MATTER AND MIND

A CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS

Edward Holloway

© Faith-Keyway Trust 2014

TABLE  OF  CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART   1

JUDGEMENT   ON   THE   TIMES

Chapter 1  Introductory

Chapter 2  The Decline of Christian Belief

Chapter 3  The Failure of Scientific Positivism

PART   2

MAN  AND   HIS   UNIVERSE

Chapter 4  Absolute and Relative

Chapter 5  The “Law of Control and Direction”

Chapter 6  The Emergence and Evolution of Life

Chapter 7  The Path to Man

PART   3

FROM   MAN  TO   CHRIST

Chapter 8  The “word” of Man, and the “WORD” of God

Chapter 9  “And the Word was made Flesh.”

Chapter 10 The Character of Christ

PART   4

CHRIST   AND  THE  CHURCH

Chapter 11 The Church of Christ

Chapter 12 The Sacramental System

Chapter 13 The Blessed Eucharist

PART   5

SIN   AND  REDEMPTION

Chapter 14 Good and Evil:  The original status of Man

Chapter 15 The Fall, and its consequences

Chapter 16 The Redemption of Man

CONCLUSION

APPENDICES

Appendix 1 Evolution and the First Chapters of Genesis

Appendix 2 The Place of the Womb of Mary in the Incarnation

Appendix 3 Nature and the Supernatural

Preface

Matter and Mind: A Christian Synthesis  was written by Fr Edward Holloway between 1946 and 1950 when he was aged 27 to 31. After studying at the Venerable English College in Rome, he completed his degrees in philosophy and theology and was ordained priest at the age of 26 for the diocese of Southwark on 13 February 1944. (Because of the war the College was evacuated to St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst, Lancashire for the last four years of his formation.)

In 1946 Fr Holloway was appointed as assistant to the parish of the English Martyrs, Walworth, South London and priest-in-charge of St Augustine’s House for Late Vocations which was also in the parish. It was here that he wrote this book. On its completion  he sent a copy of it to Rome, to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He had twelve copies of the book produced by a firm which typed it all out and reproduced it by the “Roneo” method on foolscap, each copy about six hundred pages. This book was the beginning of his life’s work and was based on the vision of Christ and creation given earlier to his mother Agnes Holloway, although the book does not reveal these origins, and stands on its own philosophical and theological reasoning.

Fr Holloway was appointed to be the first Parish Priest of St Thomas More, Bramley, Surrey in 1961  where he stayed  until  1967.  During this time he completely re-wrote this  book.  It  was eventually published in 1969 as Catholicism: A New Synthesis, a second edition of   which was published in 1976 with a Foreword by Cardinal John Wright.

On leaving Bramley Fr  Holloway became Parish  Priest  of Portslade-by-Sea,  Sussex  in  the diocese of Arundel and Brighton (1967-76); and then of Esher, Surrey (1976-86). After retiring he assisted  Fr. Victor Cook at Cranleigh, Surrey (1986-92) and from 1992 at Warlingham, Surrey. He died on 24 March 1999.

Fr. Holloway was Editor of Faith Magazine 1969-91, and founder of Faith youth movement in 1972. He was also the author of numerous pamphlets and articles which develop the original vision of Christ the Lord of Science and Lord of Religion. In addition he wrote three volumes of philosophical works, Perspectives in Philosophy, which involve a critique and re-alignment of Catholic philosophy for the scientific age. The last volume of these, Noumenon and Phenomenon: Rethinking the Greeks in the Age of Science, was published just before he died. In 2005 the first volume of Fr Holloway’s Theological Perspectives was published, comprising a selection of his editorials and articles for Faith Magazine. It is expected that further volumes will be published in the future.

So why should we now publish this early volume of Matter and Mind: A Christian Synthesis? There are several reasons. Firstly there is a growing interest in the thinking of Edward Holloway, especially in the synthesis of religion and science that he articulated so well in Catholicism: A New Synthesis and in numerous other writings, theological and philosophical. The publishing of this volume is part of a project for a “Complete Works” of Edward Holloway. Secondly this book sheds light on the whole vision he was putting forward of Christ and creation, a vision so necessary today and which has inspired many people both within Faith Movement and outside it. Thirdly before he died Fr Holloway agreed that publishing this earlier work may be helpful since, he said, “It may be easier to understand than the later work [Catholicism: A New Synthesis]!” In some ways it does present a more concise and clear theological vision than his later more developed work.

The original text of Matter and Mind: A Christian Synthesis has been amended in a number of ways for this edition. The original version had no sub-headings; these have been added. Some of the paragraphs and sentences were exceedingly long and have been broken up. Fr Holloway’s original capitalisation has however been retained throughout despite changes in custom since the 1940’s. Apart from these cosmetic adjustments the text has not been changed. Some sections on Marxism and on the social teaching of the Church have been omitted as they  are not pertinent to the overall theme.

The central principle of the philosophy and theology in  Matter and Mind: A Christian Synthesis is to show the unity of God’s plan of creation and salvation. It is a plan formed “before the foundation of the world”, a “purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (cf. Eph 1:4,9-10) All of God’s works proceed from the one wisdom of God, and are centred on the Incarnate Jesus Christ: “All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col 1:16-17) This one wisdom, which comes from the will of God, and which orders and directs all things for his purpose, is therefore the law for all created things. It might well be called “God’s Master-Key”. This law is breathtaking in its simplicity but contains great power and depth to develop and to unify faith and reason for this age of science. It has an enormous impact in the whole of theology, philosophy, apologetics and catechetics, especially in regard to their vital relationship with the scientific vision of creation.

It is in this book that Fr Holloway expounds a new vision for the age of science: a vision of science   and religion, creation and Jesus Christ. He does so through the “Law of Control and Direction” or “Unity Law”. This he introduces in chapters 4 and 5. The reader is urged to study these chapters carefully as they are the  basis of the whole book. It is through this principle that Fr Holloway leads on to the creation of man within the evolutionary scheme of creation (chapters 6 and 7), the need for the Incarnation as the fulfilment of the Unity Law (chapters 8 and 9), and the necessary fulfilment of the Unity Law in the Church, the Sacraments and especially the Blessed Sacrament (chapters 11 to 13). Finally the Unity Law explains how the damage done to man through original sin makes a tragic and coherent sense, and how Jesus Christ redeems us from this tragedy (chapters 14 to 16).   The teaching in this book is both contemporary and deeply traditional, and profoundly based in Johannine and Pauline theology in its vision of Christ and creation.

We are now publishing this edition of Matter and Mind: A Christian Synthesis in the hope that it will help many more to understand the vital importance of the vision Fr Holloway has given to us – a hope that Fr Holloway himself eloquently urged in the conclusion of his book,   written nearly seventy years ago:

The basic principles which underlie this work, itself only a partial aspect even in outline of what should be written, give to the Church the new key she needs to unlock a deeper treasure vault of the deposit of the Faith, and to bring forth from its depths new things and old for the salvation of men.  For the Church stands today on the threshold of such a majority given her by Christ, that looking backwards in the days to come, her heart will grow warm and abound within her, and she will know that what went before was but her childhood, her growing in wisdom, age, and grace before God and men to the stature of the maturity of Christ which is her measure.

Roger Nesbitt

PART ONE

JUDGEMENT ON THE TIMES

CHAPTER 1

Introductory

Through the recurrent crises and anxieties of the times in which we live, there always seems to be the constant and heartbreaking realization among men, that human life whether in the individual or in the social sphere has somehow lost that sense of direction and final purpose without which there is no joy in the heart of a man, and no meaning in his works.

Our life has been ravaged by two savage wars, wars of ideology, of conflicting ways of life, and today  we  are  once  more  bogged  down  and  stranded  in  a  peace  which  is  no  peace,  and  the atmosphere in which the nations live is heavy with the sulphur of another terrible and impending doom, for the impasse between the nations which mocks all our hopes of lasting peace is the irreconcilable deadlock of an ideological contradiction more complete and more conscious than that which bred the first two wars of this pain-wrecked century.   We have become accustomed to concede, at least in our private hearts, the expectation of another world war, because we know that there can be no other outcome when conflicting philosophies of life stand counterpoised in mutual fear and mutual distrust.

We know too that through the increasing perfection of the technique of scientific conquest of matter that has waxed the lustier as our moral and spiritual decadence has deepened, the world has grown so small and interdependent that a third great war would resolve perhaps for generations the paroxysmal tensions of our times, in that the victor, provided he could maintain his own territories as a functioning whole, could have no rival in a world shattered beyond anything mankind has yet seen.  The world has begun to divide into two opposing blocks between which the uncommitted are being reluctantly forced to choose, and in this fatal phenomenon lies, for the small and easily ranged world of modern man, the temptation of our present state, the temptation to the leaders of a schizophrenic world to precipitate the final catastrophe, and yet to dare to hope that they will survive victorious to call forth the phoenix of a new world order from the radioactive ash of the old.

A new era of history

We know that today we stand on the threshold of a new era in man’s history, we know that a new era is being delivered of the dying body of the old, and we anticipate that we will in our own days, if at least we be less than middle-aged, survive to see it born and know its shape. Or else, being among the less lucky, we expect to build up the funeral pyre of the old order with our own bodies, either in the hurricane of a new war, or maybe perhaps in the concentration camps of a new tyranny.

The common man needs no social oracle to remind him of this.   He knows well enough, and knows with a sickness at his heart that a new culture is foreshadowed in the turbulence and spiritual confusion of his times.  He knows that mankind is on the march again, but he does not pretend to know what will be there at journey’s end.  He does not anticipate any worthy or happy achievement to be built up on the foundation of ruthless propaganda and hate-smeared lies that emphasise the contradictory philosophies of our times.   Indeed, our certainty of imminent change is based less upon the positive theories and philosophies that strive for mastery over mankind than upon the worldwide breakdown of established social order and traditional culture;   a breakdown that is general indeed, but nowhere more marked or more disastrous than within that civilisation, morally the dominant culture of mankind even in decay, that goes by the name of Christendom.

The man in the street does not always reason coldly to clear cut conclusions, more often he senses, seeing deep into the fundamentals of things, the issues that dominate his life, or which confront him as a challenge to his way of thinking.   He has today concluded with that same common sense insight which one convinced will not willingly consider further, that the established order of our civilisation is in an advanced state of decay.  He knows it, it saddens him and makes him sick and sullen, but he sees nothing that he can do about it, except await the outcome of it all with a certain helpless fatalism, or if he is still a Christian, to pray for himself and his, and the world, against the storm that mutters through the dusk around him.

The root cause of our discontent

If all this is true, and it is, what shall we say of the root causes of our discontent?  Surely we must conclude that however it has come about, whether from causes of our own making or whether from some unavoidable ageing of its vital energies, that the founts of the Christian culture of Europe and the New World have begun to dry up:  the river of our life has fallen so low and runs so shallow that it can no longer support that vast “City of God”, the State of Christendom, that over two thousand years, has grown up beside it and had drawn the water of life from the living stream of Christian teaching and moral practice.

We would surely come to this conclusion even if we were not living in the order and period of a civilisation in decline, if we were presented only with the facts of this age in the abstract as historians yet to be born or as observers from another planet, for the witness of history is that growth of knowledge alone, however new and vast, does not suffice to overthrow the basic culture of a society if the fundamental formative principles of that culture remain adequate to the needs and aspirations of the human soul.

The sudden inheritance in the fourth century by the Christian Church of all those treasures of pagan achievement in philosophy and the arts which were the tribute of the surrender of the emperors to Christ, far from destroying the Christian Gospel or causing it to lose its identity within the sophisticated structure of pagan philosophical thought, served rather to give to the Christian the tools with which to actualise the latent energies of his Faith, and to fashion upon it a fabric of theological thought never since surpassed by Christian theologians, a theological edifice which the mediaeval schoolmen did little more than adorn.

The growth of scientific knowledge

If our Christian culture had not failed in some way within itself, the growth of modern scientific knowledge, unparalleled though it is in the history of mankind, would not have brought on that stagnation and breakdown which is the feature of our times, and which can only be related to a widespread loss of prestige and authority over men’s minds by those bodies and institutions which are the depositories of the essential principles which inspired and built the State of Christendom.

If there were no need of any further development of Christian theology, no need for anything more than a degree of reorientation of emphasis and a changed technique in the presentation of Christian belief, we would expect that however troublesome the process might be, we should now be witnesses of a new synthesis emerging within the ancient faith; a synthesis between her constant teaching and the new secrets of science and philosophy recently won from nature.

It is true that never before has the treasury of knowledge at the disposal of man been so rich or so little evaluated.   It is true that the rate of change in outlook and thought consequent upon new knowledge has never been so rapid, and so likely to surpass even the powers of genius to synthesize within one unity of wisdom.   Yet all this granted, we could have expected that by now, three hundred years and more after the initial impetus of modern science, after a long succession of great thinkers who were by no means all apostates from Christianity while they were pioneers of the scientific age, we would have seen the beginning, and be enjoying the first-fruits, of some   new synthesis of theology and science, of divine revelation and human understanding wrought upon constant Christian doctrine and well proven scientific knowledge.   This would have been an achievement akin to that new structure by which the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, and especially St. Thomas Aquinas, raised up those very physics and metaphysics of Aristotle which seemed at one time likely to break the back of Christian thought by the apparent contradiction between reason and revelation.

A new challenge to Christendom

If the Christian Faith which has underpinned the most varied, liberal and progressive civilisation known to mankind is true, then whatever the tensions of the process a new renaissance of Christian culture should be with us.  We would expect a new development of orthodox theology which would open yet further the vista of the Gospel and be able to inspire and to direct the new patterns of individual and social life that must follow upon our scientific achievements.  It is plain to all that we have no such synthesis, and while the eleventh hour is not passed as yet, it has begun to chime.

We admit then, for our own part, that the decay within our civilisation so manifest that it requires no  proving,  reflects  a  failure  or  at  least  an  inability on  the  part  of  the  Church  to  fulfil  her authoritative teaching mission.    The term “Church” is vague, and ultimately in this book will be seen to be truly verified only of the authoritative Catholic Church whose centre is the See of Rome, but for the immediate present the term may cover, for it is true without reservation, all those organised Christian bodies and institutions which are in a special manner the custodians of the Christian religion.

We  are  admitting  that  we  have  come  to  our  present  pass  of  universal  social  malaise  and individual unhappiness because the Christian Faith by which we live has not been able to command and to inform the new emergent factors that have made the modern world.  As a result of this failure Christendom has been unable to maintain that homogeneity of culture necessary to integrate a common civilisation.  Marxism and Nazism, to name only two of the principal challengers to the Christian way of life, are not so much manifestations of the eternal contradiction to Christ as new heresies that have been born of a social environment in which the doctrines of Christianity are condemned and the authority of the Christian Church set at nought.

Inability of Christian speculative thought to respond

The mere fact that Christianity has not maintained itself in the modern world as an intellectual force is proof enough of some failure without any special research or analysis being required of us, for this inability to maintain prestige represents a frustration of the mission of the Christian Faith, and it is the fact of failure that here concerns us rather than any close analysis of the reasons for it.

It is a commonplace of knowledge that the survival of a great civilisation depends upon the vitality of those basic convictions and generally accepted ideals which shape the ends of the society they inform.  It can certainly happen that for a while the dynamism of such guiding principles may be thwarted by the confusion of undigested and apparently conflicting certainties;  it can also be that moral degeneration alone may bring about social collapse, but it is not possible that a decline which can be traced to the sixteenth century, and which in our own day is gathering momentum towards the collapse of  a culture,  can  be related  to  anything except  an  inability of  Christian speculative thought to inform and inspire the minds of men.  It is not a coincidence either, that this breakdown of cultural harmony is simultaneous with the origins of modern physical science as we know it today.   That century saw the first skirmishes of a tension which has developed into a disastrous civil war within the civilization of Christendom, and it is as well to be honest about it.

When we say that the Christian tradition has failed to maintain its authority over the minds of men, we must be understood as referring to a failure with respect to the glories of the past, and the increasing need for the inspiration of the tradition today.   We speak therefore rather of a true inadequacy, than of failure in the strict sense.  Far from thinking that the Christian Faith itself has failed, it is our purpose to prove that at this time of crisis it is the Catholic Church, and she alone, who without the compromising of one jot of the deposit of the Christian Faith, is both able, and is alone able, to save modern man, that poor proud plaything of the volcanic energies of his own unleashing. She alone can save man from himself, and is competent through the theology and philosophy which branches out from her essential doctrine to redirect the knowledge and the forces of a new era in human history to a more majestic civilisation.

The need for certainty and finality

Man in the modern world has greater need than he ever has had since Christ of certainty and finality concerning  the  ends  of  human  existence.    He  must  attain  this  surety  which  gives  peace  and goodwill, or he will destroy himself in anguish of mind.  There can be a social suicide of mankind, even as there are suicides of individual men.   This is why we have spoken of the failure of the Christian Church to fulfil her mission today, for when the forces at work among human society are so powerful, and the need for control and direction of those forces is so urgent, no internal majesty, no relative achievement within herself, could save the Christian Church from the reproach of having failed to give what is expected of her.

It is the inability of the Church in this age to lead and to command which has been enough to bring us to the edge of the precipice and to embroil in ruin the entire world, East and West alike. For both East and West, Christians and non-Christians, have long been accustomed to rely more and more upon elements of theology and philosophy for which the only ultimate sanction lies in the truth of Christian teaching.

A crisis for all Christians

As we come now to analyse those oppositions of teaching and of outlook that have cut the gulf between the Christian Church and the trend of the modern sciences, we must make it clear beyond ambiguity what exactly we mean by “the Church”.   For us the Christian Church is truly and substantially only the Roman Catholic Church, who alone is the authoritative, constant, and uncompromising voice of the revelation of Christ.   All other Christian churches and sects approximate to her in greater or lesser degree, according as they preserve a greater or a lesser amount of the essential teaching of the Christian Faith.   At the same time, there is agreement enough between Catholics and non-Catholics for the acceptance and use of the word “Christian” in its usual more comprehensive sense, and who would wish, however sure he is of his facts, to reject with coldness and unkindness any other who approaches him in the name of Christ and greets him as a brother in the love of Christ?

Throughout the first section of this book we will be thinking always first of the Roman Catholic Church, for her alone we recognize as the authoritative Church of Christ, and from her alone who still  knows  what  exactly  she  believes  do  we  hope  for  the  revival  of  the  Christian  Faith. Nevertheless so many of the issues raised between Christianity and science will be true of Christianity and the Christian churches in the more comprehensive usage of those terms, that one will not make unnecessary distinctions where what is said applies to all who admit the name of Christian.  After the first section of this book the point will hardly arise, because it will become apparent that the argument itself by which we would reconcile Christianity and science can only be verified of the Catholic Church.  There is no other Church that claims infallibility in her definitions of essential Christian doctrine, and the presence of this attribute in the Christian Church is of the very substance of the thesis contained in this book.

This great issue of the reconciliation in one synthesis, one wisdom, of the natural principles and natural knowledge of the sciences with Christian revelation is not one to be approached with an eye to a quarrelsome polemic.  It is not in that spirit that we declare our faith in the Catholic and Roman Church.  The times are too grave, and the crisis upon us is too deep for a man to approach this issue with anything but sincere humility and trust in God.  We write for all men of goodwill, thirsting for their collaboration in the rebuilding of the City of God.  We write for all our brethren in God, for Christian and non-Christian alike, who are tormented by the anxious needs of our times and the pathetic consciousness of futility and helplessness that lies upon us all.   It is not choice but the truth that forces us to speak out as we have done, and if anyone finds our statement harsh or partisan, let him read on to the very end, and he will indeed think otherwise when he comes to reassess the matter for himself.

CHAPTER 2

The Decline of Christian Belief

The alienation of the modern mind from stable doctrinal Christianity which increases with each decade of the century, does not proceed haphazardly from private doubts upon a thousand and one points of belief.   In terms of ultimate causes the factors which have brought on the intellectual and spiritual sickness of our civilisation are relatively few.   It is true of course that a few root causes of disbelief may start a train of indirect consequences which may be for an individual the primary cause of loss of Christian faith.   It is true also that an environment of disregard for the authority of doctrinal Christianity facilitates the ready and immediate acceptance of any criticism or objection against Christian faith or morals,  especially morals,  and that for the majority of men, particularly for the majority of the young, these latter are the immediate and primary causes of individual apostasy.     True though this is, no analysis however acute of immediate causes and immediate reasons for the decline in the prestige of Christianity can be the starting-point of remedy and recovery, if these immediate causes are subordinate in nature, time, and importance to underlying causes the importance of which is minimised or even overlooked.

There are we believe certain factors, quite definite in themselves and easy to see, which almost alone are the root causes of the tension between the Church and the spirit of the age.   These few factors should be stated bluntly and dealt with honestly.   We do not deny or dismiss lightly reasons alleged for disbelief which are far removed from those of which we will treat.   It has already been admitted that these essential factors, with us now a hundred years, have bred an atmosphere of agnosticism in society which the adolescent breathes in effortlessly and unconsciously.     Each generation hardens in this groove, each element of new knowledge gathered from science is interpreted in a manner hostile to Christian doctrine, and so each generation breeds another farther removed from traditional Christian teaching than itself.

The divergence between modern science and the old theological synthesis

This drift away from the Rock of the Church is given impetus by the fact that the prevailing philosophical and social outlook of the cleric is distasteful to the young.  The mind of the cleric, especially of the Catholic priest, is still trained in the static formalism of Aristotle and the cultural tradition of the great classics and the arts.    In a Catholic seminary very little modern science is taught at all and then only as an appendage to established scholastic philosophy.   It is never taught as the physical background to newer and wider interpretations of the creative act of God, and of the implications of theology.   Such a mentality, ignorant of sociology, of economics, of psychology, of physics, of biology, is intolerable to young and virile minds trained in the tradition of the modern sciences, and the philosophies of existentialism that derive from them.   The cleric therefore has no capacity to inspire this the dominant caste of mind in modern society, nor can he fashion on the basis of a common cultural inheritance the blue-prints of philosophy and theology which a new era in human history is seeking.

There are released  in  society  today  vivid  intellectual forces  of  which  the  average  priest is almost  entirely ignorant, and even if he knows them, he neither understands them nor sympathises with them.     Yet these are the raw material of a new civilisation, the mighty and magnificent energies that call for control and direction towards a final purpose, a constructive end.   These are the very energies that must be synthesized in a unity of wisdom if any absolute meaning and last goal is to be offered for human striving, or affirmed of the human person in a modern culture.

Because of this gulf between the Church and the scientific mind, men turn more determinedly towards those philosophies of life which, however grave their shortcomings and whatever their lack of ultimate moral authority, think and speak the mental language of the world today, not of the world of Aristotle nor even of the world of mediaeval scholasticism.    The adolescent therefore grows  to  maturity  in  an  environment  of  conscious  and  outspoken  contempt  for  orthodox Christianity  and  the  Church  stands  increasingly  discredited  because  she  has  been  unable  to formulate an intellectualism that will embody the well-proven theses of modern science within Christianity in the same thorough-going manner as the scholastics of the middle-ages embodied the knowledge of their day within the cultural framework of mediaeval Christianity.

The gulf widens with each generation, and modern means of diffusing knowledge by the press, radio, and film, have brought us now to such a pass that the Christian, and especially the Catholic, whose beliefs are enriched in their religious manifestation by the ceremonies and practices of a most ancient past, finds himself considered the initiate of a recondite cult whose practices are not only unintelligible to men around him, but savour to them of superstition and magic.   This cleavage between the devout Catholic and the non-Christian or the nominal Christian stands out in sharper contrast as technical and scientific education replaces the classics in our schools, and moulds an ever increasing percentage of the minds who really make and rule the cultural thought of the times.

Inherent inadequacy and errors of modern critiques

We can say of many of the secondary lines of attack upon Christian doctrine drawn from the modern sciences and modern critique that the interpretations offered of the evidence is never necessary, and that frequently the evidence itself is too scrappy and too little evaluated as fact to be worth considering.   This is particularly true of the modernist “higher criticism” of the Scriptures, and of that wonderful happy hunting ground of leisured cranks: the study of comparative religion. It is not intrinsic evidence in these spheres which compel conclusions that empty out the content of the Christian faith. Rather it is thought, and this is the real point, that the presumption there can be no reconciliation of these theories with historic Christianity places upon the critic the subjective necessity of a modernist interpretation, whether it be idealist or materialist.

If, for example, the Christian Gospels are considered by themselves without any background of definite belief, or any authoritative norm of interpretation, all sorts of meanings can be put upon the bare words, the more so if the critic is ready and willing to make the early disciples of Christ neurotics, hysterics, or downright liars as the occasion may demand.    This sort of critique of the Scriptures in general and of the New Testament in particular, is in no way the necessary interpretation of the historic evidences, it is simple the only way a given critic can interpret them in the context of his own preconceived judgment upon the authority of Christian teaching.

The same process of deduction masquerading as analytic induction can be traced in other fields. In psychology above all, theories and judgements concerning the final ends of human motive and human impulse are offered as facts discovered by the analysis of the human mind, which are nothing more than the laughably obvious presumptions of agnostic materialists concerning the abnormal behaviour of minds in any case diseased.   Indeed, if the digression may be pardoned, we say without hesitation that one of the most fatuous errors of much so-called  psychology and psychiatry lies in the preoccupation of psychologists with pathological cases.   After delving around in the sewers of humanity, they come smellily to the surface and from their findings gravely pronounce judgements true of human nature in general.    It should be obvious even to the most blinkered specialist that, as Aristotle wrote, if you wish to know the true orientation and true function of anything living, you must analyse the finest and noblest specimens, not those that are rotting in the last stages of disease.

However damaging these a priori critiques drawn from modern sciences may be to the authority of Christianity, and even though they may constitute the proximate and conscious motives for unbelief in the minds of those who make them, they are only secondary and derivative factors. They are secondary because historically and philosophically they have a different pedigree, being based upon a few preconceived ideas concerning the nature and processes of the universe, and of man, upon which the whole concatenation of objections hinge.  To find these real causes of the modern drift from the Church in Christendom we need to go much further back into the case history of the modern  malaise  than  the  more  dramatic  symptoms  of  the  current  year  of  grace  or  disgrace.

Christian theology itself has developed from the latent potentialities of the mustard seed, and it may  also  be  that  the  spreading  anti-Christian  bias  of  so  much  modern  thought  may  be  a development of a few simple theses, which if they can be resolved in accordance with Christian orthodoxy and synthesized within Christian theology, will give us the master key with which to unlock all lesser riddles and the power to harness the great creative energies of our times to that culture of Christendom which it bids fair to dissolve.

The science of evolution and Christian theology

Foremost among those discoveries which have revolutionised the thought of the world in countless direct and indirect ways, we place the doctrine of the evolution of material forms of being, organic and inorganic.   This teaching owes nearly everything it has today to the initial impetus given it by Darwin in the last century.   It is not to our purpose here to trace the rise of this teaching, already pre-existing among philosophers in the dialectic of fact to the dust of speculation, so that the philosophic desert  blossomed forth  the scientific rose.     The implications  of a philosophy of evolution closely wedded to experimental science were tremendous, and the repercussions are not finished in our own day.   This above all was the bombshell which shook Christian theology to its foundations and caused a gradual landslide beneath those foundations which now imperils the entire edifice of Christendom.

As far as the Church was concerned, it meant that the Christian Bible could not be interpreted with the same guileless ease as a schools’ elementary primer, containing over some six thousand years the history of the world in detail to the present day.   To most of the Protestant sects this was a mortal blow.    Their Christian faith rested on the application of subjective personal opinion to an objective and infallible body of fact, the inerrant and literally infallible Bible.   The stability of their teaching, never of the highest as the proliferation of sects testifies, was preserved in so far as it could be preserved, by the assurance of the infallibility of their final court of appeal.    They now found themselves in a situation where the subjectivism of their “free Bible” was matched by the subjectivism and uncertainty of the literally true “word of God” itself.    They had no longer any firm ground of authoritative Christian teaching when the Bible itself became a work subject to comparative criticism and enigmatic interpretation. There remained now no Canon, except again personal opinion, by which to redefine the very nature of inspiration, let alone to distinguish between the substance of doctrine and its mode of presentation,  a distinction they had never been willing to admit before in any case.

This difficulty lay like a great sorrow upon all theologians whose last norm of belief was nothing more certain than private interpretation of the Bible, and while it broke the faith of some, it serves also, paradox though it may seem, to explain how it was that so many non-Catholic exegetes found it easy to strip themselves of theological vesture and to plunge wildly with the higher critics into the maelstrom of that speculative free-for-all and devaluation of Christian doctrine which followed. Only for the Roman Catholic did the parity of Christian teaching remain unchanged, a phenomenon which has continued, to the amazement and indignation of other Christians, even to the present time.

For many, the very subjectivism which taught that individual faith was founded upon individual valuation  of a  “free  Bible” allowed  them,  after the initial  shock had  passed, to  repudiate  all objectivity in Christian belief.  Applying personal subjectivism to a now fluid and subjective Bible, these began to work out their salvation anew, simply taking what could safely be believed because it was, or seemed to be, above the invading flood level of the new agnosticism.

Once this process had well begun it was to be expected, and soon occurred, that even where churches and sects maintained their former congregational and organised life, there now existed as many schools of doctrine as there were members of the congregation.   Under such conditions the essential nature of Christianity had already disappeared, although the outward evidence of the inward  death  might  long  be  delayed  by  the  embalming  influence  of  religious  and  social conventions.  There was left no shred of objectivity which might be a measuring rod of Christian doctrine and the morality which only doctrine sanctions.   What had become for the Nonconformist subjective and uncertain in the Old Testament necessarily had repercussions upon the New Testament.  The Divinity of Christ, certain for them only if the entire Bible was inerrant, became a matter of challenge, until the low churchman found himself following a master whose objective status could no longer, on any logical reckoning, be more certain, authoritative and unique than that of any other great religious leader recorded in the annals of mankind.

Implications for the approach to Scripture

The  blow  to  the  Protestant  episcopal  churches,  while  less  dramatically  disastrous  was  severe enough, and with the passage of time has proved equally mortal.   For the episcopalian churches the dilemma was to some degree concealed, because although there is no final and binding doctrinal authority in the Church of England which can guarantee a defined and unanimous agreement concerning essentials of belief, and although private interpretation of the thirty-nine articles remains the last norm of authority, yet there has always existed a fog of compromise and befuddlement over the whole issue of the relations between the authority of the episcopate and the authority of the individual in matters of doctrine.   In circumstances such as these the authority of the episcopal hierarchy gave a certain stability and continuity to traditional doctrine, an authority nevertheless always more empirical than constitutional, which was powerful enough to break down but not to prevent the incursions of modernism.

With the passing of time the lack of a central and certain authority upon doctrine within the Church of England has caused the spiritual life of that church to degenerate also into one long salvage operation upon the wreckage of Christian doctrinal and moral belief, and just how constitutionally meagre is the doctrinal authority of the bishops has been glaringly and painfully demonstrated in the open crisis that was evoked by the utterly agnostic and non-Christian Christianity professed by Bishop Barnes of Birmingham.

The Catholic could in theory plead that he had no new case to meet.     The infallible and authoritative Church who had by her own Canons (Cf.  Synod of Rome  AD 382;  Council of Trent AD 1546) drawn up and promulgated the Bible that is common to all  Christians, who had a thousand five hundred years before decided what did and what did not constitute the Bible, had never held nor could hold the same subjective and individualist views concerning its nature and authority as did the Reformers.   The Catholic regarded the Bible as inspired certainly, but not as a complete and explicit compendium of Faith.    It was for him an inspired expression of tradition itself, of that tradition which lives and breathes within the Church age by age.   A reflection indeed special and  priceless in that it  recorded  faithfully and  lovingly what only the personal followers of the Saviour could recall and record, but as the expression and product of that living tradition in its initial impulse, necessarily subject in interpretation to the living Church which mothered it in the beginning.

If this is true of the New Testament, much more so would it be true of the partial and prophetic utterances of the Old Testament.  The admitted fact of doctrine that the whole Bible was the work of God as completely as it was a work of men, was for the Catholic proof convincing that it was never meant to be left for final interpretation to the crass and ignorant opinions of individuals.   The Bible was God’s, was Christ’s, and the authoritative interpreter of the mind of Christ was the Catholic Church.

For  the  Catholic  then, the  Bible  was  guaranteed  in  the  last  analysis  immediately by God, immanent in the Church, and that guarantee consisted and consists in the inerrancy concerning the deposit of Faith promised her, and not in the placet of scholars and exegetes however distinguished or however saintly.    Theological opinion among Catholics had tended, it is true, to harden into narrowly literal and legalistic grooves of thought by the nineteenth century, but theologians could not forget however much they might ignore it, the broader and at first sight non-literal exegesis so often favoured by the early Church Fathers, and never repudiated by the Church.

The mystical and allegorical sense of the Scriptures was carefully distinguished by theologians from the literal sense but this literal sense meant not the first obvious meaning of the mere words, but the sense that God intended to be primarily conveyed.   It was conceded by even the narrowest and most conservative of theologians that a “literal” sense thus understood might coincide with what might seem to be a “mystical” sense by the matter of fact standards of verbal interpretation, and that of all this, in a matter of dispute or of great moment only the Church was the judge.

Failure of Catholic theology to find a new synthesis

It was true in strict theory and remains true, that the Catholic Church was not directly compromised in her essential doctrine by the knocking away of those props which underpinned individualist Protestantism. Yet conservative theological opinion, prone to the same type of literalism since the triumph of Aristotelianism in the schools of the Church, had swallowed a very bitter pill, or rather refused to swallow it.  In their reaction against scientific scepticism, and scientific generalisation which were as sweeping and as prejudiced as any theological temerity, they failed to distinguish the root causes of the new unbelief from the arrogance of the unbelievers, and met with equal contempt and malediction what could only be properly answered by the careful  separation of fact from presumption and prejudice on either side.

Theologians had become both over-assertive and over-sensitive to error since the challenge of Protestantism, and many Catholics among the educated, formed in a deep rut that allowed no distinction between doctrine and common theological opinion, found their faith hardly less troubled than did their non-Catholic brethren.   This anxiety was accentuated by the overall loss of prestige which followed the subsequent gradual withdrawals by theologians, especially on the matter of the evolution of man’s body, to more moderate positions and less savage theological notes.

In our own day a much more satisfactory position has been reached in the distinction between matters of Faith and theological opinion, but the clarification was not achieved without grave loss of face and sad scandal.  Had this loss of prestige been confined to the relatively superficial plane of a too bigoted defence of the human accretions to divine doctrine, the remedy would have been simple, and by now the losses would be almost made good.   But prejudice, whether foolish or forgivable is not the whole story nor the heart of the story.  It is easy, far too easy, to state that there is no valid reason why the most consistent of Catholics  should  not  believe in  the  evolution  of man’s  body so  long as he is willing to admit the immediate creation and infusion of his soul, but the difficulty is far from resolved in so glib an answer.

In the first place the theory of physical evolution seems to many to do away with the necessity and even the possibility of a spiritual soul at all, and by “spiritual” we intend no fuzzy Protestant or modernist  compromise  entity,  but  an  intelligent  and  freely volitional  principle  of  being,  non- material in itself and really distinct in order of being from matter.   This is the genuine and only Christian definition of the rational soul.   The hostility of the majority of scientists, and of their camp-followers the modern philosophers, to such a conception has long been apparent, but as time passes, while man has become increasingly inexplicable in terms of materialism, his inextricable dependence upon matter in every sort of human function and manifestation has only hardened the scientific world in their denial of the soul.   Rather than admit the soul they prefer to attribute qualities to matter as such, quite other than the determinist behaviourism popular half a century ago, and certainly not capable of test by empirical experiment.

The understanding of Creation in the book of Genesis

Since the problem is no less real because it has been so long with us, what is to be thought of the whole creation narrative contained in the first three chapters of Genesis?   If  this narration is relegated to the status of an edifying folk-story, then one of the most important books of the Old Testament has no objective doctrinal value at all, and there is less reason for giving credence to the rest of the Christian Revelation, for this section of the Old Testament is one to which the Christian and Catholic Church has always attributed definite doctrinal value, and is one of the few parts of the Old Testament explicitly quoted by Christ in a doctrinal context. (Cf. Matt 19:4-8 ref: marriage and divorce)

Even for the Catholic Church the narrative of Genesis, which is so bound up with the doctrine and moral authority of Christianity, cannot bear a meaning so far removed from the words of the text that it is unreasonable, and yet it must bear an objective meaning, and one which does not compromise Catholic doctrine.  To point the difficulty for the theologian, let us comment openly for instance upon the account of the creation of Eve.  If the narrative be interpreted with verbal literacy, then there is the very real difficulty that a God emerges who acts in the crude and anthropomorphic manner adequate for the intelligence of a primitive race of tribesmen, but not in the manner as the God of Science is known to have acted by the biologist or the physicist.   If there are some theologians who still cannot see this difficulty it is a pity, because everybody else can.

If we postulate a personal God, it is hard to see why He who framed the universe in a wonderful harmony of co-ordinated and interdependent relative evolution, governed by one master law, right up to the emergence of anthropoids closely akin in physical structure to man, should either “fashion him of clay” in the literal sense, or even less should have built up the woman upon a rib taken from the side of a sleeping Adam.  When all the discussion concerning the exact meaning of the word translated “rib” is over, there still remains some enigmatic physical dependence of the body of woman upon that of man, a dependence if real which has never been given an intelligible and acceptable interpretation far removed from the prima facie meaning of the text.

Very much the same embarrassment exists for the theologian when he comes to interpret the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, and while far more theologians are inclined to seek a sense other than the verbal sense here, their action is quite illogical, for the narrative must be treated as one whole in one tenor of thought, whether there be two documents buried within the first three chapters or not.

We ask whether it is unfair to consider the verbal sense of these difficult passages, so suitable to the mind of a barbaric people barely yet out of bondage as anthropomorphic and quite inadequate in the modern time?  We do not think there is any need to place an abyss between the God of Moses and the God of Darwin or Einstein.   He was the same from the beginning; fashioning, forming, perfecting through a law and a wisdom before men walked the earth at all.

We have already hinted that if the creation of the universe by evolution is not verbally according to the account of the hexaemeron, there is no reason to insist on verbal literalism in any other part of the creation narrative.   This is a forcible enough reminder as far as strict literalism is concerned, for theologians long since gave up trying to defend the age of the world as some six thousand years, or the creation of the universe in six days of twenty four hours.  In point of fact the first chapter of Genesis  offers very little if  any difficulty at  all  to  the theologian who  accepts  the theory of evolution, but the two following chapters are not so easy.

We would say that the mode of difficulty which above all confronts the orthodox Christian theologian is the reconciliation of man as a special creation with evolution, and the even more embarrassing difficulty of the creation of woman.    There are many other indirect difficulties of course,  especially those  that  involve  the  Christian  concept  of  Original  Sin,  its  nature  and  its consequence, but it is not possible for us to analyse all the very real anxieties that make the theologian so chary of the theory of the evolution of man.

The evidence for evolutionary theory

Before we attempt a short analysis of the dilemmas that confront both the Christian Catholic Church and the non-Christian philosophies of life that dominates the era, we might first ask how strong is the evidence for the evolution of man, or at least for the physical evolution of his body if he has a soul in the sense in which Christianity defines it.  We have no intention of turning biologist here, nor can we speak with any authority in that field.  Our purpose is only to outline in a very general way what we consider to be generally accepted fields of evidence, or spheres in which strong evidences exist. It is up to the reader to seek out the detailed material for himself if he is ignorant of it, for it is very easy to come by in any unspecialised work on the subject of evolution.  All we wish to do now is so to present the general evidence that we may more clearly indicate those matters of science and of theological doctrine which give rise to tension between orthodox Christianity and accepted scientific theses.  It is necessary to diagnose the illness with complete frankness before we can hope to remedy the disease.

We consider that the data from biology, especially on the concrete and factual level of palaeontology is not yet such that it silences all possibility of debate.   If it were so, we doubt whether biologists ever today would be as anxious as they are to build up the paleontological evidence for the ancestry of man, and so inclined to hail prematurely the latest fossil discovery as the one link they were really looking for.   Nevertheless we submit that the case is demonstrated with as much moral certitude as matters, even if not with that physical certitude that only concrete and correlated fossil evidence can give.

Evolution of Man

The specific evidence for the evolution of some of the most important animal phyla such as the horses and the mastodons is of course overwhelming and is a commonplace of any text-book of biology.   The ancestry of man, if he also has  his physical origins within this same order of evolutionary development upward from unicellular organisms, would naturally be very difficult to trace in detail in any case.  It is agreed that existing anthropoids are only obliquely related to man, and  presumably  they  also  have  their  own  complicated  and  branching  pedigree  which  as  it approaches the trunk of the anthropoid stem will be most difficult to separate from the line of life that leads directly to man.  It is one thing to establish a general hypothesis such as the evolution of species from a small amount of first-class data, and quite another to trace a particular and unique line which for the purposes of argument at least must be put in a separate category and have its pedigree proven individually.

In the case of this one species, mankind, whom all concede to be distinguished from the highest orders of mammalian life by unique characteristics, and for whom a special nature, origin and destiny is claimed, general evidence and general analysis applicable to the orders of fauna and flora generically will not necessarily be accepted as strong enough to establish his evolution.  Many will require specialised evidences, and such precise “mining” for one particular type of anthropoid remains among the graveyards of past life will be much more intricate and much less rewarding than the almost inevitable gathering of clues which relate decisively to certain classes of life, and which can be safely generalised over a whole sub-species on the unanimous admission that all life other than man is on the same level of being, and is contained within the unity of one philosophical order.

In spite of the difficulties, the evidences from palaeontology alone, which many scientists refuse to regard as the primary type of scientific evidence, is already impressive.  It has been established that the structure of very ancient human types now long extinct or racially absorbed was notably more crude and more simian than any existing human race.   The biologist has established that there existed human types more primitive even than Neanderthal man, and with a smaller brain-capacity. While there has been no structural development which could be called “specific” in the sense understood in either philosophy or biology, the refinements of structure and improvements of cranial potential which have taken place are exactly in accord with the general law of physical evolution.  There have also been unearthed anthropoid remains, which, while certainly not human nor even certainly in the direct line to man, show a brain capacity in excess of that of existing simians, and an unspecialised body structure akin to what would necessarily be looked for in any distant ancestor of man.   While biologists wrangle whether certain remains are to be considered human or sub-human, it still remains true that the very difficulty of coming to a decision is highly suggestive, and that such evidences, when they are in sufficient quantity to admit of more than romantic reconstructions, point only one way.

Again we are forced in intellectual honesty to ask why, if the creation of man was equally immediate in respect of both body and soul, God should have created initially a type structurally less humanly perfect than the modern races and more akin to the anthropoids, so that man appears to have evolved physically even if he did not.  The question is the more pertinent in view of the Christian teaching upon the personal status of primitive man, a status which,  quite on their own responsibility and not the Church’s,   most theologians of recent times have imagined to require form of classic human beauty as a physical concomitant to spiritual integrity.

In addition, the manifold evidence that can be gathered  from embryology, the existence of vestigial organs, the parallelisms afforded by biochemical comparison, the study of genetics, while each item of evidence in itself amounts only to a probability of high or low degree if restricted to the evidence in so far as it concerns man, presents an accumulation of factors easily harmonised in a magnificent unity of wisdom and beauty upon an evolutionary hypothesis, and upon no other. Indeed, the convergence of evidences for evolution below man is so great that it may be called a demonstrated physical certainty, and there is no reason at all why man should not be included as far as his body is concerned, in this one unity of law, development, and order, and there is a multitude of reasons scientific and philosophical why he should.

The evidence then for the evolution of man is, we think, sufficient for moral certainty, and the common opinion of scientists does not grow less with the years, whatever the disputes about the manner of such evolution and the philosophical interpretation of the process.

The evidence for the evolution of sub-human life is, we have urged, adequate enough to establish the fact in any case, but when there are added to biology and botany,  scientific, philosophical, and theological considerations drawn from our knowledge of the universe as a whole, the evidence for evolution in general becomes overwhelming, and the reasons for including man in this process become so great from the convergence of probabilities that evolution becomes the only reasonable explanation of man’s creation.

Evolution as a cosmic process

It has already become apparent that evolution from the more simple form to the more complex functional synthesis is a fact of being true over the whole order of matter.  It is so true that it must be considered a cosmic process.   There has been evolution in the non-living universe as truly and as demonstrably as in the living, and the summit of evolution in the inorganic order culminated in a state at which was produced an atmosphere and an environment which alone could support life. Such  an  atmosphere  requires  the  existence  of  elements  themselves  already  highly  complex syntheses, and through which alone the living cell could breathe and feed; such an environment was a condition not simply of the continuance of organic life but of its essential structure.  The lowly beginnings of the kingdom of life is relative to the latest and most complex stage in the evolution of inorganic matter.   It is a matter of common knowledge that syntheses of elements which are protoplasmic constituents of the nucleus of the lowest forms of life could only have come into being as integrated constituents in the temperate conditions of that last stage in the development of our planet in which life was born.

When the first beginnings of life are seen to depend intrinsically on the attainment of a certain stage of both cosmic and local development through a process in the inorganic universe that can only be called evolution, we can firstly refer to the climax of the process attained in the lesser order of the inorganic, as relative to the lowest inception of the higher order of the living material being. The concept  of material  evolution, then, must be enlarged  to  its  true proportion  of a cosmic relativity.    The  evolution  through  geological  aeons  of  our  planet  to  a  condition  which  could produce, or at least tolerate life in any form, was itself only an integral part of a total cosmic relationship, a universal correlative process of material evolution, which as far as it affected our own planet, became intrinsically potential to the production, or the toleration, of the living cell.  We make this somewhat annoying distinction of ‘production’ against ‘toleration’ only to bypass the question of the origins of life, though for our own part we can see no reason why the living cell should need to be a special and distinct creation.

This subject of the evolution of the living thing cannot be adequately treated unless it is seen in its proportion as only one facet of a cosmic totality, a universal process, the understanding of which calls for the co-operation of all the other physical sciences, not simply biology alone.

The tree of life appears as a tree indeed, but one whose roots penetrate beyond our present power to probe to the primordial condition of the cosmos, and as we are able to trace it upwards there is, as in a tree, a continuous branching out and thrusting higher, a graduated and co-relative series of development without break or discontinuity.  Can we then break the fine seam of this universal weft so integral to the whole natural order that co-relative evolution must be called a law of the universe, in order to make a special exception for the sake of man?  We do not see any reason for such an exception, and the vast majority of scientists have long since ceased to believe that there is any valid reason for such an exception.

Man as the summit of evolution in the plan of God

The physical organism of man, apart from extrinsic evidence for evolution, is as much embedded in the processes of material life and the environmental conditions of material life as any other animal form.  The human structure, brain, nervous system and glandular organisation is identical in type and function with theirs, above all with that of the anthropoid simians.  The laws of heredity and the genetic composition of the content of heredity follow in him precisely the same pattern as in plant and animal.   There is overwhelming evidence for the possibility, and weighty evidence for the actual fact, of such an evolution.  This being so, why should we interrupt, and interrupting shatter, the soaring majesty of this universal process which knows no other exception and is so much more perfect, splendid and worthy a conception of the creation wrought by God?  We would be making against all the evidences an ugly and unnecessary break, in favour of a being who not only does not require to be considered an exception to the law of evolution either theologically or philosophically, but who alone, we will show, gives to this universal progression of divine science and  wisdom its final raison d’être.

To the Christian who believes in evolution surely creation by evolution viewed in its cosmic vastness, its universality in place, space, and time, its coherent and integrated relativity, manifests beyond doubt and beyond the power of man to appreciate, the unity and wisdom, manifold in manifestation, one in central law and directive control, which is the awesome majesty of the mind which is God.   If against this God truly almighty and all wise, we were, without allowance for context, or the tenderness of that charity by which He gave milk, not meat to a primitive people, - who as yet were not able - we were to offer man today the bare narrative of Genesis to be accepted in the prima facie meaning of the bare words, they could do nothing else but find it unthinkable and intolerable and judge it however respectfully as the anthropomorphic concept of an illiterate tribe.

However much a man may agree in substance with these sentiments, and however much theologians may assert that body, this concession has not in practice been found satisfactory either by most theologians or by the scientific thinker.  Difficulties of real substance have remained that cannot be exorcised by this general assertion, and if we are endeavouring to analyse with complete sincerity those factors which have caused the present drift away from the Christian faith, we must examine the principal consequences of the new outlook of science and the modern philosophies upon man and his world, in so far as this now dominant mentality judges the doctrines of Christianity, above all the doctrines of that universal Catholic Church which alone we admit to preach the fullness of the Christian Faith.

In this consideration of the difficulties which confront the Christian in the modern world, and the still more serious deficiencies which vitiate the non-Christian philosophies of life, we do not intend, when speaking of the origin of man, to dwell on the question of the unity of origin of the human species.   This must be touched upon in its proper place, but mainly from the view-point of the theologian.  This is a work which relates theology and philosophy to certain scientific data, but it is not a work of science, nor even in its own sphere anything more than the outline of a fundamental theme.  Here are raised certain elementary difficulties which modern men find in the acceptance of orthodox Christianity.  We raise them but do not solve them, for the resolution of these difficulties is intrinsic to the substance of this book and is offered each in its relevant chapter.

Creation of Man and Woman

We do not consider the issue of a monogenetic of phylogenetic origin of the human species to present a principal difficulty, if only because as we shall see later, so excellent a case exists for monogenesis on any scientific reckoning.   There remains as a principal problem however the creation of the first woman to which issue we have already referred.  If the text of Genesis here is religiously authoritative at all, then any sincere effort to give a meaning substantially factual to the vexing question of the creation of the woman must postulate some physical dependence in creation of the female upon the male. And that dependence must in some true way be a dependence of origin, for no allowance for the primitive mode of presentation contained in the scriptural text, can do without this intrinsic dependence without emptying out the substantial content of the passage.

Any other approach, the attempt for instance to see in this description of the creation of woman a parable teaching a substantial truth concerning the relativity spiritual and physical of the sexes, would not suffice us here.  It would remain that the passage was not true in any literal sense because in so far as it relates an event in the physical order to be a fact it would be a total error and would have to be disregarded.  It is clear that once a passage like this is written off as factually erroneous in any reasonable meaning of the word “fact”, then the whole doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible is in jeopardy, and the difficulty cannot be held to the Old Testament alone.  We know that there are many passages of the Old Testament which are implicit citations of general historical traditions among the ancient Jews, and as such not necessarily inspired, because not intrinsic to the development of a divine revelation. Here however we are speaking of passages so intimately connected with Christian doctrine, and so explicitly defended as substantially true, that they cannot be disregarded without peril to the inerrancy of the Catholic Church.

This difficulty of giving some genuine factual meaning to the story of the creation of woman is very real.  We need not delay upon the actual narrative of the building up of the body of the woman upon a rib of the man while the latter is cast into a deep sleep.   This highly anthropomorphic passage  may  quite  easily  be  a  pictorial  and  primitively  simple  description  of  something substantially true, whether the author of Genesis was aware of the full meaning or not.  All that is required for a substantial truth to be verified of such a passage, is that it shall neither contradict nor disregard the narrative given, and that it can be seen to have been latent in the primitive narrative as the blossom is latent in the bud, even if its fuller meaning in all its relations to theology and to science would have been quite beyond the understanding of the men to whom the original presentation of the truth was first given.

Evolutionary understanding of the creation of the sexes in Genesis

The problem before the theologian is precisely what substantial truth can this creation narrative contain if the evolution of the body of man and woman is a fact, which does not do violence to the text, or relegate it to the level of an improving parable, the meaning of which is factually in error and has only a subjective value in Christian teaching?  Even if we accept without any further query the monogenetic evolution of a single pair, at any rate we must grant that both male and female of the new human species were conceived in the womb and born according to the manner which is natural to all mammals, including men.  The suggestion that the male was conceived by the infusion of the spiritual soul into a seed produced and fertilized by two anthropoids, but that then the first female of the human species was in some way drawn from his fully fashioned body after birth, is not only completely against nature but repugnant to the mind, and makes utter nonsense of any consistent and rational thesis of evolution.  There is no rhyme or reason in such a process, and it would mark a sudden and unbeautiful supernatural intervention as evolution reached its crowning achievement, an intervention ugly and unnecessary in any case, and postulated simply to conform to a religious document which all admit to be anthropomorphic in format and in presentation.

Some theologians, pressed by the vexing difficulty of this passage concerning the creation of woman, have thought out various “pre-Adamite” theories, according to which men, living under a purely “natural” order of final end, preceded the Adam of historic Christianity and were created under the law of evolution.  These races of primitive men they make to die out by some natural disaster, - the somewhat enigmatic disappearance of Neanderthal man is cited as a possible pointer to this - and one man, the Adam of historic Christianity, is then raised to the supernatural order of special dignity and destiny. Woman is formed in some way out of his body according to the apparent meaning of the text of Genesis.

Inadequacy of previous theological readings

We doubt whether there is even a remote possibility of reconciling such a view with the facts of biology upon any interpretation of those facts.  Theologically this type of creation theory is of more than doubtful orthodoxy because it conflicts with the whole sweep and outlook of historic Christianity, for which Adam was always the first man in any true sense of the word “man”.   It conflicts also with the age-long explicit teaching of the Christian Church that Adam and Eve were the first human pair, and it presumes gratuitously the prior existence of a lower order of human finality for which there is no evidence whatever in theology.  In fact this sort of theological juggling solves nothing at all either in science or in theology, and only points more painfully the lengths to which some Christian thinkers are willing to go in order to escape from the dilemma revealed so cruelly in their clumsy solutions.

We do not say that there is no answer so far attempted which meets some of the difficulties contained in the first three chapters of Genesis in fair measure, but we say that none of them are satisfactory, because they cannot give a coherent interpretation of all the major dogmatic passages. In order to fulfil what they purport to do, to reconcile the substance of the creation narrative with an evolutionary thesis of creation, they must give some genuine meaning, recognisably inherent in the text, to the major statements of the first three chapters, and it is in the failure to give some such meaning, acceptable to the fair-minded scientist and at the same time theologically orthodox as well, that they all prove unsatisfactory in greater or lesser measure.

It is not the anthropomorphic presentation of the texts of Genesis which makes this difficulty, but the problem of finding any interpretation of them which will be scientifically acceptable while remaining theologically true.  Anthropomorphism does not shock the intelligent Christian, nor we hope the intelligent non-Christian.   The development and further expansion of the content of a doctrine means that a fact substantially true is made known to the men of a given time in a manner suited to their powers of comprehension, but capable within itself of much fuller and much more accurate understanding as time goes on. This higher actuality however must be potential in the primitive presentation, it cannot be contradictory to, or irrelevant to, the earlier presentation of revealed truth.

It would be amusing to hear some of those critics who cheaply sneer at the Old Testament, explaining to their very young offspring the workings of natural selection in relation to genetics. Perhaps they would never need to try, but if they had to, there would be some fun as that terrible “why, daddy?” forced them further and further back.  We are quite sure that the scientific baby talk that would sow the germ of scientific truth in a young mind would burst professional blood-vessels at a scientific congress.   Much the same is true of a religious revelation which has been one continuity over thousands of years.  The minds of Moses’ day were no more fitted to receive the full implications of a tremendous knowledge bound up with the very basis of the universe than a young child is to understand the full implications of evolution itself.

Evolutionary philosophies and Christian doctrine

Even more destructive however than true exegetical difficulties to those articles of doctrine without which Christianity cannot survive as a religion, nor Christendom as a culture, are the myriad indirect consequences of the acceptance of evolution in the setting of a materialist or pantheist philosophy of life, settings which are almost exclusively associated today with the fact of evolution. Similarities of development, part of, or parallel to, the processes discovered in biology, are now recognised  in  all  branches  of empirical  science,  and  have justifiably resulted  in  the universal acceptance by the intelligentsia of all countries of evolutionary philosophies of matter and of the nature of living beings.

Inevitably and necessarily this has changed the approach of modern philosophers to man, and the universe from whose background he cannot be divorced.   This trend from essentialism to existentialism does not of itself conflict with Christianity, but orthodox Christianity, which in effect means Catholicism, has not been able to synthesize adequately and orientate this philosophical emphasis so native to modern thought.  The fool on the other hand has rushed in where the angels dared to tread, and the case for Christianity is being lost by the default of the defendants.

Belief in the existence of a personal God has declined as men have found the influence of mutually relative natural agencies, - environment, natural selection, organic composition, conditioned functional reaction etc. - able to account for natural phenomena that before were related to more general causes or even to the First Cause.  The Christian indeed has always recognised the immediate primacy of secondary causes in the bringing about of natural phenomena, but as serial causes have been traced further back, and their astonishing interdependence demonstrated, the scientist has tended to proclaim either a mathematical universe in which these secondary causes may be identified with some primary basic formula, or equation, synonymous in definition with a physical ultimate. That is to posit a universe in which God has no place; or else the philosopher has preferred to identify intellect with matter itself and has come to accept that idealistic cosmic pantheism which is almost as common a philosophy today as evolutionary materialism.  The classic proofs for the existence of God derived by the Church in their most accurate form from St. Thomas Aquinas, and the later proofs propounded by such moderns as Descartes, Leibnitz and Kant, have all equally fallen into disrepute.

This may be partly because the moderns had some success in undermining confidence in the classic proofs by their criticism without winning any lasting confidence in their own, but the main cause is not any defect in the proofs for the existence of God, at least in the classic proofs, but the general discredit which has fallen upon all systems of thought which ante-date the nineteenth century.  Men will not tolerate thought that is expressed in the mental dress of ages totally devoid of modern  knowledge,  especially  when  the  modern  presentation  ignores  that  new  knowledge  or utilizes it only incidentally.   When so many syntheses of thought have been shown to be too small a garment to fit a growing world of knowledge, when so many preconceptions have had to be revised in every field of knowledge, then modern man is in no sympathetic mood to listen to proofs for the existence of a personal God unless the very knowledge he has so recently acquired can be geared  to  the  demonstration  of  such  an  Absolute.    He  will  require  not  merely  that  the  new knowledge be used as the foundation of the proof, but that the very spirit and atmosphere of the new knowledge enter in such a way into the demonstration of God’s existence, that the complexities and confusions of human thought engendered by the new knowledge shall be resolved in harmonious unity in the postulate of God’s existence, nature, and relation to created being.

Roots of agnosticism

We concede that not all who doubt the existence of a personal God do so because they accept the theory of evolution, whether the word be restricted to biology or enlarged to its cosmic significance, but we do say, and from experience know, that most modern agnosticism is bound up with those non-theistic philosophies of evolution that stream off from Hegel as their modern fountain-head. The real content of many so-called modern difficulties are as old as the eternal hills, as old as human pride, as hoary as the “non serviam” (I will not serve) which was uttered by the first man and has been re-echoed since down the centuries.   When, however, to the legacy of criticisms ancient and near-modern there is added the firm acceptance of evolutionary philosophies of materialism or idealism contradictory in trend to Christian teaching, then every new difficulty, every fresh confusion of unabsorbed knowledge, every apparent retreat of conscious mind before reflex conditioned action, is taken as a new refutation of traditional Christian belief.

It is not that the existence of a Personal God has been disproved, it cannot be, but the proposition is howled down because the moderns, even the sincere moderns, cannot tolerate the outlook and background of the professed defenders of the Faith.  Most certain it is that modern men will not enthusiastically accept the doctrine of a personal God until He is so presented that the substance and the ethos of proven modern knowledge is harmonised, centralised, and finalised in Him alone. Modes of proving the existence of God, taken bodily from the masters of the middle-ages, however essentially true the argument, will not obtain an unbiased hearing today from the mass of mankind; and after all, the Church cannot address her apologetics to a tiny minority of thoughtful and pure souls who will be willing to translate the essence and the accidents of mediaeval   thought into modern  parlance.

At  this  critical time, the beginning of a new era, when the energies of human knowledge are running at high flood beyond the power of human wisdom to contain and to direct, God must appear not as the God of Aristotle, nor of St. Thomas, nor as the God of the eighteenth century Deists, but He must be the infinite stupendous Mind in whose one intelligence is contained in a unity all the scientific knowledge of the modern world, in whose fiat being is created and develops under the law that frames the very natures of created things.  He must be the Absolute Intellect and Wisdom who alone can inspire, control and direct the destinies of a new civilisation.

The modern world even more perhaps than the world into which Christ was born Incarnate God, requires not only a God, but also, and desperately, a Saviour of the human person.  If the existence of a personal God is no longer taken for granted, much less is the  Christian teaching of the spirituality of the soul and its distinction in order of being from matter.  The popular confusion of shades of meaning in the definition of the term “soul” has contributed to the abandonment by slow degrees  of  the  historic  definition,  but  the  confusion  of  use  itself  is  born  of  a  confusion  of philosophic thought.  In this again we are faced not with formal disproval of a fundamental thesis of Christianity upon which is built the valuation of the human personality common to Christendom, but we are faced with the results of another process of slow erosion consequent upon what appeared to be circumstantial evidence and the convergence of probabilities.

Matter and Mind – materialistic anthropology

We have discovered far more completely the degree to which human behaviour is conditioned by the purely physical, above all, we have discovered the controlling and inhibiting influence of the brain over bodily functions which are as much psychological as physical.   Man is proven to be subject to the same excitatory and inhibitive stimuli of drugs, disease, and brain secotomy as other animals.   We now know from the science of psychology how wide a field of activity must be ascribed at least in part to conditioned reflexes, how much human behaviour is influenced without conscious knowledge of the fact by subconscious stimuli of an instinctive and material nature.  The hypothesis of the evolution of the living entity to greater complexity through successive stages easily suggested a possible identification of mind and matter.  Was it not feasible that mind was the emergence, conscious and concentrated in highly developed beings, of the potentialities latent and always dimly active, of life itself?

The line of argument was attractive, and not without an appearance of probability.  It satisfied too that hunger for reduction to more simple and unifying principles that is natural to the mind of man, and for scientists who were also materialists or pantheists it could take only one road - mind must be reduced to matter, or matter must be elevated to mind.   The interdependence of living forms in the progression of evolution, the precision of organs and organisms conditioned through slow ages to the perfect balance of function with environment, the ultimately cosmic nature of related and universal evolution, all this urged on the mind of man a material cosmos shot through with mind in all its parts.

This trend towards dialectical materialism or cosmic pantheism would not, despite its existence as a trend of thought long before Darwin, have gained the support of un-mystical and pragmatic scientists without the important reinforcement it drew as a philosophy of being from the data of biology and psychology.   Such data is manifold, but we may take as an example the suggestive evidence that is contained in the structure and function of the brain, and the direct relation between the development of that organ and the mental powers, the psychic life (if we may use that ugly but usual term) of any given form of life.  While the nature of thought itself remained, and still remains a mystery, even to the most self-assured materialists, it has been shown that the brain, while a product of gradual evolution, is the indispensable controlling factor which gives the greater freedom from the static limitations of environment which is a mark of the higher and more versatile forms of living being.

It is without question the explanation of psychic activity which bears a striking resemblance to intelligent and consciously motivated action as we understand it of man himself.  In the anthropoids above all, and that stem is the lineage of man if evolution is true, this manifestation of mood, temperament, versatile activity, and of something akin to low-grade inventive capacity is most striking.  While it is immeasurably below the lowest human capacity even in the highest existing simians, it shows such a similarity at times with human characteristics that it was not difficult to hail this analogy with human behaviour, greater or lesser according to the similarities of the animal brain with that of man, as a dim but genuine spark of the same divine fire which burns in the head of man and is called a spiritual intelligence.

Could it be a coincidence that the most “intelligent” animal was of the same ultimate lineage as man, and that the type of his brain corresponded part for part with that of man, except for the greater development of certain areas?   Could it be a coincidence that the “intelligence” of other mammals varied in inverse ratio to their brain development, and that in the plants, which have no “brain” it was entirely absent?  If it were more than a coincidence, what was the purpose, function, or even demonstrability of the so-called spiritual soul that was supposed to be non-material in order?  It was noted too that certain races of ancient man such as Neanderthal man for instance, who is certainly a true man, either possessed a brain capacity lower than that of modern races, or showed clear indications of lesser development of the all-important frontal lobes.

False conflation of Mind and Matter

The conclusion to be drawn therefore seemed sure and simple: whatever thought might be in itself, although like life itself it was elusive and intangible to experiment, known only by its properties, it must all the same be a function of matter and contained essentially under the law of material evolution.  It was not an entity, quality, or property distinct from the cosmic order, but something rooted in that order which shows itself especially in the workings of the animal brain as the supreme manifestation of material being.  After this it did not matter whether a man defined spirit in terms of matter or matter in terms of spirit, the fact remained that what Christianity teaches to be two orders, - matter and spirit - was contained in the identification of matter and spirit as complementary aspects of one same order.

The streamlined simplicity of this theory is impressive, particularly to so mathematical an age as ours, and in any event simplicity and unity of principle in a theory, together with the capacity to relate and explain in one synthesis a wide range of phenomena, is one of those elements which make out an initial case in its favour.  There was also the added attraction of eliminating in favour of man as opposed to the rest of nature, a duality of constitutive principles, a duality or rather composition in substantial being which irritated the precision loving mind of the age, and seemed grossly to contradict the integral continuity of the evolutionary development of material being. Now it would be possible to postulate the universal unity and identity of all material being, and to reconcile into one totality, diverse only in aspect and relation, all knowledge from physics to philosophy.

As scientists traced the anatomical correspondence between man and the anthropoids bone for bone, nerve for nerve,  and in the brain convolution for convolution, as every new branch of knowledge  from  biochemistry  to  psychology  came  forward  with  similar  correspondences  of function and reaction between man and beast, it was loudly and triumphantly protested that no evidence, inductive or deductive, within the structure of man inferred the existence or the necessity of the supra-material entity asserted by theologians.   What difference is there between man and beast challenged the scientist?  There is only a difference although admittedly unique in degree, and beyond any existing norm of comparison, of personal initiative and intelligent free will.  Although it seems to be beyond comparison and to be unique in order, we can show reasons why it should be considered only a vast difference in degree, but not a difference in the order of substantial nature.

We  know  that  there  is  a  difference  in  the  capacity and  development  of  the  brain  of  man compared with any other animal, we know and have shown that the brain is in the explanation of versatility, “intelligence” and complex reaction in all living things, and while the lacunae in our argument are admitted the line of approximation is clear enough.  Is a man farther removed from a chimpanzee than a chimpanzee from a worm? We think not, urged the materialists.  Somehow the brain explains all, and whether you say “mind” or “matter” is mainly a question of emphasis and temperament.

The existence of a supra-material soul as theology conceives it can now finally be discounted and relegated with the Book of Genesis to the lumber room of those theological and philosophical contraptions fashioned by the mind of man to explain a universe the true nature and pattern of which was still hidden from him. We are presenting the case for monistic materialism or idealist pantheism as fairly as we may, so much so that some who hold it may be delighted with it and consider that we put their case more persuasively and trenchantly than their own champions.  We hope therefore that they will sincerely and carefully read us when we come to show just where this confusion of mind and matter in the unity of one order of being fails.  We do not reject it because we lack appreciation of its bearing or aspiration, but because we can disprove it, yet even in disproving it can save that unity and majesty of co-relative evolution that the scientist and scientific philosopher wishes to save.

Inadequacy of a materialistic explanation of the human mind

The majority of intellectuals who have departed from Christian theology philosophically profess biological mechanism, and a consistent materialism which forbids all belief in a personal survival after death.  It is interesting to observe that this is no longer the proclaimed and certain faith of all who, by training and convictions, would be expected to maintain it.   By an irony of fate the scientist’s own apparatus of controlled and accurate experiment has been turned upon him, and there is now some confusion in the camp.   The data of “psychic investigators” inspected and observed by scientific sceptics, has shaken their former dogmatism concerning non-survival after death, and has brought a number of modern scientists to a state of helpless confusion and incoherence.

If, as some who went as sceptics concede, a proportion of these phenomena are well attested and experimentally confirmed, and admit of no explanation except the activity of agents external to the materially  observable  order,  the  whole  neat  theory  of  the  monism  of  mind  and  matter  is undermined.  It is hardly possible if even only a few “ghosts” are proven to exist as highly active agents, that they enjoy a principle of survival of the same order as the body they long ago left to moulder.  We raise this point in passing simply because of the ironic humour the situation contains. It is a sad spectacle to see embarrassed scientists exhorted to abandon the a priori deduction of pure materialistic theory in the name of empirical fact!

Whatever the value of these investigations into the occult, they do nothing to support the edifice of Christian thought.  The contestants on both sides, materialists and “spiritualists”, are outside the stream of genuine Christian theology.  The “spiritualists” are too incoherent in their philosophy, and too agnostic in theology to be able to assist in the framing of any new synthesis between theology and science.   They have no fixed principles at all, and no centre of authority to which they can justifiably look for any principles.  While the materialist obstinately maintains that whatever these phenomena are, they will in the end be proved to be phenomena of the observable order of material causality, many of the “spiritualists”, and we use the word of course in its most general sense, themselves profess nothing beyond some vague and ill-defined variety of pantheism, and are not Christians whatever else they may be.

Materialist philosophy is incompatible with the truths of Christian theology

Fundamental teachings which are so intimately bound up with the Christian definition of the soul,such as the doctrine of Original Sin, and the consequent present fallen state of man, are not bettered in any degree acceptable to genuine Christianity because a measure of humility born of perplexity has wrung from some materialists the concession that there may possibly be something in the notion of a personal survival somehow somewhere.  Whatever misty speculations may be spun around the nature and destiny of man, the hard facts of evidence that are loosely grouped round the word “evolution” still remain, and the man who is satisfied with a materialist or pantheist-spiritualist interpretation of matter and the nature of the living being, will not have much toleration for the doctrine of the Fall.

If mind is in man in any sense an emergence from pre-existing potentialities manifested through an evolutionary process, the conception of Original Sin will be discounted, as it would have to be. Such a man will prefer, however illogically, to relate the tensions and struggles of human life to the mal-adaptation of a still “unfinished” product of evolution.  What the Christian calls sins are for him the vestiges, and more than the vestiges, of his sub-human and blindly impulsive life origin, and there the matter will be left with the pious hope that “nature” will manage somehow to improve the model any time in the next million years.  A hope that contains of course the presumption that the species will not have succeeded in disintegrating its necessary environment before the new mutant appears and is able to establish itself.

The doctrine of sin, above all the doctrine of Original Sin, as opposed to personal sin, is only one more of those tenets which theologians find awkward to explain upon an evolutionary thesis of creation, as evolution is at present interpreted.  Doctrines may develop vastly over the centuries, but at no time may development mean self-contradiction relative to the past, neither in the name of development of doctrine may anything known and taught publicly as substantial to the Christian Faith be jettisoned.  Development we saw earlier means organic development, even as the flower blossoms out of the seed, but it is not a euphemism for a change of substance.  When development becomes a euphemism for the reversal of belief, Christianity is denied as a Faith; a matter that only the Catholic really understands, because only the Catholic is faithful to the principle.

This is only one more aspect of the reason why we regard as of primary importance this matter of the theory of evolution and its myriad indirect repercussions.  If Christianity is true it is possible on this point to reconcile science and theology, and it must be done without delay.  If man is not as the Christian defines him, if there is no personal God, no spiritual soul, no survival after death, then there is no Divinity in Christ or in His Religion;  the whole economy of the Incarnation and the constitution of the Church that is built on that divine economy comes crashing to the ground.

If any man thinks to save the Christian evaluation of the human personality, its dignity, attributes and freedoms, without orthodox Christianity he is mistaken.  These values do not stand unless the theology which underlies them is also true.  If the theology is not true, then a new valuation of man must be made in which man is an animal like any other animal in order and end.   Such new evaluations of the individual and of human society, values very logical and reasonable upon their own premises can be found in the new totalitarian philosophies which are growing like cancers upon the diseased body of Christendom.

There is no future for a “Modernist” Christianity; either the Roman Catholic Church is true or Christianity  is  a  human  and  fallible  system  of  beliefs.    The  only  norm  of  authority  within Modernism is a man’s own private and personal evaluation of everything, man, nature, Church, and God included.  If Christ becomes a greater Plato, there is no reason why he should not be thought lesser than Plato, or less than any other great man who has been a leader of human thought and human wisdom.  He is greater or less as we think him so, or for our own subjective purposes find him so.  When abiding doctrinal authority goes from Christianity, the divinity within the Christian Faith goes also, and Christ, God made man, becomes a myth.   When the authority of the Church is denied, her moral teachings as well as her dogmatic tenets cease to have an absolute sanction, and are then unable to maintain an undeviating and certain directive over the ends of human personal life and social life.

This is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves today.  Apart from the desertion of so many, there are countless millions of self-styled Christians, Catholics and non-Catholic alike, who do not live the Faith in their social, business and private life, not only from the motives of human lust and selfishness which will always remain, but because in their private mind they derogate from the authority of her doctrine.   There will always be large-scale sin in human affairs, there will always be defection from Christ prompted by malice, pride, and lust, but there exists also today a defection, not always apparent in the individual, and very difficult to estimate statistically, which is a sheer weakness of interior assent, akin perhaps to the growing dejection and half-heartedness of a retreating army that nevertheless fights on.

The need for a renewed vision in the Church

We do not claim that the foregoing pages contain by any means all the factors which explain the failure of the Church to inspire the modern mind and to recast the rusted fabric of an out-grown civilisation in the new moulds of a new era.   We would be less badly off today if even the elementary principles of social justice had been put into effect at the time of “Rerum Novarum”. We would be less badly off if the training of the clergy were pursued along lines less exclusively classical and literary, if it were less divorced from the scientific temper and spirit of the age.  We would be better off today even if the clergy of the Catholic countries of Western Europe ceased to wear the cassock in the streets, and made themselves more accessible to their people in spirit, activity, and mode of life.  At the moment they make themselves so forbiddingly “not of this world” that in the minds of the younger generation especially, they are a caste quite “out of this world”.

There are many things we could do, or should have done within the last seventy years, that would have   ameliorated the present disastrous condition of Christian civilisation, but there is nothing that we could have done, or that we can do now, that will win back a collapsed world for Christ except the working out of a new synthesis of modern knowledge and the Catholic Christian Faith, a synthesis that will bind all wisdom in one whole, and inspire a civilisation universal not merely over Christendom, but eventually over the entire world.

There are many other difficulties that beset the theologian today, other than those few outlined in the foregoing pages, many of them as old and as insincere as the objections of the Pharisees against Christ Himself, but enjoying a new vogue in the dress of a new style of criticism.   We believe however that there is no important new difficulty that is intellectually sincere, which does not reduce to the doubts and difficulties that we have outlined, however far removed they may seem at first sight either from biology or from the philosophies of evolution.

Time and again criticisms of the Christian Faith, and anti-Christian social trends, take for granted a unity of cosmic principle and order from the final elements of matter up to and including man. They presume the monism either idealist as in Nazism, or materialist as in Communism so clear in

the totalitarianism that is devouring the modern world.  They take for granted some all embracing synthesis of life, social and individual, that must form every human end, whether communal or private. They presume that  is a philosophy of life that elevates the State to the position owed  to the Church, or even to the position that belongs to God alone. These philosophies, which now are driving political movements fiercely forward, bring to bear upon the new international problems of the world the mentality and the assumptions of the applied sciences to which they are so closely allied. These dominate our daily life as well as the philosophical directive of human thought, they seek, dialectical materialism explicitly and of set theory, to mould a new order and a new mind in the individual along the lines followed by the empirical sciences both in their research for new knowledge and in their generalised interpretation of new knowledge.

Rarely today does the scientist or the philosopher seek his inspiration in Christian teaching, the Marxist  indeed  is  explicitly  obliged  to  sabotage  it.         There  are  many  in  this  stream  of “evolutionary” philosophy who are not consciously attached to totalitarianism of the right or of the left, but they neglect what Christianity has to offer because they reject out of hand the authority of Christian teaching, and they respect in Christian theology only certain ethical values of a limited and subjective nature.  The hard core of doctrine which is the only intellectual sanction for what moral values they do accept, they discount as a human and time-dated expression of the needs and aspirations of a particular epoch in human history which was buried when the atomic bomb burst over Hiroshima.  The criterion they adopt when they decide whether they will accept or ignore an element in Christian teaching differs in no way from the operation of that “natural selection” which is postulated by them as one of the agencies of physical evolution.  They ask whether, from their own subjective point of view the teaching has a useful “survival value”; does it do any good that they can see; is it an adequate expression of the state of human needs and relations in the present year of progress.

This subjective philosophy of values existed of course particularly in the systems of the German philosophers, long before the evidence for physical evolution had a firm basis in natural science. The two have so combined since, for all philosophy is an appreciation and interpretation of reality, that  it  is  not  now  possible  to  unravel  the  tangled  threads  of  fact  and  theory,  physics  and metaphysics.  In reading the works of modern thinkers one cannot tell at a glance whether facts are the motivation of some new critique of religious values, or whether the unconscious theoretical assumptions of general theory permeates the presentation of new data, because physics and metaphysics, or dialectics, are so intertwined in modern thought that irrelevant presumptions creep into the work of even the most honest minds.

Alongside this stream of modern philosophic and scientific thought, we have the  Christian Church, labouring hard to preserve her inheritance and at last gaining a little in Europe, but mainly because of the bitter fruits already ripening in the communist-atheist countries, not because of any new stirring from within herself.  The fruits of human lust, pride, and fear, when man supplants God are terrible and inevitable, but a recoil from the new barbarism of the mind already apparent behind the Iron Curtain will not suffice to build a new and positive culture in opposition to the Tyranny of the new errors.

The Catholic Christian Church requires itself a principle of cosmic unity that will bind in one whole all wisdom natural and revealed; a principle which will give to Christianity a grandeur and a truth that will far outshine its rivals, and give to man with its deeper truth, the humility, charity, and promise of mercy that comes only of subjection to God, a subjection for which the heart of man cries out.  If this can be done, or even well begun, then the doctrines of the Faith, true in all ages, can be developed anew and interpreted in a wider sweep to reveal to modern man the character of the new era he is entering, and the character of Christ who has from the beginning made wise provision for all human needs in all epochs of history until the end of time.  Then, and only then, will the Church be able to inspire and inform those new patterns of international culture that must emerge if the new energies of human life are to be constructively deployed.

CHAPTER 3

The Failure of Scientific Positivism

The decay of the civilisation of Christendom is due we have said to the lack of a synthesis between Christianity and modern knowledge.   In so far as this lack reflects upon the Church it is a failure to provide for the needs of the age, but it is a failure that is relative not absolute.  We do not imply that at the moment the Church is useless and without purpose in the world.  Far from that being true, if the Church were taken away there would be nothing, absolutely nothing left in Europe which would keep at bay the powerful forces of the new totalitarian barbarism for more than five years.  The weakness of the religious systems of the East is itself a principal reason why totalitarianism is devouring that vast area of the world as a forest-fire goes through a drought-stricken countryside.

The Christian Church is failing in relation to what she should be giving the world and in relation to  what  the world  so desperately needs.    The tragic consequences  for  Christendom  first, and indirectly for all mankind that have followed upon her inadequacy mark its serious degree, and mark also the magnitude of the responsibilities she bears to mankind, and the potential stature that is still within her.  These consequences mark too the void that opens in the lives of men when this unique power that claims divinity within her and who so subtly enters every work of men loses the primacy of intellectual prestige that is her right.

An adequate synthesis can only come from the Church

The  function  that  the  Christian  Faith  fulfils  today  in  the  hearts  of  men  and  in  their  social undertakings has narrowed, and in narrowing has dropped far below the proper and beneficent level of her authority over the minds of men.  The responsibility for Christendom rests especially with the Catholic Church  who alone has  preserved  through  the storms  of the last  four hundred  years, authentic doctrine and undeviating authority.  She alone it is that has claimed, and still proclaims, doctrinal inerrancy, and who alone by virtue of what she is and has to offer, can hold out the hope to mankind of a second spring.   As it has been before after long periods of retrenchment and decline, so it must be today:  revival must come from the great sees of the Christian and Catholic Church, and above all from eternal Rome.

The decline of the influence of the Church has been with us now long enough for the modern man to judge from the present and the recent past whether or not another has been found worthy to fill her place.  We have lived long enough in agnosticism to see the authority of the Church pass over by default into the ruthless hands of self-deified tyrants.   Indeed, science has not killed the Catholic  Church;  she  lives  on  with  that  undying  life  promised  her  by  Christ,  but  wounded, weakened, and uncertain of what to do for the better future of her mission.  We ask boldly what modern science and the philosophies born of science have provided in her stead?  What has been given deeper and better to replace what apostasy has scored through and rejected?  Has philosophy or science set us free from myth, error, and barbarism, and given that greater revelation which was to supplant the dim lights of her outdated creeds?

Two generations ago they told us we were to eat of the tree of knowledge and we would become as gods, knowing good and evil for our eyes would be opened.  It has been as was the same hollow promise made to our father Adam before us - we have eaten, our eyes have been opened, and truly we have known evil.   We have found ourselves to be as was Adam when he tore himself from communion with God, most miserably naked.  May God grant we have the humility to be ashamed. We have known the cold contemptuous ruthlessness of human intellect when it aspires to messianic stature, the lustful craving of the human will for power, the ferocity and the insincerity of men who fear and respect no power higher than themselves.  If man is all, then man cannot survive; we have known it.  We have had cause enough to be ashamed of “homo sapiens”, that sadistic and lecherous ape with the intelligence of an angel, and it will be the beginning of our redemption if we hear with humility the voice of our God that queries: “Adam, where are you?”

Inability of science to answer the spiritual and moral needs of Man

If to a degree the Church has failed, much more terribly, much more certainly has science failed. This is not a failure in those strictly empirical fields where it counts increasing success and stands upon the brow of a hill from which it thinks to see another promised land. There is no failure in the proper sphere of science, but science has failed entirely where it has tried to replace the Church. This failure consists in the inability, gross and unanswerable, to prompt that increase of moral goodness, that daylight of enlightened reason and human justice which was to have followed upon the age of popular education.

Science has failed to give that increase of moral stature which was to more than compensate for the vacuum that might be left by the abdication of the Church as Scientific Materialism supplanted her as the moulder of the  minds of men.  There were to be new grandeurs of human achievement and  human  dignity,  a  freedom  that  walked  hand  in  hand  with  recognised  responsibilities  as scientific rationalism emancipated man, and released energies so long pent up by the barriers of old established myth

While science has given to man with one hand, it has withdrawn with the other.  It has given to modern men a breadth of mind that comes of great knowledge of, and great power over, nature.  It has given new and precious forms of beauty too, treasures of culture and achievement that might well indeed, on the face of it, serve towards the beginning of a new golden age in the history of man.  Yet the knowledge science has given to man has utterly outstripped the wisdom needed in man to control that knowledge, and to guarantee its constructive usefulness in a society of harmony and mutual love.  And towards the giving of the wisdom that will save man from self-destruction by his own powers science has no clue to offer, nor any principle from which one can be derived.

Man, they should have remembered, is greater that his knowledge, and therefore science is less than man, not more than God.

In this is the decisive woe, the want that is found in the weighing of the treasury of science. Science neither has given, nor can possibly give, that true directive, that wise control and certain end, which alone can guide and dominate the human personality.  Science has not been the Way, the Truth, and the Life; it can never be.   Science is nothing more than men thinking and men knowing, and men are not sufficient unto themselves.  The human personality can be scientifically analysed perhaps, but it can attain to greater stature, greater goodness, greater depth of loyalty and love only where there goes before it a Way, and Truth, and a Life.

They are speaking now of a bomb one thousand times more powerful that the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima, and the men who know all that goes towards that awful achievement may sleep of nights in the bed of their best friend’s wife.  Man is so great and yet so small, so powerful and so petty, so rich in resources and so mean of spirit; and there is nothing at all the science can do about it, for scientists are not saints, and there is the rub.  It is the saints who are able to control the destinies of men, not the scientists and the saint is defined as a man of God.  Whatever science has to give to man it is plain that science is not the Bread of Life to man, and that the god of materialism is an idol with feet of clay.

Man requires a Control and Direction greater than himself

Surely by now we have learned the truth always proclaimed by the Church, that man naked and alone is unable to control the energies of human genius?  He does always straightway prostitute the most sacred powers of his person and the most sacred secrets of nature, to serve the purposes of those same crass and primitive lusts of mind and body which over long ages have written the most tragic pages of human history.  More hurtful yet to the vanity of science when it would seize the Papal chair is the fact that, when in the smoke-hazed inferno of scientific warfare men have risen wholly superior to misfortune, and under great duress have shone a while with pure heroism and unselfish love, the values they have lived, the inspiration they have sought, have not been borrowed from the spirit of scientific progress, but have welled up from those ancient springs of the soul which are the hidden sources of religious wisdom;  the life-springs of saints and heroes, fed by the waters of God.

Who in the past from the beginning of the world have challenged successfully those same elements of savage sin within the breast of man save the saints and the heroes; from the crucifixion of Christ, even to the martyrdom of the slave camps of Soviet barbarism?   Will science save us now?   The scientist protests bitterly because the treasures of his knowledge are turned first and foremost to purposes of destruction, but who will listen to the scientist, or what does he know of the needs and the ends of life?  Would he make himself to be a prophet or even a  God when he is known to be a mere selfish, ambitious humdrum man like the rest of us?

It is not true that man has become the slave of his own machines.  This facile moan comes from lazy and negative minds.  It has merely been shown that the machine and the scientific culture the machine age embodies is the slave of man, not the herald of a new exodus from bondage, nor a god, unless men will again return to worship graven images.   The culture embodied in Scientific Positivism came out from the spirit of man, therefore it cannot be above him.  There was never any hope that it could govern and renew the human personality.  What needs to be held and controlled is the innate intellect of man and his roving will, both proud and free powers, creative of their nature, prone to evil, uncontrolled by any power on earth, unless they are relative to a power on earth that is also not of the earth but of heaven.

The ambivalent claims of science

The only logical argument we can entertain when rationalism claims the authority of religious sanction, is that rationalistic scientists taken as a class are representative of a new and much higher order of spiritual excellence and moral worth which shines out in their lives, and marks them off from other men as leaders of mankind.   If anyone is interested in working out this hitherto undeveloped thesis of the sanctity of scientific materialists he is more than welcome to it.   The tragedy of our times is the deeper because the claim of scientific culture to have released, by its own proper impetus, human powers hitherto undeveloped over the mass of society is largely true.

Sheer reason, which is often good, has shattered many stupid conventions, laughed out hide- bound codes and petty hypocrisies, and dashed aside silly inhibitions with the bland discussion of hard facts.  Popular education, necessary to maintain a scientific culture at all, has broken down in many parts of the world the tyranny of exploitation and serfdom that lay upon the common people. The broader and freer air of a scientific culture has played no small part in the emancipation of woman from an inferiority to man in social life and before the law of the land, that implied some inferiority of personal value.   A higher standard of living and thinking, itself a direct gift of the scientific machine age, has opened out to men opportunities for cultural appreciation of all the arts and sciences, and provided wide facilities for recreation where before there was nothing but the drinking-house and the dalliance of lust.  Science has added personal poise and a sense of conscious worth with graciousness and easier manners, to the lives of millions in Europe and America, and to a less degree in Asia, who in earlier days would have been bound down in the chains mental and physical of unremitting slavery.

If scientific culture had been content to know its limitations it might have achieved, with the cooperation of the Christianity it despised, some little of its first exultant visions.   As it is, the crudity and bestiality of life in past ages which grew out of illiteracy, disease, and pandemic squalor, has been more than matched as a menace to the human soul by the calculated intellectual ruthlessness and the scientific cruelty of modern ideologies which harness the colossus of scientific power to the destruction of their creator; and always in the name of some splendid human hope. This is the latest and greatest wonder of the arrogant minds of men who make themselves the measure of all that is in man.  The triumph of science has meant also the total loss of security in life, for man today is never sure of what he is worth individually, of his end and the means to it, or the nature of his relation to the society of which he is a member.   No other gift can compensate for this bereavement of the human spirit which has made man an orphan in his own house.

The time has at last come when science can see with certainty that something has been omitted in the equation it made to equal man.   It is not scientifically reasonable that almost unlimited powers, so obviously capable of creating a world of untold beauty, should be impotent for want of a principle which can command and control the soul of man.  It is a contradiction in nature unheard of elsewhere in the material universe that the active potentialities of our species are denied their channel of harmonious self-expression, and that the contradiction seems to be inherent in our nature.

Critique of the principles of scientific positivism

The individual scientist may object that this critique of science is meaningless for there is no such thing as an abstract “Science”, and that it is most unfair to saddle the specialised sciences with their strictly delimited spheres of competence, or the individual scientific worker, with all this responsibility for the woes of man.   Science however, in the terms we have been discussing it, stands for a reality in human affairs today which can no more be divorced from the individual sciences than the interpretation of facts from facts themselves.  Science stands for the government of life by the principles and factual findings of the human mind.

Any branch of knowledge which proceeds from experimental research to verifiable fact, and draws its conclusions from data so obtained is called a “science” today, however profound the sphere of human  activity it  investigates  and  however wide the field  over which  it  claims  its conclusions to be valid.  In as much as the technique of such branches of knowledge is the same, the designation “science” is valid, however much their specialised subject-matters may vary.   Now “science” in this sense, has come to stand for a method of gaining true knowledge, and for a philosophy of applied reason built upon this method and interpreting its data in terms of ultimate human  values,  which  is  a  transcendental  reality  distinct  from  the  individual  sciences  which compose “Science”.   Science here means the philosophy of Scientific Positivism whether this philosophy is bent to serve the ends of individualism or of totalitarianism of the left or of the right.

Implications for morality

Science as the philosophy of sheer reason absolute over the whole field of human destinies has failed in a respect more grievous than that implied in the loss of social security and the dread of annihilation that has been the outcome of tremendous material advances.  Science has also divorced the minds  of men,  especially the mind  of  the  immature adolescent,  from  all  bonds  of moral authority.  In so doing it has made every man the arbiter of the ends of human life, to the ruin of the human personality.  To say that every man should be in the most absolute sense his own master, begs the question, a question that science has failed to see; for the most important of all questions is whether man is an absolute in himself to himself, or whether he is relative to another Absolute as his final authority.

The scientist ought to have noticed that everything immature has its environment, its specific laws, its times and its reasons; everything other than man is intrinsically relative in nature, and function, not arbitrary and unpredictable.  If scientists had not been flushed with an arrogance of power worse than anything they reproached among the theologians, they would have found cause to suspect that whatever the nature of man might be, it was unlikely that the crowning product of a relative universe was himself relative to nothing at all.  The effect of the scientific presumption of man’s self-sufficiency has been to make the individual a piece of flotsam upon the waves of his own raging passions, and to take away from personal and social life any principle of stability.

Scientific Positivism has no criterion of intellectual and moral values, because these are not subject to experimental analysis and detached verification. Concerning intellectual and moral values the Positivists themselves disagree, so that on the lower level of technical and scientific work everything is governed by data and facts, but on the higher level of the government of men armed with all this power, there prevails a general agnosticism.   It is on this all-important level where Scientific Positivism has nothing to offer that men must find the motives and sureties that govern their private conduct and their social relationships.

The rule of agnosticism is simply “do your best, and in case of doubt, try everything once.”  The effect of trying everything once, especially upon the young and ardent, is mental sophistication and gross physical abuse, the which so degrades the personality and enslaves both mind and body, that a man is not free to change when he will, nor even, such is the power of habit, able to think with impartial judgement any more.  This is not a modern phenomenon of course, this breaking to pieces of the human person by lusts of mind and body, but the sin of science is that it has blessed the process in the name of freedom of thought, and produced a race of selfish human beings who despise themselves and hate their kind.

Social implications of scientific agnosticism

Agnosticism sits very uneasily upon the human mind, it makes for personal and social negativism and opens the door wide to a fierce reaction against itself.   Such a reaction will not be able to forswear the technical achievements of applied science, nor will it be able to escape from the same transference of the scientific method from the specific to the general statement which constitutes Scientific Positivism.   There is no escape at all from Scientific Positivism unless a system of thought predicates some principle of final authority which is higher than the mind of man.  What such a reaction can and will do is to change the emphasis of a philosophy of pure reason from individualism to communalism.

It is obvious that Scientific Positivism can either isolate man from reality as an intelligent autocrat above instinct and law but not above the common order of the material universe, or else it can insist upon the law and order in the universe and subject man to social law as a unit of a greater entity.  Agnosticism, since it is purely individualist and subjective is a philosophy of every man for himself, and upon this shifting basis of subjectivism it is impossible to build or even maintain a civilisation for long.

A civilisation requires a unanimous acceptance of a certain definition of man and of the personal and social finality of man.   A purely practical convention made for the sake of “getting along together” will not suffice, because it does not inspire men, and men will only work for an ideal in which they really believe.  No man will long to tie himself to a personal or to a social code which he does not accept, and which limits his personal freedom in the name of a social need which for him is irrelevant or at least problematical.

If the emphasis is changed from individualism to communalism, the scientific philosopher feels on firmer ground; which is why so many of them are Marxists.  For the sheer individualist there is no logical question of a definite end, either personal or social, he must be a liberal in philosophy, and resign social needs and social sanctions to those continuous changes and continuous tensions which reflect the incidental derivation of social life from the interests of independent individuals. Such a social order dies of its own inanition, and because it is incapable of preserving any stable cultural order degenerates rapidly into that morass of individualist egotism and social irresponsibility, which is the root cause of the governmental weaknesses of so many of  the nations of Europe in particular.

The scientific communalist, however, starts from a different premise.  He openly subordinates the individual to society, for him the State is the first unit of metaphysics or dialectics.  At first sight this offers a more satisfactory basis for life, it could hardly offer a less stable one.  The community can either be treated idealistically, as an abstract reality which embodies some univocal content participated by many individuals, or as a concrete material entity distinct from the cells which integrate it.  The first approach, a monism which thinks of matter in terms of mind is more strictly Hegelian and appeals more to totalitarians of the right:  it was the choice of Nazism and Fascism.

The latter thinks of mind in terms of matter, while remaining the same monism in substance, and is the Marxist development of Hegel’s philosophy favoured by the Communists.  In either case we have a monistic and totalitarian philosophy which includes everything within an order of scientific empiricism.  The unit which is the State, whether it is considered as one nation or an international order, remains conveniently one, and its present needs and future direction can be blue-printed and planned with the same scientific precision as the development of, let us say, a new type of jet- propelled aircraft.  This does at least give some definite meaning to life, for it seems to offer a basis on which a new civilisation can be built because it has unity, authority, and continuity.

Dangers of a philosophical totalitarianism

The importance of totalitarian nationalism and totalitarian internationalism does not lie in the realm of politics, or we would not be interested in it at all at this juncture.  The importance lies in the absolute dependence of both forms of evolutionary totalitarianism on scientific rationalism.   It is from  the  method  and  the  spirit  of  modern  science  that  they derive  their  rigid  application  of approved formulae, the “Party Line”, which is the blue-print of a result to be achieved.  They work with the same calm cold logic of the research scientist from “proven” facts to conclusions, and they apply those conclusions to any sphere of human activity, for if their theory is right there is nothing in man which is outside their sphere of influence.

They organise every branch of knowledge and the economic resources of the community to a pre-determined  end  which  differs  in  nothing  from  the  methods  of  applied  science  in  animal breeding or the improvement of soil fertility.   They are soaked in the technique of the applied sciences, and however ruthlessly they may deal with any “reactionary” personality, they appeal constantly to science to justify their appallingly dangerous experiments with human flesh and blood.  To Science again they go, Science with a capital letter, that tangled mesh of physics and philosophy, fact and a priori theory, when they wish to draw fresh directive for the new culture they dream of building.   This is true of all the modern totalitarianisms, but of none more than of Marxist Communism whose philosophical basis of dialectical materialism makes as close an alliance with an evolutionary and monistic interpretation of all being as can be made.  It may seem better and more tolerable to propose a philosophy of scientific totalitarianism if the alternative is a drifting, selfish, and cynical society of egoistic agnostics. The individualist agnostic, though, is even more consistently scientific than the Marxist, and he will live, if he can escape liquidation by the Party, either to see the old condition return, or to witness a hard-set hierarchical society of the same pattern as that of the Pharaohs.

For the paradox of all these totalitarian philosophies is that they emanate from the minds of individuals, and their intrinsic certainty does not therefore transcend the individual and limited minds from which they proceed.   If an individual can formulate a philosophy of science on the authority of his own genius, any other individual can question, amend, or contradict it on the sole authority of his.   This is precisely what the secret police exist to prevent in the Soviet Empire. Nevertheless, the power of the whip and the gun apart, who is to decide between them?  What a farce is all this unctuous adulation of Marx, of Lenin, or of any other well-beloved “holy Father” of Communism.   These are men like any other men, and they have not attained to their present position as apostles of the Communist State by the sheer force of their mild, pacific, self-abnegating temperaments.

There is no particular reason why any given Communist dictator should be infallible.  The Pope claims to be infallible in a strictly and clearly limited sphere, because of the assurance that as the Vicar of Christ on earth, Christ will not suffer him to err in the promulgation of doctrines of Faith or Morals, and Christ is God in Person.  No prophet of Communism has so far claimed to be God, nor has any of them believed in God, but nevertheless the “Party Line” for which these leaders are ultimately responsible, claims de facto infallibility at all times, in all things, and in all places.  Well, well, there is nothing, it seems, quite so positive as Scientific Positivism!

The constriction of man by scientific positivist ideologies

It is not possible to constrain the intellect of a man except by suppressing the full expression of that intellect, and in these new totalitarian societies, above all in the Marxist societies, we see that double weakness which explains the inevitable rule by force and by fear.  We perceive on the one hand the fallacy at the heart of an ideology which subordinates the individual to the community while all actual power and the very philosophy itself proceeds from individuals, and secondly the inherent lack of ultimate authority from which the most authoritarian and repressive of regimes suffers.

If the norm of true teaching and pure party dogma is said to be the agreement of “progressive and socially aware minds”, who is to decide what constitutes a progressive and socially aware mind?  Who is to know whether these chosen souls are not just some of the boys looking for a good job in the party?   In any case it has always been presumed that these more perfect products of evolution, like the great Marx himself and his apostles, are relatively rare,   and are always in opposition to “reactionary influences” and “vested interests” in economic and in ideological life.

If any modern young thinker behind the Iron Curtain should secretly disagree with the oligarchy that holds the monopoly of power, not only is he as much entitled to believe himself a potential world genius as to believe the same of any of the almighty “I am who am” deities of present day Communism. But he can also remind himself that the prevailing powers bear a remarkable likeness to a “vested interest”, in that they have something to lose which they do not want to lose, whatever else happens.   In relation to himself, whose ideological chastity is still unseduced by the blandishments of power, intrigue, and luxury, they are nothing less than reactionary influences which have had their necessary day.   The unsuccessful Trotsky said the same of the successful Stalin, and only Stalin’s stronger arm judged between them.  It begins to look as if might is, after all, the only test of right, and if this is so, then fear, intrigue, hate and war are the powers that rule over human destiny; and this is the final legacy bequeathed us by that philosophy of science which was so much bigger and more beautiful than the teachings of the Christian Church

If there is not by the nature of things an authority above men that all men must recognise and gladly accept because it is a last ultimate authority, then any human society that is lasting can only be built up on fear and repression.  It is not an accident that fear and repression of free thought and free speech are associated with the new authoritarian regimes built upon Scientific Positivism. Despite pretence, the roots of these philosophies are embedded in individual genius, and are subject to the egocentricity and fallibility that goes with all purely human authority.  This atmosphere of repression is a necessity of the system, and is a phenomenon of any institution or society which surpasses the limits of the power that is justified by its fundamental principles.

This is not the sum total of the chaos brought into modern life by the success of physical science and the failure of scientific philosophy.  If what we have said of the inhumanity introduced by the new philosophies of scientific humanism is true, it only serves to clarify the final issue.  Science cannot control, cannot even reach, those intangible non-experimental regions of the human personality where philosophies and ideologies are begotten, where moral standards are preached or denied,  Neither is it able to control those powers of ambition, vain-glory, pride, and lust, to name but a few of the aspects of human error embodied in human thought and action.  Science cannot distinguish between objective right and wrong.  It has been the boast of scientific philosophers that they admit no norm of objective right and wrong which is valid at all times.  In that case let them realise that the responsibility for the chaos of the modern world is principally theirs, for if there is no final norm of truth, no stable order can be maintained without autocratic tyranny.

Destructive influence on the individual soul

The chaos which science has introduced into human society by weakening the authority of the Church is matched by the tornado of ruin it has brought into the personal lives of millions.  Men live today in a turmoil of spiritual confusion and spiritual anguish.  The young cannot answer with any sort of certainty the difficult problem of the relation between love and sex.  Different schools of psychology give them different answers, and nobody has done more than the Freudians in this respect to destroy and enslave the human personality.   If the Freudian man was depicted in the technique of the surrealists, he would need to be an animal with a tiny ape-like head and a vast genital apparatus;  that after all would give the true emphasis of the valuation of man among so many modern psychologists.  Where there is no moral authority in life the young adopt a process of trial and error.   There is no end to the trials, nor to the errors.   The continual frustration and devastation of the soul in the end brings about a condition of unhappy but hardened cynicism, impervious to further loss, but incapable of any greatness.

When man’s natural and necessary relativity to an Absolute Mind beyond himself is denied, man becomes inexplicable and uncontrollable.  It becomes impossible for man to control and direct the energies of his intellectual nature by motives that will ensure the constructive application of human knowledge and human activity.  We will see later that this is simply because man is not an absolute in himself, nor subject to any other human mind or group of minds as his last principle of control.

It is not difficult to show that even on a purely scientific estimate Scientific Positivism makes nonsense of the nature of man.   If man’s relativity to an Absolute Intellect is denied, then the inherent contradictions of philosophies of scientific rationalism will always be with us, and unless the repressive power of an arbitrary state philosophy like Marxism can be maintained indefinitely, the unstable and irresponsible social format of agnostic individualism must inevitably recur.

Perhaps it would be preferable on a final weighing of the infernal reign of intellectual standardisation and the “Party Line”, if one hell may be preferred to another.  In actual fact, either form of social philosophy will destroy man in the modern world.  The successes of physical science have accentuated the inadequacy of science as a philosophy.  The falling away of the barriers of space and time together with the terrible physical powers of modern man is making urgently necessary the formation of a world federation of nations within a commonwealth that will be one civilisation.   If this is not obtained, and very soon obtained, a scientific war may destroy the scientific age.

Internationalism of this kind cannot be achieved without a firmly accepted philosophy of life, and we have already said enough to show that this philosophy must be a theology.  Man must find this Absolute or commit suicide.  This unity of the personal and social end of man is precisely what philosophy alone in any form cannot give:  all the modern totalitarianisms impose a regime on the mind, they cannot bind the mind with an internal assent equal to the external obedience of the citizen.  They command the body, they cannot command the soul, and this is not surprising, for they have never admitted that there was a soul.

The absolute Law of Control and Direction for the soul is God

There ought to be some way in which that individualism which left to itself runs to egotistic ruin and social collapse, and that communalism which can give the saving stability but only at the price of intellectual death, can be combined in one order of thought.   If they can be combined as complements, instead of opposed as contradictories, the soul of man, and the human social order can be saved.  We do not intend in this chapter to prove the possibility, for that will unfold as our thesis goes on, we desire here to give food for thought.

We content ourself now with the straightforward assertion that there is no way out unless man is in fact relative as a nature to a principle of control, an environment if you like, other than himself. It cannot be achieved unless man, like everything else that exists, has a controlling, directing and fulfilling principle adequate to every power and every need of his being.  Man is the only animal who on the showing of the Scientific Positivists, lacks this essential relation between its nature and the orientation of the powers of nature.  Every other living form has an environment and laws which control the play of its functions and the harmonious round of its life-cycle, both individual and specific.  Only man lives in anarchy, and this makes as much nonsense of science as it makes of man himself.

If there is a God to whom man is intrinsically relative we can find the answer to our need.  If there is beyond man, but spiritual like man, a God who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life of man, then the intellect of man can be freely held with plenary authority.  It would be natural and right for men to freely accept this ultimate norm, because besides being the final Truth, this Absolute God would also be the principle of fulfilment for man, and man could love Him.  There is no way in which a man can be held indefinitely and happily except by the bonds of love.  If in such a God man can find his own true meaning, the meaning of life, the standards and values of happiness, in a word, the whole truth and the whole good, then the intellect of man can begin to employ constructively the powers of a new era in the building of a stable and worthy order of international life.  Man can then be happy, free and great.

Such a desired consummation of our hopes and our fears requires a new synthesis of science and religion, of human and of revealed knowledge.   Such a synthesis must knit to God the whole personality of modern man, and therefore both science and religion will need to be reconciled as complements   in one economy of wisdom.   At the moment science and the Church are not so linked, they pull different ways, and the world grows more desperately sick each year.

We believe that this new synthesis can be made, and that in this book, however roughly written, will be found its general broad outline, an outline sufficient enough to fire other and better minds to develop and expand.  We hope only to sow; we beg of others to enter in and reap.  It is presumed certainly that Christianity is the only religion that fully and authoritatively reflects the measure of that control which God, the Absolute Intellect, exercises over men.  Therefore no new international order can be maintained unless the Christian Faith is at least the dominant cultural factor.  We have also said quite openly that only the Catholic Church is capable of effecting this new synthesis between science and Christianity.  We therefore presume that only the Catholic Church possesses the plenitude of God’s truth.

There is no need however to apologise for so controversial a case, or to foreshadow later

chapters with embarrassed haste.  We have referred already to this presumption in our introductory chapter. We state now that the construction of such a synthesis will be found to be impossible except upon the presumption above made.

If it is possible to give even in embryo and very imperfectly the shape of such a synthesis of science and Christian Faith, it will come as the sweetest gift of peace and goodwill to men.  It will open up before mankind that majestic future which we all see so miserably to be within human power but beyond human grasp.  If God, without whom man’s thoughts and works come to nothing, should stoop down to our helplessness and show us all the means, wisdom, and certainty that is in the Revelation of Christ, He would have fulfilled again in our regard the Advent entreaty to Him of the Church’s liturgy:

“Drop down heavens the dew from on high, and rain clouds the Just One,

let our earth be opened and bud forth the Saviour”.

For we need Him now with the same urgency as the world needed Him on the first night that was Christmas.

PART TWO

MAN AND HIS UNIVERSE

CHAPTER  4

Absolute and Relative: the Existence of God

When a man tries to understand the universe which modern knowledge has revealed to us, he can easily  become  fascinated  and  mentally  confused.    This  is  true  of  the  non-scientific  layman  in particular, but even the expert often loses his way.  We begin to lose our grip upon those threads of thought which enable us to interpret the cosmos as a whole.  The danger of mental incoherence is the greater because we must take our stand in the present and work backwards; a process necessary for analysis, but one which often retards the opposite requirement which is the synthesis of partial truths. The process of working backwards over simplifies the reality we study.  It is easy to take a radio to pieces and to work out the function of each relative part when you can begin from the radio as a going concern.  It would be quite another thing to build a radio from its raw materials if you knew what a radio did but had no idea how the mechanism was related.   We are all the time retracing in the universe what has happened and what does happen in a highly complex “going concern”, and we can rest too complacently upon the discovery and mathematical expression of laws which are only the reduction of a general equation of relatives to its specific terms.   We can fail to realise the quite different aspect  the Universe bears when we try to think of it as a process and a progress upwards from primitive beginnings;   some scientists consistently ignore this much more important mental process which is synthesis rather than analysis.   In this way most important clues to the nature of material being are overlooked.  Analysis is always more easy than synthesis:  it is easy to break down and relate, difficult to build a complex relativity from more elementary relative entities.

A synthetic perspective on the evolution of the cosmos

A proper interpretation  of the universe however must  consider it  as  an  evolution  upwards, and examine the conditions necessary for the eduction of the highly complex from the elemental ultimates.

This way alone lies a true understanding of those philosophical issues which lie behind the natures of material entities.  Man has learned how to resolve uranium into a fierce flash of radiant energy; that is analysis, exciting, full of newly realised truth.  He is not yet able to harness radiant energy back within the compass of the same fragment of uranium; that is synthesis, even more exciting, and much more difficult.     Synthesis  calls  for  more  effort  than  analysis,  and  requires  a  far  more  complete understanding of every factor relative to the construction of the complex from the simple; analysis does not.

Synthesis forces the mind to pose more objectively the question of finality and purpose in the coming to be of things, the relation of a result produced to “whys” and “wherefores” that define the thing produced.    A  man  has  to  work  purposively to  invent  the complex  upon  the  basis  of the antecedent simple; he requires also a unity, the concept of the nature to be produced, which controls and directs the purposive work of his hands.  We must ask ourselves whether this law that defines the complex  inventions  of  man  does  not  underlie  also  the  evolutionary  development  of  a  complex universe from an elemental universe.

The universe in which we live and to which our being is organically relative, is a synthesis.  The universe has  been  “made” in  the sense in  which “making”  denotes  continuous  and  harmonious development from the simple to the complex.  The vindication of the atomic theory is the greatest of modern scientific triumphs and the foundation of all scientific achievement that may follow in this new era of human history.  We know that this hard and concrete world is not the sort of continuous solid our fathers thought.  We are aware that all material beings are composite, composed of atoms,

that these particles are discrete within the continuity they integrate, that in themselves even they are miniature solar systems, and that these orbits are wide open spaces in relation to the miniature elements which are bound within them:  bound and determined by the fixed laws that define the still mysterious phenomena of centrifugal and centripetal force.

Every  year  we  read  more  of  the  unimaginably  minute  particles  such  as  electrons,  protons, positrons, mesons, and others named and described in quick succession as science advances, which form the outer particles and the inner nuclei of the atom.  The scientist tells us much, though much of it is still tentative, and we read of the positive or negative electric charge carried by different particles, and the manner of their operation within the atom because of this relationship.   We read and we marvel,  and  often  as  unspecialised  and  amateur  students  of  science  we  get  hopelessly  lost. Nevertheless we understand well enough that the explosion which can overwhelm a city in an instant is retracing in that unit of time the synthetic processes built up over long ages of evolution.   We cannot doubt today that across the leagues of time the whole cosmos was akin to a vast nebula, a universe of such elemental forces, as yet unsynthesized, but already the fecundated seed out of which has developed the universe we know today.   It is not this insight, breathtaking though it is, which constitutes the significance of the atomic theory for us here, but the need there is to link that universe of physics with the universe of biology and of many other sub-divisions of science.

Law of final determination - purposiveness

We  are  forced  today  to  interpret  the  whole  universe  in  terms  of  one  process  of  evolutionary development.  The evolution of the living thing is only an aspect of a process traceable over the whole order of material being.  In the face of the tremendous elaboration of compound and complex being that can be traced from the primordial beginnings of the Cosmos, is there any one principle, any one certainty on which we can lay hold in our efforts to interpret rightly ourselves and our Universe, and to formulate a true philosophy of existence?   There is a principle, one too often ignored in its philosophical value, which underlies the research of all the sciences, and the interpretation, especially the mathematical interpretation, of all knowledge gathered by the “exact sciences”.  This principle is the postulation, fundamental to all exact material knowledge, of the definition of a substance in terms of the causal relationships of law.

There can be no “exact science” without law, order of cause and effect, action and reaction.  The scientist seeks to discover these causal relations, and to determine with utter exactitude what it is in the entity of a cause which produces an effect, and what in the effect is partially or entirely determined by a given cause.  Physics is sufficiently advanced today to define many substances very perfectly, in their very essence, in terms of those causes which constitute them, and in this we see that the active relationship by which, let us say, oxygen and hydrogen are defined as causes of water in a given relativity, is an active potency in those causes of dynamic finality with respect to the composite substance which is water.  They are naturally and intrinsically defined as causes of water in a given relationship,  and  that  constitutes  a purposiveness,  something  which  is  identified  with  their  very natures, and is contained in their definition as substances.

It is interesting to notice that this dynamic finality, the definition of a complex thing in terms of the active natures of its components, is something which while taken for granted in physics, causes a panic stampede among a large class of biologists.  They are very concerned not to allow this notion of purposiveness, finality, determinism to a pre-set end, to enter the field of the living, they are far more concerned with denying the possibility than with studying the evidence for the possibility, which is prejudice not reason.  Anything which even reminds them of an “élan vital” drives them to a fury of dissent.  We are no Vitalist or Animist, we do not say the postulate of an “élan vital” drives them to dissent, but anything that reminds them of a principle of purpose in any way.  Yet the very valencies of the ultimate elements themselves, by which men can make and transmute substances has some similarity to an élan vital.

Atoms themselves have affinities and repulsions, even as some biologists have an affinity for a theory of most pure and orthodox Natural Selection, and a repulsion to anything that smells of Lamarck.   If biologists of this temperament were only given rein to their dislike for Animist and Vitalist theories of the living being, there would be some excuse for this panic, because Animism and Vitalism do finally destroy the rational basis of the sciences, but taken by itself their attitude makes as much nonsense of the Universe as any form of Animism does.  Natural Selection of random mutations is not a Fairy Godmother who can be waved in at every moment; the “environment” which “selects” is the total impact of other being upon one being, and the selection is the better “survival value” of the new mutant.

The application of such a test to the elements of physics would be laughable.  Many elements have a very primitive “survival level” and the new compounds and syntheses which could have formed only in a cool and stable condition of our planet and its atmosphere are much inferior in stability, i.e. in “survival value”, to the elements out of which they are composed.  We should then expect either a condition of “no change” beyond simple elements, surviving very nicely as principles of intense energy, or else a riot of physical “mutations” having neither  “survival value” nor any principle of control by “survival value”, a universe in which so stable and unelastic a thing as complex life could not survive.   There is no place for “Natural Selection” in the evolution of the non-living elements themselves from their own primordial origins:   you cannot, as we will see in more detail again, explain the Environment by the Environment any more than we can all live by taking in each other’s washing.

The process of synthesis by which non-living substances have reached their present multiplicity and complexity is an evolution, the same process entirely as the biologist traces in the order of living things, and the synthetic chemical compound embodies in itself a complex relativity capable of being expressed in most exact laws, which reflect the evolutionary emergence of its substance as much as do the organs of an animal explained in terms of evolutionary development.   The science of genetics which is beginning to dominate the study of living forms depends upon very exact laws capable of mathematical expression, and usually so expressed in advanced technical works.  These laws express the determination to a certain condition of the living entity, a condition contained within the relations of its genetic facts.   This is once more an intrinsic finality, a purposiveness or relation to a pre- determined end.  The laws of genetics today are so complex that the Mendelian formulae from which the science began has been reduced to its alphabet.

Purposive inter-relation of scientific laws

There is no need to elaborate upon the existence of laws in the universe, because every science of matter rests upon them.  Perhaps nothing is more impressive, when read at length in the context of some definite medical case, than the intimate relation discovered between the psychological and the physical in man himself, and the detailed tracing of the organisation and operations of every organ of the body to the brain as their centre and control tower for stimuli both incoming and outgoing.  The main effort of science today consists in the striving to relate a multiplicity of local “laws” to one governing key principle which explains a multiplicity of phenomena.   In every science more exact relations of cause and effect are today known, codified, and compared with the phenomena of other related sciences.  The only things that admit of expression in codes formulae, and equations are those inferences of cause and effect we know as laws.

There is no doubt either of the purposive nature of the urges and impulses of anything that lives. Every organ has a definite function, is framed to that function and performs no other function.  Every instinct and impulse of life, the urges of self-conservation, and reproduction, are purposive; they are directed to an end, and the living thing seeks the function to which it is relative.  There is law of birth, growth, and decline, the whole order of nature from the ultimate particles to the body of man is a relativity built upon finality and purposiveness.  Bear in mind that this finalism and purposiveness in being, and of being, does not imply any conscious striving or conscious knowledge at all:  nor any principle of being existent within the material order distinct from matter.  We have already stated that we are not preaching a theory of Vitalism or Animism, this purposiveness means that in the first place every substance is defined by laws and causal relationships that explain and define its substance, and secondly this finalism implies a Relative Universe in  which the purposiveness and relativity that goes through all being, non-living and living, means the ultimate postulation of  an Absolute Intellect, the control, direction, and planning centre of a universe of evolving relative entities.   This last, the existence of God, we now foreshadow, the proof consists in the more detailed analysis of data already given, and perhaps already sufficiently indicated.

These relative entities have evolved in a cosmic totality which is our serial universe; they represent a process of coming to be in which the composite is built up on the simple; and the process is a continuum; it progresses on and on, from the particles of matter to the most complex synthesis of elements, from these to life, from life to the anthropoids.  This continuum is truly a progression, and one worked upwards: a synthesis.     It is a progression which we can analyse, which is traceable backwards also, and we can trace it backwards as a “history” because neither the “environment” nor the natures under our consideration are found to be arbitrary and chaotic, even though they are part of a transformist order of being.

If there is an intrinsic finality which defines the substance of a living entity, and the purpose within itself of its component parts, if there is also an external relation of such cause and effect between the entity and the environment which inhibits and stimulates and if there are instincts that rule the life cycle of the living, then clearly we cannot dismiss the possibility that there may be a finality so substantial to an evolving entity and its environmental relationships, that the future specific evolution of the living is pre-determinedly contained in the relativity of its present.  This means that the future can be regarded, on such an hypothesis, as a value implicit and potential in a cosmic equation, a value yet to be educed, a value the eduction of which involves a universal rearrangement of the more generalised value, just as the eduction of a new value in an equation is a value relationship in a total relativity of values.

This concept would not allow of any sort of “random mutation” or random chance of any sort in a mechanistic and determinist order of matter.  The future of evolving material beings, both non-living elements and compounds, and living forms, would be completely defined, determined and inevitable: as blind and as pre-fashioned as the multitudinous parts and functions that define a complex electronic machine.  These relative entities, not possessing within themselves their own explanation, not having anywhere in the Universe of matter any possible absolute as their overall control and direction to an evolutionary end, must ultimately imply an absolute outside their order, even as the most delicate and wonderful relativities made by man, the new electronic calculators and reactors, are not explicable except in terms of an absolute not contained in the inter-relativity of their integral parts.

It may be, if finalism should be at the very heart of this relative universe that the future, in the determinist order of matter, is as much contained in the definition of the present as the future adult is contained in the fertilized ovum of the parent animal.  In a universe so shot through with laws that are expressions of the intrinsic causal relativity of being, we cannot ignore this possibility even as a purely a priori hypothesis, then careful reflection will demonstrate that it is more than an hypothesis, it is something that must be so.

Orientation of the whole order of being to a purposive end

Whatever the superiority of them living over the non-living in the order of existence, and this is too strictly philosophical a matter to detain us here, there is no doubt that both orders are conditioned by intrinsic finality and that both orders are synthesized in one totality.   The animal body, containing everything from the ultimate elements to the highest perfection of material entity as a unity in itself, sums up in itself all that the material Universe is, and points the unity and oneness behind the cosmic law of the relative evolution of matter.   Every one of the so-called “natural” elements and their recently understood isotopes can be expressed by a formula that is the law of their synthesis.  The atoms are likewise distinguished, and then below the atom, to particles that mark the present limits of human knowledge.   The practical ability of man to change and even to transmute elements by the separation or addition of a given particle or number of particles demonstrates forcibly enough how law governs the constitution of matter, and how the law of the synthesis of at least non-living matter, contains implicity also the finalism by which the substance is defined as “this substance” with “these fixed properties”.

The laws of astronomy and cosmology too, even those  now relegated after correction to the rank of aspects of a more general law of relativity such as Einstein’s formulation, all point to the same fact: progress in science is achieved by the presumption of definite, fixed, and determinate relations of cause and effect between material entities.  It is presumed that things have a definite specific cycle of function, or purposiveness.  It is presumed that there is finalism in being and the operations of being. On this supposition alone science has made progress, and in science the results achieved are the supreme test of the accuracy of a theory.

The  rule  of  fixed  law,  reliable  because  its  subject  matter  is  mechanistically determined,  and specific in its reaction, not possessed of free will nor subject to unpredictable changes of reaction or property, is the foundation of the exact sciences, and by derivation the foundation also of our modern civilised life.   We presume such a relation of cause and effect every time we switch on the radio; sometimes even more emphatically when we switch it off.  We continue to believe that finalism and purposive relativity exists, but that the conditions of its relation to effect are not being fulfilled every time we flounce out of the car and throw up the bonnet to see what has gone wrong this time.  We do not leave the body by the wayside and trudge home philosophizing upon the fickle chances which are the rules of Nature’s Comic Opera.

Intrinsic purposiveness and the coherence of all natural laws

The universal rule of laws is not the only observable fact of nature which arrests the attention of the scientist and the philosopher, equally significant today is the overlap of the principles of one science into the classic sphere of another.  It is clear today that the hard and fast separation of sciences and their proper laws, the tabulation of certain phenomena regulated by certain laws which distinguish one science from another, is a distinction of convenience not of reality.  We are forced to subdivide for the purpose of accurate investigation and detailed analysis, but actually the economy of Nature is a garment woven throughout without seam.  The laws of the living are inextricably woven with the laws of chemistry, and while we cannot trace the continuity of this unity is perfect detail, we begin to suspect, at heart we know, that if we had infinite resources of research, and infinite minds, we could express all these diversities of phenomena in the terms of One Law.

The natural sciences stand now not as distinct and autonomous fields of knowledge, but they merge one into another as shades of colour in a spectrum.  The laws which govern the elements pass, without ceasing to be valid, into the more complex pattern of being of the higher unity which is the living creature build up from those elements.  Throughout the universe new forms and patterns of being have emerged, new substances with a new causal impact upon other being, an impact which derives from the different finality of the new emergent substance as one nature; everything changes, but yet the balance and harmony of the universe as a “going concern” remains.  There is no cosmic breakdown because of a partial change of “environment”.   The partial change has a new function in a total relativity; strictly we should not even speak of a “partial” change in the relative impact of being within the universe, because the new realignment affects and balances the whole.  We are in the presence not so much of laws which derive from new syntheses of being, as in the presence of an equation of entity-values worked out by evolution on a cosmic scale.  We must interpret the evolving universe in terms of the eduction of new values latent within the total relativity of all forms of material being that make up the universe.

This general relativity of a universe formed anew upon itself and within itself in space and time, leads us back to an earlier comment.  There is no place here for the invocation of natural selection as the charmed formula that opens every magic door.  Natural Selection has a meaning in the order of the living, but only as a facet of a cosmic process of finalism.  The error of materialist biologists lies in the interpretation of the “environment” as an absolute value that determines a relative value dependent upon it, but even the environment is relative, relative to an evolutionary process of formation, and mutually reacted upon by the very entities it is supposed to “select”; there are no absolutes at all in the material universe.

If a stupendous process of synthesis parallel in kind to the development of the higher mammals from the single cell, has produced our planet and the elements which compose it within the harmony of a complex universe, from a   primordial state of atomic particles in movement, was it “natural selection” that accounted for the first process of synthesis in which the emergent was the environment and the environment was itself a new emergent?  We can only make sense of such inorganic evolution if we presume that there is, and always was, a cosmic relativity, purposive and finalistic which has operated according to an inherent law over the entire universe - a law which we have likened to the relation between terms within a set of relative values that can be written as an equation.

It is foolish to put chance at the beginning of this evolution that begins so long before life, or even before this recognisable universe of planetary bodies and stars came to be formed, and then when a very high degree of complex order and mutual interdependence has been achieved in one continuous progression, arbitrarily to proclaim the rigid laws of mechanistic finalism, and to declare the era of positive science now open.   This evolutionary process has a pedigree and the processes can be retraced.  If we are able to-day to split the atom it is because we can retrace the equation of forces in which the atom is constituted, and although we are ignorant of the full value we know enough to reduce an aggregation of uranium to a more primary expression in terms of energy.

The basic particles known to physics, while uncertainly named and evalued, constitute many different types of atom;  these again integrate the molecule, the molecule, already highly specialized and differentiated, admits of certain combinations only, according to its nature. These molecular syntheses, the amino acids for instance, may be an essential ingredient of the living cell, and so we go on through the whole relativity of the universe and its past and present history, until we culminate in the emergence of man.  Even in man, whom we will see to be only physically a product of evolution, the elemental laws of the elemental particles that compose his body still do not lose their own nature within the unity of man’s body that they no longer obey their own laws.  We know this only too well from the horrors of those two cities on which the atomic bomb was released.

The Law of Control and Direction

There is no explanation of this universe and all that has emerged within it, unless we place at the beginning of the process of evolution one overall and all-embracing Law, a Law which we will call the Law of Control and Direction.   There is nothing in the universe which is absolute and self- explanatory, nothing in the nature of matter that can be so.  Is there anything in the primitive value of an electron directly relative to the being of this atom rather than another?   There is not.   Is there anything in the nature of the hydrogen atom that forces it to integrate one atom or molecule rather than another?   Again there is not.   These basic elements have many affinities, compose various atoms, various molecules of various substances.  It is useless to speak of everything in terms of evolutionary dependence, in terms of atoms and electrons, and yet to miss the significance of the clear laws by which they are ruled.  The laws themselves are often of late emergence, they presume an environment already developed from the primitive, and are only the causal impact of developed syntheses of being upon other being; nevertheless they maintain the harmony of a new and complex universe, they are necessary to it.

There is nothing in the primitive elements, taken in themselves which explains the complex or makes it necessary.  The delicate interplay of complex laws with which every developed science of matter  has  made  us  familiar  today,  is  only  the  expression  of  the  finality  of  entities  defined substantially as emergents of a process of relative evolution.   We can interpret this universe aright only if we see it as one unified economy of distinct but mutually relative entities, governed by one overriding law.

It is necessary for us to understand what this Law of Control and Direction is and how precisely it manifests itself.   We need to realise not only that relativity is a fact, and that laws exist, that is obvious, but the meaning and implication of this process.  We must stress not only the universality of relativity and law, but the individual relativity of the distinct beings non-living and living that make it up.

Operation of the Law in animal life

Let us go back dialectically upon the history of being from life to the non-living out of which life is born, that by analysis we may be able to see the requirement at the beginning of synthesis.  The five senses of the higher animals are not really five senses but five aspects of one sense, the sense of the life-principle, seeking the control and direction to which it is relative.  The animal form is not only purposive in its construction, but that purpose is even more obviously manifest in the operations of its being.  The animal brain, through the channels of sense in particular, seeks by smells, sounds, sights, tastes, the end and purpose of its nature, the control of its times and seasons, the directive of its life- cycle.  It cannot live without sun, light, or air, and the eye is relative to vision, the ear to vibrations of the air, the heart and lungs to the atmosphere, and so forth.  But there is more to it than that;  we note that the living form, high or low, seeks its good, its proper end, and that through the cooperation mutual and inter-defined between its being and its environment it finds the determinant of natural law that maintains its organism in vital harmony.

The impact of the environment then, in reaction with its entity, provides its highly complicated law of finalism, of control and of direction.  The eye is not simply relative to seeing as a given content of vision, the relativity of life is far more subtle than that.   The eye is relative to the nature of the radiation of light energy, and is so fashioned that its operation presumes a relativity to the laws of electro-magnetic forces, to radiation.  The function of the eye then involves an organic relativity to those laws of the motion and action of light emission contained in the general relativity laws of light, heat and mass.  The laws that define the emission of energy and of light, the quantum theory, and the theory of the relativity of space, time and motion, all these are embedded in the nature and form of the eye, the ear, the senses of life in general; they are all of them embodied in the animal brain the control room of the living thing, harmonized in a synthesis and unified to form the determinant of one individual animal body.

The latest emergent which is the animal, embodies them in itself as in some sort of radar receiver, it is an organism relative to the laws of material inorganic being that preceded life by millions of years, and it embodies this relation together with, only as part of, the operations and law of its own proper being as this or that species of animal, and the laws of its immediate environment.   That immediate environment, fields, flowers, sun and rain, prey and preyer, impulse and fear, gratification of instinct, flight and repression, all these things come much later, and the laws that govern the animal form in relation to them, not only make one harmony with these more elemental laws, but embody the laws of elemental matter as only one principle of the more complex synthesis which is the animal and its lifecycle.   For example, the urge to mate, prompted by the sight, or smell of the female, is a reaction in an animal body that requires the harmonized cooperation of every known material law to explain it.  The cells that make the animal eye, not only the eye as an organ, but its individual cells, themselves are constituted as syntheses of compounds bound in a relativity that is higher than, but yet includes, the laws that build up the diversities of the atoms; the basic laws of atomic and particular valences on which the evolution of matter begins at all.

Through all this, with all this, in all this, the living seeks its relative determinant, its control and its direction, and it finds it.  There is not an organ or function that is not defined by shape and pattern in terms of an end the determination of which is partly within and partly without the living creature.  The definition of the male cannot be expressed except in relation  to the female, and vice-versa; the function of sex for instance is an act that requires the cooperation of the individual with its physical complement; relativity and inter-determination is mutual.  There does not exist anywhere in the order of life, a being, organ, or function, that it self sufficient, self explanatory, self determined; there must be a relation of controlled and controller, determined end and determining agent; there must be cooperation of actively relative entities.

Control and Direction – the environment and the environed

In the kingdom of life, vegetable or animal, we can see very plainly that this finalism is not passive, but very active.  The living is constituted as a purposive entity that seeks its end in life, all that it is both explains its purpose, and serves to the attainment of that purpose.   The purposiveness of all being, is so to speak “personified”, in the living thing.  The law of the life principle is not a static relativity, an inert pattern of parts, but an active, seeking, needing principle of relativity.  It is essential to remember that this seeking implies, for the organism to make sense, something that can be obtained through the seeking, it implies the mutual relativity of the environment and the environed.   The relative entity that is any sort of material life, from the anthropoid to the unicellular organism, has a given life-cycle, a  given active impulse to seek its end;  always life seeks and finds,  each according to the functions proper to its species, and it seeks this good, this determination which is its control and direction, within the order of the universe.  It seeks and it finds.

The same principle rules the inorganic order as well, less dramatically but no less obviously.  The laws of the emission and absorption of energy in discrete quanta of varying amounts govern the nature of the elements.  There is a law of positive and negative charge, centripetal and centrifugal force.  The atoms have their proper weight and proper structure, they are defined by weight and number, and these mathematical expressions stand as a reference for as many different substances and properties. The atoms themselves have their proper valences, the limits of their combinations and affinities:  the atom is not arbitrary in property and structure, and all known atoms can be reduced to synthesis of the same basic particles.

There is law here, law that is purposive, for what we describe in references of number and weight and given ultimates express substances that are intimately related, built of the same patterns of energy, but  different  in  nature  because  of  those  differentiations  of  structure  that  manifest  the  different finalities, or species, of different atoms.  Through all this interlocking of laws and relativities, from the electrons to the solar systems, there runs a balance and a harmony which consists in the balance of forces in themselves contraries, but maintained in a balance of power as complementary.

This one whole mighty process worked up from the primordial condition of matter is one total economy, and must be governed, as one total economy, but one unity of law, a cosmic Law of Control and Direction, of which all other laws are aspects, and the agents of the purpose defined through the law.  Nature is one piece, woven without break into one tapestry.  Growth and development, space and time are not the primaries of the laws of the universe, these are only manifestations of the purpose that is in things as they develop relative one to another.   Behind space and time there is the Unity of Control and Direction which is a true law, the law of the harmony of the universe, the law which defines all that is in the universe, the law which brings these entities to be, in terms of mutual relativity, in a balance of coordination and order.

Life seeks its control and direction with obvious purposiveness, though not with freedom, because this purposiveness is mechanical, predetermined, not volitive.  It is a predetermined purpose arising out of the nature, but it is a reality, a reality that is one thing with the living creature.  Inorganic matter seeks too, it has its laws of structure, its affinities, its properties, its repulsions; it also is blind, predetermined and mechanical;   the laws of its purposive evolution from a primordial condition is equally a reality.   Both these orders, the living and the non-living, are locked in one economy of relativity, they are intertwined in one whole, the ape is built upon the electron.  This is the work of One Law, the Law of Control and Direction, the basic Law of the universe, the only Law, for every other law is an expression of its partial properties, and through this law is brought into being those complex inorganic and organic entities which are not expressible in mathematical terms as substances, but only as the relations of elements through which substances come to be in a common order of intrinsic relativity.   There is no material value in this concatenation of relatives that explains the whole, for each is determined by another.  There is no material being non-living or living that contains it itself more than what it is itself in relation to something other than itself.

Absolute Intelligence – the centre of Control and Direction

Everything is caused and itself causes, but only as a unit in a vast economy, and where is the centre of Control and Direction, the centre that poises the Law of relative movement to an end of relative evolution of substance over the economy of Nature?  Space and time, or better the unity space-time, is not  the  explanation  of  this  cosmic  economy.    Space  and  time  are  only  natures  themselves  in movement to an end; space and time do not explain the phenomena and the mutations which are identified with them.  Growth and development are synonymous with space-time; space-time is the measure of beings that are relative, it does not explain their intrinsic relativity; it manifests change of form and the emergence of new substances, it manifests but does not cause them.   The primordial simple basic Law of the universe is the Unity, Control and Direction, this Unity is a Law.   The essential principle of this Law is the purposive and evolutionary relativity of being; nothing is its own control or direction;  all is relative within one economy governed by this Law.  Contraries are made harmonies by this Law, harmonies in an economy that has a meaning, a meaning man is learning more and more how to unravel.

The Law of Control and Direction operating through these contraries of natures and elements, binds them in one harmony, one universe, because it operates through them all as a principle of unity, purpose, and meaning.   Purpose, or pre-destination, necessitates control and intelligence preceding pre-destination.  As there is law and order in the universe we know there is control, and because there is motion that is purposive and causal we know there is direction.  We are led to understand that when has no meaning unless where is added.  When and where, and the what that they imply can have no meaning unless purpose is added, and intelligence must precede this cosmic and evolutionary purpose. Purpose, the design which is the relative substance of a material thing, is achieved by a Law of Control and Direction, and this must be embodied in an Intelligence.

This Intelligence frames the Law, and in its present, a present that determines the initial natures of the elements, frames also the future, always as a more wonderful harmony of relative beings as an equation, a balance of things that are, a balance of things yet to be, still latent within the purposive mutations of the natures that make up the universe.   If there is no purpose without control, no movement local or substantial without purposive direction, then when we trace backwards this serial evolution of the universe, we must come to an Absolute who is Alpha and Omega to the whole process.

A relative universe cannot be its own control and direction

When matter first began to evolve into this definite and purposive cosmos of today it needed itself control and direction towards this stupendously precise and ordered end.  The basic particles of matter cannot, nor could, be in themselves the explanation of the ordered cosmos that is one continuity from the electron to man.  The total relativity of these ultimates was already the first operation of the Law of Control and Direction, and this all-embracing, overriding harmony that is a balance of wisdom, purpose,  power,  complex  and  stupendous  achievement,  is  not  to  be  found  therefore  in  relative chemical elements.  The purpose which impregnated the material universe from the beginning so that it was always obeying a law of purpose and design to new and higher forms of being,  finally to life through relative motion and mutation, is itself preceded by the Unifying Intellect which controls and directs it, and in which this Law that controls and directs matter through the very natures of matter, has its own Control and Direction.

The ultimate control of matter, the mind in which the Law of Control and Direction within the universe has unity, and achieves the purpose to which it is directed, is the Intellect we call God. Intelligence cannot reside in nothing, but it is the characteristic of personality.  This first Infinite and Absolute Intellect;   this Principle and Control and Direction from whom matter is breathed out in creation as a purposive economy impregnated and defined by a physical Law of Control and Direction proceeding from this controlling and directing Mind in whom all has unity and meaning, this is the Divine Personality we call God.

It can be shown, and we will not delay on it here because it is so easy to demonstrate, that the nature and construction of all matter implies determination to a given function or a given range of phenomena, and to nothing else.  There is no place for “free” activities in the natural elements, there is no place for a “mind” in any particle, atom, or element, which is something other than what is found in, and explained by, its substance-pattern.  The structure of all material things, living and non-living, but much more obviously non-living, is specialized and determined to one given set of reactions and to nothing else.  This is the strongest argument of the Mechanicist against the Vitalist and Animist, and it is a perfectly valid argument.  For the same reason, it presumes the existence of a Personal God.

The determination of matter to “this”, and to “that”, in a universe that evolves to a higher economy of complex relative beings through a process of continual evolution, implies a centre of Control and Direction which explains the continuing unity and harmony in terms of a plan that binds the relatives. These relatives are moved by it, defined by it, their substance is identical with it, for purposive movement cannot be divorced from the definition of matter like an incidental property; but they are not it, nor in themselves do they explain it.

An abiding purpose requires an abiding law.   An abiding law in this serial universe means an Abiding Intellect.  The materialist loves to view the universe as a “planned economy”, the Marxists view evolution as a “dialect”, a “necessary history” of matter, upwards to more perfect synthesis. They describe it in terms of getting somewhere, terms of purpose, of mind.  Let them say where they place the mind in which this evolving and developing plan abides.  If they place it in matter they are talking nonsense.  Things which are determined require a determiner; things which are controlled have a controller;   a developing economy has a plan, a plan has a centre of unity which   connects and relates its parts in space and time;  there is no such agent possible in the material universe.  The nature of such an agent contradicts the nature of the material being.

Cosmic pantheism, usually expressed through some form of vitalism is also quite common today. The different “mind-stuff” philosophies are all in the same genus.  Any cosmic pantheism, given the specialised  structure  of  any  material  form,  involves  the  association  with  matter  throughout  the universe of some intelligent principle.  Particles of “mind-element” more multiple and diverse than those millions of human intelligences supposed to be noble achievements and high concentrations of the “mind-element” will, quite as much as any materialist philosophy, lack a principle of unity that explains  the  stable  harmony of  purposive  evolution.    The  unity of  the  Universal  Law,  and  the Universal Economy achieved through that Law, is one of intelligent coordination much above the power of man to appreciate, let alone imitate.

What taxes human intelligence to analyse, cannot have been evolved as a synthesis from a state of thesis by a principle of less than supreme intelligence.   Will the pantheist ask us to believe in the unanimity in democratic council of all the mind-stuff proper to all the relatives in the universe? Man himself would not help to bear this out!   The Unity of Intellect required to explain the Law that controls and directs the universe cannot be found in pantheism any more than in materialism,  there is no absolute from whom derives the purpose that directs the evolutionary change of relative beings and maintains throughout a multiplicity of particular purposes a harmony in one overall economy  A mind which was split up over or identified with the discrete world of matter, could never be the adequate source of purpose attained through relativity, as science has discovered it to us.

Law of Control and Direction demonstrates the existence of God

We consider that the existence of God can be stated to-day as a mathematical fact.  We consider that the proof we outline, which is not of course essentially distinct in nature from the classical proofs at all, implies that God can be proven from the universe by the reason of man as a mathematical necessity.  God does not require mathematics but mathematics, as the science of the observable value- relations  of  material  entities,  does  need  God.    Mathematics  does  not  express  the  real  value  of anything; it merely states a relationship of cause and effect.   We can express, given a relative and serial universe, all material values in terms of its intermediate natural causes, we can work back and back  to  the  last  primary expression  of  these  energy-values,  but  we  cannot  explain  the  ultimate relativity of matter in terms of anything except an entity outside matter and greater than matter.

We must remember that the relativity is always a Unity, and that no part of it is sufficient to explain the whole; the Mind of God explains the whole, its purpose, its law, the unfolding in time of the purpose through the Law.   For the same reason matter cannot be uncreated.   To be relative, contingent,  to  be  in  movement,  to  be  defined  by  a  cause  other  than  oneself  in  substance  and movement, all these terms mean the same ultimately.  To be self sufficient, to be non-relative, to be eternal, to be subject to no substantial movement or mutation, these also mean the same thing, and also mean to be “Unique and Alone”.  The essentially relative is the “created”, because all that is, and may yet be, is dependent upon a final Absolute.  To be uncreated is to be God, and to be God therefore is to be the perfection of Intellect and Will relative to nothing except to Itself.

Our long preoccupation with the nature of matter has been mainly to see those reasons which compel the mind to affirm the existence of a Personal Absolute Intelligence, and the relation of matter to that absolute God.  It is however only in the further study of the unfolding of the purpose embodied in evolution towards the emergence of the living, and then to man, that the nature of that Law which we have called the Law of Control and Direction is perceived.  This is the Law in the terms of which matter is defined in its specific substances, and through which those substances achieve the further purposive synthesis that evolution brings about through the movement and mutation and of these substances.  This statement is as true of the order of life as of the inorganic order.  It is only as the workings of this Law leads towards man that the full implications of the Law can be grasped, and of the grandeur of the purpose which it embodies.  The survey of the universe can show in a clear cold light the existence of an Infinite and Intelligent God, a God whom the mathematician and the engineer will be well able to appreciate.

Of itself however, such a light would remain very cold.  The plenitude of the purpose of God, and the fulfilment of the Universal Law of Control and Direction can only be seen when the path of the Law is traced from the non-living to the living, and from life to Man.  It is not enough for us to show the existence of a God who is intelligent, because the fullness of the meaning of Being for the human mind and heart can only be expressed fully as “Wisdom with Carefulness”, or as Love.  Love is the synthesis of Intellect and Will in a purpose which alone rejoices the heart of a man and binds him, intellect and will alike in joyful bonds, not in servility.  All that follows must culminate in that great end, for this end contains the plenitude of the love and goodness of God to man, the plenitude of fulfilment that is given to the nature of man, and to which is   related the meaning of the lesser creations of God.

CHAPTER 5

The Law of Control and Direction: A Full Outline

In the previous chapter we have postulated as a necessity of reason in the interpretation of the material universe, a universal cosmic Law of Control and Direction to determinate ends;  a Law competent to fashion through a process of evolution this complex serial universe by the causal inference of pre- determined energies existent in act and movement as purposive mutual co-relatives.  It is essential to bear in mind that this purposiveness of material agencies is not, in them, an intelligent or conscious purpose; it is a finalism which is identical with the structure and substance of material entities themselves.

The very “Law” of which we speak is not distinct really from the structure and substance of matter. This Law is ultimately the purposiveness of material being itself, being which is inter-defined, relative in movement of itself to diverse and progressive purpose within one economy of matter.  We say in movement of itself, but not by itself, because these entities, defined by relativity in their substance, and the Law of Finalism which they embody as one economy of material nature, proceed from the Intellect and Will of God, their Absolute.  This Law is one because the economy of the universe is balanced in a unity of harmony and synthesis, many substances inter-defined as actual-potential relatives in one economy of matter compose this Law.  This Law is identified with substances that exist in the universe, because a law is the causal influence that exists between co-defined entities. It is this Law which we will see explains all material evolution from the electron to the brain of man, is contained in the nature and relation of the initial equation, purposive and in motion, of material energies at the beginning of creation and evolution; for creation and the beginning of the evolution of the universe is the same thing.

Law of Control and Direction operates for a purpose beyond itself

The Law itself, however, is not the purpose or end of the Law; therefore the purpose and end of creation and of evolution is not identified with evolving material creation.   The Law which matter embodies in the economy of the universe, is the expression of a purpose that is contained in its centre of control, direction, and unity, which is the Mind of God alone.  The law of a complicated human achievement is the pre-determined causal relations of its components to the effect intended.   In the concrete,  the  components  embody  the  law;  the  causal  influence  is  one  with  the  structure  and fashioning of the components, they are made by man as inter-defined in mutual relativity in order that pre-conditioned reactions of cause and effect may be achieved.  In this sense they are purposive in themselves, they are made to do something definite, and they perform exactly that function and nothing else.

The same is true of any human organisation;   different individuals perform purposively different functions in a purposive manner, individually they may be ignorant of the overall strategy of which their function is one part, they may not know the final plan or purpose which they fulfil in carrying out given orders, but they do fulfil it,  and in doing a part they integrate a planned economy or a planned strategy.  The point becomes clearer if referred again to the organic parts of a delicate machine.  The purpose  which  defines  the  very  nature  of  the  components,  the  purpose  which  makes  the  parts purposive to a given function in their very structure is contained in, and only in, the mind of man their “creator”.

Ultimate purpose is the plan in the Mind of God

The relationship of material entities in the planned economy of the universe is strictly analogous in principle.  The ultimate purpose of God, one plan in the Divine Intellect, defines the very substance of the material being.  To be, and to be intrinsically relative, is the same thing in the material cosmos, and the Law which is the harmony of many entities developing to new forms and higher degrees of being, is the manifestation of a purpose which is not material, nor identified with matter, but is identified with God intending and willing the economy of nature;  because the ultimate purpose of nature exists before achievement in the Divine Mind as a fact.  The purpose of God is embodies in the evolving material universe as a Law, which we have called the Law of Control and Direction, even as the purpose of the inventor is embodies in the control and direction which shapes the components of his invention.  The supreme law of the Law of Control and Direction itself is the living Intelligence that is God, nothing else, even as the supreme control and direction of the components of any human achievement is the intelligent spirit of man.  The Law of Control and Direction is a true law identified in the concrete with the reality of material substances, but this Law, the Absolute of material relatives, the centre of unity, control and direction, the centre of the plan in One Mind - this is God.

The purpose, or the overall plan, conceived as an economy of relatives which exists in the mind of the human controller or inventor in his works, explains the purposiveness proper and individual in the components fashioned and related by him to a definite effect.  The mind of God likewise explains the purposiveness substantial to material entities, and while not identified with the Law of Control and Direction which the universe embodies, any more than the inventor is identified with the actual purposes and functions of the parts he conceives and fashions, explains matter and its Law, explains its unity, its purposiveness, and its evolutionary unfolding to future ends contained potentially in the initial equation of material energies and material valences of substance.

Therefore whether we regard this Law of Control and Direction that governs matter, and is embodied in matter, in the particular aspect of one science, or as the general relativity of all material being in all the sciences, we are forced by a necessity of reason which is a necessity of logic and mathematics also, to refer it back to the Mind of God as to its centre of procession, of finalism, of control and direction.  We saw in the preceding chapter that the purposive relativity of evolution does not explain itself, either in a particular material entity, or in the total economy of Nature.  It is a Law, this evolutionary purposiveness, because something intrinsic to the material entity and the material Universe; a substantial influence of cause and effect to synthesis and progress, not an incidental pushing about of atoms by a demiurge.  The Law is a real thing;  the Law is identified with real things; nevertheless the “Law” of this blind unconscious Law of matter, the centre of the unity, control, direction, and determination of material development, the purpose conscious and intelligent of the blind purposes of matter, is, and can only be a Personal Mind: the Mind that is Almighty God.

Law encompasses animate and inanimate creation

We are forced in the consideration of the living entity to ask whether this one same Law of Control and Direction which is inherent in the substance and relativity of matter suffices to explain in one continuity also the phenomena of life, or whether we must restrict this law as we have considered it so far, to the non-living order only?  Equivalently this question asks whether we need to invoke some principle of substantial being which transcends the inorganic order to explain that substantial synthesis which is the living form.  It must be frankly conceded that a priori, and without reference to the facts of the case, we would be most reluctant to break the majestic continuity of one order of material being, of one Law of evolution, mechanist in principle, which embraced all matter from the electron to the anthropoids.

There is not however any valid reason why a new Law, reflecting the new substantial order of the living, should be invoked to explain the living material creature.  There is no reason why we should make pre-determined and non-volitional life a “special creation” with a law of being distinct from, but complementary to, the non-living order in which it has the determinant and the conditions of its existence.  The distinction between life and non-living matter can well be defended as a difference in degree of substantial being and perfection within the same order of being;  that is to say, the living and the non-living material entity is in the same species, in the philosophical, not the biological connotation, of the term “species”.   It seems to us that One Universal Law has operated in an unbroken continuity of order and competence from the primordial elements to the emergence of the living cell, and as the same continuous agency has been responsible for the development of the living to the most perfect and complex animal forms.

Operation of the Law increases in complexity in relation to the higher forms of life

Here however we must introduce a further concept, one which the reader may find it hard to follow immediately, but a concept which must be borne in mind because it will be supremely important later, and will become easier to follow later because of its introduction as a concept now.  While we see no cause to interpret the order of living matter as an order distinct in species from the non-living, we do not infer by this that the Law of Control and Direction is totally and exhaustively explained by the relativity of the mechanist and determined order of matter to itself and ultimately to God.  This Law which  integrates  material  substances  and  directs  the  purposes  of  material  being  in  which  it  is embodied, has certain essential properties which will lead us to astounding conclusions.

One of the properties of this Law, a property which has been briefly touched upon already in the last chapter, is that the new forms of material being, living and non-living alike, educed through it are progressively higher in type and more complex. It is true to say that the Law itself,  for all physical “laws” are partial aspects of this One Law, deepens and becomes more complex as the relativity of being within the economy of the universe becomes more complex.  A “developing law” is a strange concept surely, but that the Law of the Universe is in fact a developing law is obvious from the known history of the universe and from the history of life.

It is certainly a fact that the animal body is governed by intricate laws, laws which maintain an equilibrium of action and reaction between the animal organism and its total environment, and the laws of the animal body did not exist as facts in the first stages of universal evolution for the very

simple reason  that  the  animal  organism  did  not  exist,  and  could  not  have  existed  at  that  time. Nevertheless the laws of thermodynamics within the unity of the animal substance are the same as the laws of thermodynamics that existed long before the animal body. The higher finality which is the animal is integrated with, and synthesized upon, the “earlier” law.  In the same way the eye and the brain employ laws of quantum emission and radiation which are the primitive “laws” of matter, and the later and more complex organism is intrinsically relative to, and synthesized upon the primitive “laws”  which  much  earlier  preceded  it.    Yet  all  this  relativity exists  within  one  economy,  one harmony, One Law.  The evolving entities integrate the Law and the Law integrates them:  they are only aspects, in the concrete, of the same thing.  If substances which have new finalities evolve, then new causal influences are begotten with them and in them; it is the same thing to say that the Law of the universe develops, and to say that the order of the material evolves.

Almighty God is the Environment for the universe

The explanation of course is as easy to find as the data which leads the intelligence of man to the existence of a personal God.  The Law, which is the intrinsic substantial relativity of matter, derives from the Intellect of the Absolute of the universe.  The final end and purpose of the Law is in the Intelligence which is God; for that reason we have called God the Alpha and the Omega of the universe.  Every purely material creation is contained in potency in the initial equation of forces in which the Law of Control and Direction was originally embodied, but it was so contained because the Being of God is the cause of matter, of its existence, of its substantial relativity, of its urge to evolve, and of the total economy which it integrates.

The acorn is not the actual content of the finalism it embodies; the oak tree is the fulfilment of the potential content of its seed, the fulfilment bigger and more complex of the initial Law of energies in which the substance of the seed is constituted.   The seed develops to its perfection relative to the action of the environment which is its immediate control and directing influence.  The first control and direction, the “environment” of the universe is God alone. The analogy fails only in that the living seed draws other material energies into its own substance in order to develop, and the universe does not, but this is no objection to the analogy, because the universe is not a thing in itself but an economy of diverse entities defined by inter-relation.  The universe develops upon itself, because the primordial elements were created as substantially relative, and therefore in movement to such purposive integration of higher synthesis of being through the Law that binds them in one economy, the Law that is the imprint in the substance of matter of the conscious Mind of God.

Before we come to foreshadow our ultimate argument, the proof of which rests in the succeeding chapters, we must finally define the nature of this “developing Law” which rules all matter and is embodied in the equational relativity of matter itself.   We must underline the blind determinate purposiveness of the individual material existent, and especially of the living existent.  Up to now our emphasis has been upon the unity in diversity of the Law of Control and Direction, the oneness and the balance of a cosmic economy.   We must also underline what precisely this Law implies in the individual members that integrate the economy of nature.

All things seek their control and direction in their environment

It is a cardinal principle of this Law of purposive relativity which we call the Law of Control and Direction, that just as the relative material thing in itself is not self-explanatory, nor the economy of the universe self-explanatory, so also the individual relative cannot be its own control and direction, its own final and ultimate determinant.  This of course is more than implicit in the assertion of the substantial relativity of material being, it is practically explicit as soon as the concept of “relativity” is understood.   Because of what is to come later in this book we must in this place insist upon the determination towards its individual control and direction that exists in every true substance in nature, living and non-living.  The atom has its structure and its valences, it “resists” the effort to break down the stability that integrates it as a true substance.   In the order of the living, an order equally pre- determined and ruled by blind instinctive laws, this purposive substantial relativity shows itself as a seeking for control and direction.  Both the non-living and the living substance then seek, each in their measure and degree, their fulfilment and proper individual finalism:  this is to say that they seek the “good” and the “true” proper to their substantial definition.

In the case of the living creature this is most obviously apparent.   The senses of life are the channels by which the life-principle seeks its stimuli, and through which it receives stimuli.   The senses are not only organs of given function, they are organs through which, as aspects of the one sense of finalism of the life-principle, control and direction is exercised upon  the living form by laws and determinations that are constituted through the environment itself.   All matter then, and more strikingly the living thing, seeks that determination to the ends of its being that its substantial relativity implies; it is made to seek its good and true from outside itself, and it finds that good and true in the co-operation  between  its  own  entity  and  those  impulses  of  the  environment  towards  which  its organism is constructed to receive and to interpret.

We will notice that the mere fact that every determination of the living creature below man is sought and is found in the Law of Control and Direction that impregnates the universe, is sufficient proof that the living form is essentially and entirely within that one order.   We know that in the concrete this Law of Control and Direction, which we may also call now the Law of the proper Good of matter, is identified with the causal impact of mutual relatives one upon another.  If then the living animal form receives its entire determination from such causal influences both organic and inorganic within the universe, it cannot be constituted by any principle higher than matter and the laws of matter.  The higher controls the lesser, not the lesser the higher, and if, as the Vitalists presume, and in this respect we think even the Aristotelean must be called a Vitalist, there were any principle of the living above the physicochemical order, truly non-material in definition which explained life, then that principle of being would require a determination to its end, a control and  direction that surpassed the Law embedded in the economy of the material universe.  But this is not so.

We see then that the Law of Control and Direction is centred and made a unity in the Intelligence of God.  We have seen the unconscious purposiveness both cosmic and particular that matter evinces through this Law.  We have seen how, especially in life, the seeking for determination, the seeking of the good and the true proper to the definition of a given nature, is both an example of this Law and is catered for by this Law as it exists in the environment.  We have seen that material being is made pre- determinately both to seek its end and to find that end;  the former is embodied in the structure of the entity, the latter is provided in the causal impact of other being made intrinsically relative to the “seeking” embodied in the nature.  We can now say intelligibly that the Law of Control and Direction is the Law of Determination to the good and the true that impregnates the universe, and that guides it blindly to purposive ends.  An end is purposive, however blind, when a definite result is achieved. This end is achieved through law, and above all, is achieved gradually by co-relative and co-operative evolution.

Matter and spirit within the Unity Law - Man

In this a great deal has been said, a burden of thought which will need several readings we suspect before it becomes fully clear, and even so we are not finished with this necessary work of foreshadowing in advance what must be proven step by step.  We must return now to the statement that this Law of Finalism which rules the universe was not only a “developing Law” but also a Law the scope and significance of which was not exhausted nor totally explained by the purely material.

This may seem irrelevant to our purposes, but it will not be an irrelevant statement if one supreme fact should be true, a fact hitherto unmentioned.  If it is true and demonstrable that matter and spirit are distinct orders which are directly relative and directly complementary in one total economy of the universe then this Law of Control, which is a physical Law, so far as it works through material creation and is manifested in it, is only a part of the Law which governs a total economy. Because if matter and spirit can be shown to be substantially and intrinsically co-relative in one entity, then the material universe is, as material, only a part of one order of creation which binds the spiritual and the material in one economy, one unity, one wisdom.

If this is so, and we will prove that it is, then the final end to be achieved of the development of the universe through material evolution is an end immediately and ultimately relative to the spiritual creature, to the rational animal, or man.  This last end defines the purpose potential in the physical Law of  Finalism even as that Law defines the natures and substances of those material entities which emerge through its operation.  This ultimate purpose and reason of the material creation, antecedent in the Mind of God, determined the initial physical equation of material energies in the beginning of the determined history of the material universe.  Creation then has been indeed creation by evolution, and we realise that creation is not finished, nor the Law of finalism finished until the emergence of man. We can reveal more:  creation is not finished until the Incarnation of God in Christ who is the fulfilment of the Law in its totality.  In the beginning God was Alpha to the universe;  in God again, in Jesus Christ, we will find Him the Omega of the universe;  the beginning and the end;  the first cause and the last end of all things that were made by, and through, Him.

Ultimate purpose and fulfilment in Christ

In the formidable assertion that ends the last paragraph we imply that while we speak of one physical Law of Finalism, or of “Control and Direction” which determines the nature and the operations of matter. Of this Law all other laws, the laws of electronics, dynamics, magnetism, genetics, biology, are partial aspects, even this one Law that embraces these lesser laws in a general Unity of Relativity, even this one physical Law is only a partial aspect of itself.  This one physical Law is only a part of itself, because it is a part of a creative Law that governs one economy. It is only part of one Law that proceeds from God in the creation of matter, works through matter in evolution, culminates in man, and because the nature of man is perfected and fulfilled in Christ, who is God made Man for men, the Beginning and the End, Alpha and Omega. Jesus Christ is therefore the Intelligent Principle from whom the Law proceeds in creation, and in whom it culminates for the control, direction and determination to his ultimate good and true of man himself, who alone of created things within the universe is made in the likeness of God and must find his fulfilment in God.

If we can justify an economy of creation as stupendously one unity as that which we briefly outline, then we are justified in saying that the physical cosmic Law of the universe is itself only a partial aspect of one process and of one economy which works through evolution to its climax in man, at which it becomes directly relative to the order of spirit. This Law then proceeds through man as one Law now higher in finalism, nature and requirement, and reaches its climax and consummation in the Person from whom it originally proceeds: Jesus Christ, Incarnate God, the “Son of Man”.  This can be so, and was, and is so, because God is Alpha and Omega to all created things whatsoever in the universe of which the rational creature, man, is the glory and the crown.

When God begins creation, that beginning is relative to the consummation in Christ, and the total economy of creation is a unity of wisdom, law, and love, which begins with the FIAT of the Divine Intellect and Will, and is fulfilled for mankind in Christ, in whom alone is the personal fulfilment of the spiritual creature.  If this saying is hard, do not for that reason refuse to hear it; what is dark and bewildering at this juncture will be clarified in subsequent chapters, and the total sweep of the later thesis will be the easier to grasp by reference back to the key and outline of the whole which we foreshadow in this.

CHAPTER 6

The Emergence and Evolution of Life

The interpretation of the nature and operations of the living form marks the final rupture in modern thought between systems of philosophy which are radically Vitalist and those which are radically Mechanist.   The point of departure is neatly epitomised in the contra-distinction of the “Creative Evolutionist” against the “Neo-Darwinian”.   Both schools are partly right and partly wrong;   it is possible to reconcile the elements which are true in each system within one philosophy.  Before the phenomena of life we are forced to consider urgently whether the finalism individual and specific that the living creature demonstrates, requires for its explanation some principle of synthesis distinct from that which explains the non-living order.

Mind or Matter in the philosophies of evolution?

The question is the more pointed when there is considered the tremendous edifice reared through evolution on the foundation of the sub-microscopic cell.  It will already be certain what stand we must take upon this issue in this work; in substance we will side with the mechanist, but it will be necessary to develop the illogical and inadequate philosophy of  being which usually passes for mechanist philosophy.  Any vitalist philosophy always has great difficulty in saving itself from cosmic animism. When a duality of principle is postulated of material being which corresponds to a distinction of “mind” against “matter”, it is philosophically impossible not to extend that principle over the entire physical universe.  The vitalist proposes his “mind element” to explain the finalism and purposiveness demonstrated in the substance and structure of the living form;  but everything in nature, including the atom, has such a structure for which a similar argument may be made out.  It is impossible in the end for a vitalist to avoid asserting either cosmic pantheism, or else a universe in which every element is integrated by a principle of “mind”, a supposition which ultimately makes nonsense of the universe.

A philosopher ought not to specify any composition of “mind” and “matter” until he treats of man. In the case of man we are confronted with specific and individual behaviour which contradicts the laws of mechanism; only when we are confronted with an entity which contradicts the laws of mechanism do we need to seek an explanation outside an order of material determinism, and there is no need, nor any justification for such an exception, save only in the case of man.   The cardinal feature of a vitalist philosophy must always be the assertion of a principle of substantial constitution within the living form which “strives” through evolution towards greater perfection.  The phrase of Henri Bergson, an “élan vital” is significant, because in any modern presentation of vitalism this élan must be a driving force which knows where it is going;  an élan which is the impetus of the species towards serial progress in form through evolution.  It is however possible to save the truth behind the “élan” without personifying that élan in a spiritual principle truly distinct from the physico-chemical order.  The vitalist makes a difficulty which does not exist and rears a whole philosophy upon the answer;  if the problem of life is examined objectively, there is no good reason why the living form may not be explained according to a philosophy of mechanism.

Control and Direction not vitalism operative in the different strata of creation

In the first place we have the suggestive evidence for continuity of evolution under one cosmic Law that consists in the close parallel between the lowest forms of the living cell and those elements through which it is integrated.  These compounds are the most delicate synthesis of inorganic matter, the summit if you will of non-living evolution, and we observe that these are directly relative in an apparently continuous manner to the lowest forms of life.  The argument is far from convincing, but it makes a beginning.  We begin to suspect that quite possibly the living cell in its lowest formality was a mutant “per saltum” from inorganic syntheses of elements.  It may never be in the power of man to make in the laboratory a living cell also capable of  true evolutionary development, but this does not imply that an Absolute Mind could not fashion such an entity through the cosmic Law of Control and Direction.

We find the analogies between the orders of the living and the non-living to be overwhelmingly strong; we must concede too that the interdependence of these orders, the intrinsic conditioning of the living creatures by laws and influences embodied in the non-living order is an even stronger argument to their identity of specific definition.  There is a  fundamental unity of type and of behaviour-pattern between both orders of being.  The roots of organic life go deeply into the inorganic order and the laws of that order; indeed, even the most complex animal forms integrate the primordial laws of matter within the one finalism of their individual animal being.  There is no break in this unity, the relativity is utter and complete, and binds the living and the non-living strictly into one order.

How much more reasonable it is to interpret life as a value implicit in the initial equation of material forces than to seek for some principle of intelligence to explain the wonderfully “intelligent” structure of beings that never manifest the slightest initiative!   Even the “vital principle” which fashioned the ant has done so with an “intelligence” and “purposiveness” which our own intellect cannot yet imitate;  and yet who will believe that an insect has an abiding and conscious principle of intellect of such blinding power?  The contradiction between a what vitalism should imply in such an entelechy, and what the finalism of the living form actually manifests in operation is insurmountable. The animal form, especially the lower animal forms, act as if they were essentially mechanisms; nothing forbids us to believe that they are what they seem to be.

If the principle of control and direction in the animal form were a principle of mind, a “soul” in any sense in which the word means a principle above the purely material order, then it should be able to govern and to develop the animal form from its own powers but it cannot.   Why, if this were so, should the animal body be so utterly and intimately controlled and influenced by environmental laws of a purely physical and chemical nature, or by chemical agents alone?  There are multitudes of such examples known to biochemistry, and as far as more general reactions are concerned, the mating instinct in the primates, for instance, is governed by atmospheric and climatic laws which are purely non-living  in nature and operation.  That these influences truly determine the animal reaction is easily proved by experiment.  The role played by the élan vital becomes more and more tenuous, unless that élan is identified with the living mechanism which is the total animal being.

There is too, a further difficulty in vitalism which is final and conclusive, an élan vital which is not the total animal being, but only its principle of substantial integration, its “soul” or “form” in the sense of philosophy, is not only the principle which fashions the substance-pattern of the living thing, but also a principle of nearly omnipotent prescience as well.  If the primordial forms and patterns of life are relative to the ultimate achievements of evolution, and the Creative Evolutionist eagerly admits that they are, then these initial forms are fashioned intrinsically relative to the ultimate perfection of evolution in the same way as the fertilized ovum is intrinsically relative to the mature adult.  If this intrinsic relativity is embodied in the “mind-principle” of the living cell at the dawn of the evolution of life, then this principle of life possesses an intellect infinitely superior to that of which men are more humbly conscious.  If a “life-force” fashion, forms, strives, is an “élan vital”, then let the vitalist or the neo-vitalist weigh well the impossible prerequisites of his theory.

False ascriptions of development to an intelligent “life force” in matter

Bergson makes great play with the evolution of the eye in the higher forms of mammalian life. He proposes this wonderful and complex example of orthogenetic evolution as a supreme instance of the intelligent power of life thrusting upwards through matter to express its highest potentialities in material structure and  form.   One can  sympathize with him, because he certainly perceives  the purposiveness and intelligence embodied in organic forms but alas, he proves too much, and in consequence proves nothing.  A purposiveness embodied in material organisms does not argue to a resident principle of “mind” in the constitution of such organisms.   A mechanism made by man embodies a strictly analogous “purposiveness” but remains a mechanism.   Bergson ought to have postulated a purposive or teleological mechanism of the living form, with One Absolute Mind as the final explanation.  Matter excludes mind, and mind or intellect excludes matter as a principle of being. Matter is an order of being substantially determined and mechanist, “fixed” in structure and in the precise actions and reactions of structure.  Mind is the principle which determines and directs matter, and which itself is incapable of direct determination or control by the lesser order of matter.  The sin of  vitalism consists in the confusion of these distinct orders of being.  This philosophy is built upon a confusion of thought and can never be coherent within itself.

Finally, the vitalist decentralizes mind over the whole kingdom of the living, even over the whole Universe.  It is as necessary for the vitalist as for any other philosopher to indicate where we must look for the controlling and directing factor in universal evolutionary relativity.  If “mind” is divided over as many entities as there are living forms, there must be an altogether impossible unanimity between them concerning the casual relations of activity.  The philosophy of vitalism subtracts equally from mind and from matter:   from mind, because the factor of intelligent initiative and freewill is obscured by the identification of mind with instinctive and conditioned reflex action;  from matter, because the causal relations of structure and composition become unintelligible when what experimentally and obviously appears well explained by  physical and chemical factors is attributed in the last analysis to a principle of being which is immaterial, and whose powers should be beyond the mechanical reactions which mark the order of matter.

How much is Matter and how much is Mind?

In a vitalist philosophy it is impossible to decide how much is matter, and how much is mind, and this is the fateful question on which the future of the modern world depends;   the competence of both orders is confused.   Such a philosophy is unacceptable in itself and is poised upon a non-existent difficulty in any event.   Life can be a mechanism and still be all that we mean by “life” short of mankind, because the living form has an intrinsic unity and finality as a mechanism, it exists substantially as one thing.  The machines of man do not possess this intrinsic finality, and therefore the analogy between the sub-human living creature and the machine is both very intimate and very far removed.   Only God can make entities which have one intrinsic finality in a relativity of diverse members.

The machines of men are aggregations, but living forms are unities in being.  In the order of real existence, of immanent being, only God, the Absolute of all that exists, can give intrinsic reality in the order of existence.  When we understand this, we understand both why life is a mechanism and how it can be a mechanism.  Even if man succeeds in creating a living cell from inanimate elements, he will be doing nothing more than reproducing those conditions in which, under the Law of Control and Direction, life emerges.  It would be the discovery of a relativity-formula that equalled life, it would not be creation but the discovery of the Law and processes of creation.

Modern mechanist philosophies of the living material form are more difficult to criticize than those which are vitalist.   The mechanist thinker is frequently more wanting in appreciation of the real problems of the issue at stake than any other philosopher. On the other hand, simply because mechanism properly understood, and increased in the jejune stature it usually has, is   a correct interpretation of the phenomena of living being, there are many nuances of opinion within mechanist systems of philosophy which make contemporary mechanism difficult to treat of.

Types of mechanistic finalism in question

The most common variant of biological mechanist theory is intolerably deficient;  it altogether fails to see the finalism at the heart of evolution, whether non-living or living.  This variant states merely that life is a mechanism which emerged from physicochemical processes and is explained by them:   it happened somehow, in some undefined way, and then it developed at random like a mechanism. It put out  random  mutations  in  endless  streams  which  were  “selected”  by  the  external  environment according to the simple rule of superior survival value.   In the first instant, so jejune a philosophy overlooks a fundamental fact which any average man, however much a layman in scientific matters, can put to himself:  even if “Natural Selection” is the all powerful fairy godmother of Nature, how, and why, has the living cell the power of modification at all? How, and why, does this power of mutation happen to be so fortuitously serial that the total economy of the organism is able to effect it and tolerate it?

One would expect that a living form which was a true mechanism, constructed according to the laws of a mechanism, would be a machine nicely and rigidly adapted to its present purpose, able to reproduce the model through generation, and static in its status.  The plan of a mechanism is adapted to a definite end, and no amount of environment explains why it should be capable of such stupendous intrinsic development as has actually occurred.   Environment may favour or may destroy the life- mechanism, the mechanism of the organism may possess a certain limited resilience, like some of man’s own machines, which admits of slight adaptations to changes of environment, but an intrinsic modification of pattern-of-being from the invisible cell to the primates is something quite beyond that. There are many forms of life, especially lowly forms, which have remained unchanged over millions of years:   if evolution began in certain environmental conditions from the same or from kindred stocks, the reason can hardly be simply in the environment.

Place of mutations

Some distinguished biologists argue with a religious fervour that the selection by the environment of random mutations over billions of years is capable both of accounting for life as we know it in its countless genera and species, and also of explaining the semblance of purposive development in the living, a semblance which does not exist in reality.  They bypass entirely the important question of the origin of mutations and the reason for their occurrence. Even if the environment selects, the environment does not explain mutant factors which are immanent.   Upon this point these eminent authorities maintain a discreet silence or mutter incoherently.   If they said that the stimulus of the environment was the cause of the mutation they would be forced to admit an active co-operative potency in the organism so stimulated to mutation.

Such  an  active  co-operation  between  organism  and  environment,  a  theory which  is  the  only common sense explanation of the facts, would imply a mechanist finalism in the organism relative to the future but latent in the present, and, much more unpleasant to the Neo-Darwinian. It would imply that the organism it totally relative to the reorganisation such a mutant factor involves.  The common sense mechanical finalism is anathema to a certain type of philosopher, both Rationalist and Marxist alike, because a mechanistic finalism of this kind, ultimately bound up with the whole sweep of cosmic evolution, will soon force a man to see the necessity for God, which is not on their agenda.

It is often objected that these successive mutations are slight in themselves, and impressive only when we consider their cumulative effect in a species over vast periods of time.   Whether this statement is true or not, and modern genetics do not bear it out, it remains a fact that successive mutations in one organ have involved serial repercussions over the entire organism, otherwise the organism could not have tolerated the new mutant, nor have used its advantages in any case.   The principal organ of change as life reached higher organic forms has been the brain itself, to which all other organs are somatically relative, and while that supreme controlling and directing organ has undergone specific development and has given us the different species of the lion and the lamb, the eagle and the dove, the total organism has been structurally adapted through the brain to a functional plan whose key is in the brain itself.

Unless there were in such organisms an active and total potency to organic evolution coordinated within the brain, there is no possible explanation of any progressive mutation in a continuous serial manner.  Change, unless coordinated within the mechanism of the living form, should serve inevitably to reduce efficiency, and thereby to lose for the living cell its survival value in the very beginnings of evolution.    While in  passing we are  speaking  of change  as  an  element  of degeneration,  unless synthesized in a new reorganisation, in primitive life as well as in the higher forms. It might well be asked how the well-established power of bacteria and other primitive living forms to develop a resistance to chemicals at first deleterious to them, and to transmit the same resistance, can possibly be understood except on a theory of finalistic reaction to environment which is first individual and then specific through the individual?

Finalism in Nature

Although materialists of the type of whom we have been speaking will move heaven and earth to avoid conceding anything to a purposive finalism in evolution they talk of the environment and of blindly evolving organisms as if these latter were research scientists resolving an anxious dilemma. Their works are full of such phraseology as:   “The species had now to decide whether or not to continue along a line of armoured specialisation that would restrict it to a habitat so limited that it would be at the mercy of any environmental upheaval, or whether rather to decrease armament for a preferential  concentration  upon  greater  mobility.”    Or  else  perhaps  we  will  be  told,  quite  in confidence, that the “choice before the anthropoid phyla now emergent, was between short-term organic efficiency, or the sacrifice of organic specialisation in favour of the long-term advantages of bigger brains etc. etc.” It was so lucky for us that our forebears way back in the family tree were so very, very thoughtful!

Nobody would object to this manner of writing if it were occasional and pictorial, one can forgive anthropomorphisms in an anthropoid, but it soon becomes evident that they speak in this way because they cannot avoid it.   Nature is so saturated with finalism and organic relativity from physics to theology, that even when scientific babes do not believe in trees, they still cannot get out of the wood. They are obliged to interpret nature in terms of ultimate purpose, even though the words they use are strictly speaking meaningless, or else imply a galaxy of scientifically minded deities.

Bergson failed to interpret the process of creative evolution correctly, but he  makes a useful critique of the mechanist philosophy of his day, when he remarks that the successive mutations which built up the mammalian eye required, especially within the brain, an indefinite series of simultaneous mutations to accommodate and reorganise the progress made.  According to the non-finalist theories

of mechanism these would all be random and sweetly fortuitous together.   The reply of one distinguished mechanist biologist of the die-hard school of "Natural Selectionism” is even more important than this perfectly valid criticism.   This objection, he replies, is only imaginary, for it is known from recent research work in genetics that one same mutant factor can have repercussions on the organism which effect serial adaptation over a wide field.  This is precisely what we would wish him to concede.  It is then proven that a mutant factor will realign the organism at least partially, and maybe totally.  This can only mean that the organism is, as a totality, relative to the mutant factor and contains within itself the power to adapt itself progressively and totally under environmental stimulus, to an end towards which its substance cooperates in a teleological way.  Natural Selection, far from being the principle agency in evolution in unable to explain either the type of mutation which occurs, especially orthogenetic mutation such as the development of the eye, spinal column, and brain, nor even the genetic processes involved in mutation.

Finalism, mutations, and the Law of control and Direction

The emergence and development of life is another and a higher aspect of the Law of Control and Direction which governs all matter, living and inanimate, in one order of finalistic relativity.   The Neo-Darwinians are unable to do justice to the very “environment” which they so often invoke;  the environment is more than an eliminating agency in evolution, or a passive milieu that is an active complementary principle which stimulates evolution, and the organism itself is an active complementary principle which cooperates totally as one thing.  If the life cycle of living creatures is governed by laws clearly environmental and bound up with seasonal changes, it should be obvious without any new evidence at all, that an organism which cooperates purposively with such environmental influence by mating or migrating can also cooperate with laws and stimuli in the environment by mutating.   It should be a common sense   deduction, because the animal organism cannot be shut off into arbitrary compartments, some of which react to environmental stimulus with finalist mechanistic determinism, while others are assigned to the production of random mutations for the fun of the thing.

It is common sense to presume that the animal body in its entirety, like the economy of the universe, is totally relative. But common sense seems to elude “impartial science” when intellectual vested interests are at stake.  It is doubtless hard to set aside the philosophy of a lifetime, particularly when fame and reputation has been built upon it; the truth nevertheless must come first, it is futile to play the ostrich when a theory is untenable.  We must conclude that in the evolution of life, the nature of the organism which is developing specifically is one principle of evolution, and the more important one, if importance between equally necessary factors can be greater or lesser. This is because the first requirement in the living organism is the ability to be transformed, and the power to effect total reorganisation of structure in the process.  At the same time the élan vital of the living form, which is a determined behaviour conditioned élan, entirely mechanist in principle, must itself be defined by intrinsic relativity to  the total  environment,  terrestrial  and  cosmic,  without  which  it  can  neither develop nor be controlled in its lifecycle.

Mind as the ultimate determinant of matter

It is this interplay between intrinsic organic potency and environmental potency, the mutual action of complementary factors, which alone can account for life.  An analogy has often been drawn in these pages between the living organism and the machines made by man, an analogy which is valuable not only because of its accuracy, but because the factors which cause this similarity are proportionately similar in themselves.  Mind is the non-material determinant of matter, the Absolute Intellect of God in the last cause and determinant of the created existent, and of the nature which defines its existence. The Absolute Intellect is the cause of these complex organisms not by “special creation”, but because they are latent values contained in the universal equation of material elements.   Life then must be regarded as something that could, in theory, be expressed in a formula which would have a cosmic relativity, not a purely terrestrial one.

It is because Mind is the ultimate determinant of matter that the machines of man bear this close analogy to the mechanistic and determined nature of sub-human life;  man also has an intellect, above and independent in principle of, the purely material order.   The mind of man conditions matter by purposive plan and invention, and produces works that cannot help but imitate the works of God;  for man is made in the image and likeness of God, which likeness is principally in his spiritual soul.  Man cannot however give life to his machines, he cannot make anything even as fully one unity as a natural element, because man cannot give “sheer existence” or “real being” to anything.  Existence as one finalism, a thing in itself, implies a substantial relativity to an Absolute in whose Being the created entity is necessary, and a unity, but the creative decree of that Absolute Intellect and Will.  Man is himself a relative being, he cannot be the necessary cause and last sufficient reason for being to anything else, he has not the power within himself.

At the same time the works of man not only bear a strong likeness of nature to the syntheses of being living and non-living wrought upon the primordial elements, but they show a similarity also to the process of evolution itself, a similarity which depends upon an intrinsic and purposive relativity towards progress.  Between the modern television set and Bell’s first “telephone” there is the same sort of intrinsic relativity as between the primitive vertebrates and the primates.   Between the first aeroplane and the modern jet and rocket propelled aircraft there is the same sort of relation as between the eohippus and the modern horse;   and the examples could be multiplied and improved.   The primitive telephone contained a principle that admitted of development intrinsically and it was developed by the application of purposive intelligence to an unspecialised entity rich in potentialities. The same is true of the primitive aeroplane, the principle admitted of development, complexity, and refinement of adaption to environment.  If the original prototype had been more than a primitive and initial beginning such development could not have taken place.  If the principle had been related to its environment in too restricted a manner, it would have much sooner exhausted the potentialities which its structure bore to the environment.  The inflated dirigible airship may be cited as an example of such restricted possibility, a restriction which goes to the very heart of the principle  which defines it, to its intrinsic formula.  The dirigible has intrinsically so narrow a range of environmental relations that it has been completely supplanted by the aeroplane.

The important point to notice is that the “evolution” of these human inventions has not been in the “selection” by man’s intelligence of “random mutations”, i.e. of fortuitous “bright ideas” tried out through sheer trial and error alone.   Man has had to study intensively the intrinsic nature of the principle or formula employed, and its intrinsic relativity to those other phenomena which are its material environment.  He has had to discover what the material, or principle, or formula is capable of in itself, and he has had to relate, or “make co-operative”, the environment and the mechanism. Neither has man proceeded by “tagging bits on” to his inventions, the development of the innate potentialities of the principles and matter-relations of human inventions has involved a total reorganisation of the entire structure.   If the structure, the “substance-pattern” was found to be intrinsically intolerant of a given mutation, then it has to be abandoned, and a new overall realignment has had to be sought.   One cannot place jet-engines in an aeroplane built on the proto-type of the Wright brothers original, the new mutant would disintegrate the whole.  In the same way exactly and precisely,  the  primordial  formula of the living  cell  was  relative  intrinsically and  purposively to complex development in co-ordination with its total environment.  The purposiveness of the organismis unconscious and is contained in the very pattern of its substance, there is no need to invoke vitalism, or any sort of “soul”, however imagined.

There is  need to invoke an Intellect that explains the purposiveness embodied in the developing relative entities, and the overall and continuous balance, active and stimulative of environment and environed,  but  that  we have  seen  already is  contained  in  the  Law  of  Control  and  Direction  to predetermined ends in which matter was poised at its inception, and the Mind behind the Law is the Intellect men named “God”.  The die-hard Darwinian must be brought to face this issue clearly;  if man is only material he has still more difficulties to answer, because on his own admission man cannot have a principle of action distinct from those principles embedded in his own nature which are common to all matter.   If man works purposively, if he interprets the laws and functions of being purposively, if he must invent purposively, and must realign his inventions purposively to improve them, and all this with an intrinsic relation between what the principle they embody is capable of, and what the environment will allow, then all Nature, including life, is similarly built up in terms of purpose,  The universe is all of one piece, one economy, one wisdom of a mind infinite  in diversity and infinite in unity alike; a man who cannot see the need for this interpretation of evolution must surely be blind indeed.

Orthogenesis and the importance of the brain

The concept of a mechanistic evolution of life here presented can perhaps be called an “orthogenetic mechanism” at least in so far as the development of highly complex life-patterns is concerned.  In this sense the term “orthogenesis” is used generically, and does not commit us to the defence of any specialised technical theories which lie outside our competence and the scope of this study.   The proper and valid meaning of orthogenesis in this sense can be understood in the background of a universal order of material synthesis in being which transcends, as does the process of evolution itself, the boundaries of biology, and merges into physics, chemistry and many other correlated sciences.  It is erroneous to cavil orthogenesis, Lamarckism, or any other finalist concept, simply because of crudely conceived comparisons between the operations of sub-human life and human standards of good and evil.  One cannot argue from the imagined “cruelty” or “selfishness” of Nature that there is no “good” purpose behind Nature.   Sub-human life is essentially mechanist in principle, and the mechanisms which are of that order are not personal ends in themselves.  It is in the same order of mistake to speak of certain types of parasitic mutation as “retrogressive” unless the content of the term is narrowly particularised.

Arguments of this type against evolutionary finalism presume gratuitously that Nature is an end unto itself, but is nevertheless capable of being judged objectively from human ethical standards, and reminded of mistakes, and even “sins”.   If the living form below man has no intrinsic personality- value in itself it is lawful to ask whether a certain line of evolution may not be necessary for a time for the achievement of a quite different cosmic end, a line of development that later can subside or be reversed. This could well be true if the ultimate finalism of the evolution of life on this planet is the emergence of man, a being with an absolute personal value.  If we can show an absolute orthogenetic sequence of evolution that culminates in man we will have the key to all evolution to higher and more complex forms.  In so far as he is an animal the brain makes man, and the orthogenetic development of the brain through evolution is the development of the supreme “principle” or “formula” possible in the material universe.  The brain of man is the supreme mechanism of the living, how astoundingly supreme can only be imperfectly outlined in the next chapter.  The development of a powerful brain may confer a superior “survival value” upon a creature, but it is the power of the living organism to educe this structure which sums up in itself all that material life is and can do, and which makes the brain the supreme proof of the orthogenesis and finalism which controls and directs the process of the evolution of species.

Science has succeeded recently in building an “electronic brain” of remarkable computational power, but it is only a very feeble imitation of man’s own “electronic brain”, which is an electrical and electronic mechanism of complexity still untraced. The brain of man, or of the lesser animals, is constructed to purposive function, like the machines which imitate it, and these functions are defined in a cosmic interdependence of law and reaction.

Orthogenesis and overall relativity

While the brain, especially the brain of man, is the stumbling block over which the theory of “random mutations” and “eliminative selection” crashes most humiliatingly, there are many lesser correlated phenomena  in  Nature  which  demonstrate  both  orthogenetic  finalism  and  organic  relativity  in mutation.   There is for example the complementary perfection of male and female as generative principles of life, a parallel orthogenesis most beautifully available for comparison in the higher mammals.   The mutual complementariness of male and female specifically sexual, physical, and psychological, form one totality relative to the two mated individuals and their offspring, in which the sexual act, the development and birth of the offspring, the physical mutual “helpfulness” of the pair, and the entire psychological life of the male and female, are all correlated in one organic relativity. This is true of sub-human life, not simply of man, and it is of sub-human life that we speak in this respect, not immediately of man, who is still more complex.  When the total “personality” of male and female in all its aspects has undergone long and intricate parallel evolution of this kind, it is quite impossible to explain it as a process unless there is an intrinsic organic finalism in the very process.

One could add also the complex nature of instinctive insect functions, again expressible in terms of mathematical relations of stress and angle and structure, which extends, as in the ants, to engineering achievements, and social orders of great precision.  All this is achieved without any developed brain, without any trace of “personality” or “initiative” even as these terms may be loosely used of the animal order.  The whole range of mechanical life and life-cycle in living nature is so vast, co-related, and complex, that we have no heart to pick individual threads among so intricate a weave.  We are content to say that there is no escape anywhere from the purposive finalism of Nature, living and non- living equally; we need only to view it all in its proper perspective.

It is not our intention to become committed, even by insinuation, to specifically biological theories, but the Neo-Lamarckians, when they pass some of the way from biology to philosophy, make a cogent rejoinder to the unmitigated Natural Selectionists which must be heartily enjoined.  They point out that if man is the highest and greatest of the living organisms developed by natural evolution, it cannot be that the urges and expressions of his nature will be radically different from the rest of Nature, or contrary to its basic processes.   Yet man does strive purposively through theologies, philosophies, ideologies of every kind, to improve his lot.  The weltering confusion of the modern world underlines this argument very heavily.  Even if there is no certain way, no sure truth, no lasting good, no final ends to be achieved in human life, it is in the nature of man to frame these things and to strive towards their attainment. The confusion of the modern world underlines also the chaos and confusion that exists when purpose and direction does not guide human life, for it is the one thing men crave, and to which their striving shows their being to be relative.

Anthropological confusion in scientific philosophy

In this respect we cannot resist quoting two short passages from Julian Huxley’s well-known work Evolution: the Modern Synthesis, because they illustrate so well the contradictions freely indulged by professional scientists who are only amateur philosophers, when they deny the finalism of organism in evolution.  The passages run as follows:

“The future of progressive evolution is the future of man.  The future of man, if it is to be progress, and not merely a standstill or a degeneration, must be guided by a deliberate purpose.  And this human purpose can only be formulated in terms of the new attributes achieved by life in becoming human etc”.

Then, just over the page we read:

“Progress is a major fact of past evolution; but it is limited to a few selected stocks.   It may continue in the future, but it is not inevitable; man, by now become the trustees of evolution, must work and plan if he is to achieve further progress for himself and so for life”.

How can man be capable of “deliberate purpose”, unless, as the “trustee of evolution”, he embodies in himself nothing more than a driving power, a force, a progressive finalism which he has received from evolution itself?  If this is embodied in man it must be embodied in the primitive forms from which man emerged, unless Huxley wishes to relate it to a special creation, which somehow does not strike one as very likely!   According to Huxley, the “new attributes achieved by life in becoming human”, (Chapter 10, page 577, op.cit)  do no more than mark the progressive urge which gave us the human, as the summit and “trustee” of progressive evolution itself.   If in any stock, especially the stocks that lead to man, “progress is a major fact of past evolution”, but is not built upon, nor derived from, those same principles of  purpose which Huxley enjoins upon humanity, then he uses the word “progressive” in totally unrelated senses of the word, of the origins of man, and of man today, “homo sapiens”.   This would make his conclusions futile, because his terms would mean nothing, and his definitions become incoherent.

If man must “work and plan to achieve progress for himself and so for life”, he cannot, as a planner, be using anything more than attributes embodied in his originals in the dim dawn of life, and perfected in the organism of “homo sapiens”.   The speak of “new attributes achieved by life in becoming human” is nonsense for a materialist, there is nothing in man which is not explained by, and found in, his originals; it is all a question of degree.  Huxley does not, so far as one can judge from his works and lectures, believe in a spiritual soul in man as for instance understood and defined by the Catholic Church, therefore this “power to plan” must exist in man as the supreme expression of a purposive finality wholly related to the material powers of life, something that life had within itself and its order to give.  Man is born of Nature, and in the womb of Nature, and a materialist must be required mercilessly to acknowledge in man only the crowning achievement of the common order of the living;  to recognise in human powers only an epitome of what life is in itself in varying degrees of perfection of form, wherever the living may be found.

Proper evaluation of finalism in the universe

We of course are not a materialist. We believe that materialism, especially Huxley’s variety, is totally inadequate to account for man, but we do admit the finalism embodied in living organisms, and above all the finalism purposive and conscious which defines the personality of man.  We do not explain the finalism and purposiveness embodied in blindly determined animal mechanisms upon the same principle of being as that which explains the person of a man, but the materialist does, and Huxley in addition comes within our definition of a die-hard believer in random mutation.  We are justified in pressing the dilemma forcibly upon him when he considers material forces competent to explain man, and at the same time makes the one order of material life “achieve new values” in man while he denies teleological evolution elsewhere.  If these values are really new, then they cannot be attributed to “life”.  If they are not new, then he is talking plain nonsense.

It is distasteful in any serious work to discuss personalities unduly, but with genuine respect for the professional achievements in science of the authority quoted, it may be observed also that even in the few lines quoted he has personified “life”, which is made to “achieve progress” and this manner of speaking is met with elsewhere in his works.  No real blame attaches to this of course, a man cannot be reproached with obeying the inexorable tendencies of his nature.  Nature is so shot through with embodied  purpose,  and  with  phenomena  capable  of  interpretation  in  terms  only of  a  purposive “history”, that a man, being himself the child of Nature, can hardly speak in any other way.  He may deny the purposive thrust of organic finalism in words, but in his works you shall know him.  It is more economical surely to postulate just one controlling Intelligence in the beginning of cosmic evolution, rather than to personify abstractions so that they become old-fashioned pagan deities of river, hill, and dale.

A true philosophy of the universe, living and non-living, must be fundamentally mechanist, but a strong caution must be given against too gross a connotation of the concept of mechanism when the term is used of the living.  The kingdom of life is mechanist in vital principle because no life other than man is in any way free.  A mechanism is any substance, animate or inanimate, adequately defined in terms of automatic behaviour, conditioned activity, and fixed functional law.  Although the range of organic power develops  in  the higher animal  forms  to  greater range  of life-activity and  greater mobility with respect to environment this does not argue any freedom from immanent functional determinism; and in fact such independence of material law is not found in any form of life below man.   The living organism develops, waxes, reproduces, wanes, and dies, and the rhythm of this process in life below man does not vary throughout the individual members of any species.  Beings, however wonderfully constructed, which are bound entirely within fixed material laws, whose every reaction  is  a determined  behaviour-conditioned  response of organic function  to  definite  material stimuli, are all mechanisms in a philosophical connotation of the term.  The faculty of nutrition or reproduction is not beyond the reasonable limits of the meaning of mechanism.

These powers define the immanent activity of the living form in its essence it is true, but they still define it in a necessary order of environmental determinism intrinsic to the organism.  They define the organism in an order which is within the unity of the supreme Law of cosmic finalism, the Law which we prefer to call, where possible, the Law of Control and Direction.   It will not be suggested that unicellular organisms can do anything else but absorb certain chemicals and reproduce by simple division in a routine which is defined by the nature of the organism in a completely determinist manner, and the principle remains the same, a principle of instinctive necessity, in all life below man. A  vital  mechanism  constructed  upon  a  substantial     relativity  which  is  potential  to  specific development may be beyond the power of man to produce, but it is not beyond the power of human intelligence to appreciate as a possibility, nor beyond the power of an unlimited Being to effect.

The concept of philosophic mechanism bears too narrow and too anthropomorphic a meaning in many minds, a fault largely due to the crude and dreary mentality of so many scientists and philosophers, whose mechanism is conjoined with the most deficient type of materialist philosophy and incoherent atheism.  When the term “mechanism” is used, many persons think sub-consciously of man’s “machinery”, and experience an understandable a priori distaste for such a concept when applied to the clearly “individual” reactions of living creatures.  The Christian philosopher at least will know  what  we  mean  when  we  say that  such  an  identification  of  accidental  “mechanisms”  and essential “mechanisms” is erroneous.  All being, as the Christian philosopher knows, is analogous and its exemplar is the Unity and Reality which is the being of God.  Any substance which has a unity of finality and essence participates from afar this likeness unto its supreme exemplar.  The mechanism which is organic life below man is truly a mechanism, and also truly an individual which is “personified” in its substantial unity. (The sense of “personified” here corresponds with the term “suppositum” in scholastic philosophy)

Sub-human life has no intrinsic determinism of itself

We do not attempt to give an ultimate definition of physical life in itself.  We doubt whether the living can be perfectly defined by the mind of man, the definitions given by all schools of thought are descriptions of the essential properties by which the living is known.  We strive simply to show that sub-human life, because it is defined totally by determinism, and totally within the laws of the material universe, does not surpass or transcend the powers immanent in material creation as one order of being.  Therefore we make it a term which is contained in potency within the initial equation of the Law of Control and Direction, a value educed through evolution and the inter-dependence of material agencies.  In this we imply that the primordial form of the living was a value which could be expressed as a formula, or equation, relative to the rest of the cosmos,  but  it is very hard to  believe that  man  could ever succeed in retracing that value, for it would be a value, we think, which would involve a total valuation of every material force and entity which integrates the universe.   The primordial form of life after all was instinct with mighty potencies which exceed the actual reality of any and every manifestation of unicellular life.  It does not follow that any single-cell life could be made to “evolve” today as did primitive life. The initial form of life on this planet was a term in a cosmic relativity which has since changed, which is continuously changing. It seems philosophically reasonable to presume that the special conditions and special relativity which effected the emergence of original life will not be repeated again, not at least in that part of the universe which is our own planet.

This hypothesis does not exclude the bare possibility that man could create cells from non-living matter, but it would not be the same thing to produce some sort of cell with some substantial elasticity admitting of development, and to produce that life-value which has given us the body of man from this basis of the single-cell.  Any life below man could, we think, be expressed as a formula of causal substantial  relativities  integrating  its  finality  within  the  universe,  but  we  must  deprecate  any suggestion that a formula, actual or potential, expresses in itself the existential value of life. Mathematical formulae cannot even express non-living values as existential values.   The formula which expresses a glass of water is one of the simplest in chemistry, but it hardly expresses the existential value of a nice long drink on a very thirsty day.   Signs and symbols give the value of nothing at all, but they are the only way in which a man can express, and file away in his brain, the causal relativity of elements, upon which all syntheses of material being are built up.

One could perhaps express the dying sweetness of a sunset in mathematical terms as a relation of material causation between the solar system and the earth, but this is not to say that even the driest mathematician who preferred that sort of pastime to the less satisfying addiction of the crossword, would so bask in the reflected glory of his own cerebrations as to believe that a formula of algebraic symbols expressed the existential value which this lingering loveliness has for the heart and the eye of man who strolls by scented hedgerows with his friend, and his pipe, at eventide.  Only mind, which is not material, can properly value anything; which is hardly surprising, because from Mind is it all begotten in the fiat of God, and to Mind therefore it is intrinsically relative in, and for, all that it is.

Implications of the Law of Control and Direction

There is no ugliness in the philosophy of the living form and of creation in general we here present; there is but the slow majestic unfolding of the fullness and beauty latent within the womb of the universe, the beauty of substance and existence within that unity of Law which frames the universe.  It gives us a glimpse partial and imperfect of the purpose always a unity, but manifold in facet, which controls and directs all that exists.   The interpretation of cosmic evolution we offer is somewhat subtle, and in spite of the risk of irritating the reader by needless repetition, the full understanding of the implications of this philosophy must be safeguarded.   In fact a degree of sheer repetition from related aspects is unavoidable, in order that the mind may grasp more fully the reason for this continual emphasis upon the existence of only one Universal Physical Law.  In spite of what has been stated and restated it would be so easy, at a superficial reading, to interpret this Law of Control and Direction, or of Cosmic Finalism, as a general assertion that the reality of law in the cosmos implies finalism and finality in general, and that the whole economy of Nature is maintained by an extrinsic and accidental correlation of many different laws, substantially distinct, which operate under a mutual co-ordination imposed from without.

Much more than this has been stated and meant, and it is in the application of our thesis throughout the process of the evolution of non-living matter to the living form, that the full implication of what we strive to express becomes more clear.   The proposition can be put bluntly, as it has been put already, if we assert again that there is only One Law of the universe and the multiplicity of material laws are only aspects of this one relativity and one unity.  As far as life below mankind is concerned, this One Law, in an operation which can only be expressed factually in mathematical terms, because the subjects which embody its workings are material, educes those new synthesis of material being, non-living and living alike, which emerge in space and time within the developing universe.

This could never mean that life, as a “seed” or “germ” pre-existed anywhere in the universe before it emerged as a stable and developing event.  We know perfectly well that the existence of organised life even in its most primitive form was absolutely inconceivable in the environment constituted by the primordial condition of matter.   Life was contained as a real and potential value within the relativity of the initial physical energies of the universe.  It was contained in potency as a real value because it is a material and mechanist value, a value which does not transcend the material order, a value of itself causally expressible in a mathematical formula.  The formula however would not give us the actual value of the living in itself, only the substantial relativity of its integral parts expressed as material relatives; the evaluation of reality in itself is always relative to mind alone.  Matter exists, but knows  neither  itself  nor  the  intelligible  content  of  other  being.     Mathematics  expresses  in conventional, and of themselves meaningless symbols, the relations and values that the conscious spirit of mind alone can discover and evaluate.

Scope of the Law of Control and Direction

This Universal Law of Control and Direction which extends and deepens the relativity theory already accepted in physics, covers all phenomena and unities in one total economy all knowledge from physics to metaphysics.   Indeed, as we said in the previous chapter, it will be found to be one economy of physics to theology, but it would be premature for the reader to attempt to understand the proper meaning of this assertion at this juncture.  Even with the physical competence of this Universal Law the concept is subtle, because we must understand that the values educed through continuous mutation within this universal equation are always a balanced, co-ordinated and substantially relative economy.

The development of complex being is more than a “new achievement” within the universe. We must bear in mind in addition to these “new achievements” that from the very substances, from the new unity of finality that is constituted in the emergence of more complex forms, there is brought into being the new controlling factor of law which is the environmental influences of these new energies upon the rest of matter within the universe.  It is in, and through, this evolution of substances and of law in one, that the harmony and progressive coordination of the economy of Nature is maintained.

This readily ascertainable phenomenon is intelligible only in the concept of an initial equation of material energies bound by One Law into One Economy;   a relativity maintained by simultaneous relative mutation, a unity poised in, and through, changing and progressively developing values of synthesis.   This unity of relativity, given the emergence of new substance-values which could not possibly be explained by reference to the primordial values of the universe as their sufficient cause, imply a plan unintelligible except by reference to a Personal Intelligence.   This principle must be independent  of the cosmic material  order, because the structure of material  being is  defined  as intelligible in terms of limited and specified function, and defined as such in relation to other smaller entities which themselves are fashioned intrinsically upon the same principle.

The problem of evil

Difficulties will of course present themselves to the thoughtful mind, many of them moral and ethical in principle, with the problem of the existence in the universe of evil never far in the background. There is an apparent background of struggle for survival in Nature which can seem ruthless and loveless in its blind mechanical universality.  There is the certain, not merely apparent existence of such struggle among men;  there are the aspirations of man, his twisted and tortured loves, the good towards to which he strives with so much confusion and ill-success.  These genuine difficulties must remain awhile in abeyance.

It will be found that in Nature below man this principle of “antithesis”, which is the whole fundament of Marxist philosophy, is a subjective illusion derived from the identification of man totally with the order of matter. In man himself this antithesis, which the Christian names “sin”, is certainly no illusion.   There would be no solution in Nature below man, if personal and absolute individual values existed in that order.   There would be no solution if the universe developed its myriad organic forms in order the more industriously to get nowhere. But given the ordered control and direction everywhere observable in Nature, it is inconceivable that human being exists for no purpose when it is so full of purpose.

If the process of evolution is subordinate, and ordered towards the rational animal, towards man, and that apart has no meaning within itself, then we can find a solution in which contradictories are reconciled as complements in one economy.  We will be able to break into pieces that presumption which makes an absurdity of Marxism, and turns it from the inspiration of noble and intelligent minds into the despair of frustrated and tortured souls.   We will be able to dispense with the grim and impossible sequence of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and relate thesis immediately to synthesis, as a value contained immediately and intrinsically in “thesis”.  There is no “antithesis” in the definition of life, or in the subject-matters of any of the material sciences.  Marxism makes nonsense when applied to biology.  The very processes of reproduction, which in so many ways epitomises material creation, give us a process of synthesis directly built up from thesis;  a relativity easily demonstrable from the initial fusion of complementary elements, and the “paring” of the chromosomes to the development of the  mature  adult.    This  is  the  simplest  example  of  evidences  as  wide  and  diverse  as  material phenomena themselves.

Without an intelligent wisdom as the control of the Law in which the relations of matter are all poised, there could be no intelligible, mathematically calculable universe, but only the unending fury of elemental chaos and perpetual dissolution, or “antithesis”.  Antithesis denies the organic relativity of “thesis” to “synthesis”, and so makes nonsense of the content of synthesis.   If the evolution of matter were by the path of “revolution” rather than “revision” or “evolution”, how does the Marxist explain the existence of vestigial organs, or the transformation of primitive organs into glands of new, and other physical function?   Marxism in biology is, when strictly and logically tested, a glaringly false philosophy.  If the reader will recapitulate in his mind the data we have considered, and the type of universe in which we find ourselves to live, he will not be able to deny the existence of an Absolute Being, in whose mind is the Master-Key to the mysteries of a universe where only reason, studied purpose, intelligent concentration, discover for man the secrets of its constitution. That is because wisdom is embodied in the mechanism of the substance of all matter.

CHAPTER 7

The Path to Man

When life begins to develop beyond the primitive limitations of the single cell, when there emerge organisms possessed of a nervous system centred and controlled in one organ, we can have no doubt that we are tracing the progress of evolution along a clearly defined path, a path which ends in the cities of men.  For the emergence of a nervous system controlled from one centre is the birth of the brain, and by the brain alone can we determine the place of any animal form in the hierarchy of life, and the brain it is again which makes and which explains man, in so far as man is a material being.  In principle, a principle of orthogenesis in a general but strictly true sense, we must recognize the brain in embryo wherever we recognize a developed system of central co-ordination of vital functions in any living form.   There is no better example of orthogenesis in evolution than the persistent development through time of the brain in the higher forms of life, because the brain is the key to the emergence of more adaptable and responsive forms of life, and in that central organ is embedded radically the developmental potentialities of all other organs, organs which, as the eye and the ear for example, are themselves examples of orthogenetic specialisation and perfection, and which cannot be separated from the nature and development of the brain.

Crucial importance of the brain

We can go a long way upon the path which ends at man before we can have even the slightest doubt of the mechanical determinism with which the brain, or its simpler equivalent in lower forms, is ruled. We cannot interpret the tiny brains of the huge reptiles of the Triassic and Jurassic periods as organs of dawning conscious thought.  The controlling centre of these forms of life was of such feeble power that their reactions must have been completely stereotyped, and their adaptability to environmental change practically nil.  It is an elementary fact of biology that, as we trace the tree of life from the Palaeozoic era backwards towards its roots, the content and development of the brain decreases in the species of life then dominant, whether the physical bulk of those forms of the living be little or great. It is impossible that the nature of the brain in developed animal forms dominant today, should belie the pedigree of the brain itself.  The genuine problems which the phenomena of human life and sub- human functions raise for us, do not allow us to doubt the substantially mechanist nature of the brain as an organ of life, indeed as the organ of life.

It must be emphatically insisted that the brain in its lower manifestations can only be interpreted upon a philosophy of determinism to definite function, and that the development of this all-important organ, upon the proper understanding of which depends our entire knowledge of the living, cannot have proceeded for millions of years according to the laws of a progressive mechanism in structure and function, and then, at some point towards the end of a process which had built up the animal brain to a principle of mechanical perfection, suddenly develop qualities and modes of behaviour which flatly deny the concepts of mechanism and of functional determinism.  This is an impossibility even within a philosophy of a mechanism of teleology;   it is much more inept to suggest that the brain developed over aeons by a fortuitous outpouring of random mutations which were carefully selected by an appreciative environment, and then at the pinnacle of this process suddenly turned “purposive” and gave us man.

The human brain compared to the animal

The  purposive  characteristics  ascribed  to  the  brain  of  “homo  sapiens”  deny  his  pedigree  as  a mechanism of nature, in that these characteristics, which undoubtedly exist, are freely volitional.  The characteristics we find in man and of which we are conscious in our own personalities, are not mechanist in order, because they are not defined by a necessity which is inherent in the structure of the brain and its relation to function, nor defined determinedly in a mutual relation between organic necessity and environmental determination.   Man then is a problem, a problem however to which there is a full answer:  but this answer will not be found in the denial of the organic determinism of the brain in man or in any other animal, nor in ascribing to the brain of man as a physical organ, powers which run counter to the concept of mechanism, and which contradict the obvious determinism which impregnates cosmic evolution as an economy of material development.

All the evidence shows that there is nothing in the brain which is superfluous, or unrelated to the specific life-cycle of the organism it serves.   It is well known that certain areas of the brain in the higher mammals control certain definite functions, and in forms much less complex it is correspondingly easier to trace the total function of this controlling organ of life.  It is evident enough that the structure of the brain is determined in relation to the life-cycle, and specific stimuli, of the species of life to which it belongs, and that this pattern of substance is pre-conditioned and mechanist in operative principle.   There are no untidy spare parts, there is no excess of energy generated, no irrelevant stimulus given to the body by the brain or received from the environment by the brain, which lacks a meaning within the life-routine of the organism.  There is nothing in the animal brain which fails to conform to the principle general throughout the universe, that structure is intrinsically relative to precise function, and that the precise function determines the organisation of the brain.  The animal organism, especially with respect to the brain, is intelligible only as a substance-pattern in which structure and function are co-relative, and in which organism and environmental determination are mutual co-agents.

Mechanistic function of the animal brain

There are countless species of colony-forming insects whose “brains” are extremely primitive, but who yet exist in an economy of life which utilizes law and co-ordination to a degree which is functionally more perfect in material respects than the conscious civilisations of man himself.  There are others whose vital activities embody the use of laws of stress and geometrical form of a high order, and yet, who will be rash enough to call this either conscious intelligent thought or random chance?  It is a cycle of controlled and directed mechanism, embodied in the very substance of those lowly forms of life, and a facet of the Law of Control and Direction which governs all matter.  Here we see forms of life with a true “brain”, one in principle with the brains of the primates, and we see also the very personification of functional mechanism.  There will be no need to make any exception for the enormously more developed brains of the higher forms of life, and even if we were desirous of so doing where would we draw the line, and upon what principle?

It is wearisome, because so blatantly contradictory, to read of any “new values which life achieves in becoming human”, if indeed man must be explained wholly within that order of materialism which is both adequate and correct over the rest of the physical universe.  The brain of man has its beginning in the same humble origins as the rest of life; it cannot, we repeat, deny those laws of its structure which are the universal laws of life, and of all material being.  If the “new values” achieved by life in man imply, for a materialist, that man is not as completely a behaviour-conditioned and determined mechanism as any other form of life, with a brain, however powerful, in the same order as theirs, then the materialist makes such an absurdity of his materialism and his mechanism that he is not worth a serious hearing when he speaks of man.  The brain of man is essentially a mechanism, a determined and fixed thing, not a free entity.

Unless there is some other principle to be invoked which is complementary to the function and structure of the material brain of man, we must believe that man also, whatever the mocking variety of his works and moods, is a determined mechanism of life.  This would mean that we live in the best of all possible worlds and enjoy the best possible state of affairs in that world, that progress is inevitable whatever happens, that nobody is to be praised or blamed for anything, because everything which happens must happen, and cannot be otherwise.  Strictly speaking there could be no “progress”;  it is more true to say that something will happen when something happens next, and as nothing else could possibly happen, one should try to like it.

The brain and the Law of Control and Direction

Few philosophers, and still fewer practical scientists, can entertain a purely fatalist concept of man and of human living; but if the entire secret of man lies in his brain it follows naturally from logical principles.  The pedigree of life demonstrates a non-free, determined, automatic mechanism of life, and all the elaboration of life up to nearly the very end of the series which culminates in mankind, manifests a perfection of mechanist organism in a mechanist environment, and nothing more.  We say up to nearly the very end, by way of admitting the reasonable difficulties which highly developed sub- human forms present when occasionally their reactions seem to approximate to intelligent behaviour.

Nevertheless, unless we are to make nonsense of the whole sweep of evolution from physics upwards for the sake of a few disputed stocks, we must continue to believe that the brains of men and of monkeys are as much contained within a mechanist order as physical organs, as are the brains of dinosaurs and the notochords of lowly forms of the living.   This straightforward conclusion from abundant data will become a nightmare of paradoxes unless we can reconcile what must be true in man, with what plainly contradicts the principles of material mechanism.  The answer will be partly in the brain of man, as it must be, but the brain of man does not explain all that man is, nor even the more intelligent part of man; the answer we will find to be as thrilling as it is startling.

We must link the brain as an organ in a special way with the universal Law of Control and Direction which underlies the economy of the universe.  Life is an epitome, a sort of personification in one entity, of the principle operative through this Law, because the living entity is a microscopic material universe in itself, more one than the universe, because one entity in itself, composite in organic parts, which the universe is not.  The brain, which controls and directs this sentient whole, this microscopic universe more perfect, because an individual, than the aggregation which is the universe, shows us as in a summary which correlates all material law in one unity, the operative principle of the Law of the universe itself.  This Law of Control and Direction is of course embodied in the intrinsic relativity and dynamic determinism of the entities which constitute the Universe, but the operative principle of this Law must also be stressed, and there is no better occasion of stressing it than the consideration of the nature of life, and above all the role of the brain in the higher living forms.

Environment – cause of control and direction

We have already seen that the evolution and development of material forms is achieved under this Law in an intrinsic and dynamic substantial relativity of matter;   there must be stressed also the corresponding impossibility that any such relative entity should be its own sufficient determination, its own control and direction.  It is an obvious facet of our thesis which has already been expressly stated, but which might be overlooked, that no being which is intrinsically relative can be its own principle of control and direction.   This necessity for a relative entity, whose whole being implies the causal influence of being external to itself, to be controlled and directed by another, may be called the unvarying cardinal principle of the Universal Law, and its importance must be stressed because it will be true of the operations of this Law at all levels of being, a fact later to become of vital importance to us.

The living material entity is the most perfect example in matter of this need for control and direction.  The living creature, as we demonstrated in the previous chapter, seeks its determination, its control  and  direction,  the  full  realisation  of  its  being,  from  outside  itself,  and  it  finds  this determination towards its proper vital fulfilment through that Law which operates for it in other co- relative being, and is named the “environment”.  This impact of other being upon a living individual which is the influence of its proper “environment”, is interpreted differently in different species, but the interpretation always constitutes a unity of life-law in any species.   What is a stimulating or inhibiting determinant for one type of living being is irrelevant to another; or perhaps, while not irrelevant, bears a totally different meaning in terms of the function it calls forth.  What arouses the lion to pugnacious fury, prompts the gazelle to flee.

This relevance or irrelevance of environmental factors in different species is explained only by the brain of these species. Each species finds in the environment a different unity of factors  which regulates its life-cycle. The brain picks and chooses the stimulus proper to its own structure, very much as a radio-unit is constructed to receive and to give out certain frequencies and only those. The brain then is a determined mechanism of control, it can receive certain fixed “messages” and, within its own organism it transmits certain definite impulses, but it is totally enclosed within a fixed range, and its structure is relative to definite functions, not to indefinite or random functions.  The animal individual can only function as a totality through a centre which co-ordinates its physical life.  This centre, the brain, regulates the whole entity through the immanent relations of determination active and passive which exist between it and the living body, and the immanent relativity of the brain outwards, towards the environment, in which it seeks and finds its ultimate, vital determination.

The brain of course is not determined only from without, it is also the organ of the control and direction of the immanent somatic functions of the animal form. These functions are not controlled through the brain except in and through the interpretations in terms of function of environmental stimuli, which as interpreted and acted upon, constitute the “law” of the life of purely material creatures  at  all  levels  of  the  living,  however  high.  The  animal  brain  is  an  active  centre  of determination which gives and seeks, and which seeks only to give to its body what is required in impulse and in inhibition by that form of life in which the brain is embodied, and to the life-cycle of which its pattern, structure, and potencies are intrinsically relative.   It will never be possible to distinguish divisions of function adequately in the brain into functions which are entirely somatic, domestic to the organism, and functions which are derived from liaison with the environment.  Every organism, even in its individual content, is so relative to the general economy of the universe, that the brain which dominates the living being will never be found capable of sub-division into water-tight compartments, any more than the living form itself is capable of definition without reference to its environment and to its specific history through time.

Highest form of animal brain does not possess free intelligence and will

The personification of the nature and powers of the living form within one organ, the brain, this centralising of finalism within a centre which gives and seeks, and in seeking acts in harmonious co- operation with the environment, does not imply any personal freedom nor any self-conscious intelligence in the animal form.  There is intelligence and will implied somewhere, but only in the Absolute Intellect which is the absolute Creator and Control behind the creative universe and controlling Law embodied in material substances and their substantial inter-relativity.  We must not try to see more in the powers of even high living forms than an epitome of the potency latent within the Universal Law.  In the living forms below mankind we behold the highest active potentialities of those mechanist laws which frame the solar systems and astral galaxies of the universe;  we see the supreme achievements of this economy of mechanism within One Law, achievements which surpass in degree and in complexity the total sum of non-living nature, because they embody the laws of this order as the lesser constituent in a higher individual finality.  Before the order of life, the splendour of the inanimate kingdom recedes and is subdued, it becomes only the womb of Nature in which the living was begotten.

The living organism, while it possesses a centre of vital finality which surpasses the non-living universe in degree of perfection, still shows itself to be essentially a mechanism in its dependence upon the environment for pre-determined control and direction.  In this the living form exemplifies the cardinal principles of the Law of Control and Direction:  that nothing substantially relative can be its own control and direction, the controlling influence must come into causal contact with, but not itself be caused in its being by, the entity upon which it exercises its determining influence.  To be relative, and to be determined intrinsically by another, is one concept;  nothing relative can be its own control and direction because action follows upon the nature of a being, and manifests its content.  Activity is not truly distinct from substantial entity, and if the entity is relative to another, so also must the activities which are defined by entity be relative to control and direction by another.  The brain is no exception to this rule; while made for control and direction of the organism it governs, it is itself fashioned relative to the interpretation of external stimulus in order that it may control.

Here lies the explanation of animal instinct.  The brain is fashioned relative to the environment, and through the senses, themselves all aspects of the one “sense of direction” of the living form, supplies those influences and stimuli which govern the animal fixedly in all its reactions;   in its functions, times and seasons.  There is no conscious intelligence whatever in this process. Indeed, as we have remarked earlier in passing, the very perfection and exactitude of many of the functional activities of living forms forbids us to interpret them in terms of inventive or calculating intelligence.  The brain of the animal is a controlling agent which is the most perfect of pre-conditioned and pre-set mechanisms; it is a controlling agent itself structurally defined to respond to its own co-control within the surrounding universe, a control of physical influences which it interprets as its own proper “laws”, its own “good” and “true” according to its species.

As the brain develops over evolution, there emerge species possessed of greater vital powers and mobility, the need for determination and control increases, the laws of life become more subtle, but at the same time the environment itself has developed and is able to provide the more complex pattern of determination needed.  This control is received through the fuller senses of higher animal life, and the developing brain grows more competent to receive and to utilize influences from the environment which have no meaning for less advanced forms.  This progression of life increasingly manifests that active causal interplay of two dynamic complements, organism, and environment, without which the historic development of matter is rendered unintelligible.

Contrast with Man

What wonder is it, in a universe poised upon dynamic relativity from the beginnings of its historical development, if the powers of life are marvellous in prescience of hidden and subtle physical laws, and in their undeviating obedience to such laws?  At the same time this highly developed animal life is so fatally fixed and determined, so lacking in initiative, so utterly unable to use this apparent knowledge of reality which shapes its ends, in the conscious and free manner of mankind!   This contrast serves to prove that this animal “knowledge” is knowledge imprinted upon structure, as in works made by man, it is not conscious and reflective understanding as that faculty resides in, and proceeds from the minds of men.  This animal knowledge, or instinct, is only the embodiment of that wisdom which shaped their ends in the beginning of time, in the first poising of the Law of dynamic relativity of Control and Direction.

The senses of animal life are only aspects of that Law, the principle of which is embodied in their substance;  life is one pulsing sense of control and direction, and this we must stress with the emphasis which is its due.  The senses of the living are only diverse channels through which life manifests its own finality, through which it expresses itself according to the content proper to a given entity in a given species; through which life seeks its good and true, its control and direction to its natural end; through which it finds that determination, and in finding fulfils the definition of its nature.   These senses radiate from the brain, which is the centre of all the senses, and the seat of the dynamism of life.  Perfection of sense-awareness, development of the brain, and greater fullness of being in life,  all these are concomitants and synonyms.

The process of the building up of the hierarchy of the living through the development of the brain, begins as does life itself, in the dim dark movements of unicellular existence, and is consummated in the ear and  eye,  craft  and cunning of the higher forms of animal being.   All this represents a development of a sense really only one:  the sense of direction, the power to seek and the power to do, which is a the immanent “sense” which defines the substance of the living.  The brain does not make life, rather life in developing makes the brain, but all roads lead to the brain or its primitive equivalent in any lowly form, for the living entity has a definition, a defined cycle of function and awareness, and that finalism is centred in the brain; in its capacity and in its structure.   The animal senses are the levers and switches so to speak of the sense of life, and this “sense” the very being of the animal existent, is necessarily also a sense directed towards its control and direction, orientated towards its environmental laws.  To the data provided through these channels of sense automatically actuated by internal and external stimulation, the body reacts through the interpretative function of the brain, with that relation of acceptance or rejection which is the subjective emotion of pleasure or of pain.

Nothing more is necessary to explain any sub-human animal behaviour, the mechanism of the brain is capable of attaining a wide and wonderful diversity of function and co-ordinated reflex action, but it still remains determined and behaviourist.  If sometimes the scientist comes to doubt the adequacy of this principle, even at the limits of its entension, to explain animal reactions found in the highest anthropoids, he should remember that there is no living species of anthropoid which has not been upon the earth longer than intelligent man, and there is no evidence whatever in these other stocks of any maintained development towards intelligent life, nor of any possibility arguable from body- structures and life-habitat of such future “development”.  We would expect anthropoids which possess brains more developed than any animal brain below man’s, to manifest also the maximum peak of determinist achievement in being, we will expect it all the more when the nature of man has been fully explored by us, but it is still only a peak of being which remains determined to fixed functions and specific life-cycle; it is not the borderline of life where matter merges into mind.

How much is matter and how much is mind?

Indeed, this must be the most important consideration of our present chapter and the next:  how much in man is matter, and how much is mind, and what is the relation between them, and the distinction between them?  We can answer this query upon which the formation of a new civilization in a new era of mankind must depend, without confusing matter and mind.  There is no need to merge them in any common  denominator  which  destroys  them  both.    We  will  see,  and  the  vision  will  be  full  of astounding depth of consequence, how much it means to say that matter is the order of being which ultimately rests upon the determination of mind.  The correct definition of mind and of matter is of the highest consequence today, because we know already from the needs of the time, and from the errors already practised in Asia and in Eastern Europe, that upon the exact determination of the mutual role in man of mind and of matter, depends the course and future of modern man.

Specialisation of the brain – animal and human

The key to understanding lies in the brain, and in the evolutionary “specialisation” of that organ of “knowledge”.  We need however to be wary in the use of the word “specialisation” with respect to the development of the brain.  It is true of course both that the animal brain has undergone development, and  that  it  has  also  been  subject  to  specialisation  of  structure  and  feature  according  to  the differentiation of species.  Nevertheless, the use of the word “specialisation” while correct technically, is open to certain pitfalls when we come to consider man, which can, and which have, shattered many a philosophic system and the dreams of many an unwary thinker.

We must, for future reference, distinguish between a specialisation of the structure of the brain towards a fixed groove of vital activities defined by the maximum organic adaptability and variability of any species, and a specialisation not of brain structure as bound to body structure and a specific dead-end, but rather a specialisation in brains, a specialisation towards maximum output of brain energy in those activities of vital manifestation commonly known as “psychic”.  An animal has no true “psychic” life-activities, because an animal has no psyche, or soul, but for convenience sake the specifically human context of the adjective may be referred to sub-human life in the anthropoid stem to denote those vital activities which require complex reflex actions which are retained as memory,

and the interpretation of complex associations of sense-impressions which are directed to one functional end in view.

A true specialisation “in brains” rather than “of the brain”, a specialisation which is not bound to fixed organic channels, is proper only to man;   the brain of man however has its pedigree in an evolutionary past, and the beginnings of this development, however realised today in the human species, must be referred back to a material potentiality in the anthropoid stem from which the body of man  originates.    It  will  follow  from  our  philosophy,  and  the  concept  accords  exactly  with  the evidence, that while every other organ of man'’ body has an identical functional counterpart in other life, the brain of man, while it remains true to the order of material being and the characteristics of that order, is in a class apart, and is something absolutely unique in physical nature.

Unique status of the human brain

This assertion must seem at first sight to be a paradox based upon an inevitable error, however subtly hidden, but the reader must follow us through without prejudice, for if the paradox can be resolved without  contradiction,  the  resulting  view  of  man  will  be  more  revolutionary  in  philosophy and theology than the theory of relativity in physics.   This unique status claimed for the brain of man could never have belonged to any other organ of a living body, nor could it have emerged through any other stock than the anthropoid stem which led directly to man.  With reference to the brain of man we must therefore be most careful in the use of the word “specialisation”, because in man a specialisation in brains does not, and has not, implied that fixation of function and purely material determinism of life which marks the rest of Nature even at its highest levels.   If our hypothesis is true, we must beware of the danger of missing the paradox of man’s nature.

The nature of man is continuous in one continuity with the Law of Control and Direction which governs all matter, but it is also unique, a second and distinct species within the material order which must not be classed as one in philosophic species with the rest of life.   If this distinction is missed, or if a thinker fails to see its justification, he can only attempt from a determinist view of “specialisation” either idealist or materialist, to explain all that is in man within one order and one philosophic species common to all matter.  This attempt has been made, and has been a disastrous failure, it destroys and enslaves the personality of man and at the same time denies the very principles upon which all material being below man has been so successfully interpreted.

There are scientific thinkers - the late H.G. Wells was amount their number - struck by the enormous powers at the disposal of homo sapiens and his manifest failure to employ them constructively, prophesy woe to man as a species approaching self-destruction through an “over- Specialisation of this brain”, a specialisation which is said to have produced an animal with mental powers beyond the limitations of human environment.  They insinuate that just as the era of expanding brain-power and adaptable mammalian forms superseded the age of the giant reptiles who perished in their armoured awkwardness, so also the era of the dominance of man seems to be about to end in catastrophe because man is about to destroy his species by his own super-cleverness.  They see the clear discrepancy between man’s mental powers and his moral standards as an imbalance of nature, which demonstrates that man has over-passed his limitations, his environment is no longer able to tolerate his wildly destructive and unpredictable life-energies.

As a Catholic priest we cannot avoid an ironic smile as these popular and professional scientists hasten to exchange their messianic crowns for the sackcloth of Jeremiah; apparently Scientific Positivism, like the Church, has its liturgical seasons, only with us Lent comes before the promise of Resurrection and Regeneration, not after it. They need not be taken too seriously, they are merely wrong about the nature of man, as they usually are, and their prediction makes nonsense of the biology which for them was to supplant the Bible.   An increase of brain potential of itself always means an increase of vital power and of vital adaptability to any physical environment.  There is no evidence that adaptability to any imaginable environment has decreased in man, quite the contrary. The ingenuity and adaptability of man as an animal has increased beyond measure;  he can protect himself from almost any environment, except himself.   If man does destroy himself, no biological explanation could be given for it, but in that eventuality nobody will be left to raise the question at all in the radio-active wilderness he will leave.

Nature not the sufficient environment of Man

The problems of man are related to the hard fact that for Man there is no biological environment at all, and never was.   Everything else finds the Law of its life in the environment, Man does not, any intelligent school-child knows that, and his master knows it even more.   There may be an “environment” which can control and direct man, the purpose of this book is to show that there is indeed, and where it is to be found, and how it is justified, but it will not be a material environment. As far as the material environment is concerned, while it does quite obviously condition and influence man’s physical life, even in the physical order man strives to create his own environment if he is not satisfied with Nature.   Lesser animals have to be content with sun and moon for their works, but newspaper men spend the small hours pouring out drivel with the scientific assistance of electric light. It is true that the gap between human powers and man’s ability to direct those powers with security and constructive purpose argues a failure of control and direction somewhere, but to relate that failure to an imbalance between man’s brain and any form of material environment, including other men, is either blind ignorance or wilful hypocrisy.  Man was never controlled by his milieu at any time, not even by other men.  Any thinker who attempts to explain man from biology alone can do so only by contradicting everything he has so painstakingly written of life before he came to man upon the summit of life.

Throughout the rest of Nature adaptability and environment have always been complementary; indeed, we are told that the environment it was which “selected” the adaptations according to their survival value, but that of course was before life developed those perplexing “new values” in man which make such a vexing mess of the situation.   Before man emerged upon the scene of natural history, adaptation and environment had always been concomitant. Man’s body is not highly specialised at all to determinate function, it is his brain which makes him capable of the most far- reaching realignment to new circumstances, not his body, and which gives him such power over Nature.  The pity with man is that his great mental energies are not relative to, nor co-ordinated by, any environment at all in the sense which environment usually bears in biological science.   The determination of environment ought to imply, if it is true of man, what it implies over the rest of Nature; the specific regulation of the functions of animal life so that an organism maintains a balanced and harmonious life-cycle.   Man is clearly not regulated in any such manner either from within or from without.

Previous to the appearance of man, an increase of vital power, especially such as to produce a new species with a more extended habitat, has always followed upon further development of the brain. This development of the brain is a prerequisite of such perfection of organic power, because only through the controlling and co-ordinating function of this supreme organ can a species maintain greater vital complexity in being.  Man apart, the brain has never outrun the organism it controlled and of which it is only an integral part; at no time has the brain been found too vigorous for the degree of animal life which it sustained.

The brain is the clue to the unique mystery of Man’s nature

If the brain is a mechanism in operative principle, it will obey the rules of mechanism also in this, that at no time will those energies which are generated, stored, and used by the brain, exceed the needs of those vital functions of the body to which the brain of a given species is adapted.  The reflex actions of animals below Man, do use great energy, and the energies which are the basic forces through which the brain works, can only be conceived as electronic energies.   It is no coincidence that the recent discoveries in electronics have made it possible to construct mechanisms which closely parallel the workings of the brain, and that they do it through a system of co-ordinated reflex  actions pre- conditioned to given stimuli, which is not much different in principle to the workings of the animal brain.   Neither is it a coincidence that the popular name for such mechanisms has come to be an “electronic brain”, for while the experts may protest at the inaccuracies contained in any direct identification between a true brain and these mechanisms, the analogy is too close to be resisted.

Without doubt the animal brain is analogous in principle and structure with these complex mechanisms of man’s devising.  This type of mechanism is not constructed for reacting, controlling, or computing in general and in the indefinite; it has no range of freedom, or of operations which are consistently unpredictable from the laws of mechanics.  In every case the mechanism has a limited competence, a competence defined precisely by its structure, but a competence which, although much below the crudest animal brain in power, requires the most advanced knowledge of man’s brain to fashion.  The animal brain, though immensely above this crude level in degree, must be thought of as itself a brain which is essentially “electronic”.   It has a structure which determines its range and capabilities, exact stimuli which prompt it, a precise reaction to precise stimuli, and beyond, it is capable of nothing more.  These electronic energies which are utilized by the brain in animal reflex reaction must be sufficient for the needs of the organism that brain serves, but not in excess of the needs of its determined life-cycle.

Were these energies, generated and utilized by the brain, to outstrip the power of the animal organism to utilize them, breakdown and disease would follow.  An excess in Nature is the same as a toxin or an excrement, it cannot be absorbed into the economy of a balanced organic life, and it must be eliminated or cause disease.   So too with the brain:   as its power increased in more advanced species, the energies it generated, while remaining true to the nature of material mechanism, still fixed in direction and determined, were fully utilized in that greater interplay of reaction between the individual and the environment which is the versatility of advanced life.   This wider interplay is observed most of all, as we would expect, in the anthropoid stem. The life of these progressive species which were developing over the ages in the power of their brains, while wider in range, continued to find in the environment the ultimate controlling factor of all those subtle reactions, sensitive instincts, and widely varying activities which were enacted through the brain. Where Man diverges from this relation of sufficiency between organic power and environmental control, there lies the clue to the mystery of his unique nature and his singular position in the physical universe.

Ascending complexity of the brain and its Law of Control and Direction

We have already underlined with great care the relation of control and direction which exists between every material being and its final end.  It must be underlined, for it can hardly be over-emphasized. We must emphasize the cardinal principle of the Law, the essential correlative of cosmic relativity which infers that no entity, high or low which is dependent on another, can be its own self-sufficient cause, control, or end.  In the kingdom of life this cardinal aspect of the Law of Control and Direction is so beautifully and so fully vindicated.  As life developed, the brain, the organ of control within the unity of the animal organism needed to become more complex in order to receive manifold new determinations which the outside world must exercise upon it to maintain it in being.

The importance of this individual relativity towards control and direction must be heavily stressed, for it defines all created substances, animate and inanimate in their very essence. It explains, and is exemplified in, the form, figure, and senses of the living, all of which while immanent in operation, are defined by an external relativity to the world outside the individual.  The living creature is not the denial, but the perfection of an order of mechanism in Nature, and no material being however exalted, can escape this dependence upon another as its proximate principle of finality.  If a being is purely material, this control and direction will be material also, it will be found in the external environment, which is impregnated with the Law of life unto the material creature.  If a being is wholly within the compass of the material order, then its end, and its determination to that end, will be mechanical, fixed, predetermined, within the compass of matter and the material relativity of the Law of Control and Direction.

The more perfect centre of this determination of being as more complex living forms emerged, is their more perfect brain.   This vital centre manages the domestic economy of an organism, and receives determination from the environment to which that life is relative.  As life developed so the brain developed, and the substantial relativity of the whole material Universe towards any given individual form, which is the totality of its “environment”, is competent to maintain progressive evolution of species.  Thus is there in animal existence a complementary balance of life-form, brain output, and environment, there is only a more varied life-cycle still within an order of physical determinism.  There is not yet any conscious and free-ranging intelligence;  we can always define the purposes of all animal function within the bounds of self-conservation and procreation.

The paradox of Man

We do not find until we reach intelligent man, any animal which possesses the fundamental and unique characteristic of man, the faculty of being free from the rule of instinct and from fixed functional  regulation  of  life;    to  be able to  ignore all  relation  of  law  between  instinct  and  the constructive effects of instinctive action;  to be undetermined by times and seasons, to argue of right and wrong, good and evil;   instead of following an organic groove of behaviour proper to and characteristic  of,  his  species.     Man  alone  in  Nature  is  not  ruled  intimately,  happily,  and unquestioningly by an automatic interplay of nature and environment.  This characteristic of man is amazing, because while man is obviously an animal, it cannot be accounted for under the laws of animal mechanism.  We are in the presence of an animal whom Nature begot, but who seems to run counter to the very order of matter and its structural laws.  The paradox of man may baffle us at first, but whatever we attempt in our search for a solution, it is not possible to force man into the school- boy jacket of mechanistic determinism.  The garment is too small, it does not cover homo sapiens, for he has somehow outgrown it, and if we force it upon him, we will rend it in the attempt;  which would be a pity, because it fits everything else except man, and should be kept entire for the very useful purposes it serves.

If we would find the solution to the paradox of man, we must trace the evolution of life in the line which culminates in man: we must explore, that is, the functions of the brain at its highest potential. For man himself has a brain in common with all developed life, and if man’s brain is a true material organ, it must also be a determined and conditioned organ, a mechanism in principle; man’s brain cannot belie the nature of all material being.  The development of the brain in the stock which leads to man must then be painstakingly studied, if we are to understand how the laws of physical determinism are verified in a being who patently does not act according to them.  It has been shown, briefly, but sufficiently we think for the reflective mind, that the versatility and subtle responsiveness of the animal below man is not the outcome of thoughtful intelligence in Nature, but is the finalism of the animal nature in activity;  in activity with the precision and finesse which belongs to that sheer perfection of automatism which only the living attains.

Animal instinct and human reason

The animals have no intellect, but they have a wonderfully developed sense-life, a sense of direction and natural purpose which is built into their natures, and which is often far more perfect and precise than the corresponding reactions of man where instinctive   reactions are still functional in human nature.   In man, automatic and instinctive reactions still exist, but in the more important functions, such as appetite for food, and sexual satisfaction, out of any relation at all to automatic environmental control, or to specific law.  In other instinctive functions, it is more significant to note the proven fact that where reason has long supplanted instinct, those instincts in man are blunted, or even entirely atrophy.   While the conscious actions of man often fall far short of animal instinct in specialised functions involving keen sense awareness and co-ordination of sense data towards a given object, as soon as reason intervenes, instinctive knowledge dies within man;  a clear indication that instinct is automatic;  it is developed, like all sense awareness, by continuous use, while reason, although much more imperfect when it directs a man to specialised physical functions, is non-automatic, non- determined, and non-material.

The animal form below man, within which reason does not intervene, is a pulsating sense of instinctive reaction to end, a sense which lives by the environment to which it is perfectly attuned, and through which it attains that routine of life which marks out the niche in Nature which belongs to its species.  In this distinction between efficient unquestioning instinct, and the supplanting of instinct by questioning   reason,   we   perceive   a   distinction   between   animal   behaviourism   and   human indeterminism.  We  come  to  understand  how  animal  action  can  be  so  complex,  so  apparently intelligent even to detail, and nevertheless always doomed to the same groove of behaviour which is manifested  in  the  species  unendingly  generation  after  generation.    The  animal  brain  has  even increased in power with the emergence of more versatile life, but the energies of that ruling organ are utilized adequately in vital operations which frequently mock the conscious intelligence of man, without  the  freedom  and  universal  awareness  which  accompanies  true  knowledge.    We  must distinguish purpose embodied in structure, from purpose which resides in intelligent personality.

A limit to the development of the animal brain

Let us put ourselves back to the time which immediately preceded the emergence of intelligent man within the universe.  We will find that the animal brain in the species of ape directly proximate to man has developed to great natural perfection, and is still developing.  We will find a species of man-like apes whose brains are developing in such a manner that their range of conditioned reflex-activity is tremendous, though still within the power of the environment in co-operation with that brain, to control.   These animals will have highly developed physical emotions, will be subject to subtle changes of temperament, show great mobility of mood, but as beings still under the law of determinism, there will be nothing in their natures the causes of which will be outside the range of the natural sciences to analyse and to explain.  We may ask though, whether such physical development can go on indefinitely.   This animal brain is a mechanism which receives its law of life from the environment, and is it possible for such an organic mechanism to increase indefinitely in power and still remain within the control of an environment which is itself a material and determined economy? Again, every activity of animal organism is turned to fixed function, and every function achieved through whatever instinctive reaction, must be relative to the physical needs and physical limitations of organic structure.

May it not be, even as an a priori hypothesis, that there is a definite limit which exhausts the possibilities of such a form of existence in a limited universe?  Can activities prompted by the motives of self-conservation and procreation be extended in complexity forever, and remain within environmental control at any level?  Perhaps the brain can develop indefinitely, but there is no reason to believe that an environment which was falling so far below the level of such a highly developed creature could indefinitely support and control it.  This however was actually occurring, there was an anthropoid  stock  which  was  developing  continuously  in  those  areas  of  the  brain  which  govern memory and knowledge-reactions, areas which in Man are identically parallel in structure with those of the chimpanzee, but in Man are enormously more developed.  The output of that brain would have to be determined to function, like everything else in Nature, there must be no waste or imbalance, for that way lies destruction.  There would come a time in the history of this species, if the association areas in the neopallium continued to develop, when those energies of the brain which are directed to complex reflex action and the co-ordination of multiple impressions, could no longer be regulated by environment alone.  An animal, which as an organic mechanism with an enormous brain, had to live a life-cycle of frenzied diversity in order to utilize that energy, would be so hostile to its natural environment that it would find there no harmonious place.

Any animal mechanism which ran beyond the power of environment to control, would at once lose its “survival value” and would be destroyed.  Such an organism would be a contradiction within the natural order;  a form produced within that order but run beyond the competence of the Law of Nature to control.  It would be the first time in the history of material being that anything which emerged within the economy of evolution was not provided with that substantial control and direction which its being required.   Such a being, born of Nature, but beyond the competence of Nature, would be a contradiction to that Law of Determination upon which all the relativity of matter is poised.

The brain of Man exceeds his natural environment

Something akin to this over-running of material controls by the brain seems to have happened, for man shows in his nature some similarity to the event.  In man we have an animal of supreme mental power within matter, who is not controlled by environmental laws according to times, seasons, and regulated life-functions.   Man alone in the kingdom of life, while not above the urges of physical instinct, far from it, is entirely beyond the environmental laws which throughout Nature co-ordinate and regulate physical instincts to constructive and balanced purpose for all other life.

Paradox of Nature though man may seem to be, he cannot be classed as a diseased species which has developed an increase of brain energy which is morbid because beyond mechanist determination. Man does appear in some ways to be a diseased stock, especially today, when his powers have so obviously outrun his wisdom, but the same powers which threaten his destruction are at the same time the instruments of the grandeur which he is capable of attaining, and in some individuals at least of his species, does attain.

Until we come to Man we have always found in Nature, under the Law of Control and Direction, such regulation  of instinct  and  life-cycle that  the living  form  has  lived  in  balance  and  internal harmony.  However advanced a species is, life has remained regular and predictable within a closed circuit.  There are no differences of behaviour among individuals of the highest species below man existing today, which parallel in any way the diversity of life-cycle between the saint and the sinner among mankind.  Each individual of every species is clearly obedient from the structure of its being to a general law of the species, which is unvarying and predictable within natural environment.  We find no such unity among men, so much unanimity of function, no physical law of life which proceeds from the specific structure-pattern of the human organism.

Until Man is reached, the progressively evolving organism and its environment have always been correlatives, there has never been any breakdown of this mutual interdependence in spite of the wide- ranging powers of life, and the formidable complexity of its organic mechanism.  Each more complex species has been catered for through more complex instructs and a greater ability to receive more complex environmental controls.  The energies of the more developed brain of these species has been absorbed in the reactions of a more versatile degree of living.   Only in man, at the summit of evolutionary achievement, do we discover an entity in whom this intrinsic relativity between environment and organism seems to have overbalanced, for certainly man is a straightforward exception to the rest of living creatures, and in him the relation of environmental control and animal organism which defines the determined and mechanist order of matter has no part.

It now follows that what has been presented as an a priori hypothesis, the emergence of an animal of so developed a brain that its life-cycle would eventually overpass the bounds of environmental control, must now be studied as a fact.  Man cannot indeed be considered as a diseased stock simply because he is not an organic mechanism like other forms of life, but in man we are confronted with a creature who has passed beyond the natural relativity of life-cycle and environmental control, however he succeeded in doing it.  The mystery deepens because since Man has, beyond controversy, outgrown the Law of Control and Direction as it is contained for other forms of life, in the mutual correlation of environmental determination and organic function - he ought also to be a diseased sport of Nature in that very fact.

Any animal at all which is the outcome of gradual material evolution, however developed a brain it possessed, should still be a mechanism, for it is still within the same order of physical evolution in matter;  it is still a material thing.  Man’s brain, as a material organ controlling the rest of his being, should still show that fixed specific determinism of life which marks every other material living form, and unless that powerful brain of man were governed by the environment, there should be an excess of undirected energies and vital disharmony.  In other words, the laws and the sequence which are  valid over the whole field of life except mankind, seem to require necessarily that man should have died in the beginnings of his species.

Man’s control and direction is beyond the natural environment

If there is nothing besides materialism and mechanism to invoke in the interpretation of material evolution from physics to anthropology, then we must presume either that man is a diseased mutation lacking vital balance and harmony of life-cycle, or else that the laws of organic determinism and mechanism are invalid over the whole of Nature:  but neither of these alternatives is acceptable.  There is a further difficulty, a difficulty not explicit, but clearly implicit in the above alternatives.  We are quite obviously leading our argument to the point at which we will state that some other principle, distinct from matter and above the material order must be invoked to explain the nature of man, and when we have prepared the way for the assertion, quite obviously we will begin to justify it.

The scientist may fear, not unreasonably in view of the past, that a theologian is once more about to skip over what are for the scientist deep difficulties which are usually slurred over.  He will reply in his mind, before ever he comes to it on paper, that the postulate in Man of a “soul” which is an immaterial principle of being not derived from the material order, denies the validity and the necessity of mechanism as a principle of evolution in the body of Man, and in man himself breaks the continuity of physical evolution and physical determination which is, in so many organic functions within Man, still existent to show that Man is a continuation of evolution, not a being unrelated to the cosmic process.  He will protest that the presumption of the existence anywhere in Nature, even in Man, of a non-material and non-mechanist principle of being still invalidates the concept of mechanism in Nature, and invalidates the concept of evolution as applicable to Man, for this principle, as outside the order of material being, is also outside the order of evolution which defines the very forms and natures of material beings.  The scientist finds as much reason to insist that Man is a product of mechanist evolution, because of the nature of his brain and its past pedigree, as we find to remove him from the order of material determinism because of his contradiction to that order.

The place of the soul in relation to the brain

This is a genuine and a seriously held difficulty, the whole case of the scientist against Christian theology centres on this one point -  the presumption that any principle of being outside the material order which is invoked to explain the nature of Man, denies the order of organic mechanism so obviously true of all else in Nature, and so obviously true of much that is known of the body of man itself, its present, and its past.  We are going to show the scientist that his natural mechanism requires the soul, and is inexplicable without it. We are going also to show the theologian that the soul has an intrinsic and natural place in evolution, and does not conflict with it.

If Man deviates with startling uniqueness from the beaten track followed by other life, while still remaining  an animal, we must, if Man’s unique place in the hierarchy of the living is due, as far as material factors explain Man, to his brain, turn again to a final analysis of the nature of the brain of Man.   We are now come very near to the solution of the problem of Man, and we agree with the scientist that the correct path of enquiry lies in the enigma of the human brain.  We agree with the scientist, because even if the factor which constitutes Man a distinct and unique species in nature is above the brain, which remains in Man simply a material organ, the correlation of that factor with all that science judges correctly concerning man, can only be found if not in the brain, at least through the brain of Man.

We lay our finger once more upon the enormously greater capacity of the human brain which distinguishes Man from the beasts. Let us bear in mind at the same time the manner in which, contrary to all scientific expectation, the brain of Man runs directly counter to the laws of organic mechanism. Attention  is  drawn  to  differences  in  energy-capacity  between  the  brain  of  Man  and  of  those anthropoids which physically approximate to Man -  there is no difference of nature or type, only a difference of degree of competence, and this is highly significant.  The kinship of the brain of Man with sub-human animal species, and this divergence of degree of power are equally important to the complete and correct understanding of Man’s nature.

Man otherwise an aberration of Nature

It is philosophically and scientifically irrational to suppose that a species which has been produced through long ages of development, whose form evolved upon those laws which determine all else in Nature, should be evolving as a precision mechanism of the most consummate vital perfection only towards chaos and self-destruction by these same orderly determinate principles of biological mechanism.  It is absurd:  there must be some manner in which the body, especially the brain of Man, remains true to the universal Laws of Control and Direction, even though it has outgrown the determination of biological and physical environment.   It is absurd to suppose that an organ, or an organism, can be developing progressively according to evolutionary determinism over ages of time, but that the culmination of this progression will be in direct contradiction to the whole economy of universal mechanist relativity.

Many, looking upon the modern world of Man, may be moved to think with some seriousness that the evidence that Man is an uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and therefore diseased species is rather strong.   Man, for all his intellectual brilliance lacks some principle of stability which the states of Nature below him clearly possess. Modern man, more than in any age before known to human history, is a chaos.  Having inherited terrific powers he seems to be hurtling inescapably to destruction with more confusion and commotion, but with no less inevitability than the suicide march of the lemmings to the sea.   But there is hope for Man, great hope and a great future, for Man is offered a better assessment of himself than that in which a false and meagre materialism has so long damned him.  We cannot hope to make sense of Man until we can make sure of the definition of human nature. Mankind has never lacked its saints and heroes great and humble, though indeed most of them have been martyred by men.  The majestic consistency of relativity which has worked towards so great a perfection of form in living creation, does not falter when it arrives at Man.  Man is not the cuckoo in the nest of Nature. He will not be found in contradiction to the natural law, but to be its fulfilment; the wonderful offspring of the womb of ageless space and time, in whom the consistency of natural law shines out as in none other.   The freedom which Man, and none other, enjoys from laws and determinations of times and seasons allows us to put boldly aside all hypothesis and question of the direction in which the species which ends in Man was tending, and to sweep up to the solution of the enigma of Man.

Within the anthropoid stock there was a species which was developing enormously in the energies which its brain was capable of generating.   There evolved a type of simian, the direct physical ancestor of intelligent man, who was nearing the level at which the limits of environmental control would be over-passed.   There was, potential within that stock, still pregnant with dynamic urge to development, a new mutant factor, a further increase in specific brain capacity.  What now, when the utmost limit of control and direction embodied in the dynamic relativity of other material being has been reached, can maintain the normality and vital co-ordination of such an animal?  The brain of this species destined soon to surpass the limits of environmental determination is still mechanist and determinist in action and in reaction, for to be such is of the very definition of matter.  It seems to be a product of an age long process of control and direction within a cosmic relativity which at the end is unable to determine within Nature what is begotten of Nature.

This new species born under the universal Law of Control and Direction, will be a diseased sport with no hope of survival if it has no ultimate principle, as a material thing, of control and direction. The manifold pageant of life which blossoms around us in the spring, which fructifies in summer, which sleeps through winter, this endless symphony of Nature, we too often forget, is the majestic culmination of that one universal Law of Control and Direction which in the beginning gathered the formless elements of a nebulous universe into a mighty economy potential with all which today we see, know, analyse, and bend to human purpose.  Could it be that the fundamental necessity which impregnates all this relativity of matter, that material being must find within this economy the law of its control and direction that it may be one and whole, was denied in man?  Was man, passing beyond the power of environmental law contained within the fabric of universal relativity to be an orphan in this one respect which defines the very substance of all created being?  For the brain which was to be the brain of man still needed control and direction, it was then, and it still is now, a material organ made for such determination and unintelligible without it.

Man’s true control and direction – matter subject to spirit

There was a way in which that animal species was made, and today still is made, a balanced creature; a way in which Man was made above all matter while the body of Man remains within the material order;  was made capable of indefinite controlled development through the brain, while placed beyond all physical environmental subjection.  Into the fertilized ovum which contained now as an actuality the specific mutant factor which makes the brain of man, there was infused its personal and proper principle of control and direction, the spiritual soul, a principle of pure immaterial intelligence and free-will, the personification in a nature of that control and direction exercised for the rest of matter through environment impregnated with law.   And with it all, the law of natural evolution, and the continuity of that order is in no way broken, for the brain of man, the peak of material potency, is intrinsically and substantially relative to spirit:  of these correlatives, matter and spirit, is formed the composite nature and personality of a man.

The soul

It is the universal Law of Control and Direction itself, upon which all material relativity, and the dynamism of material evolution depends, which requires the infusion of the soul into that animal form.  The Law of Nature and of evolution requires it, because the ultimate purpose of the Law is the production of the complex material form, the human form, at which, under the very Law itself, matter becomes intrinsically and structurally relative to spirit.  The brain of man, and in saying the brain of man we indirectly say all that physically man is, remained, and remains today a predetermined, material mechanist organ.   For this very reason, since it has now passed beyond the control of material laws, the Law of Control and Direction requires the infusion of the spiritual soul, which is the personal, direct, immediate principle of self-control and self-direction in the human person.  Nothing else has self-control, but control from outside self.  Nothing outside Man can control Man, his control and direction is personal within himself.  Matter in the beginning was created by Spirit, poised upon a Law of physical relativity pregnant with the wisdom of the Spirit, and in the last end of material evolution becomes again, directly, and of its own material principles directly relative to spirit, to the created soul of man, in the human person.  The Law of Control and Direction is not broken - the law of determinist evolution is not broken -  both are fulfilled in the governing spirit of Man.  There is no other explanation of Man. We challenge any thinker to present any alternative explanation of Man which cannot be shattered from its own internal contradictions.

Man the perfect fulfilment of the Law of Control and Direction

The relativity of matter is not only a relativity of substances defined in mutual inter-dependence, it is a dynamic relativity;  a relativity in which the substances that evolve under the Universal Law are inter- defined also in terms of control and direction.  All material being, in as much as it is substantially relative unto another to become, to be, and to continue in being, is at the same time and in the same respect, relative to other material being for the control and direction which is the determination of its nature to the harmonious achievement of the ends of purposes defined in its life-cycle.  This principle of dynamic relativity, relativity in being, and relativity in the acts which are consequent upon being, this principle of substantial relativity in and through control and direction, is true in the first elements and true in the last material creation equally;  all are subject to it.  Every relative being, whatever its order of being, must be controlled and directed.

Man then, is not an exception to the Law, but the perfect fulfilment of the Law.  This developing anthropoid, whose brain had outrun the Law of Control and Direction as it is exercised through matter, for matter, still required control and direction.  There is no other way when a man is conceived in which this determination can be given than by the infusion of the soul.  In a Man the order of spirit is relative to matter because the soul is the natural determinant of the human body, and matter is made relative to spirit, because the brain of Man requires the soul as its principle of determination.  The brain remains a mechanist organ, and for that reason the soul, the personal and direct determiner of the brain, is like a God unto the body.  Through the brain, the soul can do what it will with the body, for good or for ill.  The brain, and the body built around the brain, cannot do anything except obey the soul, and in that lies the tragedy of Man, and the tragedy of sin, but of that more later.

The infusion of the soul

The first man, and every man born into the world, remains a special creation, and yet there is no “interference” with the continuity of evolution and of the Universal Law of relative evolution.  Man was in the beginning, and still is today, a special creation, because that matter containing the mutant factor of brain-energy beyond the power of material laws to control, required the soul under the Law of Relativity in order that the fertilized ovum might even begin to develop at all.   The soul is necessary, as the supreme vital principle of the human person, for the very body of Man to be conceived.  If there were physical and material elements in the fertilized ovum which makes a man, after the fusion of the male and female elements, which was beyond the control of material laws, there would be something vital in man irrelevant to the laws of nature by which life is procreated.  Man could not therefore be conceived, nor develop in the womb, before the infusion of the soul.  The soul makes a man, and since Man develops to maturity from the womb, the soul is necessary at the moment of conception.

The first man was conceived by the infusion of the soul under the Law of Control and Direction, the Law of the Relativity of being, into the fertilized ovum of an anthropoid with a mutant factor which required the soul.   Today also, the human parent gives to his offspring only the material, a material element which requires the soul under the Natural Law. There is no difference in mode or degree between the conception of the first man and the conception of any man born of woman today. Man always was, and always is, a special creation, both in body and in soul.  In body, because the structure, pattern, organization, of the human brain require the simultaneous formative influence of the spirit which makes a man a rational animal;  in soul, because the soul comes direct from the creative will of God.

Yet God does not “interfere” or “intervene” in any way -  the creation of the soul is demanded by the physical organism fashioned by evolution under the Great Law.  God must infuse the soul - He is bound by His own Law, His own Wisdom, the necessity which He laid upon Himself when the universe was poised upon the Law. The fulfilment of the Law of Control and Direction by the infusion of the spiritual soul, when matter becomes relative to spirit in the brain of Man, is not interference, it is the continuation of creative development through evolution, the continuation of the Law of the universe into the higher order of spirit  to which in the beginning the primordial elements were relative, even as those elements are so relative to spirit today in the personality of man.  If the soul were not infused, the Law of Control and Direction would be shattered, and the universe and its principle of relativity would be unintelligible.

Mind controls and directs – matter is controlled and directed

Man therefore remains an integral nature, and is intelligible as such.   He is clearly not a material mechanism. In Man matter is determined by personal mind -  his body remains in the order of the determined - but his personality, through the powers of the soul, is placed beyond that order.   All below Man is organic determinism, fixed reaction, mechanism.  In Man organic mechanism becomes relative to direct control, to a personal mind.  Mind is the origin of matter,  the Absolute Mind, or God.  Mind is the final end of material being:  the created and relative mind which is the human soul. Because of this intelligent immaterial principle Man is made in the image and likeness of God, possessed of a conscious and free-ranging spirit, which bends his material flesh, and all matter else besides, to his questing intellect and to his imperious will.

Thus do we answer then, the riddle of Man which vexes hard our age - how much in Man is matter?  How much is mind?  Mind in man is that which controls and directs -  matter is that which is controlled and directed.  The fusion of these two in one nature equals Man, the rational animal.  These two remain distinct principles in Man, but so united in relativity in their being that nothing in Man can be completely explained or understood without his matter, and nothing without his mind.

PART THREE

FROM  MAN TO  CHRIST

CHAPTER  8

The “word” of  Man,

and the “Word of God”

Up to the creation of man, the brain, the controlling seat of life, had developed through the interplay of its own powers and the environment, at a pace perceptibly only over ages of time.  The pace was slow, for the order within which development took place had never exceeded a widening of the range of instinctive physical  functions.   The active power which stimulated  development in co-operation with developing organisms, the environment that is, had always been a factor extrinsic to the personal being of the individual existent.  Now, for the first time in natural history the brain passes, in man, with new impetus from the sway of physical laws which impact the individual from outside, and becomes directly relative to a principle of control, direction and determination to end, personified within the nature of the individual: the spiritual soul which makes every individual man a unique and different personality.

Personality of Man is body made relative to the soul

This influence of the soul upon the body and brain of man in the unity of one personality, made for rapid, indeed for tremendous development of the brain of man.   When man, truly homo sapiens and no mere animal is created within nature, the brain which required the soul for its very material coming to be and higher development, possessed in that spiritual principle into which it was knit in a substantial relativity, the principle of its greatly accelerated physical advancement. To this principle, and to such advancement through a spiritual principle, it was itself determined in its material essence under the material laws of Nature.

The person, body and soul, is a substantial relativity of mutually inter-defined complements in a manner which is well understood and well defined only in the schools of philosophy of the Catholic Church, (cf  the term “entia quibus ens est”). Yet, as co-principles of being, body and soul remain distinct, and distinct also as different orders of the real. Therefore we can say with accuracy for the sake of a vivid and useful example, that the human brain now possesses in the soul a personal and immediate “environment”, of a stimulative power infinitely superior to any combination of material causal influences.   Therefore in the personality of man the brain has not by any means lost the power of development it had shown over evolution. On the contrary the need for the soul in the body of man as an animal body arose from the orientation of the brain in one supreme species to indefinite development, to development beyond the poise and power of that realisation of the Law of Control and Direction as its works through, and is embodied in, the  universe  of  matter.    It  was  the  soul  alone  which  could  control  and  coordinate  such  indefinite development harmoniously at the point where, under the Law of Control and Direction, matter because relative to a higher, but still continuous, application of that one Law through the soul of man. It was then and it is now, the soul alone which activates the brain to greater efficiency over a given life span, and which through the laws of material heredity adds more to the specific capacity of the human brain through successive generations over the ages of human history.

Soul of Man controls and directs the body

The spiritual soul alone can know, can will, and can seek intelligently of its own nature.  Strictly speaking it is only the soul in man which “knows” and “thinks” when a man understands, or loves, or hates, the self- conscious operation so educed is primarily spiritual.  Nevertheless the body cooperates strongly according to its own manner in this composite act of a mixed nature, the personality of man acts in scholastic philosophy as the unity it is, not as a set of departments.  Because man is a complex,  not a simple nature, the knowledge of the soul, immediate, intuitive, and conscious, must impress a “reference-back” upon the brain,  a reflex  in  matter, which  is  something in  the order of a material  image,  and  is  the necessary concomitant of all human understanding.  The body of man and the brain which dominates that body in so far as it is dominated by matter, is still a mechanism, but a mechanism now determined by the soul at its highest level of control, and not by the material environment.   Because it is a material organ, the brain cannot produce thought, it can only react to a positive stimulus and record that stimulus as a reflex in matter; nothing material can think.  Thought itself, which is the spirit of a man in active operation, refers the brain to countless objects of conscious thought and to countless relations of being which have no purpose in the life-cycle of merely material organisms.  Under this determination of the soul the brain of man continues to act according to its nature as a material organ of life, and the actual mode of its organic operation, which is still by determinate reflex action, does not differ in principle from the rest of material nature.

The powers of the spiritual soul and the need of the body of man for a personal intelligent control, presume a brain whose material energies vastly surpass the requirements of animal existence below the order of conscious thought.   Because of the existence in man of a material principle of being which is relative both to the material universe and also relative directly to the spiritual order, then the very body of man cannot in the first man, nor in any man today, even begin to develop without the presence of the soul, which is a direct and physical organizing and informing principle in the totality of the human person. Therefore while man remained continuous with the process of evolution and the Law which coordinates its processes, in body and soul equally he was in the beginning, and is always, a special creation.  Man does not “emerge” in identically the same sense as other animal species within the one order of material determinism “emerge” in evolution. Man is “made”, but yet made under the law which is the controlling factor of this process of evolution.

Influence of the soul upon the development of Man

The body of man, and especially the brain which recapitulates all that in the material order a man is, is a material organ so relative to spirit, that while it remains truly material and subject to the essential conditions of the material order, its capacity, orientation, and organization are completely unintelligible if related only to matter, and becomes intelligible only in relation to the spirit. Man is the bridge between matter and spirit, a true bridge, because he rests upon both banks of these two distinct orders, and both are joined in the unity of one person. When matter directly co-relative to spirit is made actual in man, the soul is able through its own powers, which are potentially unlimited, to develop the capacity and the range of the brain in man, beyond any comparison with other life in Nature.  This the soul does through that unparalleled increase of reflexes within the brain, and that inextricably complex inter-association of reflexes to which it directs the brain in the process of seeking and assimilating knowledge.

This is true of knowledge in any order of the real, for the soul must always convey some impression to the brain when it knows, but it is most clearly true of knowledge whose object and content is in the material Universe.  Here especially the soul of man is contemplating material data for which it needs the channels of sense, and the power of the brain to retain impressed “reflexes” which is memory.   In this order of the knowable in particular, the spirit is able to develop the power of the brain and to increase its field, for the impressions and references which the brain can receive of such data and their associations, are precisely those which lie fully within its material competence.  The brain of man however cannot contemplate these associations as self-conscious knowledge independent of actions to be performed; self-conscious knowledge not bound to function or fixed law belongs to the soul alone.  The body cooperates in its own way, but it does not produce the interior content of thought.

The soul controls and directs through the brain

The brain of man then, is an organ of thought in as much as it actively cooperates with the soul in the acquisition of knowledge, especially knowledge of the material world, and objects of knowledge in any way bound up with the material.   Indeed, it is an active partner also in that the soul cannot itself operate harmoniously unless body and soul work together in sympathy in one person.  The power of the soul to be united to a completely immaterial object of knowledge, an operation in which the body is more a passive receiver than an active co-partner, that type of knowledge which is usually inaccurately relegated to the realm of the occult, and indiscriminately labelled “mysticism”, is a fascinating study of the highest importance, because it involves the power of the spiritual soul to know and to love God by direct experience in some remote measure in this life.  This is not a subject upon which we ought to linger here, but it should be said in passing that since the soul possesses, of its own essence as a spiritual reality, intellectual and volitional powers which are not derived from matter, nor dependent upon matter for their operation, such knowledge is to be expected in man, at least in deep and pure personalities such as those of the great saints.

The physical potentialities of man centred in the brain cannot only develop, but they can develop specifically.  This does not mean that man will ever produce a new mutant which would be a truly distinct species as the philosopher uses the term.  Man is defined as a rational animal, and this composition of nature between spirit and matter exhausts the specific content of man as a being on this planet or elsewhere in the universe, if rational life exists anywhere else in the universe.  The brain of man is developing specifically with man, in so far as the general level of brain development must, and will increase over mankind, if civilization remains sufficiently elevated and complex.

Soul and the further development of Man

However long a high level of civilized living is maintained, the soaring flame of the genius, whether he be saint or philosopher, scientist or poet, must leave this world with him, his gifts are the manifestation of himself as a spiritual personality above all, and they cannot be passed on directly.  This loss must not be too much emphasized, in the order of human life tradition is much more important than begetting -  a point the eugenicists might meditate upon sometimes  -  the achievements of high genius remain as the heritage upon which  succeeding  generations  may  draw  for  the  inspiration  of  individual  and  social  culture.    The accumulated treasures of tradition passed down in record written and unwritten, or even more importantly, in that living imprint upon the mind of disciples of the greatness of a master, is far more important to man, and far more potent as a cultural force than the offspring of the bodies of noble men, who indeed are mostly quite undistinguished themselves, and sometimes a grievous disappointment.

The supreme achievements of man, those upon which lasting civilizations and some sort of stable peace can be built, are not achievements of the order of science or art at all, but lie in the more contemplative realms of theology and philosophy.  Philosophy and theology alone, the sciences of ultimate truths, furnish man with those supreme human aims, inspiration and ends without which advanced scientific knowledge leads directly to a society of frankensteins destined to catastrophic destruction.  Achievements of this order, achievements within the orders of theology and philosophy in which alone lie the principles by which man’s spirit can be controlled and his destiny made safe and happy, flow only from the spiritual stature of great minds, and this living stream cannot be inherited except by teaching, and by that more subtle form and generation which inheres in the relation of master and disciple.

Man is only rightly understood by understanding the properties of his soul

Up to now in this chapter, and more markedly in preceding chapters, our preoccupation has lain with the body of man, particularly in the relation between body and soul, matter and spirit.  This preoccupation was a necessary one, and the emphasis has been justified, because it is essential in modern philosophy, and even more in theology, to show the exact relation in man between matter and spirit, to show the need there is in the body of man for the soul as its principle of life and determination, and at the same time the continuity of man with that law of creation by evolution upon which the fabric of the Universe is built.  When however we pass beyond the origins of man to the study of a man as a living person we must rather put the emphasis where it properly belongs, upon the spiritual principle in his being, for in his spirit lies his driving power, his eternal restlessness and criticism of all things under the sun, his unique versatility, his yearning for the good and the true, for the secret of perfect happiness.  In the properties of man’s spiritual soul and in its repercussions upon the material order within human personality, we must seek and find the solution to the myriad nagging anxieties which throw a deep shadow over the present and the future of the human race.

Those problems which today surround our personal and social life are problems of the soul of man, and how can they be even partially resolved by men who do not know their nature and themselves?  The great surges of spiritual wickedness, doubt, pain, and despair which rise from the unfathomed abyss of men’s hearts, challenge the saint and mystic, and strain to the utmost all that he has to offer.  Let it be understood that only the saint and the mystic has anything to offer here;  the scientist can summon seven devils to the service of sin, but he cannot control them.  Such are the problems of our time, problems of the soul of man; of man now weaned from ancient categories of thought, but sick and queasy of the new.

The problems of the modern world are also problems of the Christian Church, for they pose issues concerning the fundamentals of human life, over which issues her authority must give an answer or belie its mission.  Those issues which arise from the soul within man, with all the might and all the meanness of which it is capable, relegate into insignificance every riddle which the human mind may find unsolved in the material universe.  Whatever is said of man, whatever is given to man, whether by God or by other men, there will always be something more to say in succeeding generations.  Little dykes built along the strand of the sea, we will need to reinforce in every age those structures of thought, built upon the solid rock of undeviating truths, which maintain the level of highly cultured human life, and which answer and restrain those restless waves of human heedlessness and human passion which push against the house of God which is likewise the inhabitation of man.

A materialistic anthropology is a distortion of Man’s nature

Today, despite long years of hypocritical futility and obvious failure, the error that rears itself against the spirit of man is still the spirit of materialism.  It does not necessarily call itself materialism, often it claims explicitly to be “spiritual”. But it remains the same fundamental error, the error of treating man as just another animal among the rest of nature; an animal who lives sometimes upon a sublimated level, but who nevertheless is to be interpreted within the one same order as the rest of material being.  Not all the reasons which underlie this error are dishonest, though blatant failure should by now have disclosed them as errors, and what extenuation of this tragic mistake can be offered has already been considered.

Theologians are to blame not less than the so-called rationalists, for both have been equally obstinate, and both have, in the main, lacked that humility which ponders all the evidences.   New knowledge, undigested and unrelated to theology, is much of the cause, and for the rest, we can look to that age-old power of sin and selfishness of spirit and sense which crucified Christ for the all-sufficient complement.  It is useless to look for inspiration in human affairs toward the animal world, there to seek guidance from the patterns of animal behaviour.  If man were capable of being guided from that order, he would never have stepped beyond it.   The mistake is beginning to ripen a tragic harvest, whether in Eastern tyrannies or Western agnosticisms, and the crudity of the root error behind it all is matched only by the dull inability of those thinkers who perpetrate the error and who continue it, to learn anything different.

Uniqueness of Man as a spiritual personality

Man never was simply another animal, not even in the primitive state concerning the domestic intimacies of which some of our popular scientists have written with the intimate knowledge of private revelation.  Man is unique, and the pseudo-rationalists who have attempted to interpret human life in terms of animal behaviourism should, in their failure, have become aware that man so denies the routine of animal determinism, that whatever the principle which determines man might be, it must be either uniquely in man, but certainly not below him.  The strategy of the world’s great generals cannot be understood by watching a group of children playing soldiers, though it remains in the same order; much less can the nature of man and the principles of human fulfilment be garnered from a study of the love life of baboons.

The personality of man is a spiritual personality, his soul is the radical vital principle which explains him in all that he is, body included.  Man can have physical being at all only within the spiritual order, the fully intelligent order, and in that order lies the orientation and the happiness of his person in all its aspects.  The end and the purpose of human life is as unique in Nature as is man’s own being, and the laws which govern matter are of little value as a guide to the understanding of man.   If man has sloughed off the coil of instinctive reaction to material law it can only be because he belongs to a higher order, and to higher determination of that one Law Control and Direction which binds the universe in a purposive unity of the two orders of spirit and matter.

When the soul was breathed into the seed of man, man awoke from a deep sleep; for man  to seek his guiding star from the order out of which he has awakened to conscious life is for man to seek direction from the haphazard memory of vague dreams of the night.  The night is past and the day-star has risen upon man, and within the new world of the spirit into which matter steps at the conception of man, must he find his proper end and contentment. These continuities and similarities which exist between man and the natural economy of material determinism from which his body derives, can only be partial analogies of being, never a sufficient directive for his intelligent personality.

Man’s soul is restless until he seeks fulfilment in God

Majestic is the might and the scope of the spirit of man, but limited he remains, subject to ignorance, error, and shameful excess.  He is so great compared with all beneath him, and so small compared with God above him, that in the loneliness of a man’s heart when he has lost both love and hope, we can sense, whatever seeming power he boasts, the stark truth, and the pathos almost, of that simple comment of Genesis in which it is written that: “Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field;  but for Adam there was not found a helper like unto himself.”

Other men may be helpmate to a man, but a helpmate is not enough, we know well that none of us trusts with full authority the human word of another man, all of us are liable to ignorance and to error, and the spirit of man seeks to rest in a truth and in a good which does not decline and is not qualified by partial vision.  The ignorance and liability to error which is natural to a created being is complicated further in us by the factor of sin.  This terrible complication of man’s nature throws a mist of confusion over every work of man, it enters into every factor of human suffering and human well-being, it is a factor that must be weighed whatever is examined concerning man.  To this problem of sin, in general at least even if not in much detail, we must bend our attention later, for now it is sufficient to indicate that inclination to evil and deliberate foolishness which accentuates the ignorance and insufficiency which in any case belongs to man in his own nature.

Even without sin, man’s happiness would not be self-contained within his own being, with sin he is not able even to maintain his nature and his thoughts in that sincerity of truth which properly belongs to him. Quite apart from sin, man is a dependent creature, limited because created, dependent physically and dependent spiritually; made to desire, made to learn, made to achieve.  If man were self-sufficient all these words would be negated by self-sufficiency.  There is nothing in Nature like unto man, nothing to which he can go to learn, for he is greater than they, and nowhere will he find a helper like unto himself.  It is so stupid therefore, so grossly stupid that some spark of anger is justified, to search all nature below man that men may find the key to the end and fulfilment of the one animal in Nature who utterly transcends all else.

It is foolish to seek the direction of human life below man, but at the same time it is certainly inconceivable that man, who so urgently needs to be taught, governed, and led in the way of his happiness, should alone of all natures be an orphan within Nature.  It is a thought too irrational to be entertained, that man, whose spirit is begotten of the breath of the divine intelligence, was destined to be cast without a compass upon the endless, storm-swept oceans of doubts and fears, of ceaseless tragedy and eternal follies. Yet any man who denies either God, or the soul of man, preaches this fatal theology of human ends.

Man seeks the Control and Direction of One beyond himself

Everything else is governed and controlled, and fulfilled in its order, only man whose unique nature exceeds in greatness the order out of which he stepped in becoming man, has no certain hope, no home for his own heart, no goal other than himself, and no authority able to direct his own intellect.   Only man alone in Nature these philosophers mark down for tragedy, because for them he is born to err, though nothing else in the universe is marked out for chaos in this way.   While man draws up the blueprints of his future, individual or social, tragedy and strife grins over his shoulder, for the mistakes of men, even of noble- minded men, if they are errors touching the ends of individuals and human civilizations, must necessarily ripen a harvest of death.

For these philosophers who make the mind of man its own standard rule, men cannot avoid eternal errors;   man, they believe, lives by trial and error.   They go on further, every present state of human achievement personal or social, every “thesis” that is to say, is directed to “synthesis” only through struggle, and every peace is the birth of a new war;   for man knows what he is, but not what he shall be, and “antithesis” is built into the very nature of man. This is the path to hell, and modern man treads it onward in full measure.  This cannot have been the destiny intended for man, and it is not the destiny for intelligent man.  There is a certain end to human life, an authority that satisfies the mind, and a blessedness of peace to be obtained, if men will receive it, for it is given for their receiving.  There is a hope given to men, and the dispensation of that hope we begin now to unfold.

God the Environment of the soul

All that lives around us begins as a tiny seed; the seed of a plant, or the seed of a beast.  In order to grow and develop, and in that development to participate life more abundantly according to the order of its life- cycle, that seed of plant or animal requires its fertile soil, its sun and rain, its proper nourishment.  This seed of life may wax into a great tree, or a powerful beast, but when it began it was unformed and invisible to the eye.  Now the soul of man is a seedling also, and like a seed, which has a present form quite other than its splendid maturity, a man knows that he is, and is some measure what he is, but he does not know what he shall be.  What is potential in a thing is not visible as something actual, for it is relative to development. The fullness of any man in the prime of life is not perceptible in the fertilized ovum which is his beginning in the womb of a woman.  A genius is not known as such at conception, any more than a man who has never seen the form of some rare and beautiful flower can divine its form from the size and shape of its seed. Nevertheless the fullness is latent and potential in the seed; it is defined in a relation between the seed and the environment which will prompt it to maturity.

Man is a seed also, a seed of intellect and will, whose growth is knowledge, whose stature is deepening good will, whose content and beauty is a measure of love and wisdom in one, whose sun, and rain, and fertile soil, and proper nourishment is God alone, who is the beginning of his birth and the environment of his created spirit, whose intimate embrace of union straight upon the naked, searching, yearning spirit of man is the sweet warm ray of knowledge imparted, wisdom given, which develops the soul of man, which is the communication of the Life which is God unto man, and which the Christian calls the “Grace of God”.

It is written of man once in the pages of human history, that he said:- “I am the bread of life.  He that comes to me shall not hunger;  and he that believes in me shall never thirst.  I am the bread of Life;  This is the bread which comes down from heaven;  that if any man eat of it he may not die”. (Jn 6:35, 48-50) This man was a liar as arrogant and wicked as Satan, once who arrogated to himself the prerogatives of God, or else he was God, for he could not have spoken more simply or succinctly what God is to the soul of man.

A man cannot measure the stature and destiny of his spirit, he cannot know how far he is a “seed”, a potential living thing; of only one thing he can be sure, that like the seedling he will remain for ever static, or even wither, unless he is quickened by the light and warmth and nourishment proper to the order of the spirit.  The soul of man also is made to take root and to spring into lush life, not less than the grass of the field.  How shall it be rooted, except in God from whom it proceeded?  How can it grow except it wax upon

the sweetness of wisdom and love which strengthens and confirms the heart of man.   Man yearns for lasting love and secure truth as any suckling yearns for its mother’s milk; without love, love born of the good possessed in peace, man sickens and dies within.  There is nothing in which a man will find truth and love such as to be the full and authoritative measure of his being, save only in the Supreme Spirit from whom the soul of man proceeds.

Man is restless until he rests in God

A man can never be satisfied with the physical pleasures, good and honourable part though they have in his being rightly used.  The soul of a man finds nothing stable and fulfilling in the elementary pleasures of the flesh, sought for themselves alone.  If he flings himself into these with abandon he becomes a sordid and miserable creature, utterly selfish, always recriminating, without love, loyalty, or sweetness of soul.  These can leave only emptiness and heaviness of heart, disgust too, and bitterness of mind and outlook. No pleasure of the flesh is an end in itself in man, it is sweet and honourable only when conjoined with the wisdom of an end in view, a vocation to be lived, which is one with the mind and intention of God in making man.  The very soul of man, being made by God is good, and must judge of good and evil deep within the abyss of the conscience of a man, however foully and cynically he sins.

From this internal reproach, the division of a man within himself, the denial of the likeness of the Good and True after which man is made, rises the disgust and bitterness which inevitably accompanies the life of him who lives for the things of the body alone.  These passions soon breed depression and cynicism, and that leprous egotism which eats into the sensual mind until it rots all spontaneous sincerity, all simplicity, all sweetness, every noble aspiration of a man, even, unhappily, in men who have erred rather than sinned knowingly.  If a man lives by the body he despoils and diseases it, for the body is made for the soul; much more does he shatter the yearning spirit within him, bringing an impenetrable darkness and an eternal questioning into his heart, living always in the shadow of a fear he cannot or will not name.

A man may lift the search of his soul for happiness to finer levels, higher because more spiritual and true to himself, but still he will remain unsatisfied.  If he lives for loves which are gracious and pure, higher than mere lusts, if he delights in every art and science, all culture which is beauty of thought or object, deep in his spirit he will still be lonely and empty of heart.  Nevertheless it is not possible for such a man to seek his purpose and contenting end sincerely, and to the best of his means, and not to find it in some measure however incomplete, for the gracious mercy of God which prompts the human soul before it seeks Him, will not pass him by entirely, although errors and confusions dim its beam.  Of men such as these it can be said in the words of Christ to the scribe who was less captious than his fellows, “thou art not far from the kingdom of God”.(Mk 12:34)   There is no sufficiency for man, no solid food of life more abundant, in anything whatever less than the Divine Himself.

A man always yearns for more than what he has, for in this his present state of being he never is and never can be sated.  If he has found the kingdom of God which is within him and loves God, he yearns with joy as a child at the breast of his mother.  If he has not found the love of God, he has not found the natural food of his spirit, and whatever he seems to possess besides, he yearns with hungry anguish, as an orphan that cries alone in a time of famine and there is none to give to him.

Man seeks God indistinctly in seeking the Good and True

For the spirit of a man must seek God, it cannot help desiring Him, even though it knows Him not, though it deny Him.  There are some who deny Him and yet love Him, for he abides like the first faint greyness of the dawn in the depth of their hearts where they love goodness in general, and ideals which they approve as good, blindly but quite sincerely.  They may follow some ideal or seek some utopia in the name of man alone, but yet they love the good, and since no man can find joy in an abstraction, at the roots of it all they are loving God, even though they do not know Him for what he is.  Such men are occasionally found even among those who believe that they are atheists.

No man can have his intellect and will grounded permanently and sincerely upon good rather than  evil, love  rather than hate,  unless his soul  is conjoined to the life-giving grace of God to a degree which keeps it alive even though it is too slight to allow of life more abundant.  It is possible to deny the existence of God, and yet to love Him, for such men live in a fog of intellectual confusion, they usually are found to have a quite false and warped idea of what God is, and this caricature they fasten upon the Church. Sometimes the vague concept they erect in their own minds to replace Him, approximates nearer to the reality of His Being than the crude image of Him which they rejected in the belief that it was all that God could be.

A man’s soul must seek God if he seeks the good sincerely and consistently at all,  No limited creature, no man however loveable, can serve to be the final wisdom, the final love, the source of truth for which a good man craves, and to which he craves to be permanently joined.  Only the Spirit which is God can teach the soul of man, can rule man, enlighten man, satisfy man, for only God is authority to man, the measure of man's being and man's end, the way and the means of man's fulfilment.  God is the sunshine and the shower of man's spiritual being, the “environment” personal, immediate, direct, of the intellectual soul of man, and in God he lives, and breathes, and has his being.

Almighty God is Man’s true love and knowledge

A man must learn and love in one and the same activity; for man, wisdom and love must be contained in, and be one with, any controlling factor which aspires to govern him.  As an intellectual nature the control of man of course can only be authoritative intellect, wisdom and light in one, but this must not be the imparting simply of a code, the beautiful but cold brilliance of a light which does not warm.   In man the light of wisdom, truth, teaching, by which alone he can be controlled and directed, must be the activity of a personality acting upon, and uniting itself with another person, it must be an act of love, a light which also gives warmth and in that warmth fructifies the soul as the sun brings forth the harvests of the field.  Unless a man loves, he will not learn and he will not be held.  A man can be ruled by love given fully to a master, or by fear of a tyrant.   Love develops his personality, fear crushes him into a sullen slave.   In the end a governance of men which is based upon fear and the dragooning of the free intelligence of man must break. It will break from the cynicism it breeds among the rulers themselves, and their disloyalty one to another.  It will break too upon the hate bred out of the silent resentment of the down-trodden spirits of men, for men hate slavery of the spirit without being taught.   Only love can long hold a man, and only in a social communion which is based upon mutual affection and freedom of mind can men live sincerely and in peace with themselves and their neighbours.  Out of the Supreme Spirit which is the measure of all the knowable, there is no principle of wisdom and of love strong enough and authoritative enough to command the free allegiance of man and to control and direct his personality to its fulfilment.

We love others, and the love of true friendship is the greatest joy that man can find on earth in created things, but it is never enough for us.  No man, however loveable and good, is good enough and wise enough to rule the minds and to sate the hearts of his fellows;  for no man gives another everything his spirit can desire.  No man however holy, is enlightened enough and authoritative enough to underpin those human societies built upon the communion of men among themselves.  We must ponder the point awhile, and see why it must be so.

It is perfectly true to say that in the personality of a man is born a seed potential to growth as much as any seed of the earth.   It is apparent from the very infancy of a man.   From his second year, in barely articulate sounds he will wonder at the world about him, delight in it, point and admire, and just as soon as he is physically capable of it, he will ask “why” things are so.  It is natural to man to ask “why” and why is a word expressing knowledge in terms of a cause.  The philosophy of materialism without ultimate causes and purposes, of  “random” developments is belied in the natural, indeed the vehement impulse of little children, who eternally ask “why” to the distraction of their placid elders.  It is not the only issue upon which wise fools have been answered by babes and sucklings.  A child seeks wisdom of its parents;  if they are not capable of giving it what it needs, it will grown into a wild, warped young savage.  A child does not seek information only, but leadership and counsel, directive, help and comfort;  in a word a child, seeks love and wisdom from its elders.  This is because a child of man is born undeveloped in body and soul alike, the total personality, not merely the physical body grows over the years.

Very unlike in this respect, is any human child with the offspring of even highly developed animals.  If the young bird and beast are separated from their parents, nevertheless quickly and perfectly, if released within their natural environment, do they “learn”  all that the function of their species require.  If a human child were able to live to puberty without any human contacts, it would be wild and immature beyond any parallel with lesser species of life.  This happens because man is not a physical mechanism of nature like all else below him, man is a spiritual personality and he develops, for good or for ill, upon which he knows, and the relation which he makes between his knowledge and the ordering of his life.

This process does not stop at childhood, more deeply and more urgently does it quicken in tempo at adolescence, and at that age most painfully of all, the conflicting impulses of powers of mind and body little understood before, the clash of discordant teachings, the confusion without, and the muddle within, tear the heart and mind of man.  The easy buoyancy and optimism of youth acts as a salve to the wounds of many mistakes and many passionate sins, but the effects last often long into later life, and in some cases damage is done within the second decade of a man's life which only the deepest knowledge and the most spiritual and sincere affection of the priest can heal.  The priest we say, not the doctor, nor the psychologist, for we know well from personal experience that there are wounds in the soul of a man which only the priest can heal, because only the priest has the true understanding of man, the type of knowledge required, the chastity, and discipline, and objectivity of mind necessary for the healing of souls who have so often been betrayed, even by those to whom they went for help.

God is Man’s fulfilment and Environment both individually and socially

The anguish and doubt of man can be paralleled in the social and international order as much as in the private life of the individual, and at no time more desperately and dangerously than at the present.   The lesson is the same: that   unless there is some personality, intelligent and wise which can rule men with authority, then man is an orphan within nature.  Who else but man goes to another of his kind, and, sitting at the feet of prophet, seer, and priest, calls another “Lord” and “Master”?  No other being except man seeks so urgently for enlightenment and directive upon the very fundamentals of his life and destiny, and in the search for security of mind, disagrees so radically with his neighbours.  The mind of a man, because it is an intellectual principle, is made to know, and in knowing  to love the true and the good;  there is no other mind, except the Supreme Intelligence who is the measure of all good and all truth, who can thus control and direct man to his fulfilment whatever exactly that fulfilment may imply.   Man, who did not make himself, nor accounts for himself, does not know, and cannot know, either the measure of his own being, or its potential relation to the full adulthood of its fulfilment.  All this, only God in whose image man is made according to his spiritual nature, can know and can impart to men.

It is required under the Law of Control and Direction which binds all created being in one economy and in one unity, that every dependent being shall have its principle of control and determination to its proper fulfilment.   God is the environment of the soul, only a personal intelligence can determine a personal created intellect, and therefore God alone is the sufficient principle of control and determination over man. The determination of man by God, fully, according to the nature of man, by love and wisdom not by determinism or fear, is therefore required under the Law of Control and Direction which begins with the first elements of matter in movement to determined combination. When matter and spirit in one continuity of law and process meet as co-relatives in the personality of man, God himself, under the Law which is the expression of his creative wisdom, becomes the only authoritative and competent principle of control and direction for the spiritual animal who is man.

It must be stressed in this respect that man does not require from God under the Law of Control and Direction simply cold information concerning God, man himself, and man’s relation to his neighbour.  God is the end and fulfilment of man and the end of a spiritual creature can only be in a spiritual person, for such an end is the spiritual order of understanding, wisdom, and love, a union in which the very stature of the soul grows and develops.  As we have said, no created thing, no other man, can be this fulfillment to man, because nothing created is the supreme good, the supreme true, the supreme wisdom and love from which the created spirit came, and to which alone it is intrinsically relative for being and for fulfillment alike.

Law of Control and Direction in Creation and Man

The Law of Control and Direction operates differently according to the natures subject to it, but always in the unity of one universal economy, one unity of law, continuity, and wise providence.   As we have considered already at length, the wisdom and majesty of the Divine Intellect imprinted upon, and embedded in, material syntheses of being, becomes open and discoverable to the eager mind of man, who interprets this wisdom embodied in things in terms of laws, ends, purposes and causal relationships.  In so doing man as truly unravels some very small grain of the majesty of the Divine Intellect as does a skilled engineer when retracing and restoring the secrets which underlie some complex machine or process, the plans of which have been destroyed.  Yet what man knows of the universe in which he lives is negligible, what he knows of the relations between life and non-living matter is less than negligible, what he knows of the relations between material organism and the soul in himself, is mostly error and crude guess-work.

If modern man, drunk with what, compared with former ages, is magnificent achievement indeed, is tempted to arrogant pride, let him remember that he does no more than trace with hesitant steps and frequent errors the knowledge already existent within matter by the creative act of God.  Man has not given anything, he has only discovered what was already there, and of that  treasury he has  unearthed  so very,   very little. In the ears of modern man there should ring the query of St. Paul: “What do you have that you have not received? And if then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” (I Cor. 4:7)

Then the Law sweeps up to the matter at its consummation of potential, to the point at which it becomes intrinsically relative to spirit in one nature, and at this juncture the Law ceases to be a control and direction exercised through material environment, or any material agency at all.  At this juncture where the Law of Finality as embodied in matter requires the soul, under the same Law the soul is given, and man is made, a special creation, but still one with the unbroken continuity of creation by evolution.  At this juncture then the principle of the Law of Control and Direction, as it affects man, steps out with man from the order of matter, and must be sought in the order of the spirit.  We must now look for the controlling environment of man himself.   We have stated that the soul might be called the “environment” of the human brain, an environment personal, immediate, and of unlimited power, but body and soul are one nature, and man is one person; as a dependent and created nature we must seek the principle of Control and Direction to his proper fulfilment which under the Law of Finality must exist also for man, unless man alone is bereaved in the universe.   We cannot find any other, conceive any other, or expect any other besides God himself.   We repeat here what we have said already, to stress that this need of man to be controlled and directed by God, to an end which can only be in God, is as much a requirement of the Law of Control and Direction as is the Law of valencies to the atom, the laws of gravitation to material mass, the laws of life to the living form according to its species.

Everything whatsoever, living or inanimate, which is created and relative, must have its proper principle of determination to its purpose.   What controls and directs must be distinct from what is controlled and directed, but must nevertheless be a causal influence upon it.  To this fundamental principle of the Law of Finality man is no exception.  The application of this Law differs according to the order of being; man must be ruled by intelligent wisdom, while an atom is ruled by fixed laws of structure.  The manner by which relative beings are determined to their proper ends varies as vastly as the analogous nature of being in general, but the principle of necessary control and direction does not vary.  The relative thing must always be subject to control and direction, for it is not self-caused, self-sufficient, nor its own end in itself.

Need for Revelation to provide Man’s Control and Direction

If man must look up to God to find in the supreme Spiritual Being his final end, and the means of union with God in wisdom, truth and love, then under the Law we so often invoke, but cannot too often invoke in this  book,  there must  be  some  “revelation” of  God to  man, however  that  revelation  be described  or qualified.   All knowledge which is imparted by another to one completely ignorant of it, is in truth a “revelation”,  for  a  revelation  is  a  pulling  aside  of  a  veil,  the  imparting  of  knowledge  either  in  fact completely  unknown  by  another,  or  even  completely  beyond  his  power  to  comprehend  without  the assistance of some other.  There is no need for modern man to be afraid of the term “Divine Revelation”, neither does the Christian intend to play down the phrase in any case.

There  are  many  branches  of  knowledge  today  which  are  so  remote  from  the  understanding  and experience of the average man, that for him the conclusions of such sciences come as a revelation, a natural revelation of course, but still one completely above his ken, proved in their own order by facts and achievements which he can recognize but still not analyze.  The refinements of relativity theories in physics, and the mysteries of nuclear associations are utterly beyond the detailed .understanding of the ordinary citizen, he is disposed to believe upon the authority of experts whom he knows as names to be respected, and he quails in fearful acceptance of all these recondite mysteries, before the mighty and savage achievement of atomic explosives, but it remains for him a natural revelation, and there are many other things he accepts in the same way, and thinks nothing of it.

Revelation which is “Supernatural”

If man is subject to natural revelation, the imparting to him of knowledge by another either simply upon authority, or as more often, upon authority with a very bare and dim understanding adapted to “popular” exposition, much more should man expect a revelation of knowledge to him from God upon fundamental matters, the truth of which, and the content of which are quite beyond his unaided powers.  Such knowledge will be “supernatural” because it is above the mind of man to know by himself alone, above the authority of man to promulgate with certainty, and at least in part above the entire order of the created, because it involves the relation between relative being and the final Absolute of all relative beings.   God is the “supernatural” by definition, the word means “above the powers of nature”, or in its strictest sense, above the order and powers of all limited beings, it does not mean “magical” or “mysterious” or “unintelligible” as it is so often taken to mean by materialists who know even less about theology than their theological counterparts know about the sciences.

If man is to have a determination from God adequate to the nature of man and whatever may be the complete fulfilment of that nature in a union with God, such a revelation will necessarily be supernatural, but it will still be given under the one Law of Finality in which all things were poised by God in creation. The content of such a revelation will be the imparting to man by God of wisdom concerning God, man's nature and relation to God, man's happiness, his fulfilment and the means towards his fulfilment.   This knowledge could never be contained in man, nor be co-natural to man, for man is certainly not self- sufficient, and his end must certainly be beyond himself and yet within the spiritual order, whatever may be its measure and degree.  If the life of man, like the life of a tree, or the conception of an animal, is a great potential contained distantly within a tiny seed, then most certainly man must have a revelation from God, because he knows what he is, but not at all what he shall be; neither can he truly know what he is, if he is ignorant of the measure of human destiny at fulfilment as it is determined in the creative mind and will of God.

Man is a dependent spirit, and God is the beginning, measure, and final fulfilment of all dependent spirits.  Very simply and very completely the first chapter of Genesis expresses it thus: “And God created man to his own image;  to the image of God he created him, male and female he created them”.(Gen. 1:27) This likeness is in the very substance of the soul as a being of intellect and will, made to know and love many things, but able to find its true orientation and perfect fulfilment only in God,  the end, purpose, and consummation of the spiritual order.  The destiny of man then must be in the supernatural order, because God is the supernatural by definition, and spiritual beings are in the supernatural order because they are ordered towards God in contemplative love and wisdom, which is the only possible fulfilment of a nature intrinsically relative to God in being and in end.

Revelation proportionate to Man’s finite spiritual / material being

Man is quite unlike any material being in the relation of his nature to God and the mode of the fulfilment and perfection of that   nature.    Every material living   thing   has its end and satisfaction within its own created and material order, and within that order its natural desires are sated and at rest.   Man, and any spiritual creation, neither has, nor can have an adequate end within the created order, not even within the created spiritual order, for a created spirit is intrinsically and substantially relative to God alone, and in Him alone, the fount, source, and exemplar of its being, can it find rest and repose in a union of wisdom and of love.   Unlike the material order then, the final end of a spiritual creation is outside of, and beyond the created order by the very fact of its substance.  The powers of any purely material creature are proportionate to its end for the end is in exactly the same order, and the powers of the living thing, and the fulfilment of those functional powers are mutually inter-defined.  As it is so well expressed in scholastic philosophy, in the material order the act which perfects, and the potency which is perfected, are correlatives of one order. This is not true of any spiritual creation, and therefore not true of man.

The end of man is the possession of the all-good and all-true, and all-loving, in a union of fruition, some union which gives joy in possession, and such an end in God, the only conceivable end for a spiritual being, is beyond the created order and the powers of any created being whatever.  Whatever possible orders of human fulfilment theologians may imagine, it remains a fact that the end of man must always be in a true possession of, and fruition in God.  Knowledge about God, and love of a sort conceived from the effects and works of God, would no more satisfy the soul of man in any state of creation, than knowledge about cookery, and the distant smell of food would satisfy a starving man.  The more a man knew about God, and the more he knew of the nature of God as dimly foreshadowed in his works, the more would a spiritual nature crave for the possession of God.   In the spiritual order imperfect knowledge and imperfect love stimulates desire, such is of the very nature of a being whose end is God, and who has a natural desire to possess God in the blessedness of love, knowledge, and the peace of joy.

God and man can never be correlatives within the same order.  In the potential which is man, the actual which fulfils him is above his order, and above all orders. In the fulfilment then of spiritual beings, act and potency are not correlatives of one same order, as within matter which knows not God, nor can possess him in any way. Man desires God, but cannot attain him of his own powers. Man is made for God, but the adequate principle of such attainment will be looked for in vain in man himself.  All possession in love is a sharing  and  a  communication,  and  no  creature  whatever  can  share,  possess,  or  enjoy  God  in  any experimental way unless God reach down first, and communicate himself to the creature.   There is no natural adequacy between the finite and the Infinite, the non-necessary and the Alone Necessary;  the desire by which man must desire God is a witness of that love in God which made and which prompts the desire, for otherwise such a desire would be in vain, and Nature would contradict the order of truth in man, for there is nothing in Nature which is vain and meaningless.

Revelation as a free action of divine charity

There is no contradiction in a nature which is made for an end in God, for the possession of God, and with no natural proportion within itself between the perfection of its nature and the power of its nature.  It means simply that because nothing whatever can have any true claim, exigency, right, or debt upon the Being of God in any way, who is necessitated only by Himself and by none other, man is made directly potential to a fulfilment in God in the order of God’s charity alone, an order ruled by wisdom and by law, but contained within a relativity of charity, not of natural right.  God does not owe it to man to give, and yet man is wholly unintelligible unless the gift is given.  This is precisely what an order based on a relativity of gratuitous beneficence means, the need of man is a witness of divine charity, not a mark of exigency upon the Divinity.

What the love of God gave is manifest in the nature begotten of God’s love, and what He began He will perfect.  God does not change his mind. The Divine Nature admits of no claims upon itself, valid outside or beside the free intention of God in any way.  The final perfection of anything determines its beginning, its middle state and its end.  The end of man is in God Himself, in the Supernatural by definition, in an order upon which no creature can ever have an intrinsic claim.  If the end is thus of charity, so is the beginning which is relative to that end, and the nature of man witnesses that indeed it is so.  It would have been better for the fuller development of Catholic theology if theologians had not begun, in the seventeenth century, to excogitate artificial “natural” orders of fulfilment for man as opposed to his actual “supernatural” order.  It would have been far better for the development of theology if they had kept to the age-old wisdom of the Fathers of the Church and of St. Thomas Aquinas, all of whom so rightly admit no end or fulfilment for man except in a “supernatural order”.

Man has not, nor can have, any other end in any other order, and equally he has not claims, rights or dues upon the Godhead in the name of his “nature” at all.  It is sheer anthropomorphism to try to fasten any sort of exigency whatsoever upon God arising in any way whatsoever from any creature.  The Godhead can only be determined by Itself, but of this particular domestic discussion within the non-defined limits of historic Christianity we will deal more in a later appendix. It is enough now to show that the final end of man is in a communion of peace, love and wisdom in and with God, and because the object of this union, God Himself, is the  “Supernatural” in Itself, therefore the beginning, life, and fulfilment of man is in the “supernatural order”.

God is the sunshine of Man’s soul

If it is not possible for man to reach up to God, because man cannot share the Love which is the very Being of God unless God first communicate himself to man. It belongs to God to stoop to man’s frailty and to those necessities in man’s desiring which mark the measure in man of God’s largesse.  Man cannot acquire the possession of the True, the Good, and the Love which is God unless the Absolute first communicate Himself to the soul in its substance and in its powers.

To possess God, to enjoy God in a way can only be distinctly described by human analogies as the lasting joy of satisfying love in friendship, implies a deepening of the stature of the soul, a growth of personality, an enhancement of being which is achieved through deeper knowledge, deeper wisdom, deeper measure of that mature adulthood of the soul which shines forth in the Christian virtues of the intellectual and moral order;  wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, the awe of God, and many another list well-known to Christians from their catechisms.  All of this underlines one supremely necessary being, the absolute need for God to reveal Himself to man, to instruct, teach, fortify and attract man.  If God is the measure of man's fulfilment, even in this life, then that God who is the light, life, and bread of the human soul must play upon its substance that the seed may be quickened with the pulsing life of God's own touch.  He is the sunshine of the soul, and the soul must await and desire his ray; unless he prompts it, it would be dormant for ever.

How far above man’s unaided power to comprehend and to absorb such a revelation might be, will depend upon the distance between man’s nature and powers at his beginning, and the stature to which he is meant to attain under the dispensation of God.  Only God can reveal all this  to man, who is not the measure of his own fulfilment, can know no more of this than an infant can understand of the highest human attainments and responsibilities. Only the content of a revelation coming from the Intellect of God, from the “Word” of God’s own Being can show forth this to man.  The whole issue of man’s fulfilment in a spiritual order under a spiritual principle of finality, namely God himself, has subtleties which the mind that is spiritually immature cannot at once understand.  We have already said that more than mere information is required, information is only part of the process; the ultimate consummated happiness of man, like the fulfilment of any being in any order, lies in a possession of the object of its desire in fruition.

Man created for friendship with God – divine grace

If God is the fruition of man, God must be possessed by man.  The possession of God is the fruition of the Being of God in Himself, and mere knowledge will not achieve this for man, any more than the clear light of a frosty day will prompt the growth of a living seed without the warmth of the springtime sun.  If man is to possess God, God must increase and deepen the stature of the soul, it must deepen in the powers of its spiritual nature even as a material seed develops the powers of its material nature in growing.   This influence of “grace” as the Christian calls it, deepens the soul in wisdom and understanding, so that a man comes to understand, appreciate and actually to love God more deeply, more truly, more perfectly within his own heart.  All this can only come from the action of God upon the soul which is made relative to himself; without this influence of God upon the soul and within the soul, a man is naturally unable to understand rightly and fully the things which are of God and of himself.

For this reason no non-Christian philosopher has ever written of God, man, and the nature of man without grievous errors, because the measure of their spiritual knowledge and of their interior wisdom of soul has been so small.  What light and warmth of God’s grace their own goodwill had won for them was never sufficient to enable them to compass creation without grievous errors, nor could it be.  The same is true today, more shockingly true than ever before since the days of Jesus Christ.  We live among, and we are ruled by, men of great genius and achievement, who lack wisdom, patience, humility, depth of heart, and certainty of the destiny of those millions whom their thoughts and actions rule.  We are continually plunged into tragedy because great men lack wisdom, and in them we see as it were the powers of angels controlled by the thoughts and passions of selfish children.  Christ, who was God, did not err when he said “without me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5)

Knowledge and teaching of every sort concerning God is only a means to the fuller possession of God in truth and in love and God can only be possessed if He himself prompts the soul by that manifestation of himself which wisdom and teaching contains, to desire Him more fully.  Desire consummated in love is the nourishment of the soul, and by loving God the soul grows bigger and deeper within, and can absorb more from its Bread of Life.  There is no other way for a spiritual being. The truth and goodness which all men desire if they live in sincerity are only the attributes of the Good and the True;  Him the heart of a man desires to possess, and in possession sweetly to repose.   Blessed is he who in this present state of bare beginning has started upon this royal way to union with God in perfect love, for he has begun to attain heaven upon earth, as he is meant to, and he hears his treasure and his sweet reward within his own soul; for heaven, like hell, begins on earth.

Economy of Revelation in human history

The life of man begins dimly and in a small growth, and from the social nature of men, who necessarily are “members one of another” the very degree of perfection of the individual spirit will be greatly affected by the social conditions of organized human life, the more so given the ravages and complexities introduced into social life by human sin.  It must therefore be expected that any revelation made to the human race by God will begin as something partial and imperfect, but continuous, and deepening in content, even as the first days of spring are sufficient to quicken the grain of wheat, but not enough to ripen it into harvest.  Men too, both individually and socially must develop by degrees, and it is not possible for them to possess all things at once.  It would be thus even without sin, but sin and its repercussions upon the individual and upon society, immensely retards this progress towards the perfect understanding of the economy of God in creation, and the revelation of God to man would have to be, as it was in fact, conditioned by this terrible handicap.

Such a revelation at the dawn of human history would be dim in degree and undeveloped in content.  At least before sin wounded and confused the nature of man, it could come as something co-natural to man; present in the intuitive understanding and peaceful awareness of God, without discursive reasoning, as the “Good”, as “It”, which would be in the depths of a pure and sinless soul in the very first of our race.  For God seeks the soul before it seeks Him, and the communication of God to the soul in such measure as it is fitted to receive is always present unto it, for God loves man without man’s meriting, and God loves man more than man loves God.

The soul has never differed in nature or substantial powers in any man, from the beginning to the present day, and the soul of man, independently of matter, has its own native powers of understanding.  It is good of its nature, it is intelligent of its nature, and it can judge of right and wrong of its nature, though in a limited degree.  Such revelation of God as the soul needed at the beginning of human history in order that it might come easily and sweetly towards its end, deepening more and loving more profoundly over the years, might derive at first from that immediate union of the soul with God which is a living prayer, manifest in words and in acts, and which would have been much more common among men, and much more perfect in degree, without the intervention of sin.

The understanding of God necessary for an increasing union between the created spirit and the uncreated Spirit in wisdom and in love, might not involve anything more than this in the initial condition of human life.  As time went on more would be necessary, the control and direction exercised over men by God would deepen as their knowledge of all things deepened, and as their needs increased.   The need for authority would increase, especially after the fact of sin, and the weakness and confusion engendered by sin, this revelation would require to be more “distinct” more of an “authoritative intervention” than before. Nevertheless it would not be a true intervention because it would be one continuous fulfillment in man, for man, of the Law of Finality.

Any exercise of God's necessary and unique function in man's regard, of control, direction, and principle of growth, is the fulfilment of that one law of His creative wisdom which we have named the Law of Control and Direction, or the Law of Finality.   God never does anything arbitrarily or unnecessarily, for God is the all-wise.  Arbitrary and incoherent conduct belongs to human folly alone, and if the actions of God seem unnecessary to certain men, it is because they measure the destiny and the needs of men by their own sin-rotted smallness, and not by the Being of God, which is the true measure and exemplar of man’s nature.

Man’s development requires fuller Revelation

It is certain that there would be teachers and masters within human society as soon as it began to develop, for men are by nature members one of another, they are co-operative creatures, and they fulfill their own destiny in loving and helping each his brother.  What men knew and understood of God within their own souls as spirit to spirit they would certainly not keep to themselves.  What men could realize of themselves concerning God, and what they could supplement from the direction of wiser and deeper minds aided and assisted by God, could suffice for a very long time in a primitive society, and while it would be far from what men would increasingly desire, it would be all that men could receive while human life remained on a level so primitive that a more perfect tradition and a deeper understanding of God would be beyond the range of most men to receive and beyond the power of so low a social order to develop, or even to retain.

An order in which the revelation of God to man remained so dim and so vague would not suffice for ever, especially in a condition of mankind confused and weakened by sin and its appalling repercussions on the individual and upon society.  It could not suffice indefinitely in any case, for as civilization developed and broadened, and as man increased both in the average capacity of his brain, and even more in the power of the soul to know from inherited knowledge retained in a stable civilization, man would need more and more urgently to learn many things concerning himself, his fulfilment, and his end.  There would, and there did arise many questions, moral and doctrinal, which could never be answered with authority by man alone. Christian scholars have said very justly that at the time of the Incarnation of Christ, the mood of the noblest minds produced by the Roman-Hellenic Empire, was one of frustration and deadlock.  Such a man as Plato rose to no mean level of spiritual insight, but Democritus also was far from wrong in his philosophy of physics, and until Christianity, nobody had found any way of reconciling the “spirituals” and the “materialists” of the ancient world.  In any event, all of them lacked final authority, and upon the word of a man, even a man supported by great wisdom and great miracles, everlasting authority does not rest.

No mere man can know everything, however true his teaching or intimate his union with God.  Future ages can always claim truly that he was a man of his time, deficient in many things, unable by the very limitations of his knowledge of God and of creation, to speak with a final sanction valid for all ages.  There are dogmatic and moral issues which arise from the new circumstances of new periods of history;   the release  of  the  individual,  especially of  women,  from  the  near-slavery  imposed  by  the  economic  and technological barbarism of past ages is only one among many such problems in our own time, and such problems impose new stresses upon accepted modes of life and behaviour which are ultimately based upon doctrines, even though the doctrine must be distinguished from its accepted practical application.  In our own times, the greater freedom of the individual in most countries of the civilized world from the more crushing forms of economic servitude, has raised problems concerning especially marriage and family life which are truly new, and call for a new application of true teaching to new circumstances.  The authority of a man alone, however holy or wise, cannot bind the human heart, especially when the truth imposes onerous obligations, and when in addition the animal passions of human nature resent the curb.   An intellectual excuse with some foundation, becomes as in our own day, an eagerly accepted excuse for moral breakdown.

As human life developed in complexity slowly over the ages, despite the retarding influence of sin, always allied to barbarism of thoughts and of deeds, the need for a supreme authority and for all embracing revelation of God to man, would be, and was felt more deeply.  While something remains to be given which is meant for man, and which men cannot give, man can always answer with Pontius Pilate:  “What is the truth?” (Jn 18:30)  for only God can give man the complete witness to the truth.

Revelation in Salvation History

The desire as time passes for a deeper and more specific understanding of God, of man himself, and of creation, an understanding which linked all man’s knowledge and all his activities in one synthesis of wisdom and truth would be the more urgent according as the stature to which man was destined to attain was the more above his own unaided powers and feeble intellect.   The greater the distance between the potential of man’s created beginnings and the actuality of his final perfection, the more the “draw”, or interior attraction upon the soul of God’s own Spirit, would be a “draw” working internally upon the soul, and externally through every aspect of human action, prompting desire in noble minds, and spur forward growth of soul.

To this purpose there had to be, and there was, from the days of the first men onward, an authoritative revelation of God to men, however we describe it or qualify it in its beginnings.  The Law of Control and Direction, the manifestation of God’s creative wisdom and unchangeable purpose, to which man also is subject, requires that for man there should be available to him his proper principle of control and direction, otherwise the intelligent wisdom and purpose of God in creating would be negated in man which is an absurdity.  At no other time was man an orphan in this world, God was always his Father.  That there is a limit, from the nature of man itself, to what man can individually and socially absorb at once, Christ Himself recognizes for us, when speaking to the Apostles of His own Church, he says to them shortly before His Ascension:  “I have yet many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now, but when he, the Spirit of Truth is come he will teach you all truth, ...He shall glorify me;   because he  shall take what is mine and declare it to you. ” (Jn 16:14-15)

The Church of Christ is taught the infinite fullness of the revelation of Christ by degrees over the ages, which no man, not even the Church herself, can comprehend all at once, nor even at all, save as circumstances make it possible to see the new relationships and deeper majesty of things of God in Christ. Man always must learn by degrees, and as he makes progress by degrees he is able both individually, and socially, to take in more.  The greatest of the world’s scientists had need to begin with simple addition and the multiplication tables, and the greatest of the saints began with the common prayers all Christian men learn upon their mother’s knee. The revelation of God to man began as milk for babes;  the supper-table of Christ before His Passion was the consummation of one continuous increase, a process which is paralleled, and must be paralleled, in all the acts, and thoughts, and deeds of men.

As the control and direction of human life exercised by the Supreme Spirit of God upon the spirit of man deepened in content, there arose outstanding teachers and doctors of religious truth among men.   There would have been the priest and the prophet in any case, whether sin had darkened the human social scene or not; for sin, which is a denial of the good, changes nothing and creates no new order;  sin only detracts from what already exists.  The knowledge given by priests and teachers, even when directly assisted by God, and deeply united with Him in soul, could not suffice for ever, if man was to have a directive in his life truly adequate to his nature, and truly related to his end.  No human mind, however holy can portray God as He is, nor man as he is to God, nor with a plenary authority which increases without loss, diminution, or error, express the content of that Godhead in whose perfect substance man is breathtakingly imaged.

There appears to be a supreme difficulty here, for the nature of man seems to make it impossible for God ever to communicate Himself fully and adequately to man, in that way which is the perfection of human adequacy.   If angels exist, created beings which are purely and simply spiritual entities consisting in intellect and will alone which cannot be argued directly from reason but can be known from revelation at least,  and the high fruitions of that order, there is no difficulty in their case.  Once again the Law of Finality will require of them, as created and relative entities, that they have their proper principle of control and direction; because they are spiritual beings, God is their fulfilment, and can alone mature their spirits to that end, in the communication of the Life which is in his own Being to theirs.   God will be the sunshine, shower, and quickening principle of their created substance.  There is no difficulty for them, for God can communicate himself fully to them as the Pure Spirit upon the being of pure spirits by unimpeded contemplation, by knowledge infused directly, and received intuitively within their substance in a content of pure wisdom.  Because God is Pure Spirit, and an angel is a pure spirit, the ray of the Divine Sun strikes unimpaired pure and serene upon their substantial being, but with man the case is otherwise.

Man requires a final spiritual revelation through the medium of matter

Man is a spiritual personality, but not a pure spirit.  There are three possible orders of being, all of which are created by God and none of which are contradictory to each other.  A created being can be purely spiritual, simple in nature and person such as an angel; a complex of spirit and matter, as is man; or purely material as is all life within this universe which is less than man.  Man is the bridge between the purely spiritual, and the merely material, all his thoughts, words, and deeds are bound up with the participation of spirit and matter in a common life.   It does not seem possible that man can ever be intimately and adequately in contact with God; perhaps an individual soul may be ravished with the highest contemplation, but continuity of contact with God, a union proper to both parts of his nature with full sufficiency, valid for society as well as for the individual, this seems to be beyond the powers of a composite nature.

Some Christian theologians have thought that but for the coarsening of man’s mind by sin, and the direct errors and chronic feebleness of response to good which sin has induced within human nature, man could be sufficiently taught and sufficiently developed in the powers of his soul by contemplative union with God by itself.  This however is untenable, for sin or not, man still remains a rational animal, not an angel, and if God meant man to live and learn after the manner proper to the spiritual order alone and exclusively, most unwisely did he fit his soul to a body, which body must always be a distraction from such a form of knowledge, and a hindrance by its very nature and necessities to the fullest participation of the intuitive contemplation of God.

Even less satisfactory would such an order of life be when we consider the social aspects of human life, which are only the natural corollary of his rational and animal nature.  It is inconceivable that all men would live in  spiritual independence of each  other,  or  that  the greater would  not  communicate their deeper knowledge and deeper love to the lesser.  Here it is that the crucial distinction between men and pure spirits stands out most strikingly, for a man can experience contemplation directly, through the powers of his soul, but he cannot communicate this wisdom to another immediately through the same medium.  He is forced to co-operate with matter, he needs the spoken word of the mouth of man which transmits through the medium of matter the content of his spirit.  Besides, the fundamental difficulty, especially for the widespread and social teaching of mankind remains: the lack of final and conclusive authority, the inability of any man to speak a word valid for all times, authoritative for all times, capable of deeper development of content, capable of providing new inspiration and new answers to new needs without change, retraction or some integral deficiency of content.

Under the Law of Control and Direction man must have such an authority, and it must develop, and so develop that it fills out like a seed and becomes a great tree, so that the birds of the air nest in the branches thereof. (Mt 13:32)   If civilisation was meant to continue and develop continuously, the increasing knowledge of man, his social and moral relations, his conception of the love of his neighbour and his brother due under the common fatherhood of God, all this in all its aspects would need to be synthesized and held in one relation to God.  It would include the present and future fulfilment of man, and have an orientation which must be continuous and abiding, unless human life, both in the individual and in society is to be subject to violent breakdown and social tragedies.  What man can give such a theology to the world? Does it not obviously require the direct revelation of God in person and in Himself?  What man can be such a king among men, over men, for men, and for the world?

Completeness of Revelation - the Incarnation of the Wisdom of God

There is a man, who, cast out and crucified by sinners, proclaimed such a vocation in himself, and who said to his cringing judge, “You say that I am a King, but for this I was born, and for this I came  into the world; to bear witness to the truth.  Every one that is of the truth hears my voice.” (Jn 18:37)   But this man said that He was God made flesh for man.  This saying is hard, and if you cannot hear it easily now, attend and follow on with us, that this saying may become easier hereafter.  Sure enough it is, that if it were possible, this would be a most gracious and most perfect manner of providing for man his necessary determination from God at all times, with perfection for growing human achievement, with wisdom for widening and deepening human communion in a stable civilisation.  Is it not  because  many have  lost  this  certainty  in Christ that  a fearful  tyranny,  already worm-rotted and sick but the more savage for its secretly recognised failure to hold men, stands across one half of the World in the East, and faces a Christianity in the ancient and newer provinces of Christendom which is decadent and unable to resist it properly?   Therefore the world hovers on the razor-edge between unhappy peace and unhappier war; and still there is no other name under heaven given to men by which they may be saved.  What name but the authority of God speaking, teaching, revealing, loving, and since sin, also suffering, is enough for distraught mankind?

From the word of man...

Yes, there is no escape from it, whatever a man can, and should possess of God through contemplation in the deep powers of his soul, this contemplation must be supplemented by a manifestation externally in the spoken and the written word.   In man spirit and matter must work in fullest harmony, and neither the individual nor society can live perfectly according to the nature of man, unless matter co-operated fully, according to its own material order, with the intellectual order of the spirit.  In the “word” of man, in the nature,  significance  and  all-embracing  need  of  the  word,  we  find  the  clue  to  the  manner  of  human operations, individual and social, without any respect to the problem of sin. Because what the “word” demonstrates in man is of the fundamental essence of human nature considered in itself as an order of being between mere matter and sheer spirit.

The “word” of a man is not a spiritual thing, nor a material thing, - like man it embodies each order, but that which gives its meaning is a spiritual, intellectual content.  The word of a man is an intelligent content expressed through and in a material medium, whether that medium is speech, writing, signs, painting or music.  Before a man can convey the content of his mind to another, the interior “word” of his mind, the spiritual-physical content of knowledge as it lives in his consciousness and is impressed as a reflex upon the brain, must be transmitted through the external word, especially the spoken word, and then next in importance, through the written word.   Men can express thought and feeling also through pictorial art, sculpture, and music, but never with the precise clarity which belongs first to the spoken, and then to the written word.  A wonderful thing is this “word” of man, which summarises in its own form the mixed nature of spirit and matter in one unity which is man himself.

The words of men are no spontaneous animal calls, built into his organism, identical in all members of the species, bearing a fixed determined meaning in terms of conservation or reproduction.  The words of men, as animal sounds, are in the same material order as animal calls, even as his body is one with theirs as a material organism. But also like that body, the “words” of men are not subject to mechanical determinism, but are ruled by that spiritual principle which moulds the signification of human speech to meanings and directives imparted by the intelligent soul alone;  imparted arbitrarily without reference to mechanism of structure or function, so that as the ages pass, men make new words for new knowledge, and continually change the very structure and format of the language of earlier days.  The external speech of man is the absolutely necessary medium for the expression of the content of his mind, and the absolute necessary medium for the reception of law, teaching and determination of any sort, from others.

The whole theology and philosophy, the twin wisdoms of man’s destiny and law of life, hang upon the tremendous, and hitherto undeveloped significance, which underlies the meaning for the theologian and the philosopher of the spoken word of man as the expression of a content inherent within his mind. Through the word man reaches out to all things which are in heaven and upon earth;   the majestic cadence of noble literature, the painted vision of the poet, the ponderous measured weight of epic human sorrow, the keen, incisive knowledge of the scientist, all these and more besides live within the words of man.  Through his “word” a man’s soul pulsates beyond itself, and reaches out to another. Without the word his spirit may be a treasure house of priceless riches, but they are locked in silence, and will be lost in death without the word, which is the key to the mind and heart of a man.  There is no wisdom so far beyond the range of matter that a man cannot discuss it, and know what he means.  If he strives to impart to another a knowledge so far beyond the range of material forces, a content known and sweetly enjoyed within his own breast which is purely spiritual, then will he fling it far across the country of men’s souls in parable and metaphor, in allegory and likenesses.

Uniqueness of the “word” in human language

This is a power which belongs to him alone, uniquely among beings that breathe and walk, the power to express the reality of some thing through a likeness which is not directly true of it, neither in form nor in nature, but which has to be transferred to another order, made a metaphor, that it may be understood.  Do errors “glare” or truths “shine”?   They do not, but every man speaks thus, and understands another so speaking, and this power of expression by analogy in simple metaphor, is only the alphabet of that wisdom of transferred reference which lives in all literature, science, and art.   Without analogies, parable, and metaphor, the theologian, the philosopher, and the scientist cannot even begin to teach.

The words of men are so much conventional sounds by which the thoughts and feelings of a spiritual personality are expressed, and so little mechanist and determined reactions to functional needs of the body, that the vehicle of expression changes continuously with time, even among primitive tribesmen.   The languages of men which less than a thousand, or even five hundred years ago were almost identical, are not today intelligible unless the conventional sounds and symbols, the “modern languages” of nations whose speech has diverged from a common root, are deliberately and laboriously learned.  This we must expect: the content of the words of men bear no intrinsic relation at all to the actual sound.  It is very true that a rose by any other name, whether in English or Chinese, will still smell just as sweet.  Just as the thoughts of a man are a purely spiritual content which generate a material reflex, so also the words of a man, the external expression of this internal impression, are part spirit and part matter in their nature.   They are material media which stand for a content of the mind; in themselves meaningless, they are full of meaning only when relative to the spirit, for the intellectual order determines the meaning and reference due to them.   This principle, true of all human languages, is abundantly exemplified in modern technical and medical words, which are usually artificially derived from classical Greek and Latin roots which could never have had any direct reference to a species of knowledge entirely outside the ken of men two thousand years ago.

Because speech and writing is arbitrary and conventional, not something inbuilt into man’s physical nature with a fixed range, like a mere animal cry, the vehicle of man’s intelligible expression of himself is able to change in sound and in recorded form;  the actual sounds and markings are freely variable, because the determination of human speech is not mechanistic.  If anyone is inclined to the view that the chattering of monkeys represent a varied language with a rich vocabulary, he is entitled to his whimsy, but he must admit that they do precious little with it, and have precious little culture to show for such an apparatus.

The spiritual nature of man is demonstrated in his speech by the unity of content, identical among all nations, which underlies such a striking diversity of the physical expression of it.   Because thought, the expression of the intellect knowing, is specifically one and the same in nature and in operation, the language of one race can be “translated” to an equivalent in the language of another.  Without this underlying unity, distinct from the material order, human communication would be impossible between races with utterly distinct languages.   Men think in the same way, think the same type of thoughts, and what is equally important, all recognize a clear distinction between good and evil, true and false, although their standards of good and evil may differ in degree.  The words of men are absolutely necessary to human social existence, and while they may differ as much as English and Chinese, they all of them agree in this one point, namely that they are arbitrary symbols of an underlying intellectual content, which content, may, because of this identity of form so unlike the diversity of language itself, be transferred with precision from one set of symbols to another.

The word of Man expresses his spiritual and material being

This phenomenon of speech is most striking, the human word is so obviously a relative symbol, it is not a thing in itself in any way.  It stands for an intellectual and intelligible content as much as a flag stands for possession of a territory by a given nation, and it is no more bound up as a sound with the meaning it signifies, than the flag is of its nature bound up with a given nation.  Nations change the symbols of their nationhood, and the languages of men change likewise, only by more gradual degrees.  Body and soul in man must always work together for perfect understanding, and for the transmission of understanding.  The “words” of man are a beautiful example of this unity in man of matter and spirit, and of themselves are a sufficient demonstration of the double order in which his nature subsists.   The sounds mean nothing themselves, essentially and organically they are not fixed in any way.   The words of themselves profit nothing, it is the spirit which quickens them, and gives them the life which is their meaning.

A man has a content in his mind, something he knows and understands, something which is held within his spirit and referred back as a “reflexion” to his brain; this content, this immaterial word of his soul, has a twin word besides itself.  There is the “word” within a man’s own self which is the impression on his brain of the content of knowledge within the soul, the “word impressed” as most Catholic philosophers name it, and then there is the word expressed, which is the symbol by which this content of thought is carried over to another.   There is nothing more painful in intelligent conversation than the struggle to find, in a foreign language, a word which precisely expresses the thought in one’s mind.  So arbitrary are sounds in relation to the thoughts which give them life, that a man speaking in a foreign language he knows indifferently is often more than half unable to express his true meaning because of the generality and vagueness of the words of that language which come painfully to him as he speaks.

Thoughts make words; words of themselves are nothing at all.  Words are thoughts wrapped up in matter, and they express the very nature and necessities of a spiritual principle, the intelligent soul, which is itself bound up with matter.  There can be no change in this order of things, for it follows essentially from the nature of man.  There may be such a thing as ‘telepathic’ communication of thought, and we see no reason to doubt such a power in man, but there will never be any perfect, sure, and certain expression of human thoughts and human emotions except through those external “word” in which matter and spirit co-operate perfectly according to the perfection of the unity in matter and spirit which is human nature itself.  A word is a unity, one thing, which has definite value, but yet it is composite in nature, because the format and the significance are not the same, nor of the same order.  The format is a material, a sound:  the meaning is a content of the intellect.

...to the Word of God - the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom

Man also is a unity, one nature, one thing, but composite in nature of spirit and matter.  The words of men illustrate with perfection what man is, and his dependence upon the material both in his being and in his actions.  Man could no more be sufficiently determined by God in all the individual and social aspects of human finality by pure contemplation than human communication and daily life could be carried on by telepathy.  This is only the more true because of sin. It would still be true, because of the nature of man, and the mode of human action consequent upon man’s nature, even if no man ever had abandoned goodness and truth since the dawn of human history.  Man needs the word, the spoken word, and the written word. There is no perfect means of controlling and directing men unless the mind of God can be transmitted with God’s own authority to the mind of man with perfection, and perfection of such communication means, in the case of man, a communication through the spoken word.  There is no other means fully and properly adequate to the nature of man, and God, who made man, must, under that supreme Law of Finality by which in his own wisdom He is alone the determiner of man, have taken into account this need of man to learn, and to come to love, through the material word, the word of the flesh.

Do we not begin to understand, with rapt awe and admiration of the all-wise and all-kind mind of God, too vast to be demeaned in anything he does, that, since all human communion, all knowledge, and all love which abides among men depends upon the word, the expression of what is spiritual and free through and with the material. This must also be, by the necessity of man’s nature, the only sufficient and perfect manner in which the Intelligence of God, the “Word” which is the Living Wisdom of the Divine Mind, can contact, in order to control, direct, fulfil, and make blessed, the sons of men made to become also the sons of God?

Catholic Theologians have always taught that the economy of an incarnation of God in the flesh was highly fitting to human nature in this respect.   We however see more than a fittingness, we see a necessity of the divine wisdom itself.  This complex of spirit and matter which is man is only one person, with one final end, a destiny in the vision of God and in the bosom of God which is perfect joy.   To be wise, harmonious, and perfect, the means employed by the Divine Wisdom to bring men individually and socially as a multitude, to so perfect an end, must itself be the perfect means for that subject destined to that end. There is no means which could perfectly fulfil all the requirements of human nature other than the speaking of God to man through the words of men.  Any other means leaves the body of man with less than its perfect mode of co-operation with the spiritual order, so that neither the created soul, nor the Spirit of God could perfectly operate through that material flesh which is part of the personality and nature of man.

All created life upon this earth is meaningless without man, and in man the body is for the soul, and the soul, is for God.  Human nature requires, if the means to its end is to be ordered perfectly to the supreme perfection of the final destiny of man, that spirit and matter shall co-operate each according to their own order  both  in  God’s  life-giving  activity upon  man  and  human  society,  and  in  the  acceptance  by the individual and society of the life which is in God for men.  However the nature of man does not determine God by any natural exigency or claim upon Him in this respect, for the created and non-necessary cannot determine the Creator  who is  the Alone Necessary.  The postulation  of any exigency upon  either the Incarnation of God in the flesh, or the Beatific Vision to which final end that manifestation was given to man, is the postulation of a metaphysical impossibility.

Nevertheless, we can truly say that the nature of man requires such a dispensation of a revelation of God to man in the flesh, since the final cause of a thing, although the last stage in the consummation of any activity conditions everything else that is related intrinsically to that consummation.  Man’s need for Christ does not determine Christ from within the Godhead, but this relativity to such a dispensation of God through the Spirit of God, the “Word” of God and the flesh, demonstrates the disposition of God in the creation of man, and demonstrates in that disposition man’s natural and necessary inability to attain that end of his natural powers. It demonstrates therefore his creation in an order of finality which is one of pure charity, and not of justice, one in which the final motive is not man nor the creature at all, but God Himself, who willed so to be glorified in his creation.

God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world

If we speak strictly as theologians, Christ made men for Himself, from a motive which is relative only to Himself. Men are for God, and therefore for Christ, the only possible mediator between the Divine and the human.  Because God willed to create man, He willed to be Incarnate for man. But in the strictest language of theology, He is not en-fleshed for us, for He is the manifestation of the creative love and wisdom in which God freely disposed that we should be for Him, and exist unto Him.

In one order of love God determined by His free bounty, under the same Law of Control and Direction which holds the whole universe in one order of relativity, to cater also for man, giving him in the eternal and immutable decree of the Divine Wisdom that plenitude of control and direction, wisdom and love, relative to a blessed fulfilment in the Essence of the Godhead.  There can be only one way, for God is indefectible wisdom, and his charity is not the less wise and intelligent because it is a gift. The being of man must be swept up as it is,   matter and   spirit in one person, with the perfection due to both orders in the one personality of man. He must be swept up into the plenitude of the Godhead, perfected the more, filled out the more above measure, thought, or desire, not denied or left without meaning.  If God is the end, God is also the means of this fulfilment of man, for nothing created or creatable is a means of union with the Uncreated.  God who breathes the soul to be, under his own physical law, is likewise the bread of its life, the sun of the spirit, the beginning, the means, and the end.

Therefore, that the Law of Control and Direction might be fulfilled with perfection for man, that man might be taught of God, with perfection of wisdom, truth and love, with authority for all times, with a perfection that would fulfil all that was partial before, and led to this fullness;  with a perfection of infallible truth so utter, being born of God, that it could over all ages be developed and deepened without error, insufficiency, or contradiction, for that cause:

“The word was made Flesh,

and dwelt among us, full of Grace and Truth,

and of his fullness we have all received,

grace upon grace:

For the law was given  by Moses;

Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ;

No man has ever seen God,

the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,

He has made Him known”            (Jn 1:14,17-18)

The fulfilment of the Law of Control and Direction

One Law of Control and Direction, of Finality, operates according to the same principle differently in the different orders of being, from the movements of the elements and the laws of their synthesis to the creation and determination of man within the spiritual order. Under this Universal Law of the One Economy of Creation,  in the FIAT which determined Heaven and Earth and the destiny of men, the Wisdom of God, the “Word” of God, the Content of the Divine Intelligence was to be manifest personally to men as the Light, and Life, and Shepherd of souls.  Therefore that fulfilment  must be  foreshadowed  from dim beginnings in one continuous economy of divine revelation which looked forward to, and was consummated in Christ, in God made Man.

We have this foreshadowing in the Christian Bible; an account of God’s relations towards men, which however  partial  and  difficult  to  follow  with  exactitude  from  its  primitive  character,  vast  scope,  and antiquity, yet gives us the following outline which must be expected under the Law of Finality, and gives it unambiguously.

1) A claim to be the authoritative and developing manifestation of God to man from the beginning of man’s history onwards.

2) A pure and true conception of the Nature of God and the nature of man.   A true conception of the distinction between God and creation.

3) The realisation of insufficiency, and the expectation of a Saviour who will fulfil and perfect all that anticipates Him.

4) The rise of prophets who are teachers and guides from God for their generation, and who foreshadow in types and in symbols the coming of the Anointed of God, who will have plenary authority.

5) These spiritual teachers and masters who speak with the authority, and under the inspiration of God, give pointers and prophecies towards the future; they are ambassadors of the Messiah, and their prophecies, both of words and of types, are fulfilled in Him.

6) Even more strongly must grow the expectation of the Messiah, even more distinct the prophecies which concern Him, and as human wisdom, even aided by God, fails to meet the increasing hunger of the souls of men, more intense must grow the yearning of the souls of men who sigh: “I know that the Messiah comes, who is called Christ; therefore, when he is come, he will tell us all things.” (Jn 4:25)

It matters not that they knew him not when he came, nor knew him as God Incarnate among men, all this devolves upon the tragedy of sin, and its problems are too vast to answer here.  We must expect a primitive revelation of God to man, an exercise of some control and direction with divine authority which will deepen and expand with the growth of human knowledge and the stability of human civilisation, until the time of the plenitude of the Law of Control and Direction should be fulfilled in God made Flesh for human nature. We find all that we must expect once, and uniquely once, in the Christian Revelation.

We find a man who spoke with authority, and “not as the Scribes and Pharisees.” We find a man of prophecy,  of prophecies  which  are astoundingly precise,  and which  are understandable only after the Incarnation and in the light of the crucifixion of Christ.  We find a man who wrought great miracles by His own power, whose claim is Divinity, and whose personality and character draws the souls of good men as their true magnet, in a tender and all-surrendering love.  We find in Him every nobleness of character for which the souls of men long.  We find Him calling Himself “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” (Jn. 14:6) We find Him stating that “before Abraham was made, I AM.” (Jn. 8:58)  With this stupendous claim, here and elsewhere, to be  God  Himself,   in  the  Person  of  God,   and in the  nature  of a man,  there  goes also  a sweetness, a wisdom, a merciful love, and a balanced sanity, which was, and which today still is the confusion of his enemies and the glory of his disciples.  Shall we not say indeed, “Are you He that is to come, or look we for another?” (Lk 7:9)

CHAPTER  9

“And the Word was made Flesh”

The joy, the inspired enthusiasm, with which the first Christians proclaimed the Incarnation of Christ and the tidings of great joy that it held for all the peoples is known to us as a matter of history;   but it has become a fact of past history rather than modern history.   Today, when Christian civilisation hangs in tatters, when the Catholic Faith of the nations has been rent with heresies and schisms, when good men who glory in the name of Christians proclaim not one and the same, but many Christs, all differing in their revelation and not all Divine, the voice of the apostles of Christ falls hollow upon the nations, and men listen with respect, but not with confidence.  It is not easy, even for the voice of truth to assert itself with the same ringing majesty as of old;  the message of salvation and  new hope has lost its loud fearlessness, and Christendom itself, the haven of the world, is urgently in need of a redemption within itself.

The Incarnation always at the heart of Man’s identity and history

Yet even today, when the Faith of Christ is decayed among the nations, and when Christianity seems to belie the promises of Christ, and to be passing into the dead world of human religions, one more among many,  even  today,  whatever  individual  values  we  hold  sacred,  whatever  sanctity  we  claim  for  the personality of man, whatever freedoms, above the rut of biological materialisms we try to salvage from the ruins of a culture, all these are the droplets which remain within that chalice of the Christian Faith dashed down by the nation.  They remain like scattered heirlooms from a wasted treasure.  The fullness these noble teachings once verified has withered among us.  The living springs of Christendom run low: the waters of life which Christ promised to the peoples, do they not seem today to be a poor and muddled trickle?  But the spring still flows, and if it can flow strong again, and fill to overflow those banks of human power to comprehend that stem its stream.  As in a time of drought strong rivers fall, and cities languish in the molten air with fly-blown plagues, but come the blessed storm are cleansed, revived, and sweetened, and pulse with fiercer life, conscious of death so near;  so will it be with us.

Whatever our shame as Christians, the needless poverty from decayed inheritance, we who have received in so rich a measure of Christ’s fullness over two thousand years have not lost all.  The weakness and the wickedness of men, and all the bitter tears, the foul squalid things, the chaos of pride, lies, and deceit which have welled up from the heart of man which gives of its abundance, not all these have prevailed to death against the Church of Christ, nor yet belied even those words of Christ within a proverb, that “by their fruits you shall know them”.

At this present time, in a period of decline in Christian faith and morals which is still unchecked, still sweeping even lower, it remains true that the teachings given men by Christ, although whittled away and progressively abandoned, still preserve a better level of charity, justice, and chastity in human affairs throughout Christendom than prevails in those regions where the name of Christ has hardly entered, or where it is bitterly persecuted.  While the nations of Western Europe, the nearest to the power of antichrist, conscious of their own miserable decadence, yet shrink from the bloody servitude of Marxist Communism, in the name of what liberties do they refuse to surrender, except those liberties with which Christ alone has set them free?  Let men be of good heart then, for Christ’s religion will show itself, and at this present time, to be no failure, for it has within itself the power to bring up from its vast treasury, new things and old for the light and the comfort of men of good will.  Far from having failed within herself, or even having failed from the malice of men, so that the world stands upon the final consummation that will follow the final apostasy, the Church of Christ, we dare surmise, has not much more than begun her history.

What are two thousand years against the sum of human history which has passed before them?  And what may two thousand years appear among the centuries still to come?  It is not given to men to know the future, but we have no reason to presume that the pages of man’s story are turning upon the last leaves of their concluding chapter.  There is no reason to think that all history is ending irrevocably for men because the human race quails before powers with which it dare not trust itself to use, and before unanswered riddles it has come to despair of solving.  From all this it can much more reasonably be argued that we are ending rather the first great era of universal civilisation, and entering upon a second world civilisation that will be greater and more all-embracing than the first.

Need to re-present the essential Truth of Christ

If in the ruins of Rome, St. Augustine dreamed of a civilisation that should be the City of God on earth, and penned, even while weighted with despair and expectation of the end of the world, the noble outline of the Christian order which inspired so much of mediaeval thought, how much more reason have we today, with so much greater resources, to expect for our civilisation a resurrection out of our decay.  The time for the manifestation of Christ in the Incarnation was wisely chosen indeed in the plan of God, for it came at a period of expanding and settled civilisation under the aegis of the Roman Peace.   In spite of all the breakdowns and the partial collapses, that Empire of Rome which stood across the West and the East never really perished.  It recovered to expand more widely in the middle-ages, and in the modern period, it was continued in, and with, the Christian tradition, even after the rise of Protestantism, and it endures to our own day in the Christian peoples, free and submerged alike, of the modern world.

The epoch of settled and expanding civilisation which began with the Romano-Hellenic Empire, was the first historically known period of widespread and continuous human culture over a significant area; it came indeed to cover most of the known world by the time of the birth of Christ.  At this present time also, many of our woes arise from the insufficiency of the practical embodiments of Christian belief in existing society to inspire that society, or to direct it.  Marxism itself is only a new claimant to a very old throne, the throne of authoritative religion, and therefore the throne of the Christian and Catholic Church.   It is an alternative from which bad Christians and agnostics alike have begun to shrink in horror, for even if the Church had no more within her to give the modern age, even so would she be a better light to men than the black slavery of the spirit which has arisen out of the East, and stands upon the shores of the West.

Need for a New Synthesis

We must expect today, when we all know that a new era has begun in the history of human civilisation, that if the religion of Christ is true, and is founded upon the only claim which makes Christianity the hope of mankind: upon the Divinity personal and unambiguous of Jesus Christ, that we will find within the Church’s doctrine all that we need to fire the world anew, and to restore all things in Christ.  This new inspiration will certainly be given, for it has never failed to happen that in times of crisis the Spirit of God has worked within the Church with a new power.  This new inspiration will be yielded up from those unfathomed depths of the riches of Christ from out of which the world, like the householder in the Gospels, may bring up treasures both old and new.   We must expect new developments within genuine and orthodox Catholic theology with the more confidence because men so urgently need a new and a more compelling synthesis of Christian thought and modern knowledge.

Now, for the first time since man opened his eyes to this earth, his world is one in space and time.  Now, when it is agreed without dispute among all intelligent men that mankind must rapidly integrate a truly universal civilisation, and become one people in the brotherhood of a world-wide commonwealth, now is the time when Christ our Lord, who ceases not to work even unto now, will bestow upon us all in greater and richer measure from the fullness of that Faith which was revealed to men in the Person of God and the nature of a man.  The economy of the Incarnation continues unto the end of time for men in the authoritative Christian Church, and from the deposit of that Faith, guarded with jealousy and without betrayal from the citadel of God which rides the seven hills of Rome there will be shown to men a deeper vein, and richer yet, of God’s pure gold, latent within the inexhaustible mine of Christian Faith long worked by men.

This we must anticipate with faith and ardent hope, because the times require it, and the arm of God is not shortened more in the present time than in days of old.   The Church is never old; nothing she has achieved in the days of her youth will become the boast and marvel of a weak senility.  She never ages, and her strength must wax with the centuries to match new needs.  What things then we have heard as done in the days of our fathers, greater than these will be done in ours, by the strength of the Son of Man who is born to us.  For at all times, and throughout all times, the government is upon His shoulders.

The opportunity for a fuller development of theology and science

Never since the days when rude minds, but minds aflame with the certainty of truth, laid siege to the proud and empty paganism of ancient Rome has there lain before mankind both the need, and the attainable prospect of one world civilisation, confirmed through one Faith from God, and under God, pacified in the unity of one brotherhood, one aim in human affairs, one common charity of end and purpose.  So vast an opportunity as ours the first Apostles of Christ did not enjoy, if they had done, how certainly would they have grasped it, making it a glory to suffer and to labour for the name of Christ.

The meaning for mankind of the Incarnation of God in all that it meant two thousand years ago; in the deeper and more urgent meaning it bears for men today, cannot be expressed fittingly in the clipped language of mathematical science.  The language of poetry and mystical theology, the intimate and lovely language of love possessed in fulfilment, this tongue alone uplifts the heart of a man when he has come to love not the Incarnation, not an abstract dogma, nor even a fact, but the Person of Jesus Christ.   The language of physics and the sciences of matter is not the language that wells up spontaneously within the spirit of man which transcends all matter, and wings its way upward into God’s pure ray, until, so guided upon its limpid beam, it shall have homed deep within the infinity of the Sun of Justice.  Not in matter, nor in the sciences of matter, but in the depths of the spirit of a man will we find the kingdom of a man’s own self;  a kingdom, but a vassalage too, because the throne prepared for the Word of God from the conception of a man.

We have earlier pondered the impossibility for science to usurp the place of theology in human life, and the malaise that men have suffered since the irresponsible attempt to supplant God by a feeble human rationalism, shot through with stupid errors.  Nevertheless, in the very name of the Incarnation itself, and the majesty of divine wisdom contained within that economy of human salvation, we do not overlook, rather do we insist urgently upon the fact that the birth of Christ is the summit not only of theology and philosophy, but of material science as well.  The crown of all natural science lies in the proper order of those sciences, because Christ is their appointed purpose from the beginning, of the laws of the physical universe as they are relative to this earth of ours.

In this age when so great a gulf seems to yawn between the truths of the Church and the truths of the physical sciences, we must come to see the perfect reconciliation of these two in the unity of an economy which  is  one  wisdom,  a  wisdom  in  which  Science  and  Religion  are  necessary  complementary,  not contraries, nor even autonomous systems of knowledge which are unrelated intrinsically, but unable to clash.  If the human mind, enlightened by the grace of God which is offered to every man, will lift its eyes a little from the earth, it will see the mighty consummation in the human nature of Christ of the whole process of living development through evolution.  Without Christ, man is meaningless;  without man, all life besides is meaningless;  without life the earth is meaningless;  but all things have meaning in Jesus Christ, to whom all things are relative, through whom all things consist, of whom all things bear witness in their being.

Development of doctrine – the opportune time

It is to be expected that Christianity should be developed anew with greater fullness at this time when the presentation to the world of the Faith of Christ has become too meagre precisely on that level of the relation between religion and the physical sciences which is the natural meeting place today between revealed and natural knowledge.  It is no scandal that such a redeployment of Christian teaching has not existed until the present time, because only now, in misery, fear, and frustration are all the tribes of the earth disposed to listen in humility and with sincerity.  There is then need today for all men to possess a deeper insight into the meaning and fullness of Christ.   Nevertheless today, not less than centuries before, when the human mind approaches Christ in order that it may meditate the wisdom of God in Him, this age will not be found to dim, nor new fields of knowledge to have rendered trite the one magnificent summary we already possess. We seem to so little appreciate the motives, causes, and ends of the Incarnation of God in Christ, which has rung down the centuries for two thousand years, and which rings out today with a new depth of meaning and a more startling clarity:  that summary which is the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John.

Age has not dimmed the lustre of those noble lives of ancient inspiration.  It is astonishing how perfectly, in the light of modern knowledge, this ancient text expresses the consummation of the Law of Finality for created man in the person of God incarnate.  But, if the Christian concept of the inspiration of these ancient lines is true, then it is no longer matter for astonishment, though awe remains, for what is recent we must expect to shine out afresh in hallowed verses not as something unrelated to their content, but as the deeper fulfilment of a content already contained therein, but imperfectly developed and imperfectly appreciated. For the mind of God never grows old;  and what is written by the hand of God grows greater with years and becomes more fully what it is without self-contradiction.  Even as men grow greater with the years from infancy to manhood, and become more fully what they are;  for men are living things, and the words of God, they too are living words.

The Prologue of the Gospel of St. John

“In the beginning was the Word:

and the Word was with God:

and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.” (Jn 1: 1-2)

The doctrine of the Blessed Trinity which alone explains some of these phrases, we leave aside, it is too deep an issue, and too domestic to Christian theology, to admit of study here.  Our emphasis, since all our thought is dominated by the Incarnation, must be upon the significance of that expression “the Word”.

The word of a man is the content of his own spiritual intelligence, the abiding awareness in self- conscious knowledge of himself, and of what he possesses in terms of knowledge.  The “word”, which is the interior content of his spiritual being as it knows itself and other things through itself, is always with him, because it proceeds within his own being.  When a man speaks to another, and teaches another, he manifests exteriorly some part of this content which is his “word” to other men, through his senses.  Those spoken symbols which alone we usually consider when we label such intelligible sounds a “word”, a content of knowledge abiding in the intellect, which is transmitted through speech, and informs with meaning the physical mechanism of conventional spoken or written words.

The Word of God is the living and personal content of the Divine Intellect, an operation which proceeds personally and from eternity within the Being of God: the personal content which defines the living Intellect of God in the essence of God.   The “Word” of God which proceeds within the Being of God which is Intellect without limitation, is the ground and exemplar of all created being, of all other entity that is, which is not self-necessary but created in the wisdom of God through the free-will of God, and therefore St. John continues:

“All things were made by Him;

and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (Jn 1: 3)

But for spiritual creations, self-conscious intelligences whose life is quite above the dim and automatic awareness  of  material  life,  God is  more than  the creator,  He is  also  the personal  fulfilment  of their individual being, and therefore our text proclaims:

“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” (Jn 1: 4)

The Light of man

Not by bread alone does man live, whose nature surpasses the material order and the pleasures proper to that order.   All human love, even when it is warped and wasted by selfishness and lusts, seeks more than physical pleasures alone, it seeks to rest in the wholeness of the good loved, in the character, personality and nobility of the person loved.  The most hypocritical sinners attempt to sublimate their lusts, being conscious of the emptiness and shame that lies in sensuality, and attempting to mount a lie within the frame of truth. In this men bear witness in themselves that the good and true they seek lies in the sweet depths of nobility of personality, in loveable integrity of being, and the perfection of this can only be found for man in the infinite loveableness of God, from whom man comes, after the likeness of whose substance he is made, for whom he was breathed forth into existence, and back to whom his spirit must go to rest, or burn eternally in the unsated fires of unfulfilled desire.

God is our sun, our food, our quickening principle and delightful love, in whom we live, and are, and have our being.  In whom, if we do not live, we are famishing, sinking lower in dull emptiness of soul into a starvation of spirit which can end in what is for the soul of man the equivalent of death.   In the Divine Word, the content of the divine wisdom was life, the beginning of life, and the end of life for a spiritual being; Alpha and Omega in one. This life was the light of men, necessarily so, that man may have that determination from God that his nature bespeaks, implores, and looks to with confidence.   The Divine Wisdom alone is the proper determinant of man, a determinant as a Person to persons, in an order of wisdom and love freely given, and voluntarily accepted. There is no other order possible between God and a spiritual being.  This light was the light proper to man, and men are palpable beings, en-wrapt with matter, and therefore the light must shine palpably for a palpable being, in matter for a material being, publicly for a social being;  and in all these things the Light was not found wanting.

The darkness did not comprehend it

“And the Light shines in the darkness

and the darkness did not comprehend it....

This was the true light which enlightens

every man that comes into this world.” (Jn 1: 5, 9)

The Light which is Christ shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not recognise it.  This darkness is the nature of man, now weakened and degraded by sin, and by the inherited effects of human sin from the beginning of his time.  Sin it is which has wounded, wasted, and coarsened man, particularly through the flesh, which is subject to generation, and therefore subject to the legacy of the past for better or for worse. But the greater evil for the individual is the more immediate and virulent darkness which is deliberate personal sin, that wilful darkness of mind which more than all else frustrated the fullness of the Living Light when it was made flesh in Christ. This darkness is the pride of power, the lust of honour, wealth, and voluptuous pleasure, that cold-blooded wickedness in men from which derives the great mass of human suffering.

It was from this darkness derived the sufferings of the Son of God, in whose mortal ears there rang the frenzied cry “away with him, crucify him”.   As it was said to His own people, and through them to the whole  world  in  which  all  flesh  had  corrupted  its  way,  “which  of  the  prophets  did  not  your  fathers persecute?”   The world has always crucified the prophet and the saint, just as it crucified the Master of saints and prophets.   Even the plain good man, upon whose moral worth ultimately rests the pretentious ponderous superstructure of human society, even he is subjected to jealous persecutions in greater or in lesser degree.  How then could Christ escape the Cross, when the Light of the world shone in the darkness?

Nevertheless He, and He alone, was then and is still, the true Light which enlightens every man who comes into the world.  The creative act by which a man is conceived of God more truly than of a woman, is an act of love which does not terminate at conception, but which rather begins at conception, and unless forcibly thwarted by a man himself, ends in the final completion in the Beatific Vision in the depths of the being of God himself.   God is always and alone the true Light which enlightens a man, and which by enlightening blesses his person until it matures in the perfection of love and of those virtues of the human personality which originate in the union of the love of God.  All this God is, and that He might be the Light and the Life with that plenitude which marks his own wisdom, and which is imprinted upon the nature of man within the necessities of human nature.

The world knew Him not

“He was in the world,

and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.

He came to His own,

and His own received Him not.” (Jn 1: 10-11)

He was in the world, that the universe which His Law had erected over endless leagues of time might receive Him as the plenitude of that Law:  the fulfilment of every natural law in the Incarnate Word, the principle of life and government personally for man, uniquely for man.  It is the supreme tragedy of history, a tragedy which marks  our fall and all its wantonness, and all its woe, a tragedy beyond all human sorrowing whose pathos rings in the simple staccato phrases of St. John, that while all creation looked forward to the advent of the King of kings, and Lord of lords, the blossoming of all history in the Word made flesh, from whose first fiat all times and ages have proceeded,  that the world of men did not know Him when He came.

The blind world of matter knew Him indeed, in that without sight or comprehension it was formed for Him, and gave of its own to prepare His coming; it had given of its own when He was conceived as a man in the womb of the Virgin.  This loyalty of Nature which had never sinned, and disloyalty of the mass of those who alone could in truth be “his own”, Christ marks with sorrowing words for all human ages, when entering Jerusalem in the brief and borrowed pomp of that Kingship upon which rest the bases of our earth, He answered those who sought to restrain the people from their acclamation of the Messiah: “I say to you,

that if these shall hold their peace, the stones will cry out.” (Lk 19:40)

There is a mine of meaning in these words.   If men had not recognised in some brief measure his Kingship decreed before time, embodied in all Nature and its laws and seasons, then, when He came into His own, and entered Jerusalem as the King of Ages, Messiah, and Lord of the world, if some human tongue had not proclaimed Him King, then indeed the very stones would have cried out, for He was the Head of all, not only as God, but as God made matter for men.

His own did not receive Him

“He came unto His own,

and His own received Him not.” (Jn 1: 11)

In this sentence we see the rod by which the nature of man is measured, man’s stature too, and dignity without par in matter.  We are “His own” not by virtue of what we are, but because of what He is, in whose likeness we are fashioned.  We have here also the measure of man’s weakness and the token of man’s fall, in that when the Word of God fell upon the ears of men through the words of a man, for the greater part men would not heed it.  Only a few hated the words of the Word of God, but only a few loved also.  Most of them were muddled, timorous, and awed, and as it was then, so it remains today.

It takes a pure soul to admit the Light of the World in a fair measure.   In most men some light gets through, but they are too fearful of the pain of purification to do more than follow from afar.  Such men love Him, while love does not also hurt, but such men do not follow Him even to Calvary.  The scandal of the Cross leaves them subdued along the way.   They mourn Him as  the women  mourned  along the way of the Cross, but unless a stronger spirit should rally them, in time of tribulation they fall away, for they love their fleshly darkness more than they love his Light.  Nevertheless over the most of them Christ will still, we think, find excuse to throw the mantle of his mercy and his pardon, for their spirit is willing, but their flesh is weak.

Men are “His own” because they are intelligent beings, made to crave with always unsatisfied desire for love.  Not for the love of sensuality, that poor, gross-bellied god of modern man, but for the love by which the soul seeks union with another like itself, which fulfils itself.  Such love is found to consist in wisdom and love together, the which experienced, is delight and joy.   Such a delightful love in which a man contemplates the beautiful, good and true and conjoins himself thereto, and in which, when he has deeply tasted, he rests with sweetness all secure, as a child will rest upon the breast of a mother.  This is the love for which a man hungers, often enough when he does not know what it is he seeks, and despises its name. This is the only love which fills out the heart, enriches the mind, deepens the being of a man;   which sated does not disgust, which never cloys, nor wearies upon a man.  This is the love for which men are made, that they may enjoy it also on earth, not only in heaven;  which is found in God and once found may be shared with his friends, but which out of him is neither to be found, nor admits of any substitute.

He came to His own

As new born babes carried helpless at the breast, although their very being must cry out for Him, unless He should first reach down, they could not of themselves reach up to Him.   He alone is Master, Lord, and lasting  Lover,  but  bound  in  spirit,  and  still  more  in  the  flesh  by  the  limitations  of  the  creature’s insufficiency, it must needs be that the majesty of the Divinity, inaccessible to created power, should first stoop down to the natural feebleness of those men whom He did not scorn to call the sons of God.  There is no folly here, nor anything which demeans the name and nature of Almighty God, only a wisdom sublime beyond man’s reach, a love greater than any which has entered into the heart of man to conceive, a wisdom, and a gracious charity of will, fully justified, and fully comprehended, only in the infinity which is the Godhead.

Accordingly, in the name of that unbounded wisdom, and under His own Law of Control and Direction for creation, He took upon Himself the form of man, that He might be fully and perfectly manifested in His plenitude to His own; a plenitude by which man could alone with a fullness perfect to his nature, rejoice in the light which enlightens every man that comes into the world.  Bitter woe it was, bitter beyond the power of men to mourn in Lenten lament, that men loved darkness rather than the Light, and love it yet.

“He came to His own.” (Jn 1: 11)

Words which mete out the generous measure of the worth of a man, the worth and dignity which glorifies the least gifted and the most afflicted of the sons of men; which measures too the majesty of that One Law which embraces all creation from the building up of universes until it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ for the sake of “His own”.  There is not outside the Being of God any other Light, or Life, or Way for men, nor is any conceivable, and therefore did God come to us, his own, as authoritative wisdom, our last Master, into this created order over which, himself excepted, man alone is lord and master.  This is no guess, no justifiable speculation of theology, but the crystal truth worked through like a silken thread in all of this magnificent prologue of St. John which we follow, and upon which following, we linger to meditate.

Incarnation determined in God’s charity from eternity, not determined by sin

In the Intellect which is the Word of God, whose purpose is framed before all times, and framed with perfection in all detail, we are not “His own” because of sin, nor ever could we be.  It was not human sin and the degradation which sin entails for human kind which decreed the Incarnation of God in Christ.  We are “His own” by creation and by nature, a destiny determined to that purpose of our substance which is its consummation in the likeness of Christ.  By nature we are “His own”; but, let us remember, not by nature, either ours or His, is He “our own.”   What we refer to Him in love, or service, or due obedience is given all in strictest justice; we are unprofitable servants always in that we do no more than we are obliged to do.  We are relative to Him in an order of strict justice.  We do Him no charity nor kindness.  All whatsoever that He does in our regard is kindness, nothing of it is due justice.  We are relative to Him, and He to us, a mutuality of love, but ours is justice, we return a debt, and His relation to us is a charity, a love which preceded all return, and prompts what returns we make.

If we are relative to God, God is relative to us, but not in one common order, and this distinction points the absolute distinction of Creator and created, the supernatural and the natural order.   The supernatural order is the perfection of nature beyond its order, and that in one charity, not in any justice, which charity frames the very substance of a man, then prompts to more what has been made, and makes perfect what has been prompted.   It was not the sins of men which determined the Incarnation as an economy of man’s salvation, but rather the fallen state of human nature into which the Incarnate Son entered so conditioned the Kingship of Christ that it was vindicated in triumph over sin, and over death, which is the wages of sin.  The order of man’s salvation consequent upon the advent of sin into human nature became a redemption worked out through love patient even to crucifixion, rather than the majestic and eagerly accepted kingship it was meant to be.  In this St. John bears us out, because he marvels that:

“He was in the world:

and the world was made by Him:

and the world knew Him not.” (Jn 1: 10)

The “world” is recapitulated in man, he who sums up in his own nature all that the universe has, matter and spirit, both orders in one whole.  If man’s nature had never been despoiled by sin, if above all, integrity of body and soul alike, attuned perfectly to the grace of God had been maintained over human history, even in a partial manner among some of the tribes of men, then prophets and teachers would have pointed even more precisely and eagerly to the time when there should enter into the world the Word made Flesh, for the more abundant life of men who would have known him when he came.   Natures unclouded by sin and grossness would have acclaimed Him when He came, as God en-fleshed, as the Wisdom of the world, the Light of all mankind, the Omega who fulfils in the habitude of man, what was Alpha in the spawning of the universe

The rejection of Christ

“He came unto His own

and His own received Him not.” (Jn 1: 11)

The Divine Wisdom Incarnate met a rejection so full of grief, and of such frustration of His kingship, that only God made man could alone know it all, and tell the whole of it, as tell He did, when in the garden of olives His sin-shocked soul sweated through his flesh, and grief distilled in bloody beads that dripped upon the ground. (Cf Lk 22:44)  Nevertheless, with mercy for the race of fallen man, despite the lonely grief of being unknown, ignorantly loved, and grossly understood, to those who received Him in some imperfect measure, varying in degree of whole-heartedness, to such as these, in his day, and in ours:-

The Word was made flesh

“To as many as received Him,

who believed in His Name,

He gave power to become children of God,

who were born, not of blood,

nor of the will of the flesh,

nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the WORD WAS MADE FLESH, AND DWELT AMONG US,

and we beheld His glory,

glory as of the only Son from the Father,

full of grace and truth.” (Jn 1: 12-14)

At a time in history wisely chosen God gave His blessing, and our earth yielded up her fruit:  the blessed fruit of the Womb of Mary, Our Lord, Jesus Christ:

“And from His fullness have we all received:

grace upon grace.” (Jn 1: 16)

Of this fullness we do all receive, even in the crumbling chaos of this age.  This fullness of Christ it is, triumphing in the hearts of men against any perverted logic of a false biology, or of false eugenics, which maintains throughout Christendom those fundamental values which free men, however worthless their own lives, are willing to defend, that life may be worth living upon earth at all.  There is no reasonable appeal to universal brotherhood, no sense in suffering fools gladly, among individuals, or among nations, unless Christ be the truth, and his teaching the grace which lends all graciousness to human lives.  Even in the merciless dialectic of Marx, which cannot in pure reason attribute any value to the individual in his own right, nor does so in practice, what illogical appeal there is to an equality of all men an order of brotherhood and mutual love, is not justified by science, though introduced to soften the mechanistic rigours of a philosophy of science.   These redeeming elements derive, probably unconsciously, from that Christian formation of all European thought which over two thousand years has leavened so much of the life of man, however imperfectly.

Of the fullness of Christ we have all received, and we had to receive, otherwise  the teeming mind of man,  and his  insatiable heart,   would  have been neglected by the God who made him.  Our deepest need for God-made-Man, that in man all creation might be perfect under one Law of wise control, rings out with precious beauty in those succeeding verses of St. John;  verses so apt, and verses so startlingly true in these days of ours, that their inspiration stands as boldly clear as does the print which holds them:

“For the law was given by Moses;

Grace, and Truth, came by Jesus Christ.” (Jn 1: 14)

Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ

No man of himself can do more than point a way, or give a law, even as Moses gave the law and the commandments to the ancient Jews.  What any man gives, although with the authority of God, is still quite insufficient, as was the Mosaic law, for no man is the light which enlightens every man that comes into the world.  No mere man is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Bread of Heaven which gives life to the world; the living waters, the Good Shepherd of souls;  the Vine of whom all men besides are branches, and into whom being grafted, all men draw life, that they may bear fruit and live  more abundantly within their own, by a principle of life which is not their own.

No man can be all things in wisdom, love and noble joy to men, not even in his own time, - and how much less for all times?   No man is, without qualification of any sort, the Truth; and therefore, without qualification no man can speak the whole truth of his own, for he cannot comprehend it as it is, for the whole truth, is God in person.  He alone is the True, and the measure of all truth in creatures, especially of those truths which exist because of a direct relation to Himself.  No man can control the intellect of man, direct the will of man, fulfil the desire of man, except Him who is the measure, the norm, the authority of these things to all men, and such a one is God alone.  Therefore St. John continues in this same mighty preface:

“No man has seen God at any time:

the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father,

He has declared Him.” (Jn 1: 18)

The word of St. John, when He speaks of the Word of God, is clear enough, and his argument convinces, but if we would have more, we may have it in the words of the Incarnate Truth Himself. From the beginning of the third chapter of St. John’s Gospel, in the straightforward language of conversation between the Word made Flesh, and a Jew learned in the theology of his people:

“Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  This man came to Jesus by night, and said him ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no man can do these signs which you do unless God is with him’.  Jesus answered him:  ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God…’  Nicodemus said to him,    ‘How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?’  Jesus answered:

‘truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit,  he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit.  Do not marvel that I say to you:-  ‘You must be born anew’,  the wind blows where it will, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes nor whither it goes, so is it with everyone who is born of the spirit.’  Nicodemus said to Him:  ‘How can this be?’  Jesus answered him:  ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?   Truly, truly I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.  If I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe me, how will you believe me if I shall speak to you of heavenly things?  ... No man has ascended into heaven, except him who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. ... For God so loved the world that He give His only-begotten Son; so that whoever believe in him may not perish, but have eternal life.  For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world may be saved by Him.  He who believes in Him is not judged, but he that does not believe is judged already, for he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.  And in this is the judgement, - that the Light has come into the world, and man loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.” (Jn 3: 1-19)

C H A P T E R  10

The Character of Christ

Before the personality of Christ as that word means character, the pen of man is powerless.  Here is the revelation of the total which is God.  Let every man seek and ponder for himself, now, we can only treat of Christ as a personality in generalities.  The private understanding and personal appreciation of Christ as an individual, this will be more or less, richer or poorer upon so many factors, most of them subjective.  A man must come to know Christ from the life of the Christian Church within herself, from the reading of the Scriptures, from personal prayer, and from the countless facets of the Christian tradition.   Every man’s appreciation and personal joy in Christ is his own property, and much of it could never be transmitted to another.  If in human things a man cannot communicate to another his personal love of intimate friends, of husband or wife, of children, much less can he share with another the love which consummates the desire of the inmost searching of his soul; every man must approach the Master by himself.  However, there are many things in the life and personality of Jesus Christ which are common for us all, attainable in some degree by all, though the detail which lies behind the generalities, as a rich countryside lies within the dim line of a far horizon, are to be found alone by each man seeking alone.

Christ is the image of the invisible God

We find revealed to us in the personality of Christ the perfect mirror of the Godhead, the more obviously in matters which regard the relationship between God and mankind.  We find in Him a tender love for men which is inexhaustible, and which was not exhausted even to the death of the cross.  A love profound and merciful beyond our crude comprehending, a love so far beyond human mercies, and human carefulness, that confidence in Him is prompted within every man, however degraded, who is sick of heart, and would desire to return back again to his own true centre.  For this love of God for men in Christ, being begotten before time and space, transcends all human categories;  for His delight was to be with the sons of men, as his prophet tells concerning the predestination of Christ for men, before the uncreated Word became the Word of wisdom en-fleshed for men:

“The Lord created me in the beginning of his work,

the first of His acts of old:

ages ago I was set up,

at the first, from the beginning of the earth;

when there were no depths I was brought forth,

when there were no springs abounding with water..

Before the mountains had been shaped;

before the hills I was brought forth,

before He had made the earth with its fields,

or the first of the dust of the world.

When He established the heavens, I was there,

when  He drew a circle on the face of the deep,

when He made firm the skies above, and established the fountains of the deep;

when He assigned to the sea its limit, that the waters might not transgress His command;

when He marked out the foundations of the earth:

then I was beside Him as a master craftsman,

and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before him always,

Rejoicing in His inhabited world.

And delighting in the sons of men..

and now my sons, listen to me:

happy are those who keep my ways.

Hear instruction, and be wise, and do not neglect it.

Happy is the man who listens to me,

watching daily at my gates,

waiting beside my doors.

For he who finds me finds life,

and obtains favour with the Lord.

But he who misses me injures himself.

All who hate me love death.”    (Prov. 8:22-36 Cf Heb. 2:10-18)

This is the love of God for men, in Christ, out of which there shines the fruition intended for the human soul in its final and beatific union with God.  It is a love, made human and visible in Christ, which tells us all with a perfection of manner and a certainty that goes beyond all speech and all gratitude to express. Unless God himself had spoken to us with infallible assurance, who would have known, or have dared to believe he knew, what things God has laid up for men who love Him?  The things which are revealed to us in Christ are things so great, that of all this it is his very Incarnation which is to man the most assured pledge of the truth of them.

He gave them power to become children of God

Only because of Christ could we believe that every man was our brother.  Only because of Christ would we labour with gentleness against arrogance, with  sweetness before pompous ignorance, with forgiveness before subtle persecution and animal hatreds.   Not from dialectical materialism would we believe these things, not from the grim apparatus of that mechanism of biology, applied to man, which lumbers to new stations over the bodies of its own rejected and slaughtered leaders.

Apart from Jesus Christ we have no reasonable motive to believe in universal brotherhood, “social goodness”, loyalty or love.  A materialist may hold all these things when he is still very young, but when he has come to learn the involuntary selfishness, the conscious and unconscious jealousy, the silly arrogance, the stupidities of heart born of unremitted power, when he has come to know all the sordidness and the disappointments  which  lie within  human life, not  from  the pressure  of economic systems,  but  which impregnate the blood, the bones, the marrow of men, then only God can save him from despair, if he has still the tenderness left to despair.  When a man is thrown back upon himself in the end, deserted by his fellows in the mad rush to serve self, then only God can save a man from despair of man;  only God  and Him crucified.

In Christ a man can believe that we are members one of another, conjoined and compacted in the bond of a common brotherhood.   In Christ we can love another man, forgive his faults, bear the burden of his grossness, and pray that he hear ours.  In Christ we can forgive, because we can be humble.  In Christ we can love, for pity of the handicap of sin which weighs upon our natures; for hope of reform and healing, even in this state of wounded nature, from the medicine that men may find in Christ.

In Christ we can lean upon God, and not upon our helpless hopeless selves, in prayer; and in painful endeavour  to  purify  a  nature  run  wanton  from  its  earliest  youth.    Because  of  Christ,  in  the  humble recognition of mutual weakness among all men, a man can love his brethren, and discipline that love lest lust should supervene.  He can forgive, but yet retain the truth, and know sin and folly in his brother even while he pardons; he can cherish too, but still see with honest eye the blemishes that blot the personality even of the finest men that breathe.

Growth into mature manhood after the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ

In Christ, and because of Christ, his rock of sure standing, and only perfect joy, a man can do all this and more.  Without Christ there is no humbleness, and without humility the fallen, foolish soul of man revolts against the stench of human lusts, for power, wealth, women, and, among the bold, for even a messiah’s crown.  Such a man will hate his own self in the secret void of his own heart.  He will rage even more with hatred and contempt against any other who in the same name of his own arrogant pride, shall stand against him, or distantly threaten anything whatsoever that he covets for his own.   All systems of human self- sufficiency whether materialist or idealist must lead to a regime of fear.   There is no tenderness in the jungle, no mercy there or forgiveness, and why should it be otherwise among men?  Only in Christ can a man be a man, for in Christ alone he will discover the searching truth, the acceptance of which can cure only if it sears.  He that will save his life for himself shall lose it; and he that shall  lose his own self for Christ, shall therein find his life, and save it.

This way of truth is often hard, painful, and exacting.  It is not an easy thing to reform one’s personality upon the likeness of Christ’s.  This way of the truth offers as its prize a rose of purest delight, the restful joy of interior wisdom and sweetness in God; it is the prize of a man in this life also, but for its plucking it costs the smarting hand of painful endeavour, for it blossoms above thorns.

In the life of men of deep intelligence and deep hearts, there comes a time when, without the knowledge of God and the hope for man which stands revealed to men in Christ, they break their hearts, because they have plumbed the inevitable unreliability of themselves and of other men. They find no resting place for their spirit, neither in themselves nor in men, and they do not find because there is none to be found there. Left to himself a man will discover sooner or later that there is no bedrock to human personality within the human person, there are only sands of varying consistencies, but there is a storm which can shift them all.

If then there is no motive in men why a man should suffer fools with gladness, he must either retire into the slummy shack of his own heart, and live in the rut of the cynic, or else strive with the rest with the weapons of the rest; be hard, ruthless, cruel, and shrug it off as the way of life.  When all else fails him, if he

has power, and dares to use it, there is the final weapon of individual or mass murder as an instrument of personal power.

Such a breakdown must always occur, because the controlling centre of human life is not in man at all, and certainly not in matter which is less than he.  If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.  The centre of control for man, the directing intellect and the inspiring love rests in God alone, in the Intellect which is uniquely authoritative, balanced, and wise, in the Good which is lasting, deep, tender, and merciful This is to say that the control and direction of human destiny is Christ alone, because Christ is the name of the Word which the Intellect of God speaks to men.

The love of Christ compels us – transformation of individuals and society

When a man sets out to attain some end in view, whether because he loves it, or because he considers it to be plain stark duty for him, if the means are painful, and the way is long he must have a compelling motive. A powerful motive is not enough; a man must be certain, there needs to be a “must” at the back of his mind, a “should” is not sufficient to motivate him.   In the order of man’s destiny towards God also, the more because of sin, there will arise in the human mind numberless complex difficulties, hesitations, and new doubts.  The need for a complete and a compelling authority is obvious if man is to be the recipient of his adequate determination to his true happiness at all times, and throughout all increase of natural knowledge. The unique status of Christ, and the unique truth of the religion given to the world by Christ, should therefore stand out with a surer truth in these days, and with all-compelling certainty as the only beacon of mankind.

The governing laws of a man’s life go out beyond the nature of man, beyond instinct, and beyond animal behaviourism.  If men fail to realise this, if they fail to look for a governing centre, of an intellectual nature, beyond themselves and certainly beyond matter, then there will inevitably follow first the ruin of private lives, and then the ruin of whole societies as the majority of the individuals which compose them fail, and cease to have anything to offer by which civilisations can be supported.  To last a long time is not the only test of human success or failure; not quantity, but quality is the test of the vitality of men and of cultures.  A humdrum and selfish personality, one of those lives which seem to span the gulf between men and vegetables, may drag on to a great old age, and yet such a man has never lived at all in any sense worthy of human existence.

Civilisations too, such as those of the ancient East, may stand for centuries upon the souls and bodies of men who are dead; for men die not only in the body, but in their souls, in which they die of the slavery of the spirit, the unresisting obsequiousness which can accept anything at all from a powerful tyrant, because mind,  heart,  and  self-respect  have  been  stifled  from  birth.    After  long  ages  perhaps  someone  will successfully rebel, and resistance will come sooner, very much sooner, if some whisper of a doctrine which defends the personality of men is breathed among the masses.   But whatever the perils, or the hopes of men, does not every crisis, every doubt, every tyranny point the one inescapable need for men to know, and for societies to cherish, the firm truth, the stable laws, the correct paths of happiness for the human personality? There simply and without qualification must be an answer to these vital human needs, and the answer must repose in an Intellect which is sure, firm, and final.

The coming of Christ gives mankind this essential of human life with a sweetness and an ease which opens soul and body to the wisdom of God as a flower turns towards the sun and opens blossoming.  We learn from a man, through the senses of a man; we love a personality which is embodied in the tangible nature of a man, we speak to the Absolute Being in human accents, and are sure of understanding, of graciousness and of love.  We learn in our perfect manner, and while we learn naturally and with ease we have behind our lesson the authority of God’s own and personal word.

When the hot and harassed mother and housewife pauses in her cleaning to glance up at the picture of Jesus Christ in her living-room, and to exclaim inwardly, “O Sacred Heart of Jesus, rule you my home”, what else does she do than go to God she must, if she is to go perfectly as spirit and matter united in one nature and in one personality?  How could she go thus to God, or how could any of us, with that perfection which lifts both soul and body sweetly to God in one, and sanctifies our lives through all the welter of work- a-day routines, unless she, and we all of us with her, unlettered and learned alike, could find Him as God, and yet as God attainable by man, through the medium of human sense?

Personal relation to Jesus Christ

Let a man read the New Testament for himself, and consider the parables and similes under which Christ presents His understanding to us, and our relation to him.  Let him notice the tenderness which breathes through all the sayings of Christ.   It is not a small thing to have learned, or a small delight to have appreciated that God is to be approached with love, and with self-abandoning trust rather than with awe and submission.   Is it a small thing for a man to have learned that, in the relations of men with the Divine, “perfect love casts out fear”? (I Jn 4:18)

A man must come at last, over the years of his life, to know and to love Christ as a person.  He must, if he will be a perfect Christian, cease to serve from motives of duty which contain an element of fear and imperfection, and learn to love with the perfection of love which casts out fear.  So great and so perfect an act of friendship as the intimate love of God surpasses our power to discuss in this place.  It requires that a man should know God truly as God is, and love him with a perfect sincerity, the basis of which is complete humility.  It demands that he should read, listen, ponder, and contemplate, so that in the full environment of that Catholic and Christian tradition which contains the fullness of Christ's revelation, a man may grow day by day in the maturity of the goodness and happiness which for men is life, and life more abundant.  What here we seek to do is to give the broad outline, to make plain the general economy of Christianity;  to give details is beyond our present scope, and as for the experience of the sweetness of the love of God, the writings of the saints are full of it, but every man must earn it for himself, and when he has earned it, he will taste it and prove it for himself.

When a man comes to read the New Testament, he may find difficulties arising obviously and spontaneously which seem to contradict, in the very fact that they can arise, the claims we have made, and will make for Christ, to be the authoritative and final revelation of God to men.   From the pages of the Gospels we find Him speaking in the language of his times to minds which were simple and uneducated. There are indeed many things which at a reading are obscure, especially those many treatises of St. John’s Gospel which are spoken either to the apostles or especially to the teachers and doctors of the Synagogue.

Many such passages are difficult at first sight because they are profound, and they treat of spiritual realities which are foreign to sensual minds.  There is little indeed which obviously goes beyond the scope of the thought of the age within which Christ was born as man.   Even the Gospel of St. John, and the epistles of St. Paul, to list the two most subtle authors of the New Testament, do not exceed the power to understand of men well versed in the principal philosophies of the ancient world, and in the law and traditions of the Jews.  We will find nothing, except possibly in the book of Revelation of St. John, which was quite   unintelligible   in the   beginnings   of   Christianity,   but   which is   a clear, concise answer to ourselves upon some present problem of modern knowledge in its relation to man’s nature and God’s word.

Continuation of the authority and definitive revelation of Christ

There is, in fact, nothing which specifically answers the difficulties and doubts, and they are legion, which beset serious, fair-minded men in the present intellectual chaos of our times.  Can it be, a man can fairly ask, that the words even of God incarnate, uttered two thousand years ago, can be in every way sufficient to answer the queries of new knowledge, and to solve the riddles posed by new doubts and new denials?

Adequate that is, from the immediate sense of a phrase, or from some simple straightforward article of Christian Faith?  This obvious and immediate ‘answer’ is not what we mean by an authoritative revelation. If Christ had spoken like that, He would not have spoken truly as a man, or have been understood at all by men.  If the Church herself possessed unintelligible but explicit knowledge, wrapped up against the needs of distant ages, she too would not be natural to the nature of man, and in that would deny, rather than manifest, the wisdom of God in herself.

While He was on earth, towards the end of his mission as a man speaking among men, Christ clearly states that everything is not finished and complete for all time.   The understanding which his disciples possessed of Him was the beginning, not the end of wisdom.  “I have yet many things to say to you:  but you cannot bear them now”, he says to his followers, “but when he the Spirit of Truth is comes, He will lead you into all truth.  For he shall not speak of himself:  but what He hears He speak.  And He will reveal to you the things that are to come.  He shall glorify me:  because he shall take what is mine, and reveal it to you”. (Jn 16:12-14)  Before the unparalleled growth of human knowledge in the last one hundred years, and the unparalleled doubts and confusions which they have introduced, these words have deep significance indeed:  They become as significant for the Church today as for the Church at the time of the first disciples of Christ.   Christ has always more to show the Church of the depths which are within the Revelation entrusted to her, always more than she can bear or profitably utilize at any given time, and at no time should we expect a deepening of such understanding more than at this present time.

The continuing presence and authority of Christ in His Church

We must inevitably ask ourselves how Christ’s mission can be final and lasting, unless He stays upon earth as Master and Teacher until the end of time. Unless, that is, He is able in some full and perfect manner to guarantee the continuance of that plenitude of authority and infallibility of teaching which is the raison d’être of the Incarnation, then the whole economy of God becoming man is reduced to nonsense because it is reduced to futility.

The world saw Christ as the infallible teacher and master of men for some thirty-three years at the most, and of those few years, only three were years of public life.  During that span, whether He was or was not accepted by the small nation of men to whom immediately He addressed Himself, the world did in fact, and objectively, possess an infallible and final criterion of the ultimate truths which govern human life.  When His  public mission  on earth  ended  with  His  ascension,  unless  He was  in  some  way able to  provide otherwise, the world must have lapsed back to the state of headless uncertainty in which He found it.  This means, if the economy of the Incarnation has not been continued after the ascension of Christ with exactly the same notes and qualities as that economy possessed when it was vested in the humanity visible and apparent of Jesus Christ, that the graph of God’s manifestation to the human spirit of the Light and Life of men rose to a towering peak in Christ Himself, and then, some fifty years after His human nativity, began to

sink gradually back to an initial level of uncertainty and doubt upon fundamental issues of human life and conduct.

Does not the endless division and subdivision of Christians outside the universal Catholic Church give evidence that this could happen, would have happened, and did happen, when the note of infallible authority was removed from the teaching of men who claimed to preach the salvation of Christ?  Does it not  imply beyond all dispute that in the absence of a final authority which can pronounce without error upon matters of Faith and Morals, grave differences must arise, and did arise among men, concerning the application of Christ’s teaching, and the more profound elucidation over time of its content?  Especially where Christian doctrine seemed to conflict with reasonably held tenets of natural philosophy and experimental science was the lack of basic authority felt, even though the certainties and values affected by such crises of knowledge were basic to the nature, personality, and end of man.

If the economy of the Incarnation were meant to be left wide open to such collapse, then either it was futile or else Christ was simply a man like other men, however great as a leader of men.   Somehow, somewhere, there ought to be some continuation of His authoritative presence, if Christ is God, and the fulfilment for men of the universally operative law of finality in creation, the City set upon a hill which every traveller may see afar off.  There must be some way in which the plenary authority which the world possessed in Christ carries on, and deepens with the years without changing itself.   Yet which of the organised bodies of Christians who claim to preserve, perpetuate and pass on the content of the revelation given in Christ makes such a claim to infallible certainty anywhere in its constitution?

The Divine revelation in Christ abides in the infallibility of His Church

A man may shake his head at the very notion of inerrancy upon basic Christian doctrines being in any way perpetuated among men, he may find this saying hard and he unwilling to hear it, but he cannot deny that if Christ was God, and if His mission was meant to last among men for all time, then quite certainly the infallibility which  is  the prerogative  of His  Divinity would  have to  continue with  his  mission.    The alternative is to deny the Divinity of Christ, and with it to empty out any authority at all in the Christian religion.  We ask whether, however hard or strange the claim may seem at first sight to be, there is any Christian Church which claims to carry on and to exercise specifically the infallibility in basic issues of human destiny which reposes personally in Jesus Christ?  We find that there is one such Church, unique and alone in this claim without which the economy of the Incarnation is futile.  She is the most ancient, the most contradicted, the most hated, the best loved, the most misunderstood, and the most authoritative.  There is only one, and to name the Holy, Catholic, Roman and Apostolic Church, whose human head on earth is the Bishop of Rome, and only he, is to labour a point which is a truism of history.

Even if somehow by supreme power and divine wisdom, Christ is able to guarantee the continuance over space and time of his revelation, together with that essential note of ultimate authority and final truth which alone fulfils the Law of Control and Direction for man, there remains the need for development, for the progressively deeper understanding and unfolding of the content of his own teaching, and we may well ask whether such progressive development can continue over time with harmony, and without breakdown or contradiction.  Can it be possible that one revelation of Intellect and Will manifested to men in Palestine long centuries ago, should remain at all times, throughout the course of history, the adequate and authoritative word of God to men, as long as the world shall endure?

It could be done; it was done.  The meaning and the majesty of Christ cannot be grasped with any degree of understanding worthy to be named knowledge of God, except through the understanding of that relation to men in which the economy of his Incarnation is continued by Christ through human history.  We turn therefore to the means by which Christ continues and develops the divine economy initiated by Himself in the flesh two thousand years ago, by which he expands that mission to mankind, which became visible and sensible through the en-fleshing of the Word of God, with a majesty and a plenitude which neither diminishes, nor remains even static through the ages, but deepens rather with the passing of the years.  We turn now to that marvel of God’s wisdom which is his own Church, for in her will be found the confirmation of what we claim for Christ, and in Him will be seen the necessity for all that she is, and claims to be and has it further within herself to become, for the salvation, individual and social, of men today.

PART FOUR

CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH

CHAPTER   11

Christ and His Church

Nobody who has a real understanding of the total economy of Christianity can object to the statement that Christianity without belief in the historic, literal Divinity of Christ is not worthy of the name.  For without the Godhead of Christ, there is no universality and absolute authority in the Christian religion and it is this authority, the unique prerogative of a revelation contained in a Divine Person, which makes the Christian religion.  If a man does not believe that Christ is God, he should in honesty cease to call himself a Christian. To be impressed by the human character of Christ, to admire his teachings, and to accept some part of them, all this may make a man a “friend” of Christianity, but without belief in the Godhead of Christ and in the absolute authority of the Christian Faith, it does not in any practical or historical sense constitute a man a Christian.

The Law of Control and Direction in Christ and His Church

The Christian believes that Christ was both God and man, one person in two separate natures, and that Christ is the plenitude of God’s Word to men in that human nature.  If this is conceded, then as one would expect, He ran his course on earth as a man, He died as a man at the hands of men, He rose again as became God, and completing His mission, since every work effected in human nature must have a consummation, He left this world and returned into his own, even as he left his own to come into ours.   Somehow the infallibility and authority  of  God’s  intelligence  contained  in  Christ  must  continue  and  endure  upon  earth,  otherwise  the Christian religion fails openly, blatantly, publicly, to fulfil the economy of the Incarnation to which the whole plan of creation builds up, to which it leads, and which it serves.

For the Incarnation represents the perfection in man, for men, of the Universal Law of Control and Direction in contingent and relative being.  The Incarnation was not a divine economy of human fulfillment which was to endure for some forty years, and then to perish.  It was the giving to men of man’s “all” from God, for all time, from the tiny beginning, the mustard seed which God sowed in Palestine, through the whole of human time, until the seed became a great tree, and the civilisations of men should swell in the branches of it.  This purpose of the Incarnation cannot be fulfilled if the Incarnation is stripped of its essential features, or in any way subtracted from, much less if it is thought that the surety and infallibility of God’s control and direction over men ended with the ascension from earth of the Messiah.

Unless this authority which derives solely from the Godhead, continues with the same unity, universality, and identity of content which is contained in Christ’s Person as the Teacher and Master of the world, continues with exactly the same characteristics and precisely the same scope, then the Incarnation of God becomes an absurd claim.  If there is no final doctrinal authority on earth after the ascension of Christ, then there is left only a headless body of disciples who preach an authoritative and infallible Saviour, but who have no final standard upon which to answer the inevitable difficulties and queries which arise as time moves on.  It was inevitable, and therefore it did happen, that searching and subtle queries would arise concerning the intimate relations of Christ’s revelation within its own integrating parts, the precise meaning of recorded expressions and parables, the qualification and interpretation of Christian doctrines in their bearing upon this or that discovery of natural reason.  This was inevitable, and it happened, and it has happened at no time in history with more emphasis and more anxieties than at the present time.

The continuation of Christ’s authority

Unless there is some fountain-head of organised verbal authority, some human “word” which continues to be the vehicle of the Divine Word and to re-echo over history the accents of Christ, then dissensions must arise almost at once. Unity of assembly and identity of doctrinal belief must perish without that authority, and Christianity must become a human fabric that crumbles before the wind and rain of time, and which crumbling gathers momentum into desolation.  Not even the acceptance of the literal Divinity of Christ is enough to make a man a Christian in the truest sense, because to believe that Jesus Christ was God Incarnate does not alone justify as valid the claims He made for His teaching on this earth, and which His own immediate followers made so unambiguously after him.  It is the certainty of authority, the truth resting upon the inerrancy of the Divine Intellect which must at all times be visible, and attainable by men, which alone vindicates the dispensation among men which is the Faith of Christ.  If this authority does not exist somewhere on earth for men, then Christians are bound in the course of centuries, to split again and again into sects, all of which teach a different Christ, and in that differentiation belie the very economy of the Word made Flesh.  In the one sole fact that sects organized in the name of Christ neither have, nor claim as inherent in their essential constitution any absolute and infallible authority in the determination of what is essential Christian doctrine, they demonstrate beyond the possibility of sincere defence that they are not a true continuation of the economy of the Incarnation of the Divine Word.  If there were no such claimant to absolute guidance upon the destinies of human life anywhere in the world, Christianity would be a witness against itself of the illusory and self- contradictory claims made for its founder.  The personal claims of Christ, on their highest and most supreme level could not be entertained for a moment.

Now this fragmentation of Christian bodies, all calling themselves Christian, and all attaching a valuation to the term which differs not only from sect to sect, but among individuals of the same sect, has occurred, and it is one of the causes of the weakness and helplessness of Christian civilisation in the face of the forceful and ruthless ideologies which have torn the world apart since the beginning of this century.   It is a cause of mounting scandal and perplexity to men of good-will everywhere in Christendom.  Today, the sense of the need for the reunion of Christians is more urgent than ever, the cry is raised more insistently than ever, and with pathetic sincerity, - let all Christians unite in one communion!  Yet how can they unite?  They differ upon the very essentials of Christ’s teaching, they cannot even agree concerning the minimum which constitutes a Christian, much less upon the nature of the Church of Christ, and her organization through space and time.

Even if these dissident bodies could unite, what authority could drive from the haphazard merger of a medley of private opinions upon the basis of a human common denominator?  And just how long would even the lowest human denominator be low enough to save this superficial, meaningless “unity”?  If Christianity can so ‘evolve’ that it can abandon integral elements of its historic content which one thousand years ago were universally accepted as touching the fundamentals, once more the economy of a Divine Revelation made in the flesh of man by God, would be weighed in the balance, and found wanting on that terrible criterion of a divine guarantee, which alone gives Christianity an everlasting dominion over the lives of men.

The Catholic Church in the Divine Plan of Salvation

The reader will realise exactly what point we are making here, and however much he shrinks from it, he will be unable to gainsay it.  We are arguing to the unique truth of the Roman Catholic Church not from the Bible, not from Christian tradition, not from history or from reason, not from any ground of polemic common in whole or in part to Christian men.  We are persuading from the ascertainable nature of the dispensation of the Incarnation as a Divine Economy, and from the essential notes which must define that economy at all times, if Christ is the Light of the world and the Life of men.  That economy of relativity between God and men must be so continued in the world that it can be found the same today, and can be recognized in its fundamental characteristics as the instrument by which God continues to operate that same Law of Finality which brings Him, as Christ, into the created order at all.

It is of course a truism that Christ manifestly teaches the unity of His Church, it is true that there are scores of passages in the New Testament which can only bring shame and sorrow into the heart of any sincere Christian, when he finds himself burdened with the reproach of disunity.  Whatever the cause, and whatever the answer given to this reproach, the fact remains that before the tribunal of the world,  Christian and non- Christian, theistic or atheistic, whoever admits the name of Christian senses most grievously this tragedy of heresy and schism.  This however is not the issue with which principally we are concerned.  We pass over any appeal direct or indirect to the usual grounds of theological apologetic; in any case these are not grounds upon which the non-Christian will be willing today to pay attention to discussion.

The  entire  Christian  Faith  needs  to  be  seen  anew,  and  vindicated  before  the  world  anew,  against  the background of the whole universe, of this planet, of the nature of matter and the nature of man.   No other presentation  will  profit  men,  and  do  justice  to  Christ  in  the  modern  world.  No  other  view  will  power Christianity with the energy with which to fulfil its world-wide mission, a mission that had best begin with the rapid re-conquest of those provinces which Christendom has already lost or is still in danger of losing.  The presentation of the Faith we strive to give is the only one which can more than justify the claim of Christianity to be the one complete and perfect religion, of whose fullness all other faiths which treat of God and men possess at the best only a handful of precious fragments.  Christianity is not a ‘religious system’, nor is it just a code of religious tenets which needs to be salvaged at this time, and refurbished for the prestige of its apostles and the relief of its devotees.  The unique importance to mankind of the Christian Faith lies today quite simply and starkly in the fact that this Faith which is from Jesus of Nazareth, is God’s own expected, plenary, and inevitable provision for man’s fulfilment under that Law of his own wisdom, through which all creations and their proper laws consist.  There is not any alternative way of individual, national, or international salvation for mankind except this way.  Consequently upon this solemn fact, the supreme manifestation of Intellect and Love from God towards men, must be seen in the perspective in which we depict it, because that perspective is substantially true, whatever incidental deficiencies exist in our presentation of it, and because only this fuller vision of the truth can provide for men of a new era out of the riches of the treasury of God.

We  present  then  the  economy  of  the  Incarnation  in  this  cosmic  perspective  not  because  it  proves  a convenient prop for bolstering up a sagging civilisation, but because it is the truth;  because it is a fact, the supreme fact of life for all men and for all nations.

Guarantor of Truth - for our salvation

It is stated in one of the most ancient and most universal of the Christian Creeds, that God became man “propter nos homines, et propter nostram solutem,” “for us men, and for our salvation”.  We seek therefore for the means by which this article of the creed of Christians is verified; we look for such a continuation of the economy of divine wisdom operative through matter, that the dispensation of the Incarnation will be recognisably continued in it as a visible fact, together with the unity of function and operation that economy implies.  We seek in history a medium of such a type that it possesses a centre of authority, a body organized with a head, a head that is a centre which so guarantees unity of doctrine, and certainty in the promulgation of doctrine, that its tenets are certain and binding upon the intellect and free-will of man, even as the answers of Christ to the people in general, and to his adversaries in particular were authoritative, and final, in the unity of his living person.

We seek a centre, such that it derives its power and its guarantee not from itself, nor from human wisdom and scholarship, but only through its being the mouthpiece through which speaks the abiding presence and operation of Christ as God.  Any institution or organization which presumed to continue the economy initiated in the Incarnation by human powers alone would again not be one and the same economy whose authority is, and is only, Jesus Christ: for the final inerrant authority upon the things which pertain to God and the supreme end of man can only be God, no human authority can ever be absolute in its own right.  The economy of the Incarnation was visible and organized in the person of Christ, and today also, in the absence of Christ in the ordinary sense of human nature, that economy must persist as something visible and organized, an operation of spirit through the medium of the flesh, sensible for a sensible nature, visible for a mixed nature, organized for a socially co-operative and socially dependent nature.

Vicar of Christ

What we are seeking is not something which supplants Christ, but the instrumental means through which Christ continues to apply an economy of human finality which once initiated by Him can have no end while men live upon the earth.  There is only one possible claimant in the world to this title, and in the unique fact of this claim and its fulfilment in her organized constitution, she stands proven as the Church of Christ, the continuation of a divine economy of human control and direction, whatever may be the shortcomings of her human members high or low, in the past or in the present.   It is most significant in this respect that the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, bears and has born from the earliest times, a title which proclaims him to be neither more nor less than we must expect to find.  He is the “Vicar of Christ”, not the “Head” of the Church, for only Christ himself is always, and for all times, the Head of the Church.  The Pope is the “Vicar”, or deputy, of Christ in this world; the continuation through history of that spoken “word” of authority which abides personally in Christ, and which is continued by Christ’s power alone through the authoritative words of the Church until the end of time.

We are not interested in the human failures, however gross, of popes and bishops in the history of the Church, and therefore we do not stay to anticipate and reply to any objections raised upon that ground, such reproaches are not to the point.  We are not even concerned with the fact that the Church seems to be unable to harness and direct the energies of our times to the forms of a new civilisation, because this failure is only apparent, and will quickly be remedied.   We would say quite openly to the cynic that the Church today, or rather the intellectuals of the Church, must necessarily give the impression of being becalmed, and of merely drifting painfully forward rather than moving with the certainty of power.  This must be so, at the present time of  transition  between  an  old  order  and  a  new,  because  the  Church  is  the  custodian  of  the whole  truth, responsible for that truth to both God and men, while her critics are responsible to nobody except their conceited selves.

Guardian of truth

An institution which inherits and continues a divine economy in the world, which is assured of infallible guidance in essentials, but not in every application of those essentials to practical purposes, must, under the weight of so onerous a custody, be over-conservative, anxious, and hesitant before  change, if, while she has the whole of the essential truth, she still awaits that precise development and deployment of her doctrine which will ignite new fires of energy within her speculative theology, and the philosophy which accompanies it.  It is just because she must be fundamentally always right, or else eternally wrong, that the Church Catholic must hold back, and as it were, await new light, when she lacks for a time the further insight into the treasures of Christ which new needs call for.  The Church, like the individual soul, has not always everything she needs for the more vigorous prosecution of her mission straightway to hand.  The Church, like the individual, is bidden to pray for what she needs, and it will be given to her; and the Church’s prayer is never left long unanswered.

The irresponsible can jettison whatever load of Christian teaching they find a burden at the time, but on the barque of Peter there is no superfluous cargo, and when rapid advances in knowledge break into the human superstructure of philosophy and theological presumptions upon which the practical expressions of Christian morality are built in society, the Church must wait, ponder, and pray for more light. For the truths of Christ and the truths of reason are parts of one unity of wisdom and they do not contradict each other, even though a full synthesis of the two may for a time escape the minds of men.  The world should thank God that the Church does so wait and pray until she sees her way, and the true way for mankind, clear ahead and sure. If she did not wait, she would, like the sects which have splintered off from her, jettison the truth before every petty storm of human error and of half-baked truth.  If the Church did not wait upon God in humility, the lights of the world would go out never to be kindled again.

Because the Church of Christ has the truth, the unique truth, this insight has always been given to her throughout her history at those times of intellectual crisis which are far more perilous to mankind than crises of moral breakdown.  Because she is uniquely true, and faces today the greatest crises, and the greatest challenge of the intellect which Christianity has ever confronted, certainly since the beginning of the Dark Ages, and possibly since the Church began, therefore new vision and new strength is offered to her once more.  A greater splendour of the truth to meet a deeper questioning of man, is given to her, and through her to every man who worries over this war-wracked and hate-laden world.

It is given to her, because it is hers alone to present, defend, and render fully significant.  It is not intelligible except through her constitution, through what she is and claims to be, and in the undimmed light of what she has always so steadfastly defended in the face of every anxious doubt, and every plausible error.  It is given as the enduring mercy of Christ upon men, which casts the saving shadow of the Cross athwart the ages, till the ages end.

Obedience to Christ

We present this theme with so much sincerity of purpose, and with such indifference to a victory in debate for any petty gain, that we hope to retain the good-will of the reader, especially the vaguely Christian reader, and to take him with us to the climax of this most important of all human issues.  He must come with us, because if what we have already argued and will argue, is true at least in substance, before God and our own consciences to pick and choose what we will or will not believe from Christ.   We are all of us bound equally by His Authority, whether we like it or not, whether the truth hurts us or not, and if it hurts it will also heal.

If the substance of our thesis concerning the economy of the Incarnation is true, then we are not free to judge of essential doctrine from private opinions, nor on the other hand, in the possession of the fullness of the truth, dare any man glory against another, as if he had received of his own merits or his own wisdom.   We find ourselves to be, the more in our common fears and common anxiety, all of us sons of one Father, and brothers through Christ.  There is no place at this time for the puerile conceit which makes issues so tremendous a stake in sectarian polemic.   This issue - whether Christ is the plenitude of the Divine Being in matter, whether Christianity is the uniquely true Faith, whether the Catholic Church is the sole deposit of that truth of the Faith - this issue is too solemn in the crisis of our times for silly arrogance, too big to dwell amidst littleness of mind.

Continuation of Christ’s Presence among men

The continued existence of Christ upon earth as man was neither necessary nor possible.  Once He had begun an economy of human determination to fulfilment which only God could begin, He could perfect it without an indefinite existence on earth in a human nature.  In the first place, the dramatic clash between good and evil, God, and the aberration from God which is sin, could not be continually re-enacted throughout history in the human nature of Christ.  He could not be continually crucified and glorified by turns if He was truly man as well as truly God.  In that historic fate which men meted out to Christ, not one race or one section of one race stands  condemned,  but  the  whole  human  race,  which  is  revealed  in  all  the  weakness  and  the  reckless wickedness to which it is capable of sinking.

Not all men put Christ to death; not all of His own nation put Christ to death, but His disciples wavered, the people murmured approval of a lie, and their leaders urged them forward to consummate the sin.  It has been repeated often enough during the centuries, and is repeated today as a process within private hearts and among nations.  Until the end of time it will be true of Christ that for individuals and for societies: “This child is set for the fall and for the rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against.” (Lk 2:34)

The Church is Divine in its nature

From this alone, if Christ is truly man, His mission, as far as His dwelling among men in the normal habitude of a man is concerned, must have a definite span and an end.  In any case, there is no reason why Christ need stay on earth indefinitely to fulfil His mission, not when we recall who He is, and the nature of the economy revealed in Him.  We must remember with an assent of mind which is real, not simply notional, that He is God, the Supreme Intellect, and the Supremely Loveable, who assumes the nature of man that through the intermediary of the senses of man he may manifest with plenitude the Life, and the Light which is in the Being of God for the participation of men.

The actual teaching of Christ, the instruction and revelation given to us authoritatively and without error or qualification by Christ, once declared to men through the mouth of the Word made Flesh, can, as a content now guaranteed and final, be carried on through the instrumentality of created persons.  “As the Father has sent me”, he told his disciples, “so also I send you”; and it was perfectly possible for Him so to continue His mission through men.  No man, no created nature at all, could so declare God to men as Christ declared Him in the Person of God, but once the Word Incarnate had spoken, others could hand on in their turn whatsoever He had told them.

There are indeed functions of his mission which he cannot delegate to others, because they are essentially a divine operation upon the substance of the soul, and as they do not admit of any instrumental efficacy through created persons, do not admit either, of any delegation to created natures.  He alone is the “true Bread which comes down from heaven” and thus He alone can nourish the soul of a man intimately within its inmost substance.  Christ alone, and no mere man at all, can quicken the soul, and prompt it to desire Him more, and so draw it from desire to union, and then increase continually the degree of that grace of union within the created spirit.  In this the function of the Godhead admits of no delegation, because to be so related to a created nature, and to effect such a fruit within it, belongs to God alone.

We will see in the next chapter how in the Church which He has constituted, he retains these operations proper only to God, in so marvellous a manner, that once it is  understood in its entirety, the ordering of the essential nature of the Christian and Catholic Church is itself a proof of the Divinity of Christ, as well as the best of the credentials of the Church which derives from Him:  there is a wisdom here which is superhuman, and which the mind is forced to recognize as beyond man’s wisdom to devise.

Continuation of the Incarnation

If it is within the power of God to guarantee through the co-operation of men the continuance of the economy of the Incarnation, then the foundation of a “Church” is the inevitable corollary of that dispensation.  It is a corollary, we say, because human nature calls for it in just the same manner, and upon just the same principle as it called for the Incarnation of God itself.     There is no other conceivable way in which an economy of authoritative control and direction through the intellect and will can be continued in a modality which is natural to the order of human life, while it remains supernatural in origin, function, and finality.  Christ is God working through the material for the perfect good of a nature compacted with the material, and the same visible, sensible economy of the palpable “word” must be found in the instrument which is the vehicle through which the economy of the Incarnation is continued and expanded.

The individual human nature, and those aggregations of men working in unison to a common end which follow from the social relativity of human nature, all of this, the totality of what a man is, and the order which men integrate as members one of another, needs both God in the flesh of men, and a Church in that same medium;  a Church which teaches, preaches, proclaims and defends the revelation of Christ throughout time and does it with a plenary authority in essentials.  If there is no such Church, no such means on earth by which the mission of Christ can be, and is carried on through the ages, then not only is Christ not God, but also man is an orphan within creation, because he alone of all created things has never been given his adequate principle of determination towards his finality, nor has he any means of determining just what precisely that finality is, in any event.

What we require of the Church of Christ, and what we seek in her, we require not only in the name of historic Christianity and the sources of Christian belief but what we require we demand also in the perspective of that wider, more fundamental background which has formed the matter of our previous chapters.   A background in which the whole cosmic economy of the creative Intellect of God is poised to fulfilment in the Person of the Word made Flesh.

That Jesus Christ claimed Divinity is plain on almost every page of the Gospels, though nowhere more clearly than in those passages of St. John where he speaks of Himself as the true Vine, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the Living Bread which came down from heaven and gives life to the world.  This claim obvious in many places from evidence both direct and indirect, reaches a climax in the solemn declaration:  “Amen I say to you, before Abraham was made, I AM.”(Jn. 8:58)  That Christ intended His mission to continue for all time through a Church, an organized body of believers is also patent enough to any man who reads the New Testament with thoughtfulness, and we do not intend here to repeat arguments and proofs of such an intention which can be found in any good Catholic text-book of apologetics, and, as arguments from Scripture, are probably incapable of being improved on in their presentation.

Intention of Christ that the Church be One, Universal, and Apostolic

Did Christ intend that this Church should be one whole: a unity in Faith, moral precepts, and authority?  If he did not, then as we have already said, and will continue to insist, a divine mission of God towards mankind would have been entirely ineffectual.  Here again there is evidence so abundant throughout the Scriptures that we cannot turn aside from our main theme in order to reproduce in full, matter which can be found much better arranged elsewhere.  If any indication needs to be given, there is no proof more touching than that contained in the prayer for his disciples and his Church which precedes the account of his betrayal, and takes up nearly the whole of the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.

Perhaps we may be answered that an intention of unity does not necessarily imply any such absolute hierarchical order and authority as that which we defend.  If our requirements are not met however, there can be no guarantee of unity, neither can the Church be in any sense an organism which grows and develops through the ages upon the content by which she is initially defined.  As regards the intention and the mind of Christ, we must consider the choosing and the training of the “twelve”, and in particular, the rights accorded, and the promises made, to them alone.  We must bear in mind their special mission and special authority, which was maintained before the Ascension, and much more potently after it.  We must in particular note such forceful phrases as:

“He that hears you, hears me,

He that rejects you rejects me,

and he that rejects me,

rejects Him that sent me”.  (Lk 10:16)

We are obliged to mark above all else the grand and ringing commission given to St. Peter:

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona,

for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,

but my Father who is in heaven.

And I tell you:

‘You art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church

and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.

I will give you the keys

of the Kingdom of heaven.” [i.e. authority over the Church]     (Mt 16:17-19)

Many feeble and not very intellectually honest attempts have been made to explain away this passage, which is surely one of the most clear and most magnificent passages in the whole of the Christian Gospels.  It can signify only one thing, a meaning reinforced abundantly from other passages of the Scriptures, by solemn Councils of the Church, by most ancient tradition, by the factual witness of history, that Rome alone is, and has always been, the centre of unity, and that away from her disunity becomes confusion worse confounded.

The Office of Peter

It can mean only, taken in the historic content of Christianity, that there was constituted by Christ in the twelve Apostles, an organized, authoritative Church; that Peter was the authoritative head and ruler on earth of that organism, because he it is upon whom as a ground-work the Church is built, and who alone has the plenary power of the keys.  He therefore deserves to be called, after the Ascension of Christ, the “Vicar” of his Master, for his is the final word of authority which re-echoes the Word made Flesh.  If the Church so built upon the Rock which is Peter will outlast the power of death and dissolution, then this power is not merely personal, nut functional, an official ministry organic to the Church of Christ, which must be carried on through successive “Peters” until the present order of the world shall terminate.  Peter, whose name expresses his office, and is not a name found in use among the Jews, is the first Vicar of Christ, or Pope.

Because he became the first bishop of Rome and so constituted that see, then the metropolis of a world-wide empire, as the seat of the sensible, visible, head on earth of the Church, so also today his successor in that office, by virtue not of honour, dignity, or historic precedence, but by divine right as the successor of Peter, inherits the same office and the same title, and stands today as the centre in the material and visible order, through which Christ continues and exercises His function as everlasting Head of the Church.   Just as God spoke to us in the nature of man that we might be led through those human senses without which men cannot live and act, so also the relation between Christ and his Vicar on earth might well be expressed by the relationship in thought and action between the soul and the brain in man.  The brain does not produce thought, it is a vehicle through which thought is expressed, and it expresses what it is constituted to express through the influence of the soul.  The Bishop of Rome also, as the head on earth of the Church, is the visible, the ‘material’ vehicle of Christ as it were.  What he has when he speaks solemnly on special occasions in definitions of Faith and Morals, he acts not from his own, but from Christ’s power, determination, and influence.

The Infallible Church and the development of Doctrine

Among the wealth of deep and tender teaching which the Gospels contain, and which makes it so difficult to select one or two passages among so many, there are two passages spoken by Christ to His uncomprehending disciples on the night of His betrayal which demonstrate both the necessity for a Church which will be an authoritative social organism, and also the necessity of another most important feature of Christian revelation which  cannot  be  separated  from  the  organization  of  the  Church,  namely the  ‘development’  of  Christian doctrine. We have used one of these passages before, and have touched upon the matter which it contains, but a slightly more full treatment of this matter is called for while we consider the nature and constitution of the Church.  Our Lord, speaking to his disciples with that solemn tenderness which characterizes the whole of the discourse upon the eve of the Passion, speaks to them as follows:

“These things have I spoken to you, while I am still with you,

but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit,

whom the Father will send in my name,

He will teach you all things,

and bring to your mind

everything I have spoken to you,

Peace I leave with you;

my peace I give unto you.

Not as the world gives, do I give unto you.

Let not your hearts be troubled,

neither let them be afraid.” (Jn 14:25-27)

If the Holy Spirit is to teach the disciples all things, and to bring to their minds the fullness of the words of Christ, it cannot be done except through an organized and authoritative Church.

This ‘teaching’ of the Church through the ages concerning the content of the revelation given in Christ, involves the unfolding of what is not at first fully appreciated by the disciples, that is to say, by the Church. There is here a certain development of doctrine, and unless that development is guaranteed by some authority, it will  not  be  the  growth  to  maturity of  the  powers  latent  in  a  seed,  but  a  process  of  substantial  change accompanied by steady disintegration.  There is besides a similar passage, part of the same discourse before the Passion, in which He reiterates the same theme, and admonishes His disciples that:

“I have yet many things to say to you,

but you cannot bear them now.

When the Spirit of truth comes

He will guide you into all truth.

for He will not speak on His own authority;

but whatever He hears He will speak.

And He will declare to you the things that are to come.

He will glorify me, for He shall

take what is mine, and declare it to you.” (Jn 16:12-14)

There were indeed many things that Christ had to tell His disciples which they could not bear then.  They were things which concerned the inexhaustible splendour of His dispensation, things which would unfold more fully as the centuries passed, as human knowledge increased, and as the widening vista of man’s knowledge of the universe and his own place within it called for a fuller synthesis of all created wisdom in the central unity of Christ, the Seat of all Wisdom.

The place of Christ and His Church in the Economy of Revelation

Christ could not have been given to us at any time in the history of mankind.  He gave himself when the nations were ripe unto harvest, when the state of human civilisation could “bear” His mission and could support its continuance through the Church.  In like manner also, when He had run the brief course of his public mission on earth, He had shown not all but only the beginning of His glory.  He had revealed and had clarified the essentials, but He had not unfolded all the majesty of that content to the minds of men; for they could not bear it.  He had planted a seed, a seed which would grow and develop interiorly and exteriorly through time, as the Church, guided by the Spirit of God which vivifies her, came the more fully to understand:

“What is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth,

to know also the charity of Christ,

which surpasses all knowledge;

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”  (Eph 3:17)

Divine guidance would prompt and direct this process of growth and development, a guidance promised by Christ  frequently in the Gospels,  and  particularly  in  the  few  passages  we  have chosen as illustrations.  For development is something other than mere change.  Development is an increase of being in accordance with, and substantial to, the nature of a thing in its primordial condition.  Development does not change the content of a thing, but brings to maturity what is actively contained as potential in its definition when it first begins to be. A physically mature adult is very strikingly different from the single cell which began to develop many years before in the womb of a woman.  He looks very different, yet he is one and the same entity.  The maturity is the fulfilment of that primitive content, a fulfilment to which the beginning was actively and substantially relative; the consummation of the expectation contained within a single cell.

It is the same in principle with the revelation given by Christ and contained in his Church.  The appearances may change, but sincere consideration will show that what is found in the latter end is only the mature content, the fuller growth, of what was there present in the beginning.  There is nothing really “new”, nothing new in the sense of an extraneous factor which has been taken into the original substance of the Christian revelation, but which was not there in the beginning as a reality capable of further elaboration.

Any man who will honestly examine the doctrine, dogmatic and moral of the Catholic Church, will find that throughout history she has jettisoned nothing, added no new principle, and betrayed no ancient content under pressure.  She has grown and developed step by step upon her past, always consistent, always united, always and everywhere one in Faith and in authority.   She remains the same while she develops in knowledge and understanding of the things of Christ which are shown her by the Holy Spirit of God which gives her life.  For this Spirit of God it is which, as her Master promised, declares the things which are of Christ, and shows them to her.

The holiness of the Catholic Church - possessing the mind of Christ

It is plain for all to see, especially all men who acknowledge the Christian name, how in the Catholic Church the economy of the Incarnation is wonderfully continued in all its necessary characteristics, so remarkably indeed, that a deep mind will not remain long unconvinced once he begins to pray for and to seek after the truth.  Her very constitution, maintained entire against heretical defections, against sin and foolishness from outside, and also from within her living body, is proof enough in the background of so many centuries, of the power of God which works in her.

The development of doctrine is not a phenomenon which a Christian needs to defend with any sense of embarrassment.  Development of doctrine is the law of life for the Church, it is an increase of her own public stature, even as increase of holiness is a perfection of the personality of the individual.   And as increased personal sanctity brings with it for the individual a greater depth of appreciation and understanding of the things of God, so also development of doctrine is for the Church an increase of the understanding of the mind of Christ, and through that increase she has it within her to give new help to the sons of men as with successive ages they turn to her with new questions and new problems.  She answers them with an increase of wisdom, out of the things which are Christ’s own.  This increase of stature within the life of the Church is best likened, as

we have seen, to the growth of a seed; the filling out of a content already there as an active potency, in its most humble beginnings.  This metaphor is the more to be preferred because it is the comparison so often used by Christ himself when he speaks of the growth, internal  and  external of  his Church.   It was not possible for the plenitude of the grandeur of God and of His works which is revealed in Christ to be grasped by even the noblest of men in the beginning of the new dispensation of the Incarnation.  It would have been directly contrary to the nature of man and to the discursive and gradual way in which man increases in all his knowledge; and Christ came not to destroy anything, but to give life, and to give it more abundantly.

Today the Incarnation can be understood with a fullness which has never been possible before, because it can be viewed in its intrinsic relation to so much greater a background of knowledge.   After the persecuted infancy of the Church, it was the background of knowledge contained in the Romano-Hellenic empire which threw so rich a light upon the Wisdom of the Word of God, that there came forth the very great theology of the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church.  In the middle-ages, the wealth of the same knowledge, added to by the considerable Arab civilisation of the Levant, became in the hands of the Schoolmen, and particularly of St. Thomas Aquinas, the raw material of an even greater and more accurate synthesis of philosophy and of theology.  Today the world is immeasurably more rich with new knowledge than in the middle-ages, and today it is the duty and the obligation of the Church to provide a further development of understanding, and a new and larger synthesis of the wisdom of all things, natural and supernatural in Christ, to provide for men today their

“natural milk, rightly desired with simplicity.”(I Peter 2:2 Douai version)

Church as Guarantor of genuine development of doctrine

This process of development in theology which must receive a new impetus at this very time, is then a process natural to man, for it follows his natural mode of acquiring new knowledge by degrees, and not by immediate contemplation of infused truths.  This process, natural to man, and therefore proper to the Divine dispensation by which man is ruled through the ages by God, requires an authoritative and palpable centre within the Church, available for appeal in all cases of doubt and challenge.  The economy of the Incarnation is a consistent order;  just as when Christ was on earth his Apostles could turn to the spoken word of the Word made flesh, so at all times in history, men must be able to look towards the same spoken authority of the Word of God within the Church he instituted to fulfil his mission.

Who can be sure, however holy and learned he may be, whether an emergent system of thought, or a new speculative development within Christian theology is a true development of doctrine, a deviation from the truth, or a mixed content partly true and partly erroneous?  Not every new thought is true, nor every new system an increase of genuine wisdom.  There are heresies as well as developments, destructive and dissolvent lines of thought which derive not from the promptings of the grace of God upon humble genius, but rather from the soaring minds of men of great power, who while they may be geniuses are unbalanced in wisdom, and who fail through arrogance of spirit in greater or in lesser degree.  Not every man of genius is possessed of that high degree of sanctity which holds the fierce thrust of a powerful spirit to a true and steady course.  An individual may be sure that he is right, or that someone whom he admires and follows is right, but others may be equally sure that both of them are wrong, and in any event, of what general use to the vast mass of men is purely subjective opinion, when it touches upon controversies of fundamental importance to Christian doctrine?

There must be a centre of appeal which can be trusted without  reservation,  and  once more  we are back upon the  fundamental requirement of the Law of Finality, that man shall have his sure and guiding Intellect, and that this principle of infallibility upon basic issues shall always be present in the world since the inception of the economy of God made man for men.   The Church must be so linked to Christ, that through her constitution, and through the hierarchical co-relation of the members of the Church, Christ Himself may speak to her, and for her, to the world with the same authority as when He spoke on earth.  Now every voice needs a mouth, and every word needs a tongue, and the mouthpiece and tongue of the Word of God is the Vicar of Christ, who in his own person has it within his office, on certain occasions in clearly defined circumstances, to speak for Christ, as Christ, with the infallibility of Christ.  This he does not by virtue of his own power, but by the power of God who has promised to preserve the Church from substantial error, and is well able to fulfill his guarantee.

Christ Himself is the Guarantor of inerrancy

Men will look in vain for any visible guarantee for this inerrancy of the Church of Christ which stands through the successor of St. Peter.  It is not because of any human power, and certainly not because of a majority vote, or even human unanimity in a General Council that this quality exists within the Church and is exercised;  it rests upon the promise of Christ alone.  In the last analysis, the Bishop who is the “head” and “brain” of the Church, the Vicar of Christ, is directly conjoined to a ‘soul’ which is the Person of Christ, and He alone it is who acts with infallibility through her.  There remains as visible evidence of the fact however, one proof of tremendous force surely, the proof which is the witness of the past and of the present, which stands in the coherence, clarity, unity, and continuity of the doctrine of the Church Christian and Catholic; a witness that stands  together  with  an  uncompromising  fidelity to  the ascertainable nature of universal  Christian  belief through the ages.

This indirect proof of a divine government of the Church is the more striking because these characteristics have been maintained in a historical continuity through considerable periods of the most shameful decadence, and of the worst betrayals of Christ by members of his own Church.  It has been maintained without breakdown even when Judas has, on some occasions, sat upon the throne of Peter.  We have said indeed that it belongs to the constitution of the Church that the Vicars of Christ shall be, in certain circumstances which are too specialised to detain us here, infallible. We have never said that they are also impeccable.  A Pope who was a great sinner could speak with infallible authority in the name of Christ, as the instrument of Christ for the government of the Church, and the next day could die, and be damned for his sins.  Men cannot be ‘guaranteed’ in impeccability, or they would not save their souls by willing co-operation with the gifts of God.   The inerrancy which is proper to the Church belongs to the successors of the Apostles, the Bishops of the Church as a total body, and in particular to the successor of St. Peter, who is the governing centre and source of authority within the Church, in much the same way as the brain is the centre of control and direction in the body of any living creature.

The wonder of the Catholic Church  is  that  notwithstanding the development  of theology,  philosophy, science, and all forms of knowledge which has been achieved over two thousand years within the heart of a type of civilisation which has always been highly critical and progressive, this same Church is manifestly one in type, marks, and essential character, with the Church of the first centuries.  There has been most surely the consistent development of a seed, not the formless agglomerations and haphazard divisions which change merely human organisations beyond all recognition, until in the end even the name, now become a mere label, is finally discarded.

Hierarchical nature of the Church’s authority

It is sometimes objected that the constitution of the Church is too authoritarian, and should be more democratic. Unless such a criticism is kept to fields of practical administration and discipline, it does not merit discussion, because it shows simply a failure to understand why the Church is necessarily constituted as she is in her organic essentials.  In essentials the Church can never be a “democratic” institution in any strictly logical sense, still less in a political sense.   The truth concerning God, man, and creation, is not something which can be decided by a majority vote.  It is not man’s prerogative to inform the Deity that consequent upon a mandate from the electorate, agreement has been reached at cabinet level concerning His nature and attributes.  It is the prerogative of God to declare such things to men with an authority from which there is no appeal, and to maintain that principle of certainty over the ages.

God is always right, and only God is always right, human 'presbyterianism' as a norm of divine truth makes nonsense of any ultimate divine providence for men.  It may come as a shock to some of the vaguely Christian popular philosophers who have been writing so very sincerely, but also so very confusedly of late, upon the related subjects of Christian unity and the defence of European civilisation, to be told that the Deity would not, in point of fact, have changed his mind either before or during the period of his Incarnation, if he had only had the advantage of their own experiences and the benefit of their valuable observations.

Truth is one whole, and the revealed truth is absolute truth without qualification.  Because the Church is the instrument which continues the economy of the Incarnation, she must be hierarchic, organized from within according to office and function by the authority of Christ, even as an organic body is organized in members and organs, and has one centre of determination in its head.    The Church, since Christ is her absolute head, being to her what the soul is to the body, must be organized from the top downwards, from Christ to men through the ministry of men.  She cannot derive her authority from the bottom upwards, as if she received her mission and her credentials from men.   The Church can, and sometimes has, followed an inadequate and unwise policy in human affairs in many provinces of Christendom; in so far as she lives in her members she can make mistakes over a wide field, and can fall into moral degeneracy and can need reformation from within herself.   She can in fact, in so far as she may be identified with very many of her members, endure many wounds, but she can never be wounded either by disease from within, or laceration from without, in any lethal place;  she can never die, nor can she fail substantially in her mission.

Judgment of Christ in His Church, not private opinion

While we are considering the essential constitution of the Church it will be wise to touch briefly in this context upon matters which have much importance for Christian men who are not in communion with the Church Catholic, or Universal.   We ought while we study the nature, origins and constitution of the Church in the perspective of the guiding principles of the economy of the Incarnation, to give some measure of attention to those sources of Christian  tradition and teaching which are constituted by the accepted Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament.  We have already asserted that these cannot be considered as a sufficient Canon of Faith in themselves alone, and the all-sufficient proof of this assertion among many reasons which could be adduced, lies in the impossibility of interpreting them by private judgment in one, and in only one, obvious sense.  This point is so much proven by contemporary history among the sectarian churches that it needs no further labouring at all.

If men cannot be sure, absolutely sure, of the meaning of doctrines contained in the scriptural record, then the Bible is simply a very edifying body of reading but nothing more than that.   In an earlier chapter we insinuated that for a Christian, a man we mean who believes that Christ was God, to claim to interpret the Scriptures on the norm of private opinion is outrageous, and we must reiterate that statement more forcibly now.  We do not say that private opinion enlightened by the grace of God may not be a canon of interpretation which may often be right, even less do we say that the individual cannot obtain the very greatest personal profit from such reading.

What we do say, and do insist upon, is that the final and authoritative norm of judgment is the Church, and not private opinion, and that when the individual contradicts either the interpretation authoritatively defined by the Church, or contradicts Catholic doctrine in the name of private interpretation of the scriptures, then the private individual is always wrong.  Private opinion is not the ultimate norm of the interpretation of the inspired writings.  When we admit that God is the principal author of the Christian Bible, we must also admit, because of that fact, that it is not possible for any man at all, however holy and sincere, to make his own limited intellect the measure of the meaning of the  Divine  Intellect.    The holier  and  deeper the man,  the  more he  will understand, but even the great saints and doctors of the Church whose commentaries have been of such value to the Church, have never mastered everything that God has to say to men through the Scriptural record.

The verses of the Scriptures, especially of the New Testament in Christ, are pregnant with meaning for all time, and the degree of our appreciation of that fuller significance will deepen as human knowledge increases, and as theologians of the Church are able to present to us the wisdom of God, both that which men gain naturally, and that which is revealed in Christ, in an ever closer unity, and an even more grand perspective.  In this deepening perspective Nature will become an always more perfect foil to the jewel which is the Incarnate Word, who crowns all Nature.

Theologians, especially saints and doctors of the Church, are often profoundly right, and they are the instruments of God by which a new depth of Christ’s wisdom is unfolded before the eyes of men.  They may be right long before the Church asserts that they are right, but we can only be sure that they are right when the Church approves their teaching, or when, as in the case of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, she declares their personal sanctity and recommends their presentation of the Faith of which she is the custodian.  We must live then as man:

“First of all you must understand this:

that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation,

because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of men,

but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” (2 Peter 1:20-21)

Scripture belongs to the Church whose interpreter she is

Not only are the Scriptures subject to the Church rather than to private opinion for their final declaration of sense, but it is the Church herself who makes the Scriptures - the Scriptures do not make the Church.  The rule of Christian Faith is not ‘Scripture’ but ‘Apostolic Tradition and the Scripture.’ If one is asked which of these is the greater, the only possible answer would be that the living Tradition of the authoritative Church is greater than the written record of the Scriptures.  This must be so, because Tradition and Scripture are not really two distinct principles of authority, but the same principle under different aspects.

The inspired Scriptures are simply apostolic, or in the case of the Old Testament, prophetic tradition, which is written down and which is directly inspired by God in the accuracy of what it records.   The apostolic traditions of the primitive Church which are contained in these written records did not make or precede the Church, they are the written record in a biographical detail that could not perfectly be maintained in any other way, of the Tradition which then lived in the Church, and continues to live in, through, and by the Church. Because the Church, under the inspiration of God produced the Scriptures, she alone, under the guidance of God, is the adequate interpreter of these things which are her own.

It must be remembered too, that neither the Gospels, nor the Epistles of the New Testament make any claim to be a detailed and exhaustive record of every aspect of the Christian Tradition, nor to contain the precise application of the Faith to every query which touches Faith or Morals.  If we are told that: “There are many other things also which Jesus did, which if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.” (Jn 21:25), then we are given the last word upon this subject out of the pages of the Scriptures themselves.  This is not to say that we could have done without the Scriptures; they were written as part of the one dispensation of the Catholic Christian Church.  We are insisting only that the Scriptures are written Apostolic Tradition, and not the entirety at that.  Between Scripture and Tradition in the Church there can be no conflict at any time.

What is now the written record of the Church of the Apostles, was in their own day the living Tradition of the Catholic Christian Church, and only in and through that Tradition as it still lives in the Church, can those divinely guided records be fully and correctly interpreted.  This living Tradition alone it is, which deriving from the Apostles, and jealously guarded always as the “deposit of Faith”, possesses the key to the meaning, the ever more full understanding, of the written words of God.  Christ cannot contradict Himself, the same power which guides the Church today guided the evangelists of old; what was written under the inspiration of God through the Church, in the Church, for the Church, can today also only be declared in more abundant measure through the same authority of God which rules the Church.

Scripture and Tradition parts of the dispensation of the Incarnation

Here once again we are in the presence of a divine economy which we must anticipate if the Incarnation is to be true to its own guiding principles: the governance and perfection of man through the instrumentality of matter. Because of the Church, the Word of God which is spoken by Christ is carried through the centuries by authoritative preachers and teachers among all the tribes of the earth.  This Word is contained both in speech, where it is the living tradition of the Church which endures through successive generations, and in writing, where it is the recorded Tradition of the Scriptures, and particularly of the New Testament, which concerns us most.  The Church as a living entity is the judge of both vehicles of true teaching; of the verbal content ever living within the Church in the members of the Church generation by generation, and of the recorded Tradition of the Bible, and the solemn definitions of  Popes in  Council.   She is the Judge of all these things, the living present, the recorded past, Scripture and Ecumenical Council alike, for they are all born of her, and they all live by her.

In the crises of doctrine concerning Faith and Morals which from time to time beset the Church, men must have recourse to Christ, for He alone can re-declare the truth in new circumstances, and when this becomes necessary, as sometimes it does in times of subtle heresies, men will hear again through the voice and senses of a man, the authoritative voice of Christ speaking down through the ages, speaking through the mouth of Peter, the rock upon whom the Church stands for ever, and in whom most magnificently and most consistently, the type, character, and principle of the “Word made Flesh” is continued for all men in all ages.

Infallibility – a fifth “note” of the Church

It is customary among Catholics to enumerate four outstanding “notes” by which the true Church of Christ may be known:  that she is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.  This is very true, but one should go much further in this claim.  We must also insist that the infallibility which the Church claims as part of her very essence, is not only a note, or mark, by which she may be recognized as the Kingdom of God on earth, but the one and fundamental mark of her descent from Christ in which all other characteristics inhere.

The supreme characteristic of the whole dispensation of God’s divine influence upon intelligent man which culminates in the Incarnation, is the note of infallible providence, and infallible authority, in the control and direction of the final ends of man.  The supreme character of Christ’s public mission on earth as a man is its finality, and its infallibility as a work wrought directly by God.  This same mark then, is the mark which first and foremost we must look for in the Church if the work of Christ so begun in the past continues through time, and is realised through a Church.   We have already said it of course, but once more we return to it as the inevitable corollary of so many conclusions:  the note of dogmatic infallibility, must be found somewhere on earth among Christians, if Christ is God made man on earth for men.  This note is found as an explicit claim within the Catholic Church, and within no other Christian sect.  It is the note which more certainly than any other proclaims her divine descent, because it is the note which is fundamental and basic to the whole economy of the Divine Being working through the material, and through created persons, according to the nature of man. This characteristic, an infallibility promised by Christ and maintained by him, is the origin of all the other marks by which she may by known as the “light of the world”, and the “city set upon a hill”.  She could not be One, and Holy, Apostolic, and Universal or Catholic, unless the integrity and continuity these phrases all imply rested first of all upon her constitutional authority, and her certainty in the truth.

Obedience to Christ

We do not present to men as a fact, a challenge, and a truth which carries an obligation, this unique prerogative and unique truth of the Catholic Church for any reason less than the life of their own souls, and the salvation and regeneration of world civilisation.  We proclaim her status, and the consequent duty incumbent upon us all to accept her, because we thrill to the realisation of all that she is, of the greatness within her which so far outshines any of the grandeur of her status because we know that what we have written concerning her is so certainly, so overwhelmingly the truth.   We do not believe that men who are already Christians in name, especially those who are ‘not far from the kingdom of God’ in that they admit at least the Divinity of Christ, will long desire to kick against the goad of God, and continue to remain outside her.  Good men will not desire to answer the unanswerable, or to seek for further signs beyond these most certain signs we give them gladly in the love and brotherhood of Christ.

We are not free, not any of us, to bow the knee or to ignore her as we will.  We are not acquitted of our reasonable service because we find in her past, or in the behaviour of some of her members in the present, either sin, stupidity, or ignorance.  She is divine, and Christ lives in her, despite the frailties and follies of men who compose her body.  She has the fullness of Christ;  she alone has the wherewithal to lead any soul to the highest happiness and human perfection;   she has the means of safety, sanity, and a great hope for all the nations of the world.  With all the faults of men, she is the Bride of Christ, eternally beautiful, and she is holy in deed and in substance, and provides to all men in her Sacraments, her teaching, her approved practices of devotion, the means of an increasing life of soul, and wealth of personality.  If men reproach her because she loves and does not despise even her children who are sinners, let them recall that she is the mother of all the Saints, and that men have not canonised in affection and in popular esteem any but those supreme examples of human nobility whom she has raised from their baptism, and crowned with the final honours of her altar.

CHAPTER   12

The Sacramental System

The organization and the constitution of a universal Church follows the guiding principle of the Incarnation, and in almost everything that one can say concerning the Christian Faith, the type of divine operation towards men embodied in the Incarnation of God, is the key to the understanding of whatever is discovered in the Church as a society which functions among men under the mandate of God, and through the determination of God.   We saw that an organized and substantially inerrant Church was the corollary of the type of mission which Christ initiated in Judea in his own person.  We saw also that the Church in continuing the essential type of that mission as an apostolate in a visible medium, through the spoken word, and through men, is true alike to the economy of God acting upon men for men in a human nature, and also to those elements in human nature which explain the causative motive of the Incarnation and the ecclesiastical dispensation in which the same divine operation continues through time.  At the root, it is the mixed nature of man, his composition of matter and spirit in one nature which looks towards, and expects of the divine wisdom of God, an economy of salvation through matter and spirit in one unity, without which the nature of man would be a denial of the divine  wisdom  of God.    The  Incarnation,  and  the Church  which  is  the assembly of Christ,  is  therefore manifestly one and the same Divine Economy on earth.

The Sacraments in the Economy of the Incarnation

The Sacramental system of the Church, and the claim which is made by the Church for the nature and mode of operation of her Sacraments, is likewise a corollary of the same dispensation of the Supreme Spirit working through  matter,  through  the  flesh,  through  human  nature,  and  a  corollary  which  is  very  easily  drawn. Moreover, even as the prerogative of substantial infallibility in the declaration of doctrine concerning Faith and Morals is necessary and intrinsic to the very concept of a Church of Christ, however hard a saying it seems at first to the mind of man, so too the equally startling mode of operation claimed for the Christian Sacraments is necessary and inevitable.

The infallibility of the Church, and the operation of a sacrament directly and immediately of its own objective causative power, these two principles are not surprising at all in themselves.  They are surprising only because men have either ceased to believe in the literal Divinity of Christ, or else because while they still believe in the literal Divinity of Christ, they have long since emptied out of the content of Christianity those marks and characteristics which alone make sense of the Divinity of Christ, and of the mission of a Divine Person among created beings.  Only the Catholic Church is consistent in all things, and in all aspects of her constitution, with the economy of the Incarnation;   men must realize that it is not the claims of the Church which are ‘startling’, but the basic fact of an Incarnation of God in human nature which is startling.  Once this cardinal fact is appreciated, and the Incarnation is seen in its proper perspective in creation, all else is the majestic unfolding of the one supernatural wisdom of God in the Person of Christ.

As we come now to treat in brief of the Sacraments of the Church, and to show their necessary derivation from Christ, we make no claim that we will do justice to the richness and beauty of our subject-matter.  One of the heartbreaks of this book is the realisation time and again that every chapter ought to be a separate book, and the impossibility in so short a compass as one book, of doing anything like justice to the wisdom of God which shines out in all his wonderful works.  We must content ourselves with a definition of a Sacrament which does little more than echo the simple definition of the catechism which the church places in the hands of little children when first she gathers them together to learn the things of God: “A sacrament is a sacred rite, ordained by Christ, which is the outward sign of an inward act of God, by which grace is given to our souls.”   The Church numbers seven such special and distinctive rites, or Sacraments namely, Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Holy Eucharist, Orders, Matrimony, and the Anointing of the Sick.

Not every Christian ceremony is a “sacrament”, but only these we have named.  There are very many  rites, ceremonies, and practices of devotion used in the Church which were instituted by herself, and these she can multiply, modify, or abrogate at will.  A rite which is a Sacrament was instituted by Christ; it has special attributes and stands in a special relation to Christ, it will remain in the Church until the end of time, and over its essential nature the Church herself has no modifying power, because it is an integral part of the essence of the Church herself.  Most of the solemn ritual which surrounds the administration of the sacraments is non- essential to the substance of the sacrament.  Such accretions have been added directly by the Church, or at least approved by her as the pious practice of age-old custom.  These accretions of ritual indeed can be modified or dispensed, but the essence of the sacrament, as a sensible sign ordained by Christ of a divine operation, that will always remain the same. With this necessary distinction made, we can leave aside the discussion of what sort of things are or are not “essential” in a sacrament, and how they can be determined.  As far as possible we must by-pass issues which are domestic to theology within the framework of the Faith.

What we have to present concerning the Sacraments of the Church will probably startle the non-Christian at first, and many a purely nominal Christian as well, but as the chapter proceeds both will come to be surprised not at what we teach of the Sacraments of the Church but rather that they had failed to anticipate what we will have to say even before we began to set it out explicitly.  Once more the reader will find himself amazed at the complete exactitude with which the forms and properties of the Christian Sacraments follow from the plan of the Incarnation, and we think that many of them will be forced in the light of the stupendous consistency of wisdom within the constitution of the Church, to concede that such complete fidelity to the divine economy from which she derives, argues both her supernatural origin, and a supernatural guidance in her theological development over the centuries.

The Sacramental principle

We do not intend to explain any given sacrament at length, although it is imperative to denote a short chapter following upon this one to the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist in particular, nor are we going to defend the derivation  from  Christ  of  any  given  sacrament  in  particular,  so  full  an  exposition  belongs  to  detailed apologetics, and can be found in works of apologetics.   What we wish to focus in this chapter are certain elements in the general sacramental system which are not, at least to our knowledge, gathered together and presented in the same perspective elsewhere, elements which cannot in any case be thoroughly appreciated except in the perspective of the synthesis of creation which we have been outlining progressively in this book.

Every one of the Christian Sacraments has one property in common with the rest, however dissimilar it may be in other respects, an all-important property which is frequently a matter for kindly scorn among critics outside the communion of the Catholic Church.  It is claimed in the case of each one of those seven visible and sensible rites which the Catholic calls ‘Sacraments’, that the spiritual effect which is signified in the rite is caused not by the individual in whose favour this rite is exercised, but derives immediately, directly, and in a causal sense only from the sacramental act itself.  The Catholic Church teaches very positively that neither the Minister of the sacrament, nor the person who receives it, has any intrinsic causal influence at all in the production of the effect, or grace, which is conferred by the sacrament.  The person who receives the sacrament is the passive recipient of a gift of God in the spiritual order, and the minister is only the active instrumental agent;  neither the minister nor the subject who receives the sacrament causes the effect of the Sacrament.

Theologians are accustomed to sum up this possibly frightening, but certainly not ambiguous doctrine, in two terse Latin tags which contain the essence of Catholic teaching concerning the sacraments in a nutshell.  A sacrament, they say, operates “ex opere operato”, which means roughly “from the operation which is accomplished”, and not, like all other holy rites and devotional practices, “ex opere operantis” which means, - “from the efforts of the person who performs the act”.  In other words, a sacrament has primarily an objective value, it does something of itself and of its own nature.  The subject who receives the sacrament is active only in so far as he may, or may not co-operate, with the effect conferred by the sacrament, but he is not an agent in any sense which means a “cause” of the effect produced in him.

Now in the case of every other hallowed rite, (except the Mass, which is primarily a Sacrifice, not a Sacrament, although it is inseparable from the accomplishment of the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist), the very opposite is true.  In any other rite besides the true Sacraments the principal cause and agent of the spiritual benefit conferred lies in the good dispositions of the recipient, and in the perfection of intention with which he uses some rite or ceremony as a means to assist him in directing his heart and mind to God.  The number of private and semi-liturgical devotional usages is myriad, and in them the form of the rite, and the significance of the rite does  not  directly effect  anything,  the value of the rite as  a work  of prayer is  secondary to  the dispositions of the recipient, and is only a subjective instrument of prayer.

Non-Catholic difficulties with the Sacramental Principle

This must seem at first sight the only reasonable doctrine concerning the use and value of external rites at all.  It is understandable that a man may use some form of ritual to assist him in the fuller appreciation of spiritual things, but most non-Catholics find it outlandish, and superstitious beyond belief, to think that any sort of rite whatever, even a ‘sacrament’, is able to bring about any effect of itself.  The non-Catholic is accustomed to regard all religious rites, the sacraments included, as simply traditional and holy symbols, as vehicles of self- expression standardised by Christian practice, by which the human personality is assisted to lift itself up towards interior union with God, and as nothing more than that.  Such vehicles of Christian “self-expression” have not, outside the teaching of the Catholic Church, any causal influence of their own nature.  Surely, they urge, the effect of a “sacrament”, not less than the efficacy of any other religious act, consists in the raising of the heart and mind to God, and the acceptance by God, of that human piety in a relationship symbolized under different aspects in those traditional and solemn Christian rites known as the “sacraments”.  The “sacraments” in themselves, they would say, could be altogether changed, or even discreetly discarded, if it were not for that reverence which is due to their antiquity, and in at least some cases beyond dispute, to their choice as a symbolic expression of either divine, or human love, by Christ himself.

To non-Catholics this seems the only rational view to take, and the consequences of the Catholic theology of the sacraments appear to them to create needless embarrassment for the intellect.   The Catholic teaching, defined by that Church as an article of faith appears as nothing more or less than an anthropomorphic accretion from the grossly superstitious ritualism of paganism.   When all due respect is tendered to the sincerity and professional ability of the theologians of the Catholic Church, may it not be whispered in all honesty and charity that the Roman Catholics have got themselves into an indefensible position from which they cannot now withdraw?  Is it not fair to say that so superstitious and materialistic a concept of the sacraments is just an unfortunate barnacle-crust of paganism which the barque of Peter accumulated in her stormy passage through the weary oceans of pagan Rome, and which on later arrival in more tranquil waters, her crew were unable to hack off from the Ark of Salvation herself?

When one is invited to believe that some act of religious worship causes something within a man, what else is this except an invitation to believe in magic?  One may use the most beautiful ceremonial and the most inspiring form of words in such a rite, one may define its concept with all sincerity and with a wealth of erudition, but this does not conceal the fact that the Catholic theologians, and the Catholic Church indeed in her General Councils, are saying that a rite does something to a man, rather than that a man does something through a rite, and what else can such a concept set forth except an invitation to believe in superstition and magic?

On the fact of it, this attitude is very persuasive and very human.  Indeed, it is altogether too human, and it is bound up with a concept of Christ and of the Church of Christ which is only and merely human, a concept limited by the short-sighted vision of nature undeveloped and unenlightened by the wisdom of God.  Such an attitude of mind, and the line of argument outlined by us above, misses the unique essence of the Christian Sacrament, because it misses, as do the sincere minded men who habitually think according to it, the nature and the significance of the Incarnation itself.

The Sacraments continue the work of the Incarnation

A sacrament is not an act of magic, although it is an act which confers some effect of its own nature.  It is unique in order and in nature among acts which are effected among men through the hands of men, but yet nothing is more worthy of credence that what we claim for it.   We say “worthy of credence” rather than “reasonable”, because the motives of credibility must be sought in God, in the Person of Christ, and because unless the “reason” which makes the nature of a sacrament credible had descended with God upon earth, it would not be knowable or conceivable at all.  The “reason” for a sacrament must be sought in the supernatural order of the Intellect of God in Christ, not in the ratiocinations of the created minds of men.

The motives of the Incarnation as a perfect economy of divine wisdom for the determination of man, are reflected in the activities and the exigencies of human nature in a thousand ways in a thousand spheres of human expression both individual and social.   From the earliest times in the history of mankind, to confine ourselves to religious expression alone, we can trace sacrifice, rites, and sacred liturgies among the tribes of the earth.  Men could not dispense with ceremonies and rituals for the same reason that they cannot dispense with the spoken and the recorded word, because men are intelligent beings who subsist through a co-relation of matter and spirit in one substance. Body and soul must act in unison in this unity which is the human person, each element according to the properties of its own order, each assisting the other according to its means.  It is natural for man to express a content of his spiritual intellect through the media of beautiful language, splendid apparel, pomp and pageantry of every description.  In so doing, body and soul act in harmony in one person, and through a material beauty there is expressed the beauty of truth, goodness, and wisdom signified in what is done with outward show.  The Christian Sacrament follows the same requirements of human nature as does all ceremonial, and follows directly from the economy of the Supreme Intellect, the Divine Word, acting upon men through the flesh.

Sacraments of the Church constituted and effected by Christ

When Christ instituted the Church as an integral part of the order of governance and fulfilment for men, it was necessary that he should also institute the Sacraments, which indeed are only distinguished from the Church in the same way as separate members are distinguished within the body which they integrate.   There must be channels of sense through which the living waters of the Spirit of God might flow upon the human person, even as Jesus Christ Himself is the supreme “channel of sense” through which the tidings of God are given to the nations.  The work which God began in matter through his own human nature in Our Lord continues through the same medium of sense, and will continue through that medium of the material until the last human soul has been gathered in to the harvests of God.

“But Jesus answered then: ‘My Father is working still, and I am working!

This is why the Jews sought all the more to kill Him,

because He not only broke the Sabbath,

but also called God His Father;

making Himself equal to God.”  (Jn 5: 17-18)

The sacraments are the principal channels of sense and material expression through which Christ, as God works upon the individual soul even until now.  The Sacraments are not vehicles of sense through which men express themselves to God, and in consequence their value is not subjective, deriving principally from the act of the subject.

The sacraments, as material media of expression and operation, are vehicles through which Christ as God directly operates, through a material medium, and causes and effects a reality of a spiritual nature within the created spirit of man.   A sacrament therefore, is an expression of Christ’s action, not an act of the human recipient of the sacrament, and it has an objective and concrete value of its own, because it is an “act of God” in the fullest sense, an operation through matter in which God directly and as the sole agent, confers some status or some spiritual benefit upon the soul of man.

A sacrament, then, must work “ex opere operato”,  “from the work which is worked”, because a Sacrament is an act of Christ, an objective act, the primary causality of which is divine, and because God is the primary agent, as a spiritual being in the spiritual order.  A very simple example may be given which illustrates the principle of a Christian Sacrament.   When the king lays his sword upon the shoulder of, let us say, a Mr. Francis Smith, and says “Arise, Sir Francis”, that ritual, actions and word together, is not a subjective activity on the part of Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, is the passive recipient of a benefit, and all he does is to accept the honour and co-operate in its conferment; he does not cause it.  The action of the king when he knights Mr. Smith, is an objective action, an action which does something. The touch with the sword, and the will of the monarch expressed through the words “arise, Sir Francis”, make Mr. Smith “Sir Francis Smith” there and then, at that very moment.   It may be said that actually it is not the rite, nor the words, which makes the citizen, Mr. Smith, to be a knight, not in a strict sense anyhow, but it is the decree of the king as a power, manifested through these signs which is the genuine causal factor.  This is the exact truth, and we reply that a sacrament does not operate differently in principle either.

It is not strictly and logically the rite which does anything as a rite, but the will and intention of God as a Person,  which  is  active through  the sacramental  act,  and  which  accomplishes  whatever effect  that ritual typifies.  The action of the king when he creates a knight is an objective act, a direct conferring of a status or of a benefit, because in the king all temporal power is centred as in its fountain-head.  The action of Christ when he confers a status, or gives some benefit of soul through his sacramental activity, is causal and objective, because Christ is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and in Him reposes the plenitude of all power in heaven, and upon earth, as in its source and fountain-head.

A Christian sacrament is not then, an act of magic. This reproach would be justified only if the rite was claimed to be about some effect of its own material power, like a charm or a talisman.  A Christian sacrament does not accomplish anything in virtue of the visible act which is performed, but because of the primary activity of Christ, the principle minister of the act, who works thus, and works causally through the instrumentality of men and various sensible media.  That no rite, or material agency, could of itself cause any spiritual effect, or increase in the soul the life of its spiritual powers, Our Blessed Lord himself was at pains to emphasize, when, speaking to those Jews who had crudely misunderstood how they were to “eat his flesh, and drink his blood.” He answered them: “It is the spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing.” (Jn 6:64).  By which He meant that even the flesh of His own Sacred Humanity was of no profit simply as a material thing, but only as the medium and instrument of the Spirit of God which quickens life in the souls of men.  And not only in soul indeed, but in body and soul together, for both are co-relatives of one person, and in that unity of personality possess only one common end in that beatific vision which is the intuitive enjoyment of the essence of God by the intellectual powers of a spiritual creation.  The sacramental rite also, which is a material and a sensible sign, would be of no objective use whatever, unless it were the instrument through which Christ worked and manifested a divine causality which increased the soul in a good of the spiritual, order.

Sacraments are the principal means of the operation of God

The sacraments are not the only means by which Christ “works even until now”, but they are the principal means, and to them all other means are relative and subordinate, for the sacraments are direct acts of Christ by which, through the Church, he applies the fruits of his salvation and redemption for the participation of men. There are many public acts of devotion quite apart from the private prayers and private works of individuals, which are useful to the soul of a man as a means, of coordinating his personality more fully towards God and the things of God, and these public and private devotions are not sacraments.

These latter are acts not of God, but of man, which have only a subjective value, they proceed from the individual and they are useful to him only according to the perfection of his own dispositions.  They are an aid to the human personality, but they do not in any sense, do anything directly of themselves as sacred actions. Among the public devotional usages of the Church, perhaps the most simple and most beautiful of such “subjective” rites is the making of the “sign of the cross” upon the head, breast, and shoulders.   Yet  this most ancient and  most  beautiful  rite,  the  first  thing a Christian child is taught to do after it can lisp the name of the Trinity, although full of rich significance, is not one of the sacraments of the Church.  It is not a sacrament, and therefore does not causally produce in the soul any objective content signified in its own form.  It cannot, because it is the act of man; a prayer only.

A sacrament is an act of God made man. A sacrament does not ask for anything, adore anything, confess to anything: a sacrament is a gift, and the giver is God.  Since not every rite through which men adore God, ask something of Him, and love Him is a Sacrament, but only seven particular rites, perhaps we ought very shortly and in passing indicate the relation which exists between a true sacrament, and a rite which is not a sacrament.

Sacraments effect a fundamental relation of man with God

The Sacraments pertain to the fundamental and basic relations of God to human life.  They are media of God’s action through sense channels in which, according to the nature of the sacrament, Christ either consecrates a man to Himself in some fundamental relation, conferring on him a status and the virtue of soul to live worthily in that status, or else a medium through which Christ ministers to the essential spiritual needs of men.  We can give some general indication of what is meant by a "“fundamental relation"” if we take the Sacraments one by one in passing.

In the sacrament of Baptism a man is cleaned from the stain of Original Sin, he is pardoned the state of disobedience to the intention and will of God which is contained in the disordered concupiscence of his fallen flesh, and which in the unity of one personality is a privation of the total goodness intended in his nature in the wisdom of God: a privation, and a grievous imperfection which must be forgiven if a man is to be named again a “son of God.”

In the Sacrament of Confirmation a man is strengthened in the status which he has already received by Baptism, and increased in the graces which are given with that status; even as the infant Church, on the day of Pentecost, was strengthened and confirmed in the powers which were already nascent within her.

In the Sacrament of Penance the forgiveness of Christ is extended to us all in our personal sins; and not merely forgiveness, but also with pardon, counsel, encouragement, and instruction given by the ministry of a priest. Without which ministry, this forgiveness itself would be frustrated, for men need to be taught, corrected, helped and consoled in order that they may once again place their often wounded feet upon the way of peace and holiness.  In this the priest, who is armed with the mandate and authority of Christ, speaks as Christ would have spoken, encourages as he would have encouraged, and shows to the penitent the why, and the wherefore of the occasions of human sin, even as his merciful Master would have done before him.  Nevertheless when he pronounces the words of absolution, he absolves not by his own power, but by the power of Christ who acts through his human voice as through an instrument.  It is as when the woman taken in adultery heard the words “Go and sin no more.” No man can ever forgive sins, but only God, and the most perfect way is when He pardons through the instrumentality of a priest, for in this way forgiveness is accompanied by those measures of counsel and instruction which are necessary so very often if future falls are to be avoided.

In the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, a man feeds upon the plenitude of Christ, upon the Deity, the only Bread from Heaven which gives life to the world, for the Holy Eucharist is Christ still Incarnate on earth. It is the same Jesus Christ, in his Divine and human natures, yet dwelling for all time among men as their Bread of Life, present under the appearances, but not under the material reality, of bread and of wine in the Sacrament of the Christian Altar.  This Sacrament is the centre and principal of all Sacraments, because the only one which is not simply a means through which Christ works until now, but Christ Incarnate in Person. This sacrament is so unique, and so especially the centre of all Christian life, being the God of Christian men dwelling among them still, that we must devote a short chapter to the consideration of it by itself, and will not linger to explain it here.

In the Sacrament of Matrimony the lives of a man and a woman are so consecrated to God that they become two in one flesh, a unity of nature which cannot persevere with happiness for them both, unless they are united also in a mutual and responsible love in the spirit.  Through this sacrament they consecrate themselves to God for the work of bringing forth men not only for time, but for eternity.  In this office they are confirmed by God, and blessed as were our first parents at the dawn of human history, and they are strengthened in soul to observe the responsibilities and laws of their state with that mutual love, and in that mutual faithfulness, and mercifulness, which is demanded of the holy state of marriage.

By the Sacrament of Holy Order a man is set apart, and consecrated wholly in body and in soul to the apostleship of Christ, so that he is, or should be, as a father, a judge, a counsellor, and a healer of souls amidst the people of God.

In the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, the Church prays for a man when he is grievously ill, and the

effect of this sacrament is to heal him in soul, and if God will it, also in body.  The healing of the body is not obtained by a ‘miracle’, but the action of the sacrament follows, and embraces the natural means of healing, and prompts the total co-operation of the sick man with those means.  This is achieved in particular through the quiet of soul and the peaceful resignation to the loving care of God which this sacrament confers.   If it be however the good pleasure of God to close his mortal span, this sacrament forgives him if he be in sins; anoints him with the blessing of the peace of Christ, and brings him with confidence in the clemency of God to that dramatic moment when he closes his eyes in death beneath the sweet blessing of the mercy of Christ.

The sacraments are therefore rites through which Christ operates upon the human person with all plenitude of power in respect of the degree of grace given, and also in respect of the manner of its imparting.   In the sacramental system God ministers to the fundamental and radical spiritual needs of men. All other prayers, rites, and devotions may be said to be aspirations of the soul which look towards and are fulfilled in one of the sacraments, or else a co-operation and further implementation in the individual of the sacramental grace already received.

Perhaps the sacraments might be well enough described as the permanent frame, the skeleton upon which is built up towards God the spiritual stature of the individual, and the social and public life of the Church.  They are the permanent underlying framework of all Christian religious practice, and because of their institution by Christ as plenary channels through sensible media of a divine activity, ideally and perfectly adapted to the individual and to the social nature of man, they remain unchangeable in essentials for ever, for the wisdom of God is without repentance.

Reception of the content of the sacraments by desire

Anyone, but especially a Catholic, who has the fullness of the Faith of Christ, can obtain a striking insight into the general nature of any sacrament from the consideration of those finer points of the Church’s sacramental theology which are usually ignored by laymen.  It is because a sacrament is a plenary operation of Christ as God towards men, in a mode defined by the basic relationships of human life, that it is possible for theologians to speak of the reception of the minimum content and effect of certain Sacraments by “desire”, without the reception of the sacrament fully and formally as an administered rite.

The clearest possible example is the teaching that a non-believer may receive the essential content of the sacrament of Baptism “by love and desire” alone.  The essential content here in question is the remission of Original Sin, and the reacceptance of the soul by God in the union of habitual grace, the completion of which union is nothing less than the Beatific Vision itself.  Even without Baptism, this effect may be attained by a man turning to God in an act of generous aspiration, an act of the sincere love of God, a love which is itself prompted by the influence of God’s inward action upon the substance of the soul. For God loves men before they love Him, and prompts them to return His seeking.  All that is asked of such a man is that he should love God within his own soul, and put that love into practice according to his knowledge.  He must love God and his neighbour according to his light, however dim that light of knowledge may be.

This essential content of Baptism, the remission of Original Sin by the acceptance of a man by God as his “son” in  the union  of sanctifying  grace,  can  be obtained  by a man without  the reception  of the formal sacrament, because the active cause, in or out of the sacrament, is the same God seeking to effect the same one end.  A man can love God more and less perfectly; there are degrees of union with God.  In the state of heaven itself there will be degrees of perfection in the comprehension by the created nature of the Divine Nature;  a distinction of degree measured very largely by the acquired merits of men in this present state of existence.  It is possible also to receive a sacrament, in so far as its essential content is concerned, in a lesser or a greater degree.

Theologians are accustomed to say, in the case of the sacrament of Baptism, that this sanctification by interior love of God is wrought  "in voto sacramenti”, which means literally “in the wish to receive the sacrament”, a phrase which we will find very meaningful indeed.  When a man “desires” the sacrament, he desires Christ as the Saviour and Redeemer of the world, for the sacrament is only God as He acts upon the soul in the plenitude of his action, and in the consummation of the perfection of the manner of his action.  God is always prompting the soul from within, and perfecting the soul from within, through prayer, contemplation, and good work.  Long before the Incarnation of Christ, God was still the control, direction, and final end of man, although not yet in that plenitude which was, and which is, the perfection of His determination of men.  Just as Christ, God acting in a human nature upon mankind, is the perfection of the providence of God under the Law of Finality, so also, in the same way, and under exactly the same principle in the same salvific economy, the Sacraments are the plenitude expressed in matter of a divine action of God within the souls of men.

When a man receives the grace of justification “by desire”, he truly does so in the wish for the “sacrament”, for the will implicit in his act of the love of God is the longing for the fullness of God.  The fullness of God is only Christ, and the fullness of the carefulness with which Christ applies His redemptive pardon to the sons of men is only the sacrament of Baptism.  Just as the Incarnation of God gives us the plenitude of the Godhead in a manner which admits, and alone admits, of our perfect understanding of God and our perfection of co- operation with God, so also in the fulfilment of our personal spiritual lives the Sacraments give us the same thing, the plenitude of Christ’s divine salvific activity, by which “He works unto now” so manifested, and so applied, that it is the perfection of divine wisdom perfectly adapted to our human nature, and alone admitting of our perfect co-operation with God both in body and in soul.

Sacraments - spiritual operation through the medium of matter

The sacraments, faithful as ever to the type and economy of God revealed to man in Christ, are true completely to this same highest form of the manifestation and operation through sense of a spiritual reality.  A sacrament is more than a religious symbol of a spiritual effect.  The sacrament itself, in its own visible reality, in its “matter and form”, to use the language of theology, typifies and expresses by a natural analogy, the interior spiritual effect which God achieves in it.  This effect God alone works in and through the Sacrament, as the principal minister of the sacrament.   In the sacrament of Baptism for instance, the physical act of a washing, and the words which accompany and which define the act, represent in the medium of matter, the analogous spiritual effect which is the “cleansing” of a man from the “stain” of original sin.

In each of the seven sacraments the outward matter and form is representative in its own material order of an effect in the spiritual order which is essentially analogous.  The sacraments, as sacred signs, are not merely arbitrary symbols, but they are types, in an analogy of form, of the effect in the order of the spirit which is represented by them, and is brought to pass through them.  In our opinion, the Fathers of the Council of Trent (session XIII) spoke with genuine inspiration from God, when in introduction to their canons upon the sacraments, they chose as their definition of a Sacrament the succinct and all-sufficient formula:

“The sign of a sacred reality (res)

and the visible form of an invisible grace”.

This is a perfect definition of a sacrament, and it defines in the sacramental system the perfection in God’s works of a process which is paralleled exactly in all human operations.  We have studied the manner in which the human word is the sensible sign of a spiritual and intellectual content.  We have considered how the same principle, con-natural to man, and necessary to man, extends to all the arts and sciences, and to every form of human communication.  Metaphor in literature, and drama among the arts of action, have especial interest for us here, because they also strive to express a spiritual and intellectual meaning through material realities which bear some natural analogy to the content of their theme.

If strength of character and moral fortitude is called “leonine”, it is only because there is an analogy of nature and of function between the quality of physical strength in the material order, and the non-material virtue of moral courage, to the description of which the physical attribute is metaphorically transferred.   In great drama also, especially drama of an epic nature, as far as possible the creator of the theme and the producer of the action strive to express their subject through representative material media, which by an analogy of types and metaphor, express more fully and more majestically a reality which belongs, and can only belong, to the thoughts and destinies of an intelligent being.

The Church then, and when we say the Church in this context we ought really to say Christ, is most perfectly faithful to the nature of man as human nature  is  known  by  works  and deeds  in  all aspects  of human living.  The very  sacraments themselves are surrounded by her with a liturgical splendour which while not intrinsic and essential to the Sacraments, embraces them, and sets off in more detailed majesty the virtue and the meaning of the sacramental effects which they impart to the soul.

Co-operation with the grace of the sacraments

So perfectly do the sacraments agree with the nature of men, that although neither the minister of them nor the recipient, are true causes of what God achieves personally through them, there are nevertheless certain conditions which arise on the part of the minister, or the recipient, or both of them, which condition the valid imparting and the valid reception of the sacraments.  A sacrament, even as an act of God, is an act of God which fully respects human nature itself.  As a cause of a spiritual grace or status the prime mover is Christ Himself, but in so far as it is an activity exercised through human persons, it is conditioned by the requirements of a human act.

There must be found such a degree of co-operation with a divine operation as is proper and human in both the minister and the recipient.  In the first place, the recipient must be capable of receiving the grace or the status bestowed, and must not be in such a condition either through sin, or through the possession of an existing status which is contrary to the grace conferred by another sacrament, that there is a contradiction between his existing status before God and the Church, and that conferred by some one of the sacraments.  A sacrament which presumes a reasoned consent, such as Matrimony for example, which is based upon a mutual contract, cannot be valid unless the recipients are capable of giving such a consent, and do in fact give it freely.

The minister of a sacrament too, must at all times, as a delegate of Christ and the Church, perform an action which is truly ‘human’,  and fulfils those conditions under which alone an act is consonant with the dignity of an intelligent personality and is considered to be the responsible act of an intelligent being.   Therefore the minister of a sacrament must not perform a purely mechanical activity; a sacrament cannot be validly imparted by a minister of the Church of Christ, in the name of the Church, if the minister is out of his mind, inebriated, or rendered incapable of a human action by the use of any means, such as drugs, torture, or great terror, which robs him of real freedom, for freedom of action is a basic requirement in a responsible human act.  The minister of the sacrament need not know, in order to be a valid minister of Christ, and for Christ, the exact character of the grace which is bestowed through the rite which he administers, but he is required to have that minimum reasonable intention without which the rite would be less than responsible as an act of a human agent, the intention namely of “doing what the Church does, and intending what the Church intends” in the conferring of the Sacraments.

The minister of a sacrament need not even believe in what he does, for belief, as a subjective property of the minister, does not affect the imparting of the content of a sacrament at all, because the minister is not the cause or the giver of what is bestowed.  A traitor can validly act, in an official capacity, in the name of the head of the state for whom he is deputy, because his acts are not valid by reason of his own personal authority.   In a somewhat similar manner, although the analogy here is only partial, an unbelieving minister can validly bestow a sacrament so long as he possesses an habitual intention of doing what the Church does, and does not explicitly intend to do otherwise.

On the part of the recipient also, certain minimum conditions must be fulfilled, and those minimum conditions, which are again only the minimum conditions which define a man’s act  as human and responsible, are so widely different according to the nature of different sacraments, that it is unnecessary and unwise to go into them in detail.   Even when a sacrament which confers a status, and therefore the power to ask and to receive from God the grace, or spiritual strength, to live worthily and happily in that status, has been received validly, it is still possible for it to be devoid of fruit because of some bar placed in the way by the unworthy dispositions of the recipient.   For instance, a person may fulfil all the conditions necessary for the valid reception of Holy Orders, or of Matrimony, but may yet be so far from any intention of living the duties and responsibilities of those states worthily, that he is not capable of receiving the sacrament with profit to himself until he has brought himself to a more sincere frame of mind.

There is nothing whatever in a Christian Sacrament which does not demonstrate sweetly and reasonably the true type of the workings of God as they have been exercised upon man with plenitude of content, and perfection of manner since the Incarnation;  and there is nothing in them either which does not sweetly and reasonably confirm to the requirements and the dignity of human nature.  In the sacramental system the fullness of a supernatural wisdom and a supernatural order is wedded to the mode and manner of a created nature, with the same unity and perfection as the natural and the supernatural orders are united in the Person of God

Incarnate.

Sacraments in the plan of Divine Wisdom

So wonderfully does the sacramental system follow from the nature of the Church and from the economy of a Divine Dispensation operative with and through the material, that no man we think, who is honest, can possibly dismiss them as “magic rites” once he has understood the barest essentials of Christian sacramental teaching.  If many difficulties and queries arise in the mind of the reader, and they may be anticipated in the case of the non- Catholic Christian reader, we remind him that in this work we have not done more than present the very barest essentials of Catholic teaching concerning the sacraments, and that for a fuller account of such matter in detail, he would need to consult a more specialized study.

The sacraments follow from the Nativity of God on earth with such sweet reason that we may appear to rationalize them overmuch.  It will always so appear with the things of God.  The supernatural order is not an arbitrary and inconsequential order.   It is the order of divine wisdom as that wisdom caters for man in his journey towards his fulfilment within the essence of God, the seat of all wisdom, intelligence, and love.  There is more “intelligence” more “wisdom”, more of a “plan” in the operations of the Divine Mind in its relationship to men than there is in the operations of the same supreme intelligence through the whole of the material Universe.   The wisdom of God is one wisdom, all of it the product of the all-wise, and all-intelligent, and almighty  being  of  God,  and  in  the  wisdom  and  intelligence  there  is  nothing  arbitrary,  meaningless,  or indifferent to its end.

When we study the Incarnation, the Church, the Sacraments, and indeed all whatsoever that is contained directly and indirectly, explicitly and implicitly in the order by which God fulfils in man’s regard His own divine Law of Finality, we will find always, and everywhere, a consummate wisdom, an organic coherence of intelligent action which the mind of man can appreciate as tangibly as he can appreciate the wisdom of God embodied in those material physical laws which are the basis of the sciences of matter.  There is however one supreme difference, the wisdom which is from God for the benefit of men, fulfils a man, and no other wisdom can fulfil him.  The wisdom and the goodness which is in God, and is given for men’s participation, delights a man, and rests his heart in a secure love, a love which nothing created gives him at any time.

The wisdom of God moreover, since it is above a created mind in origin, order, and intention, and plan, can be declared to men only by the Divine Intellect, the Word of God in person, and when it is declared, even then God must first prompt the created spirit from within, before it can comprehend aright, and relish fully the things which are of God.  All created things below men are less than man, he learns and discovers them of his own competence.  The end of man, and the growth of a man’s soul in understanding and in love towards that end, is above a man, and there he does nothing of his own competence, but sits at the feet of God.  The Sacraments themselves, through which so perfectly Christ nourishes and heals His own, they are channels of His working as a Divine Person upon created human persons.  They are above our competence to imagine before we are taught concerning them, nut not above our admiring comprehension once we have been taught, and enlightened by the grace of God within our secret souls, that we may perfectly understand.  In the beginning of our study perhaps the sacramental system and the mode of operation claimed for it seemed shocking, even foolishness, but what shall we say of it all in the end?

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than men,

and the weakness of God is stronger than men”.  (I Cor. 1:25)

CHAPTER 13

The Blessed Eucharist

Among the sacraments, the Blessed Eucharist, which is Christ again present in the forms of matter, does not appear as an event which however wonderful, is something extrinsic to the economy of the Incarnation, something magnificent but arbitrary.  If we give to the Blessed Sacrament, as the presence of Christ upon the Christian Altar by transubstantiation is called, its rightful place in the order of the Christian Dispensation, it has an organic oneness with the economy of Christ, which removes any element of surprise.  While the element of surprise disappears, a surprise which derives from a failure to appreciate fully the motives and purpose of the Incarnation, the majesty of the divine wisdom in Christ is further enhanced. For indeed this Sacrament is so integral to the purpose of God contained in Christ that it is no more arbitrary and incomprehensible than the human form and figure of the Master when he walked on earth.

The flesh of Christ: the Bread of Life

To understand properly the setting of this sacrament in the Christian Faith, a man must first read the whole of the Gospel of St. John, more especially the first chapter and the sixth chapter.  This synthesis is not addressed exclusively to Christians, and even less exclusively to Catholics, and for that reason we consider it necessary to reproduce at length from the sixth chapter of St. John and we must grasp at least the uncompromising boldness of the claims of Christ before what we say of this sacrament can be seen in its conformity with the economy of the Incarnation, particularly as that economy is portrayed by St. John, the Gospel above all of the Divinity of Christ:

“Truly, truly I say to you,

he who believes has eternal life.

I am the Bread of life,

your fathers did ate manna

in the wilderness, and they died.

This is the Bread which comes down from heaven,

that a man may eat of it and not die.

I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven.

If any man eats of this Bread,

he shall live for ever.

And the bread that I will give,

is my flesh, for the life of the world.

“The Jews therefore, disputed among themselves,

saying:  ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’

So Jesus said to them: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you,

unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man,

and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood,

has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed,

he that eats my flesh and drinks my blood

abides in me; and I in him.

As the living Father has sent me,

and I live by the Father, so he who eats me shall live because of me.

This is the Bread that came down from heaven.

Not such as your fathers ate and died:

he who eats this Bread, will live for ever.’

“These things he said, teaching in the Synagogue in Capernaum.

Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said:  ‘This is a hard saying, - who can listen to it?’

But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at it, said to them:

‘Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending where he was before?  It is the spirit which gives life, the flesh is of no avail.

The words which I have spoken to you are the spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe.’

“For Jesus knew from the first who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him. And he said: ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me, unless it is granted him by my Father.’  After this many of his disciples drew back, and no longer went about with him.

Then Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Will you also go away?’ and Simon Peter answered him:  ‘Lord, to whom shall we go?   You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know, that you are the Christ, the Son of God.’”  (Jn 6:48-69)

We transcribe this long passage without apologies:   every word of it is full of significant meaning.   It is a mistake to think that the New Testament can ever be hurriedly read, each verse must be taken individually, and the sense of it digested before the mind is allowed to run on.  In this astonishing passage,  we speak in the mind and persons of His hearers, Christ asserts that He will give His flesh and blood as the food of everlasting life to men, and in this claim shocks and bewilders equally, both His casual hearers and His intimate disciples.  He does not retract anything, when the crowd begins to melt away shaking their heads, He only turns to the “twelve” and asks them “will you also go away?”  Once again, as on other occasions of supreme moment it is Peter who answers for all of them.  It is not, however, the ringing profession of Faith of other occasions, it is the confused and worried loyalty of a man who has been beaten down to the uttermost motives of his belief, and who has only then come firmly to security:  “We have believed and have come to know that you are the Christ, the Son of God.”  There was evidence enough for that, but it took all of it, took the very Divinity of Christ, to guarantee a saying so hard, that: “Who could hear it?”  We notice with a profound sense of the significance of this dramatic scene, that Christ does not explain away these words of supreme scandal, but only appeals to His future ascension as proof of His power to make actual a promise which is not credible, nor even intelligible, save in the Person of God alone.

The presence of the Person of Christ Incarnate among us

The institution of the Blessed Sacrament, the real presence of Jesus Christ, Divinity and humanity equally, under the appearances of bread and wine by transubstantiation of these material elements into the substance of His own Body, will cease to be simply the highest pledge of Christ’s love for men after the crucifixion, if it is realised all the time how organic to the Incarnation it is.  The Blessed Sacrament is not something which, given the Incarnation of God, might have been omitted. It is not arbitrary, indifferent, or incidental to the mission of Jesus Christ.   We can, within the framework of the economy of the Word made Flesh, well understand the motive, need, and majesty of this Sacrament within the Church of Christ. And to understand well why it is, does not entail any need to know as fully how it is brought to pass.  What requires the wisdom of God to effect, is not always possible of detailed understanding by the mind of man.

To be the Way, the Truth, the Life, and the Light; to be the Master, the Good Shepherd, the Teacher and Lover of souls, God needed the form and senses of a man, which can only be had in human nature, and to that end He was borne as man of the womb of the Virgin Mary.  But once the Intellect which is the “Word of God” has been proclaimed as a spoken word, and a spoken sense, through the human word of the “Son of Man”, then the knowledge which He imparts as God can, in that medium at least, be carried further afield by others.

Now the manifestation of God to men in Christ is not the promulgation merely of a code, the imparting of a “message,” as so many who are nominally Christians seem to think.  The Incarnation represents essentially the offer and communication of God, of His own self, personally to persons, as the life and further nourishment of the spirit of man in every aspect of that created need, through the medium of sense in a nature one with our own.

This has been called the essence of the “sacramental system,” and is a true statement, so long as it is realised that the sacramental system is only a derivative of the economy of the manifestation of God through human nature. The sacraments follow the Incarnation, and the sacramental system should not be extended to cover the witness to a divine creative mind rendered by created natures in what they are, and in what they require as their ultimate explanation.  A sacrament does not consist in the manifestation of an ultimate cause in the natures of created entities; a sacrament is a divine operation manifested through, and effected through the co-operation of material things.  A sacrament is the manifestation of the divine through the material, but in no way abrogates the essential distinction of the orders of spirit and matter.

Need for the continuation of the Incarnation to divinise man in love of God

The communication of the Divine Essence to man to be participated in by men as the life of a created spirit, and in the Beatific Vision as the final end of the destiny of a created spirit, remains the same now as when Christ was on earth in the recognisable nature of a man.  We are not offered less today because Christ is ascended as man back into His own, and his spoken word is carried through history by his disciples in the establishment of His Church.

If fruition of God is to be experimentally perceptible within a man, it must of course reach a relatively high degree, a degree which most of us do not attain.  For most Christian men, a not always continuous peace in the possession of a sincere conscience, and a conscious tranquillity in the possession of a certain purpose of their lives, is the most which is achieved.  Concomitant with this, there goes a nagging uneasiness and a recognition of  interior  dissipation  of  mind  in  the  false  living  which  is  deliberate  sin,  but  the  deeper  fruition  of contemplation so universal among the saints, is not possessed by them, and because it is above a mind weighed down by sensuality, is little understood even when it is revered.

But then, the same is found in the human friendships of the majority of men. In most of us our affections are at the best waterlogged with unconscious disorderliness of sense, and our loves are for the most part barely kept above the level of some degree of sensual aberration by a leaven of spiritual love which derives from the habitual grace of God, albeit in a lowly measure.  In very many men, indeed, this leaven does not exist, or is not observable in its fruits, and one selfish attachment follows another in a never ending cycle of recrimination and selfishness.  Love breaks down continually, until age robs a man of the passion, and leaves him with the husk of hardness and cynicism which remains to him, empty and old, when the volatile spirit of sensible passion has evaporated from life; and would to God that even before this witness men could learn that such loves are selfish lusts, not the loves which are born in the hearts of men by the fundamental love of God.

Growth in the life of grace

When we analyse the average attachments of men, we find much that is unconsciously crude and imperfect; it is scarcely surprising that the all-pure and sincere love of the Incarnate Love, so incompatible with greedy lusts of mind or of body, should be sadly imperfect even among His disciples.  And yet this fundamental and alone supreme love, the joy of the saints, and of the intimate disciples of Christ, can be, has been, and is today, the secret treasure and the profound delight of countless thousands of pure and genuine souls, notwithstanding that most of them still fall short of the summit of heroic sanctity. For “the kingdom of heaven is like to a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found; and sold all that he had and bought that field.” (Mt 13:44)   The “message” of Christ is the revelation of the Intellect of God to the intellect of man, and the offer of Himself loving, and to be loved, to the will of man.  The words of Christ are not the fruition of Himself; rather they are a map of life. But the individual must tread the country they chart, and tread it remembering that:

“No man can come to me, unless the Father who sent me, draws him.

It is written in the Prophets, ‘They shall all be taught by God’.

Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”  (Jn. 6: 44-45)

The function of Christ of which He here speaks as a work of the Father and of himself, is the actual vivification and quickening of the soul from within, in the growth and perfection of the powers of a spiritual being;  in what we call the “virtues” of a man.  The virtues themselves are not the first result of this vivification within, the first is the conjunction of the created and the Uncreated in a union which gives life, and is the state of sanctifying grace.  The second is the restful delight of the soul in Christ according to intellect and will in wisdom and charity, the third is that manifestation of this union, and its effects in all the operations of a man; for the “virtues” of the soul are specified by their objects.

This activity of Christ’s by which He is as much the Bread of the spirit of a man as wheaten bread is the food of his body, cannot be exercised vicariously by any other, for man is intrinsically relative to God both to become, and to become perfect, and to none other.  All roads lead to this one road, all leads to this one end of the operation by which Christ “works until now.”  The teaching, preaching, and giving of precepts exercised by Christ, whether in His own Person, or vicariously through the Church, are all means to this one end:   the quickening of a man in the conjoining of his soul to God in charity.

The state of charity is the seed, and germ, of everlasting life; for as we have said earlier, heaven begins on earth for a man's fulfilment is part of one process which begins with his conception in the womb.  The finalism exercised directly by the Spirit of God over every individual soul, is not an exterior moderation by laws and commandments only, but it is, by a personal union, the law of the life of a man from within his being.  In this lies the motive and the wise reason for the institution not so much by Christ, as in Christ, of the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist. It continues that eternal economy of God to man through matter, by which Christ alone is the Bread of man.

The Blessed Sacrament of the Altar – Christ Incarnate

When the priest of Christ, following the example and command of his Master at the Last Supper, pronounces the words in the sacrificial oblation of the Mass, “This is my Body,” then it is the Body of Christ in the plain and literal sense of those words; it is the same Christ in His human nature, under the appearances of bread.  The reality, or substance of bread is transmuted into the humanity of Christ. As in all the sacraments, the visible appearances set off in their own order as appearances of material bread, the Incarnate Bread which now lies upon the altar in the same nature as when an infant opened his eyes, and cried towards a woman long ages back, in a frowsy cattle-pen near Bethlehem of Judah

In like manner, when the priest of Christ pronounces, not as an historic declaration, but as an authoritative assertion, the words over the wine, “This is the Chalice of my Blood, of the New and Eternal Testament,” then it is the Blood of Christ;  which means to say, the total humanity of Christ expressed as food and drink for mankind, in these two material media.  This matter is now Christ; not a different Christ, but the same Incarnate God expressing Himself to men in the same nature,  but under a different application and objective relation to men of that nature.

Is this a hard saying which no man can hear? But consider that it is not said by a human mouth, and that the ear of man may hearken, the Spirit of God must touch it with the grace of a divine understanding.  Think upon the mission of God Incarnate, and the meaning of Christ; and then, in this claim which appals men who are willing to entertain the Divinity of Christ, which is one with this claim, and with this Sacrament, see fulfilled the promises of Christ, and that divine intention spoken at such length in the Gospel of St. John.  See in this Blessed Sacrament the total majesty of that Law and Plan of all the universe, now consummated in Christ for man’s more abundant life.  God is the life, and food, and very sap of the being of man. Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

How is this life exercised, so that the external word is matched by the inner absorption of the unspoken word, which is the play of the Divine Spirit upon the seed which the spirit of man? It is exercised by the reception, and in an analogous manner one might say the inward digestion, of a life-giving activity of God immediately upon the spirit of a man.  God communicates Himself so intimately to men, that without the loss of man’s identity in  God, or any diminution of God in Himself, which is impossible, a man is fed in the intellectual nature of his being;   with wisdom, which is the bud upon faith, and will blossom fully only in heaven;  with hope, which is the un-sated possession of a love which hungers still, and expects the maturity of its springing;  with love, which can never pass away when faith and hope shall be no more, because it is the imperfect substance of them both, and shall be made perfect hereafter.

Perfection of Christ’s Control and Direction of Man

This is the work of God towards a man, the answer to the need which hungers within a man, and which, under the mighty Law, analogous in application but one in active principle, which frames all things that are, through control, direction, determination to end and final consummation in that end, is met by God for men in Christ, when the Son of Man meets the sons of men in the kiss of peace.  This work was operative from the beginning, for the Father works from the beginning; but before the Incarnation was given in less perfect measure, under an imperfect dispensation that looked towards its completion in Christ.  In Christ we understand how that relation of God, always the control, direction, and the final bliss of men, has been fulfilled with such a plenitude beyond which more, not even God could give.

All cosmic law, as relative to this planet at least, is relative to the living thing, and the living order to mankind, and mankind to Christ: for man was made for God, not God for men.  When this is accomplished, and God, the Life and the Light, the Way and the Truth, the Bread which came down from heaven and gives life to the world, is no longer decreed, but given in the Flesh, then that fiat, now made a fact, shall stand the same for ever.  Christ cannot be divided against himself, nor his humanity divorced from his divinity: Christ is not two persons, but one.

By this we mean that because God is the life of men, therefore Christ is the life of men; and Christ is God Incarnate, and always will be, and His flesh shall never be where his Divine Nature is not, nor shall there be found the Divine divorced from the human nature which divinity assumed.  If in God we live, and are, and have our human being, so did He live, and He is, and He has his being with our human nature, so that in Him we might with perfection be drawn up to the Perfect Exemplar of our created being.

Hence the flesh of Christ is food indeed, and His blood is drink indeed.  In Christ God has declared Himself, and given Himself for our plenitude; in the medium of the material, in our matter.  God and human nature, God and matter, shall not be put asunder after this act of their union in Christ.  God never changes His mind, for all his works are wise.  Therefore, if Christ is the Life of men, and the Bread of heaven, He must still communicate Himself always, until the end of time, through His Divine and human natures in the unity of one Person. He must be our Bread through matter, even as He came as our King in the figure and measure of a man:  this He does in the Blessed Sacrament of the Christian Altar.

Christ’s abiding Presence in our midst

He leaves Himself with us still, under the external forms of bread and wine, but these forms are not bread and wine, for their intrinsic finality is changed to that of the Body of Christ.  He leaves Himself with us still, that with the eye we may see, with the mind know, and in the heart love, the fullness of the Godhead communicated to us in Christ, as in the beautiful hymn:

“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,

the darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,

help of the helpless, O abide with me.”

Abide with us He does, as in that eventide of ages past, when two stricken disciples, bowed under the scandal of the Cross, constrained to tarry with them and abide, a gracious stranger, near by to Emmaus, and how “they knew Him in the breaking of bread?” (Lk 24:35)  Now we know that even the body of a man lives by his soul, and by it is curbed, disciplined, and re-formed, so that in nobility of mien, which often shines through the face of a man, it may be directed to the perfection of its own order, through the spirit of a man which vivifies a man.  So much does the grace of God, by which a man lives, for body and soul together. To this end, with a fullness perfect for body and soul, matter and spirit, when we receive Our Lord in that Great Sacrament (so justly named the “Holy Communion”), by which He abides with us, we commune with Him in a fullness complete for body and for soul, and which lifts both alike to God. What we eat with the body, we eat also with the soul, and both the one and the other are blest with that nourishment which gives life to the whole man, and raises him up at the last day.

In Him all the fullness of God dwells bodily

What is this except the crowning fullness of the Incarnation, the consummation of the mission of Christ on earth?  Once given, Christ is never taken away from us.  From the Incarnation till the ages end, the quickening communion of God upon the being of man is an act of Christ, of God incarnated in the element of matter. Since this quickening of the spirit of man from within is an act of Christ, it must be made perfect in a mode which will give us God and Man in one: and the answer of God to this required fullness, organic to His own economy of the Word made flesh, is the Blessed Eucharist.  It is the last and crowning gift of God in Christ, but yet a gift integral to one wisdom of His government, not an arbitrary addition to His mission as God made man which might have been withheld, leaving the economy of His Incarnation substantially intact.

There is no other way in which we can receive the interior nourishment of our souls in God’s plenitude for men, “for in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells bodily,” (Col. 2:9), except by receiving the consecrated Host in  the Sacrament  of the Eucharist;  and  the union  which  is  manifested  through  the  Lord  whom  we take physically within our bodies, is paralleled by the union of our souls with Christ, by the which we are nourished in the order of the spirit:

“Whosoever shall eat this bread,

or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily

shall be guilty of profaning the

Body and the Blood of the Lord.

So let a man examine himself,

and then so let him eat of that bread,

and drink of the cup.

For he that eats and drinks unworthily,

eats and drinks judgment to himself,

not discerning the Body of the Lord.” (I Cor. 11:12)

The Blessed Sacrament is the food of Man’s soul

There is no other way in which Christ can be the food and life of the total person of man, than through the transubstantiation into the substance of His human nature, of some form of matter. There was no more wise or more beautiful choice than bread and wine, the common foods of life over most of the world, as the medium through which this abiding presence of Christ among men should be effected.   What bread and wine are to physical life, that He is to the spirit of man, and, by the correlative impact of the soul upon the body, to the body of man also, for in this most profound sense, even the very body of man does not live by bread alone. Many are scandalized at this the sweetest and the most consoling of the Church’s Mysteries, because they cannot conceive that it is possible at all.  Like Nicodemus, they are all the time asking “how shall this thing be done?”  It is impossible in a man, and incredible of a man, but it is folly to be scandalized at the things which are done, and the things which are further promised by God, Who is so far above the mind and powers of man.

He who in the beginning of time, poised the awe-full fabric of the universe upon a fiat which breathed forth one Law, a Law implemented last of all in God from whom it first proceeded, in the same one economy of wisdom which embraces all creations from the primordial elements to the Church of Christ, under that one Law, included the dwelling of His Person not only in the souls of men who love Him as God, but also the dwelling upon the altars of men, as God made man, as Emmanuel, God with us.  If there were nothing in the ways and deeds of God which man could not fully fathom, nothing which escaped the natural, and even the grace aided understanding of the human mind, then God would not be God, for all that was His would be held within the creature’s ken; and the created, and the limitations of the created, is the negation of the Divine.

Transubstantiation consistent with the law of finality

While  the  detailed  understanding  of  how  transubstantiation  takes  place  may  escape  the  mind  of  human philosophers, there is nothing in it which negates the humanity of Christ, or the nature of matter.  It may surpass the order of human knowledge and natural causes, but it does not clash with them.  We could enlarge upon this point for the benefit of those who find, as did the Jews before them, that this is a hard saying, only by an excursion into the more remote regions of philosophy which would be undesirable, but for the benefit of those who can understand much in a very little we give the following relatively brief explanation.

It is the intrinsic finality, or substance, or definition, whichever word is the most familiar to the reader, which determines the shape, and size, and properties, of a being; it is not the outward manifestation, or any of the properties, which determine the substance.  The “substance” of a thing is defined as, “what the intellect of God knows it to be through all its relations to God and to other creations”.   This is what we mean by the substance of a thing, or the intrinsic finality of a thing; we mean its content as a being; ultimately, that content of being as it is defined by the intention of God.  We know and judge partially of the “substance,” or “essence,” from the acts of a being, but the outward manifestations only witness what it is, and the interpretation of any one individual being can be very complex, for entities have many variable factors.  The mind of God, which precedes creation, defined the substance which so manifests itself in all its relativities, that it should so be, and should so have, and so manifest itself in act and activity.

The finality of a being also includes, in its cosmic and its specific relativity, the limitations of that content, first in its specific content, as a being of a given degree and perfection and then in the outward expression of its entity, as that entity is again relative intrinsically to God, and to other created things by which its definition is bound:  for all entity other than God entails limitation as a corollary of its natural perfection, like a coin which has two sides and two faces.   The finality, the cosmic “vocation,” if you will, of our own bodies, does not require anything more than what all of us have and commonly manifest in our form, figure, place, and space- time.  Our intension, which word means in philosophy the same thing as substance or intrinsic finality, has an extension, an outward expression, dependent upon the intension as it is defined by the Intellect of God in creating, in all its natural and normal relativities to other material being, and other men.

We stand in a given relativity to God, to our neighbour, to our universe, which has thousands of aspects, all linked up as one in the unity of our being, and one aspect and element of those relations which follow our definition as “men” in the universe, and upon this planet, is the form and corporeal figure of a man as we commonly know it, in its common variations, which variations have definite physical limits, even if the distinction between the ovum and the adult is a rather startling variable.  These relative variations of state, size, and figure, are uniform, and the limits of most forms of physical variation are known to us experimentally.  In basic qualities, all men look much alike, and in addition, no man has such a physical relativity to other men, or to the universe, that he is in several places at the same time.

Finality of Christ’s Incarnate Body

The Body of Christ, while the same as ours in nature and kind, the organic material complement of a created spirit, has a more august extension within the same intension.  The human soul and the human body of Christ are instruments of the Divinity, and through His human nature, the Second Person of the Trinity fulfils in us His Law of Finality, which entails the making actual of all the potential contained in the possibility of human definition.  The finality, or intension, of the Body of Christ, has therefore a corresponding extrinsic finality, a corresponding extension, appropriate to its function as the vehicle of the operation of God upon mankind under the Law of Control and Direction.  The extension then, of Christ’s human substance, matter, as well as human soul, will follow and will be adequate to, every mode of the operation upon man of the Divine Person of the Word made flesh:  for such is the “vocation” of the human nature of Christ.  In every mode and in every aspect of Christ’s mission which called for the spoken word, He needed the form, the figure, and the common senses of a man; He was “found in the likeness of man.”

In that relationship, individual, interior, and at all times proper only to God, in which He is the Life of men, the Bread of men, the True Vine, of whose sap men are nourished. In that respect and real relation to men, He could not give Himself to us as the principle of our supernatural life, under the form, figure, and senses of common human manifestation. Therefore to that sublime end his humanity requires a further “extension”, a further relativity to men, of what its “intension” can sustain without denying itself.  An extension which is not proper to us, nor to any created being, for none of us is the food and life of our own souls, let alone the souls of others.   God Incarnate is relative to men as the supreme food of the total human person, and therefore His human nature is capable of the relativity in matter both  of common human habitude, and of the Eucharist; to this extension the human nature of Christ, unique among human natures, is defined substantially as a necessity of the extension which follows its definition, in the hypostatic union of God made Man.

There is not in this any contradiction between our human nature, and that of Christ, for human nature is living matter substantially relative to spirit as a principle of a complex nature, matter informed by a created spirit in the unity of one composite substance, and in this Christ has no more than we have.  It is the extension of the relativity of the human nature of Christ, as the vehicle of the Divine Person, which differentiates the human nature of Christ in the Eucharist from our own. This sort of differentiation is of the order which theologians are wont to call “accidental,” to the substance of human nature, not intrinsic to its definition.  Both modes of substantial manifestation, common human habitude, and the sacramental habitude, are proper to the human nature of Christ; both are within the extension of the application and the relativity to men of that substance, for the human nature of Christ is never separated from the Divine, and it follows the functions of the Divine in all the operations of Christ upon men, as the perfect medium in matter of the Divine.

One and the same Christ: in Palestine, in the Eucharist, and in the Tabernacle.

There is no internal contradiction in the statement that Christ walked the tracks of Palestine, and that the small white host within the tabernacles of all the Catholic Churches of the world is also, and identically, the same Christ.  We can call to mind in this respect how many mutations of expression the intrinsic finality of human nature is capable of, and which we take for granted as a “fact” of Nature, which they are.  The growth and development of the adult from its natural seed is a striking process in all forms of life;  but the thing which develops and matures is the same thing, the same individual, the same person;  the same “intrinsic definition,” “substance,” or “intension,”.  That which changes, changes in its “extension,” or, in the language of scholastic philosophy, its “accidents,” but not in its intension, for the intension is the definition, the intelligible “itness” of a thing, and if that changed with every variation of a being, nothing would be intelligible, or have intelligibility, at all, for material beings at least, are undergoing some sort of change at every instant.   This “itness”, or “thisness”, of a thing is the intrinsic finality which, within the co-relativity of material substances, influence something to be, and to be such, and thus determines from within the basic intelligible content of a thing.

How far beyond the extension, the fullness, of our human self-expression, extends the humanity of Christ, which sweeps out, instinct with His Divinity, across time, and space, and place, for the life of the intellectual nature of man, until the present state of our terrestrial existence shall be brought to its predestined end!  Where God is given to us in the fullness of our mode to receive Him and co-operate with Him, and the fullness of God’s largesse to bestow, there Christ is given to us.  Where Christ is given to us, there the Divine with and through the human and material is given to us; and where Christ is given to us as the Bread of our life, there He is given to us through the Sacred Host that reposes in the tabernacles of the Christian and Catholic Church.

In the unique case of the human nature of Christ, the intrinsic finality of His human nature, which derives its extension from the office of his Divinity in this world, admits intrinsically, and requires extrinsically, an extension of the modality of being proper to its substance.  This modality, substantial sacramental presence, remains accidental to human nature in its essential intelligible definition, and therefore does not deny the common definition of human nature, which must be the same in Christ as in ourselves, if Christ is truly a man.

This digression, which does not please indeed, but which it seemed better to concede for the benefit of the philosophically minded among our readers, is not intended to prove that transubstantiation is a fact, still less to reveal how it is effected in fact, but only to answer briefly the sole objection which the human mind has any right to raise against the doctrine,  the suggestion that such an operation constitutes a denial of human nature in its intelligible content.

The Divine Person of Christ, God and Man, made Present

In the study of the Blessed Sacrament, its place in the economy of the Incarnation and its meaning, we ask what is the precise function of Christ’s Body in man’s regard?  Are we, for instance to emphasize the part played by the material in Christ as such under the appearances of bread and wine?  It is clear from the passage of St. John we quoted at such length in the beginning of this chapter, that too careless an emphasis here can do violence to the significance of this continuance of the Person of God Incarnate on earth within the altars of the Christian Church.

We possess the correct lead to an answer in Christ’s own explicit words: “does this scandalize you?  It is the spirit which gives life, the flesh is of no avail.”  He explains in this phrase that even His own sacred flesh is of no profit to man simply as a material thing.  The humanity of Christ is integral to the more abundant life of man because this flesh is vivified in a Divine Person, and it is this assumption of the material by the Person of God which gives profit to his human nature as “food indeed.”

Christ is ever God made man, He is not a man become God, nor even a man, a human person, “assumed” into God, as so many, even Catholics, unconsciously tend to think of Him.  Where Christ is, His humanity must always be, and it will be there in its own nature and in that relation and propriety to men which is necessary for man’s sanctification, in all the elements of Christ’s influence upon mankind, for the wisdom of God is without repentance, and the Incarnation and its integral economy is from time, now unto eternity.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; in the Sacrament of the Altar too, where He continues to dwell among us as our Daily Bread, He continues to dwell among us, in matter, as the Word made flesh for the life of the world, the same Christ.  In this Blessed Sacrament, God in Person, the actual manifestation to us of His human nature in a mode under which we can receive Him as our food, does not require, and would be repugnant to, the form and figure of common human habitude. But in this function which He fulfils in our regard as the Bread of Life, it is wonderfully adequate to the perfections, and the limitations of our human nature, with a wisdom which only the Divine Intellect could have devised.

The Sacrifice of the Mass

The Real Presence of Christ by transubstantiation being a fact, and an integral part of the economy of the Incarnation, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is so intimately linked with the Sacrament, must always be the central theme and the principal act of worship offered by the Christian Church.  Until in a later chapter we have treated of the Redemption wrought for man by Christ, its nature and its manner, it is not possible to explain with any sort of sufficiency what the Church means by the “Mass.” It is enough to know now, towards the conclusion of this chapter upon the Holy Eucharist, that it is the offering through time, of that same sacrifice which Christ accomplished on Calvary.

Now however, this sacrifice is offered not in the manner of that once and for all self-immolation in blood, but in the un-bloody oblation of the triumph of the Resurrection.  The Mass is not a new or a different sacrifice from that of the Cross, for the principal One offered is the same Person of God the Word;  the manner indeed is different, for the status of the humanity of the Lord is different, having passed through death to victory, so that now when He offers Himself as the eternal mediator between God and men, He offers in his humanity “a clean oblation,” not the bloody immolation of the Cross, for immolation of any sort has no more part in Him.

We  have  endeavoured  to  show,  and  when  we  treat  of  the  Redemption  will  show  yet  more,  that  the Incarnation was decreed by God for us men, and for our salvation, irrespective of the advent into the world of the rebellion which is sin. We must also, in the name of the unity of the one organic economy of the Word made flesh, assert that even if sin had never robbed a single soul of its integrity and its original destiny, and even if Christ had been born into the world and had been acclaimed with universal homage, as “King of kings, and Lord of lords,” as was His rightful majesty, even so, He would still have continued to abide with us as the food and life, and consolation without peer, of our created spirits, in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  We would not the less, but rather the more, have possessed the Blessed Sacrament as our delight and joy, and the Sacrifice of the Mass too, equally and as necessarily, only this Sacrifice would have been from the beginning a pure oblation, and a sacrifice of praise, not the treacherous crucifixion of the King of Truth.

Through the evil which is sin, sin so deep within the vitals of man that it has wasted and wounded, but not corrupted utterly the good nature of man, the mode of Christ’s salvation through redemption well we know. For which cause, He Our Lord, signifying in the double matter of the Sacrament of the Eucharist not merely our souls’ food and drink, but also the rending of His Body, the shedding of His Blood, willed that in the very manner of that supreme Christian Sacrifice, there should remain in the act of consecration and in the form of words in which it is effected, a memorial of the bloody immolation of His Cross.

“Taking bread, he gave thanks, and he broke it, and gave to them saying:

‘Take, eat, this is My Body’.

And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks,

gave it to them saying: “Drink it all of you.  For this is my Blood of the New Covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  (Mt 26: 26-28)

As often then, as we consecrate the bread and the wine upon the altar into the Body and Blood of Christ, in  the distinction of these elements, and in the words we use, even after that triumph from which “death has no more dominion over Him”, (Rom. 6:9) as often as we do it, we do it for a memorial of Him.

PART FIVE

SIN AND REDEMPTION

CHAPTER 14

Good and Evil:

The Original Status of Man

In presenting this synthesis in a manner which is comprehensible to the reader, we are forced to follow an order which is not indeed the best possible order, but which seems to us best to serve a coherent presentation of the synthesis of Catholic and Christian thought which we are trying to instil.  It is, for example, fundamental to the conception we have of Christ, that His manifestation in the universe as God Incarnate should have been predestined independently of the event of sin, or even the foreknowledge by God of the incident of sin.  It is therefore advisable to outline, and we do nothing more than outline anywhere in this work, -the economy that is fulfilled in Christ, without competition, so to speak, from issues which arise subsequent upon sin.

Christ pre-destined independently of sin as Saviour

The conception we present of Christ, is not of course entirely new.  It has a distinguished lineage in Catholic theology.  It is found in embryo at the least, in many of the Fathers of the early Christian Church.  It is taught, though not indeed with the plenitude with which we now urge it, by the school of theology that draws its principal inspiration concerning the Incarnation from John Duns Scotus, the great Franciscan of the thirteenth, and early fourteenth century, who taught at Oxford.  But whatever view a Christian may hold concerning the principal motive of God in the decree of the Incarnation, every system of Christian theology which is fundamentally orthodox, and Christian (orthodoxy means for us, in plain words, “Catholic truth”), must grant that the existence of sin in the world so conditioned the Incarnation in the event, that the redemptive and propitiatory mission of Christ cannot be briefly dismissed as something quite secondary.

Sin requires that Christ come also as Redeemer

Christ is not only the “Light that enlightens every man that comes into the world” (Jn 1:9), He is also “The only name under Heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) Sin did more than despoil the nature of man, sin despoiled man also of his destiny.  The repercussions of sin are so tremendous, that they affected, and continue to affect in vast measure, every relation that God bears to man in the plan of creation, every relation of mankind to God, and of men among themselves.

It is not possible to understand the role of Christ as Redeemer unless one has some understanding of what sin is.   It is not possible either, to grasp how the work of Christ as Saviour of the world derives from His primary relationship to man, unless we see Him first as pre-ordained in the mind of God before time was; the Word  from  whom  the  decree  both  of  Creation,  and  of  the  Incarnation  proceeded,  in  whom,  as  Christ predestined to come, were made all things visible that were made. We need first of all to appreciate the Incarnation as something organic to the plan of the universe, the last end, to which sub-serves the mighty Law of Finality upon which all being in the cosmos rests.  We need to see the Incarnation in this perspective first, irrespective of the event of sin, which as a fact freely perpetrated, non-necessary, and evil, could never have been more than extrinsic to the mind of God in creating.

Without a reasonably developed knowledge of Catholic theology, the meaning of the Redemption will not be appraised adequately unless the significance of Christ as the “Bread of Life” for mankind is meditated first of all.  For reasons such as these, and others too technical to furnish here, we have ordered the sequence of our chapters from Creation to Christ the Lord of Creation, then through to the Church and the Sacraments, so that the role of Christ, and the constitution of the Church may be intelligible, and then we retrace our steps to treat of sin, and of that redemption from sin and its consequences which we possess in the person of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

Nature of being, good and evil, and the disaster of sin

The understanding of what sin is, begins with the understanding of what being itself is.  Evil is not a positive quality.  Evil is a negation, a negation of good.  Evil is the lack of some good, some fullness in the reality of being, where that fullness is due and proper to the nature.  Moral Evil is closely analogous in the spiritual order to disease in the physical order.   Moral Evil is also a certain wasting and ruin of the true condition, of the fitness of a thing.   The differences however between physical evil and moral evil are as great as is the difference between the purely material, and the spiritual orders.  The analogy, though useful, is so partial, that if not most carefully treated it can lead to a wilderness of confusion from which there is no returning.   The difference in order and kind between physical evil, and the moral evil which is sin, is so imperfectly understood by many moderns that both their philosophies, and their private lives, become a welter of insoluble dilemmas.

Distinction between physical and moral evil

A physical evil, even where it represents a deficiency of some good properly due to the nature of an individual, is not necessarily outside the order of the more universal necessity of material being.   The evil, bodily and material, of a being in this universe need not be necessarily an evil in an absolute sense, for it may subserve the general order of material existence. It is an evil for the lamb to be devoured by the lion, but without lambs to be devoured, the good which is to be a lion could not be actualised at all.  It is equally an evil for grasses, to be devoured by dear little lambs, but as this is not so startlingly horrid, it escapes the notice of the sentimentalists. Yet the principle is the same, and it goes to the heart of the material order.

It belongs to the very order of purely material creation, that entities should be thus relative the one to another.  Purely material natures are not ends in themselves, not a single one of them, nor does their finality extend beyond an allotted span at the best.  The supreme physical evil, which is death, comes to them all in any case, and with death, personal extinction.  All being, however spiritual and sublime, is relative to God that it may exist at all; but material being has within its order a more total subordination.  It is not only subordinate to God that it may be at all, but is also relative intrinsically, in its essence, to the continuation of the cosmos as a series of inter-dependent, inter-defined relative entities.

In order that the universe may be a “going concern” at all, the evil of the individual material being, the liability to physical subjective evil of a given species, is necessary to the good of another individual, and to the potency of being of another species.  This is so because matter is the lowest denominator in the order of being. It represents the lowest possible order of intrinsic relativity, dependence, and mutual subordination in the line of essence and existence.

The ultimate created nature to which the total material order is subordinated, and that intrinsically, is of course, the rational and spiritual nature of man.  We define a man as an animal possessed of a non-material principle of being; a principle of intellect and will, in other words, a soul.  If there should be an order of life anywhere other in the universe beside our planet where there exist beings which fulfill this specific definition, we would name all them indifferently as “men”.

So obviously is this intrinsic subordination in the order of being connatural to the material order, that the whole framework of natural evolution, and the entire range of laws which constitute the physical sciences, depend upon it absolutely.  The structure of those complex and less stable elements, and syntheses of elements, upon which primitive life depends, is impossible, unless it be built up on the simpler base of molecular and atomic forms.  Physicists, when they strive to explain their science to us, are wont to speak of matter in its most primitive and particular state, as being subject to “imprisonment”, or “capture”, within the nucleus or the orbits of the atom.  They do not consider this to be of the very essence of evil, for this subordination of one finality to another is typical, and is connatural to the entire physical order.  In similar manner the most primitive cells flourish by absorbing and breaking down certain combinations of elements, until in the end we see the whole majestic edifice of material life rising in increasing complexity, the one dependent for its existence upon the resolution of the being of another.  The very organs of living things are fashioned according to this relativity. The body of the animal has, provided out of its innate attributes, properties and substances which function solely to defend it from invasion, whether from within or without.  The subordination of any given species to a more general finality is then reflected in the process of evolution, and in the organic structures, developed over ages, of those living forms which have evolved.

This entire process has not within it a single trace of true evil at all.   It is only a reflection of the low, profoundly relative,  and  subordinate  degree  of  being  proper  to  material  things.    This  process  of  mutual subordination to a general order of being is the measure both of material limitation, and entitative insignificance in the order of the real, and at the same time the condition necessary for the permanence of the material universe as a complex and progressive order.

This condition then, in which the relative evil of one material entity is a necessity for the good of another, although, it is indeed an evil for the subject which suffers loss is not unworthy of the goodness of God the Creator, for nothing in that order of being has an absolute personal value at all.  It is impossible to conceive of a material order in which this relativity did not exist.  If nothing decomposed anywhere in the universe, nothing could increase to fruition.  If nothing died, nothing could be born.  Man alone in the material universe, has an absolute, personal eternal value.  This may offend the sentimentalist, but it is sound Christian teaching, and the only teaching which makes perfect sense of the material order.

Moral evil which is sin

True evil, which is sin, is something very different in kind.  Sin, like physical ‘evil’, is a loss or defect of due goodness in the being of a spiritual nature.  It is a deficiency in the full finality, and the true happiness of a spiritual being.  It is unlike the order of subjective evil in the material creation which we have just considered, in that it is not necessary to, nor inherent in, the order of spiritual being as such.   Moral Evil is not only a deficiency which is contrary to the good of a spiritual nature, but one which runs counter to the whole order of the spiritual creation, whether in the individual or in general.

Sin derives entirely from a factor which is non-existent in the material order, but proper to the spiritual order.  Sin derives from the free-will, the power of self-determination proper to a spiritual creature.  True self- determination is altogether beyond the power of material things, for material natures are pre-determined and pre-conditioned in all the acts and functions of their nature.

If we take the entire hierarchy of being in its respective degrees of perfection, the following facts emerge:- God cannot sin;  Angels and men can sin;  Some pure spirits did sin;  Men have sinned, and do still sin;  natures which are bound up with matter in their total definition cannot sin.  They are too low to sin, even as God is too high to sin.  Matter, and the mechanism of being, connote the same thing, this lowest order of entity lacks the power of immanent self-determination and freedom from substantial relativity to another created substance which gives that degree of entitative perfection which makes the very defect of sin possible.

God cannot sin, because God is self-defined as alone the necessary, perfect, and indefectible being.  God is His own fulfillment because He is; in God there is no limitation or defect, or want, in any way.  Even pure spirits are created, and are not self-necessary.  They are created by God for Himself; their being is relative to Him as to their source and as their final end.  In God alone is there no desire, because there is nothing wanting that may be desired.  In God there is no ignorance, and where there is no ignorance, nor any desire, the which

arises always from the incompletion of a good possessed, there can be no sin.  Sin can occur only when the fruition of a being is sought wrongly, whether the fault be voluntary or involuntary.  God cannot sin, for the mere possibility of sin is a denial of the perfection of divinity.

An adequate study of the problem of evil, particularly of sin, and its myriad indirect consequences, is a highly specialised and difficult study.  We are content to stress that sin, while it may be likened to physical evil, and even to physical death by a true analogy of proportion, is not in the same order of defect as any phenomena which may be found in the order of being below human nature.

All physical evil is a want of due and proper integrity in a being against which material natures resist, or will resist if they are able.  Living things are possessed of means of defence against the invasion of their being.  It is in the interplay of these relative forces, the power of the predator, and the power to resist of the preyed upon, that the balance of nature subsists.   Nothing in the material universe frustrates its own finality from within, from the immanent direction of its own powers.  Whatever Freudians may imagine, there is no such thing as a “will to die” in the non-spiritual world, though something akin to such an urge does define grave and deliberate sin in man.  Everything in the material world has its own proper good, and seeks to preserve and to increase the same. Below man, we find nothing that of itself, is divided against itself.

Being is made for the cohesion of the Good and the True

This is the point of departure between physical evil in the material world and the spiritual evil of sin.  Sin is an immanent self-frustration, a rending, or even a destruction of a spiritual nature, through those powers by which alone, rightly directed a spiritual being can attain the purpose of its creation.

The understanding of what sin is, requires, beyond the preamble which has preceded our exposition of its full nature and consequences, a deeper appreciation of the nature of being as good;  as true to itself, and as reposing in that good which is the right ordering of its being.  For our purposes it is desirable to commence from material being, and to follow through from the material order to the nature of man.  If sin is not a positive attribute, but a state of privation of a due good, we can only understand it by contrast with the reality it decays, by contrast with the good.

In the deepest, most fundamental sense of the word, a being is good, when it possesses the being proper to its order, and possesses it with that fullness and wholeness of nature which defines its substance in the intention of God.  Goodness and Being are convertible terms; a thing is good, and possesses “well-being” because it is a good nature and possesses its being in a good manner, namely, when all is well within it.  Because He is the source of all being, God is equally the source and fountain-head of all good.  The universe in which we have our being was therefore good from the primordial beginning of creation.  Everything that existed in that co- ordination of material entities was good, because it was existent, and was all that it should have been, evolved within it, fulfilled perfectly in itself the measure of the Intellect and Will of God concerning it;   therefore everything that was made, was wholly good.

The very name of God means the Good, and the word “wholly” originates from the same root as the word “holy”.  The primitive affinities of these words indicate that our forefathers had a better grasp of philosophic realities than most of us, for indeed ‘wholeness’ of being is ‘holiness’ of being, and when a thing is ‘wholly good’, it is also good and holy.

If goodness defined every created element that composed the universe, it defined likewise every manifestation of being, predetermined and inevitable, that proceeded, under the natural law,  from the relativity of those natures that were made.  We have asserted in the previous chapters that our universe was, from the moment of its creation, fashioned according to an overriding Law of Universal Control and Direction.  This Law too, was good, because it determined the very form of those primitive elements of creation, and under it they were constituted as active realities, intrinsically relative, within an evolutionary cosmos.   The ultimate elements of material being were good then, because they were.  Within their being lay an intrinsic relativity to coalesce between themselves, and that in a determinate and purposeful manner, and to bring forth thereby more complex forms of being, built upon that relativity of substance.

Goodness and Truth of Being in obedience to the Unity Law

This physical Law of Control and Direction must be called a law, because it is the rule and measure of the natures and powers of different forms of material being.  It is that Law, which, issuing from God as a creative “fiat”, made every element of matter what it was, and made all the elements of matter relative as “every one of them members one of another”, and created them in such a disposition of substances in action and inter-action, that  by evolution  among themselves,  the  whole  complex  order  of  the  cosmos  was  built  up  on  the  pre- conditioned activities of these material energies.  This Law of Control and Direction then, is the law of God under which material being is created what it is, is set towards its end, and brought to that end, the whole process being contained in the initial order of creation.  This total relativity, as an inseparable whole, is the law of good, because it is the law of being.

This truth is not less actual in the inanimate order than in the order of the living, but its application and operation in the realm of the living is more important for us, because of its consequences within the physical body of man.  The all-embracing nature, and cosmic majesty of this Law is also the more easy to grasp in the order of the living because while we trace this law of goodness, and of being, in the kingdom of life, we can marvel the more at its stupendous comprehensiveness while we trace the myriad complex threads which enter into the meaning of the pattern of advanced forms of life.

The evolution of life is the evolution of matter under that one controlling Law which is embodied in the natures of material beings, and which directs the material order to more perfect achievement in the order of being: to a more perfect actualisation of that good which is ‘to be’. This is why everything that lives, from the depths of its own substance, has powers and instincts through which it seeks the purpose of its being, and seeks always to find without fail.   The powers and instincts through which the living organism seeks its natural perfection, are not distinct from its nature; they are simply the nature in active operation.

Obedience to the environment is the good and true of all being

Because these natures are formed, begotten, and maintained in a universe of relatives, through all their senses they seek in that universal order, their necessary determination.  They seek it from, and they find it in, that co- ordering of related entities which we call the “environment”.  They must so seek, they must so find, and they do find.  It is through the operation of the universal Law of finality which is the Law of good unto being in its most comprehensive meaning, that within the fabric of the universe, all life finds, each in its own species, that controlling causal influence which co-ordinates and directs the stimuli, instincts and passions which derive from living beings.  The senses of the living creature, even the very differentiated senses of the highest forms of life, are all radiations of one only sense: the sense of good, the sense of life itself, in its different specific manifestations.

Everything that lives has, if left in its proper environment and natural conditions, its own times and seasons, its own inexorable cycle of life, and the law which controls its life-mechanism is the impact upon it of other forms of being, ultimately the impact of an influence which takes in the whole cosmos in unison.  This subtle and  far-reaching influence rules  the individual  with  a law of life that  not  merely maintains  the internal equilibrium of the individual organism, but which over the whole period of evolution has maintained both the individual life, and has prompted the specific development of new types by evolution.

The more complex the form of the living becomes, the more varied the functions of its existence, so much the more there develop, with intricate beauty, those senses and powers through which this equilibrium of being is maintained in the universe.  As the living being evolves to a more perfect degree of actuality, so much the more does the brain develop, a marvel of exquisite pattern and vital power.  It becomes the supreme marvel of the sense of life itself;  a complex organ of control, wonderful in its competence both to determine the myriad functions of its own living body, and to receive and interpret a myriad outside factors;  all of which factors, though many, are but one environment, one force controlling in a relativity.

Man has produced nothing, never we believe, will ever produce anything, which can rival the mechanical perfection of the developed anthropoid brain, in which there are combined relatives of the Universal Law that are the basic relations upon which evolution began, together with functions and co-ordinations of natural law which are the exquisitely complex expressions of material evolution at the summit of its achievement.  And all this within the single finality of one animal life, seeking and living that one finality, and living it under the distinct law of its own species, into which finality all these far-flung relativities are gathered up into the unity of the synthesis of one entity.

One economy under the Law of Control and Direction

The very vastness, the intricacy, the overwhelming complexity of the process we try to delineate oppresses the mind, as we stammer some little of this universal order, so that others may also understand, and understand that without intellect it cannot be interpreted by man, and except as the expression of an intellect cannot be explained in its being at all.  All of this universal order of entitative relativity is one economy of the Law of good, the Law also of being, and the Law of life.  Nothing stands by itself alone, is active of itself alone, lives for or by itself alone.

The development of the living to higher perfection of being introduces new mutations of its own accord. In the mere fact of such development, because it introduces new mutations within the universe which become in their own being new elements of the law of relativity, and by these new elements of being, and the law contained in their causal environmental impact upon other being, the development of species among themselves is catered for in a mutual inter-dependence.  The universe which is the womb of material life is, in that fact, pregnant with the good, and the more perfect in degree the development of being, so much the more perfect is shown to be the potential latent within this Law of the universe which is declared in its unfolding.

Man

This, and nothing less, is the meaning of that refrain of the first chapter of Genesis which recurs after the

“naming” of each species of being which Moses enumerates as created: “And God saw that it was good”. (Gen 1:10) Until he reaches the climax that is man himself, the heir of the ages, to whom alone belongs the superlative of good in the order of being that exists within this universe, and then we find written:

“And God created man to His own image:

to the Image of God He created him.

Male, and female, He created them.

And God saw all the things that He had made,

and they were very good”. (Gen 1: 27, 31)

All things which God made were good, but when the order of creation is crowned by man, it becomes indeed exceeding good.  The stock from which the body of man was to derive physically was not only good, that much it had from the mere fact that it was an existent nature undefiled by sin, but good with an urge to an increase of the degree of that good:   for being, and good, are synonyms.   As the tree of material life branched more proximately to mankind, this stock which was in the direct line towards man became the most developed, and the most rapidly developing, in the realm of the living.

Over eons of time, matter had sought its natural good not only in the normal functions of sub-human animal life, but in that more profound sense which goes to the heart of the process of the evolution of species; matter had blindly, and necessarily, sought not only to survive in the individual existent, but from an innate urge within the organism, co-defined in terms of the total cosmic environment, had sought an increase of specific perfection natural to its material order.

In the order of the good, of the rightful, of being itself in all its aspects, a good which filled the universe, and radiated from all that matter had, and which was pregnant with all that it was yet to become, the material life which was relative intrinsically to the spiritual order, and spiritual soul, had its pulsating being.

The soul of Man the environment for the body

There comes the time when this species of life, greatly developed already in the powers of association which mark its brain, supreme in the order of matter, but up to now still able to seek, and to find, its good, its needful determinant within the universe, now attains that peak of material perfection which we explained earlier, where there is reached the grand fulfilment of the evolution of life.   The body of this anthropoid species is still a mechanism  in  its  order  of determination,  but  a mechanism  which  has  reached  the last  limit  of material environmental control.  It has reached the level at which the interplay of the immanent mechanism of material life, and the influence stimulative and inhibitive of the environment, can no longer maintain the equilibrium of its material being, if there should be any further urge within the genetic content of any members of this species to further advance in the power and sensitivity of the brain.  That power is there, is present strongly, and is the supreme mutant of the entire terrestrial order.

It is at this moment, when within a pair belonging to this species, matter crosses the line, that matter becomes, for the continuance even of its own material equilibrium of being, relative substantially to a higher principle of unlimited personal power:   the spiritual soul, without which a man cannot be conceived.   The determination in a behaviourist sense, to obey mechanist law with some inevitable mechanical  necessity, which is embodied within the material body of man, because it is material, comes up to meet, and to be taken over by, the free and potent order of the spiritual intelligence.

While matter and spirit are truly, and utterly distinct in order, in man they are defined as correlatives one to another in the bringing to be of one substance.  In the rational creature, this correlative of matter and spirit, the soul becomes the immediate environment which controls the body in the union of one nature and one person. Remember, for it will be all important in the understanding of the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, that when matter becomes relative to spirit from its intrinsic powers, and when under the Law of Finality that spirit is created into the fertilized ovum, that all the ‘self-surrender’ of matter to its environment in the ‘trustful’ seeking for its good, the blind expectation of its good need from the Universal Law working through the environment, is now surrendered completely to that created spirit which makes a man, a man.

Through the dim mists of time which shroud from us the ancestry of our bodies, that living organism which was determined and conditioned to the peak of material powers, where matter needs, yes and demands, the soul, had always sought the good, and otherwise it could not do.  When this animal body became relative to spirit as the chief principle of man’s being, it must needs expect from the reasoning and far-seeing soul, that same determination in the good, that same government of its physical nature in times, seasons, and harmony of function which it had sought, while still it could find, in the material universe.

Co-operation of soul and body in Man

Here the mind again reaches a promontory from which it can view the vast sweeping scene which is the operation of finality, as a Law, over the entire kingdom of the created.  Each level of created being, pure spirits, men, and mere matter, exemplifies that universal Law in its own way and in its own order; moreover these very orders are linked, despite their distinction, in one economy which is a unity in the Creative Mind which is God.

When man is first made under this Law, the material in his nature still seeks in its own proper way, in the blind manner of matter, for a man’s body is no less material for being the body of a man, and it can only co- operate with the spirit after the manner of a material element.  This it does, and this it must do; but the answer to its need must be sought, and is sought, within the being of a man, from the determination not of any extrinsic environment, but of the intrinsic soul.  It is natural for a man to be determined by his intellectual soul, by what he decides freely and willingly to do.  There is no contradiction between matter and spirit, and in man matter is determined, or at least was originally determined, entirely by its proximate determinant, which is the human soul.   For man is a living bridge between matter and spirit, both these orders are co-relatives in him, each defined in terms of the other to make one nature.

The body of man is now knit to, and even organised by, an intelligent and free-willed principle of being. Now through the soul alone does the material element seek that determination of its functions which to be exercised, and must be coordinated through the brain.   Before matter passed into the synthesis of spirit and matter which is a man, the brain alone was the last somatic determinant of physical functions, and the necessary external governor of that body through the brain, was the total external environment, which played upon the individual living thing as the impact of one totality of Law with many related aspects.  In man, the summit of these determinations from environmental law is found within his person, in the competence of his soul.  It is now the soul, not any extrinsic factor stimulating internally the potentialities of matter, which directs and uses the overflowing energies of matter in man. Specifically it directs the energies of the brain, so that in man the material brain is urged forward at a vastly accelerated rate to an increase of associative reflex capacity which, however beyond the power of the physical laws of the universe to control, does not, and never can, tax the power of man’s personal spirit to maintain  in equilibrium unless that equilibrium is shattered from within by sickness of either soul or body.

The environment of material beings governs their responses to physical stimuli

Up to the emergence of man, matter had sought from the material environment and the directing good for the material life instinct in that environment, not only those stimuli which move it to given functions, but also those influences which cause physical passions to wane, and become latent after their appointed time of useful  function.  For matter is not wanton, nor lustful and disordered in its economy.  They greatly err who consider material life below mankind to be a medley of blind automatic desires, fiercely striving for whatever fruition of pleasure lies nearest at hand.  Without the power of reason, blind matter would crash in chaos if all nature were a competition of wanton concupiscence unordered to purposeful end; no living organism could survive such disorder.  If delicate machines made by man break down and are burned out by disorderly usage, how much more so the delicate mechanism of material life!  The material living creature is not only prompted to act by environmental laws, but by the total pressure of such factors it is also removed from specified functions according to a clearly perceptible cycle of its own seasons.

Within its proper environment, matter is controlled by environment, and matter obeys, because to respond to its good through material stimuli both excitatory and inhibitory, is natural to matter.   Of course, men can introduce all sorts of confusions and aberrations in domestic animals, because even when these breeds are not artificial species which could not survive in a natural terrestrial habitat, they are still removed from a full integration into their environment, and to be able to point to, let us say sexual aberrations in such purely material life which parallel masturbation in man, is only to say that the mechanism of material life jams without its full material determinant.

It must be expected that animal functions and animal passions which are framed towards a material determination, and are harmonised only in a given setting, will become a disorderly chaos when man removes them from that setting, but it certainly does not prove that animal life has no natural law, rather it emphasises both the law, and the determinist manner in which it operates as the action and re-action of entities in a relative inter-play.  It is natural for living things below man to seek the physical functions of their nature, but in seeking they also find, and must obey, those determinants which prevent their over-passing the bounds within which the times, functions, and propriety of physical passions are contained;  animals are not ruled by reason, but they are reasonably ruled.

The soul in Man is the environment to govern physical stimuli in Man

Man has outgrown the beneficial restraints of physical laws, and nowhere does this show more strikingly than in the sexual conduct of men, and in their attitude to family responsibilities, although it would be deplorable to fasten on this one striking example of how little man is ruled by laws of determinism, as if it were the only thing that mattered.   Man’s natural restraint must be exercised through his wisdom; the wisdom that is the reasonable knowledge of his soul.  To this reasonable knowledge, this personal intelligent wisdom, the body of man now looks, and in it seeks the regulation of its powers and animal functions.  Concupiscence, which is irrational desire, is not natural nor proper to man.  The state of man today is fallen; fallen in nature, and gravely wounded, but of that we shall say more in its due place.  Concupiscence is that state within man in which the powers and passions of the material body are not fully and immediately subject to the intellect and will of the soul.  In the present state of man the physical powers may react to a material stimulus with indifference to the will of a man, and do often lust strongly against his reason and his will.  Man is then self-divided; and self- division is a sign of sin; and how it came to be, we must needs soon consider, for the issue is one of sad urgency for every one of us.

This was not the intention of God in the creation of man.  When matter, conditioned by its being to seek its good fully and with blind inevitability, became relative to the soul, it became relative as a principle of being perfect in its own order, to a spiritual principle itself good, and good with a higher content, a goodness that belonged to a being made in the image of the Goodness which is God. The soul of man was like God himself to the material body.  Independent in its own powers, made for God itself, and for the good of the material life to which it was knit, and knit moreover in the unity of one common finality, it determined the body with despotic power.  The body, the blind, machine-like body, must needs obey,  since to seek its good was of the very sense of material life.  It sought good blindly of the soul, and obeyed that spirit blindly.  It could do nothing else, and as related elements of good in one being, why should the body do anything else, or the soul have been expected to provide it with anything else but good?

There was in man when God first made him, the material life which had always sought its good, and could seek nothing else. Matter was good, wholly good and pleasing to God;  for it was as He made it to be.  There was also, relative to that body as its principle of being and further advancement, the spiritual soul, pure and spotless from God; instinct with wisdom that was proper to its nature, a wisdom that mirrored afar off the wisdom and purity of God Himself.  These two elements were relative to one nature, one being, and there stood before God in that instant of creation, the first spotless man; whole and integral of nature, body and soul one harmonious unison unto God; and God saw the work which He had made, and it was very good.

Relation of soul and matter in Man under the Law of Control and Direction

When, over the ages which had been leading up to this climax of creation, all matter had been good, and had sought its good, while it obeyed a Law which in its material expression was, and is, a true physical law of the universe, in fact the Law of the universe, all matter had indirectly obeyed Wisdom, had obeyed the Intellect of the Absolute from which it came, and could not do otherwise.  This Law in matter was, and is the tangible expression, embodied in the relative entities of material things of the determination of the Absolute Intellect over matter.

When too, under that same Law the soul was created into organized and living matter, it was because the soul was now necessary under the same necessity of finalism, and should give to the body of man together with finality and determination, that whole good in the order of being which is synonymous with finality and with being.  The soul was the personal embodiment for man of environmental determination, more powerful than matter, and completely superior to that which it now controlled and directed to an end known in the wisdom of the created intelligence.   There was not originally any disharmony or antithesis in man, he was all of him ordered to one fulfillment, and to that fulfillment each element of his nature contributed to the full measure of its capacity and definition.  The order of wisdom requires that this should be so, and this order of peace and harmony within man was the natural condition in which man was, and must have been created.  If it were not so, God would have made man a monster.

Original harmony of soul and matter in Man

Nothing which exists can be naturally indifferent to, or divided against, its own finality for the finality of a thing is the order of its good, and good embraces all that is within a nature, even a composite nature.  Any reluctance between the two elements of man’s nature, any reluctance even based upon an imagined “independence” of matter to spirit in man, would rupture the order of good within a common finality between these elements, and would make man a monster, whatever the degree, high or low, of the destiny in union with God appropriate to his nature.  The most perfect of the works of God within the material order, was not created inferior in substantial perfection to those primitive living forms which lie so far below man, and know of no internal defect in the response of their natures to their proper good.

God is the good which is the end of man, in whatever order of perfection that good which is God could have been given. The common finality of matter and spirit in man to an end which terminated in any sort of union with God was ordered could not admit of any disharmony, or even tardiness of response, of the flesh to the spirit in the natural state of man.  God makes all things, and nothing which is made by God, and prompted closer to Hi, moves tardily towards its source and fountainhead of being, unless it has been averted from God through some factor which is in contradiction to God.

Concupiscence is un-natural to Man

They err then greatly, as do even a considerable class of post-Reformation Catholic theologians, who teach that the state of “concupiscence” is natural to man, and that the state of integrity of harmony between body and soul is only “supernatural”, and was lost by Original Sin.  This state of concupiscence means that the body of man is so naturally indifferent to the reasoning soul, the principle of finality, and in scholastic philosophy the “form” of the body, that it can not only respond blindly to material stimulus against the judgment of the reason and the determination of the will, but can even, as in us we know it often does, fiercely contradict the truth of reason, so that a man is divided against himself, and becomes like a nation labouring under civil war.  That such is the present state of fallen men we each of us know too well, but it is an insult to the intelligence of the All-Wise to maintain that this ever could be, even in a less vehement degree than now, the natural relation in man of matter and spirit.

The soul was destined to fulfill for the flesh every good, every prompting, and every wise rein which the Law of matter fulfilled, and still fulfils for purely material things. Matter was as intrinsically relative to obey the rational soul as matter is today to respond to the rein and restraint imposed in so many ways upon organism by material environmental laws.  In an appendix to this chapter, we answer at greater length the difficulties of certain schools of theology against this the true conception of man, and if we take shelter under the shadow of St. Thomas Aquinas in our disputations,  well, it is a broad and noble tree, and we will find a motley crowd of theological travellers also sheltering beneath this perennial shade.   It is in any case, in sheer philosophy, a contradiction in terms to postulate a being with only one natural finality, whatever that finality may be, which is divided against that finality; and indifference to its determination to finality is reduced to opposition, because between positive and negative, being and not-being, there is no third term to serve as a mean.

How much more obvious does this become when the being is man, whose principle of determination is a spiritual intelligence, made like the substance of God in powers, and until it forswear its natural loyalty to God, is made good to judge wisely of the good and to determine the whole person of man in harmony, to whatsoever perfection of spiritual fulfillment God has destined for him!  If the state of obedience of matter to spirit in man were entirely supernatural, and nature, as born today in a man were naturally perfect, imperfect in the eyes of God only because of the loss of a “gratuitous super-natural gift” which is only an extrinsic “accident” in relation to that nature, it is very hard to see why, in the absence of some reason more intrinsic to human nature, this original status of Adam is not given back to man in Baptism. For the whole voice of Christian tradition through the ages witnesses that the Redemption of Christ is the perfect and the consummated victory to God over the powers of sin. Why then, if physical integrity be an “accident” of the super-natural order, is its restoration, and the consequent immunity from concupiscence, not an integral part of the grace of Baptism?

Created in the Image and Likeness of God

When man was first made, his nature was wholly good. There was nothing in him which lusted directly against the wisdom of the soul, and hence indirectly against the wisdom of God.  He was the image and likeness of God, and as a spiritual creature he would have been so in his nature and in the harmony of his nature, whatever some theologians try to excogitate concerning the status of man before God.  Now this soul which makes man a human being was itself in need of life and determination.  It controlled the body, and the body was made to expect and to receive its control, but it could not control itself, and therefore without the influence of the life which is in God for spiritual creations, without grace that is, it could not determine the body either, because what a man does with his body depends upon the wisdom and sincerity of his soul.

This was the condition of man when first created, and the original intention for man of the Mind of God. The body of man sought its good through the soul.  The soul in its turn sought its good, its needful determinant to its final perfect good in the supernatural order of God’s own direct operation upon its created spirit.  To this end was man wholly fashioned, so that without grace he is not intelligible, and without drawing upon the life of grace he cannot long maintain any stable good within himself, for he withers and he dies out of the true Vine into which his nature was grafted at conception.

Nature is not of itself, of its natural definition or of any rights or exigencies of its substance, within the supernatural order.  Nevertheless the nature of man has no other destiny, nor any intrinsic intelligibility except within that order. This is to say that the wisdom, intelligence, and finalism which defines the very substance of the created spirit is a wisdom of the order of God’s free charity, not of any justice, for nothing other than God claims in justice upon the being of God.  God is not tolerant of exigency, or of justice, from created natures, for justice entails a right to receive, and an obligation to give, within the same order, and nothing outside Himself obliges God.  If any man should say that God, once He freely creates, is bound by an obligation to provide whatsoever is required for the minimum fulfillment of the spiritual nature, we reply that an obligation founded upon an initial charity is within the order of charity, not of justice, for it is all part of one same creative dispensation.  We add too, that the decrees of God are perfect in wisdom and in disposition, and that what God begins, is already completed in the intention of God.  There is no transition from a general order of charity, to any specific order of justice. God’s Providence is one, and His works are the unfolding of one, completely one, divine economy.

God created out of love, and in that one same love, He perfects what He has made.  There is only one act of will in God when He creates, and only one process, not two;  and therefore only one order which embraces all things, either in their end or in that to which their end sub-serves:   the supernatural order of the spiritual creation which proceeds from God and is consummated only in God.  Therefore:

“Let us love one another,

for charity is born of God.

and everyone that loves, is born of God.

and knows God.

For God is Love.

By this has the charity of God appeared towards us,

because God sent His only-begotten Son into the world,

so that we may live through Him.” (I Jn 4: 7-14 Douai Version)

CHAPTER  15

The Fall and its Consequences

The manner by which Man was in the beginning meant to achieve his full happiness, and is today still meant to attain it in the order of a nature redeemed, was by an intrinsic orientation of his being to God  and  in that orientation by an increase of holiness which represents an increase of stature for the soul of man.  This gives a continual enhancement of the human personality through the “virtues” which ennoble a man.  He is meant, even today under the handicap of a fallen nature, to so grow in depth of goodness that he may attain to “perfect manhood, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”  (Eph. 4.:13.)  This is not to be accomplished only by the barren observance of a code of conduct, but by a union of charity with God so real and substantial, that of Him, and in Him, and through Him, the soul may develop in its inward life, both making progress, and knowing from within the fruition of that advancement.  In the very beginning of man’s creation, and also today, when a man is created into the world, the nature which is made by God does not first ask, and then receive. The soul of man comes from the creative act of God, and with its very creation, there follows that first prompting of the grace of Christ by which it is to be drawn ever more fully towards the consummation of the intention of God initiated with its creation.

The free will of Man the spiritual creature

Nevertheless, men are free. They have their destiny in God, whether they are reluctant to accept it, and all the responsibilities it entails, or not.   The destiny of a man is the gift of God which follows out, and makes intelligible, the gift of his nature, its powers and its virtues; but no man is necessitated to accept this perfection of his imperfect being and imperfect status in being.  What is given to a man in the order of charity, the very gift of created existence, must be perfected within that same order. Man cannot of his unaided, undeveloped powers of spirit obtain for himself that end, nor is it asked of him. Man is asked only to respond freely, and man need not correspond.  Man alone in Nature can say ‘no’ to God.

The nature of man is utterly subjected to God to be, and to be perfected, but the acceptance of this determination is in the order of man’s own powers. Man has free-will, and if he wills he can refuse to live in the reasonable subjection to God which is proper to his nature, he is not necessitated by substantial determinism as is matter.  As a child is born dependent upon its parents, so is a man dependent upon God.  As the child can play the prodigal, and run away from its parents, so can a man desert God, and like a prodigal son, he will waste miserably in want.

Our First Parents

The tragedy of our race is that men do not only sin as private persons, but that the original parents of our race did also deliberately sin, and the results were not, nor could they be, merely individual and private.    Sin is disaster to spiritual beings, and true sin exists when a man uses the free-will of his nature to wrench that nature away from the Absolute to which it is directed, and by whom its powers are determined only for its greater good.  The consequences of the sin of our first progenitors were appalling for the whole human race, and in the analysis of the consequences of their sin, we will understand what Original Sin means in the teaching of the Church. We will see why such consequences were inevitable, and how today, in the light of the Christian doctrine concerning sin, we can see readily enough that sin exists, and that mankind cannot reasonably be conceived as anything except a fallen race.

A teaching which is at first difficult to many minds will become the only reasonable solution of the patent and visible effects of moral evil, and once more the Church of Christ will vindicate, in the unique truth of her doctrine, her claim to be the custodian of a divine dispensation which must command the allegiance of the mind and the heart of the modern world.

When man was first created he was good from the innate powers of his soul, made in the likeness of the being which is God.  He possessed a degree of wisdom from his nature, for wisdom is true knowledge, and the power in that knowledge to interpret the truth of things, and the right ordering of a means to an end.  He was created also in the order of God’s grace, into a vital union of love with God, in which his natural powers to know and judge of good, were prompted onwards to a greater perfection. Man was created for a more perfect knowledge of himself, creation, and God, and a sweeter fruition in the end of his being.  Grace did for man what the material environment does for the created seed: it prompted what was made, made its latent powers spring to more abundant life. This life in a spiritual and intellectual being, can only mean a depth of union with God, and from that union, increase of those virtues which define the powers of a spiritual nature.

Free will - sin is the free act of a spiritual creature

While man could know his good, and know God’s order for his good, he could also refuse to obey it, and could make himself his own end, his own arbiter of good and evil.  He could make himself, as it were, his own god, and  thereby subvert  both  his  orientation  to  God,  and  the  ordering  of  his  life  contained  in  that  all-wise orientation. Man could, and a man can, refuse his determination towards his end, even though it would make him a living contradiction, a being divided against the good proper to its own created and subject nature.  The only antithesis which exists anywhere in created being is the antithesis of sin, of a nature which refuses to co- operate in its own proper fulfillment, and only spiritual entities are capable to this unnatural antithesis.  Sin is an antithesis against God, and against man himself; and sin is unnatural and destructive, not the glorious vindication of human liberty.

The Christian and Catholic Church teaches that this evil, the antithesis of sin, not only occurred but occurred in the first pair from whom our species naturally descends.  It rests with us to enquire whether this is in itself a truth worthy of credence, because when human nature is examined, the fact of a Fall somewhere, somehow, which involves the everlasting clash of good and of evil in all aspects of our lives, becomes so clear that we do not think that any man can long doubt it, whether he accepts Christianity or not.

An act of the spirit not the material in Man

The body of man could not, as a material thing, be a direct cause of sin.  The body, as a material thing, is made for determination, not for free activity, and in a man, the principle which governs and commands at the summit of material functions, is the intelligent spirit.  If man sinned, the cause of such a sin was the rebellion of the soul; for the body had never rebelled, nor could it, of its own powers.  If the parents of all mankind did sin, what could be the consequences?  They would be precisely the consequences, given man’s composite nature, which the Church has always named and taught to be the results of Original Sin.

Throughout long ages, material being, the order in which man’s body had its roots, was an order of the good; only of the good.  Matter was naturally good because God made it, and good and being are, in the last analysis, convertible terms.   Matter then, had been good of itself, good in its functions, operations, and seeking, and intrinsically conditioned to the good of its substance.  In all its acts and operations matter had responded fully to its determination: under the physical Law of Finality, its Law of good; it had always obeyed, and indeed as a predetermined order it could not do otherwise.

When matter was united to spirit in man’s nature the soul became the personal environment and determiner of man. It was then possible for the material element, naturally subject to the spirit, to “seek an egg, and be given a scorpion” (Lk 11:12) The soul, which alone in man’s complex nature can say “I will not serve,” refused to acknowledge the bent of its nature, and to accept truthfully the good it knew as the true good. We must ask ourselves what the repercussions upon the material element in man will be.  The first sin would necessarily be a sin of pride, an intellectual falsehood, because by it man withdrew himself from his natural determination by God, to God, in goodness; and in willing himself, and his own will as an end in itself, tried to imitate what can be the prerogative only of a non-subject and non-relative nature. This is why we have said that man, in sinning, made himself his own god.

The Original Sin of pride and its repercussions

Whatever might have been the actual occasion of the first human sin, the essential and the primary element in that Fall would be disobedience born of pride.  This state would necessarily have repercussions, and terrible repercussions upon the body, for man is one person, and the denial of the good and true within the soul would be communicated to the body, which would react and respond in its own way according to its own order.  The body would, in the act of sin, be willed by the soul, its principle of control and direction, to co-operate as a partner in a negation of the order of good as such; of the very substantial order of being.

This is what occurred when man first sinned, and in that sin, matter was thrown violently against the course and determination of material being which had prevailed over the millions of years of the natural development of the universe, and of life.  The law of good, we have seen, is only one aspect of the very relative being of material things in their substance. It defines every created material thing, and it reposed in the constitution of matter,  permeated  into,  and  radiated  out  of,  every  operation,  action,  and  function  of  matter  living  and inanimate, for it was the vestige in matter of the good and true which defines the substance of God.  The urge to its natural good, means there is a disposition in matter to obey its natural restraints and inhibitions, however exercised, as well as to seek its natural pleasures. Over eons this balance of law, stimulating and restraining, maintained the equilibrium of natural living things, even as in the order below man, it still maintains it.

In the living thing this “urge” to its good is  a true way, the supreme sense of the life-principle, of which the so-called “five senses” of animal life are only partial and secondary manifestations, for the seat of this sense of its natural “good” is in the brain of advanced life.  The sense of “control and direction”, the sense of “finality”, the “sense of good”, all these phrases are different aspects of one same thing, they are synonyms which are identified with the substance, operations, and inter-relativity of material things.  The sense of the life-principle centred in the brain had always been, then, a sense of the good. Thus it was natural in man’s body for that material element to seek its good with vitality, with eagerness, in a pre-conditioned harmony from the soul, since for the soul was matter made in man, intrinsically related.    In man, matter was intended to seek all its good, proper that is to its own order as material, from the soul; for matter in man had “crossed the points”, and become relative to spirit in one continuity of natural law.

Rupture in the harmony of control and direction between matter and spirit

When  matter  in  man,  “crossed  the  points”  to  a  new  line,  and  became  in  human  nature  the  substantial complement of the intelligent soul, the urge to good, and the orientation to its true determination within matter, were not changed.   The direction of living matter, the direction to its good, its finality, still determined the material element in man, for the creation of man neither breaks, nor interrupts any law, but continues the Law of finality which is fulfilled in all creation in a higher order to which matter, at its climax is relative even as matter.

When man sinned, he forced his body to disobey forcibly the determination of its own material sense of the good, and to become averted from its automatic determination to its true good.  The soul was the proximate interpreter to the material body of the application of the law of the good and the true, of human finality, because the soul is the proximate control of the higher functions of the body, and the soul determines the body towards that order of good which it learns from God through natural reason and revelation alike.   The body cannot directly react to a spiritual determinant except in a mechanical way, and the ultimate control of God upon man is exercised through the soul.  The body shares such ultimate determination only through the intellect and will of the soul.

Because only the soul in man is the immediate determinant of matter, the body must necessarily obey the soul even against the radical law of its own sense of the good, even against the resistance of the material element as such. The soul is like a god in power to the body, or at least, it was in the beginning before the harmony of the two elements in man was ruptured by man.  In the commission of the first sin, the material body of man, not less than the soul, was divided against itself and thrown into disorganized confusion.

Sin in Man is a fundamental violation of the Unity-Law

To appreciate the meaning of this subtle, but vital fact, the reader must bear in mind that the law which ruled, and which still rules the material universe, is in the fact of its constitution as the law by which being is maintained, a law of goodness and of truth for matter. It is the embodiment of the wisdom of God in created substances.  From the original fiat of God in creating, it determines the beautiful and harmonious natures of material things, their related attractions and repulsions, and all that is of them, or in them.  This is, in matter, a conditioning of co-relative substances in a predestined economy of the good and the true.

When material being, and the statement is best exemplified in life, finds the factor within the causal impact upon it of other related beings which is the natural determinant of either positive function, or cessation of given functions, to that factor it responds.  We may liken the senses of the living thing to the operational controls of highly complex human mechanisms. For just as certain electronic mechanisms respond automatically to beams which stimulate or inhibit some impulse so, and upon the same sort of principle embodied within the laws of the material universe, do the senses of life, or better the one sense of the living creature, respond to signals and impulses to which they are materially conditioned.

This should serve to clarify what is meant by the “sense of the good” in matter; there is no other sense in matter.  We mean the natural conditioning of matter towards its substantial good within its proper order.  The spirit also, intellectually and freely, is determined towards its proper good according to the same principle; and for the created spirit, God alone is that final determination, that environment.  In man, the orders of spirit and matter coalesce in one substance, and matter receives, or should receive, its determination towards good in its own way, according to its own order, from the soul, which is orientated to God, and which is sought by God.

Repercussions in the body and in the soul

We have several times in this work indicated that the power of responding by reflex action to the environment, and of receiving such material determinants as stimuli to function, which explains the whole life-cycle of sub- human life, passes over in man to the soul, which gives such stimuli directly to the material, and to which the body, through the brain, responds in exactly the same way, but in a different order of finality now, as does any other material thing.  The sin of the first man, which was a culpable and known denial of man’s order of his true good, an evil, a negation of the good, was transmitted to the body of man as a determination against the order of the good to which every material nature is conditioned.

Sin was known in the intellect of man as a deliberate resistance to the good known as such; an aversion from an order of subjection to a higher power known to be good, and to be good for man.   This resistance was transmitted also to the material body as the determination of that body to an end out of keeping with, and directly against the harmony, the bent, and the orientation, of living matter.  The free and intelligent spirit of man, in the act and the fact of sin, forced the body to act in a manner which was both not integrated into its total good, and transmitted to the body as a positive indication to respond entitatively against the sense and urge of complete and total good in material being.

The body must necessarily obey, because it lives by the soul, even while it is not the soul, since the soul is its entitative determinant. But in obeying the sinful soul in its own material powers it disobeyed that urge to good which was the perfection of its substantial orientation in the body of man, even as in all other material things.  The soul “knew” through its intellectual essence that it was living a lie, and this knowledge, together with the will to perform, could only be communicated to the body as a resistance against its law of total subjection to its proper good, and its ready obedience to that integration of its functions in a total good.

Sin as a forceful and deliberate aversion from the Good

Since  sin  in  itself  is  not  something  positive,  but  an  act  proceeding  from  a  denial,  or  refusal,  of  God’s determination, sin is really a forcible aversion away from the good of a nature, not a positive something opposed to good as one thing against another thing.  So also in man, the communication of the sinful will of the soul to the body in the human person, is the enforcement of an act in the known context of a refusal to integrate that act within the total harmony of proper good to which the nature is substantially defined.  In matter, this would mean that the first sin violently ruptured the total integration of the functions and senses into a total harmony of good, subject to, and relative to, the soul.  It represents in matter the blunting of the very orientation of the body to its proper supernatural good, through its union with the soul in one person. It meant the disorganisation of those material functions among themselves and in their relation to the soul. That is a true wounding, or lesion, of matter from within, because such a privation of total co-ordination to good, to the natural “health” of the body, can only be a wound or a lesion. Every wounding, or disease, is a privation in the subject which suffers it, a privation of its due natural good.

We do not hesitate to say that this “lesion” of the material in man caused by sin was and remains strictly a physical wounding of the material powers, and consists in the disorganisation of those powers towards their proper end in subjection to the spirit.  We further add that this very disorganisation is an effect on the primary blunting of the natural, physical, and material response to the good, transmitted to matter by the intellectual soul.  Like every wound, this effect of sin in matter admits of a degree of healing, or of further inflammation.

If the soul is very strong indeed, because it is the natural control of the body, it can force the body to obey, in spite of that reluctance of the flesh caused in our race by sin, and upon this discipline, exercised in a high, and unusual degree, the whole theory of Asceticism rests.  We shall see that because the body is wounded, but not totally corrupted, it does give some degree of response to such a process of re-formation, and re-integration of its senses unto reason, through the grace of God, so that what in the beginning of a man’s conversation is an appalling strain upon his will, becomes in time much easier, and even, so St. John of the Cross assures us, ready and prompt obedience at the highest, and most rare, levels of mystic attainment.

The discernible effects of Original Sin

The immediate result of the introduction into man’s nature of sin, for the first time, will be the effects of sin we know today, only much more clearly and tragically emphasized, because sin would be an impact upon spirit and matter for the first time.  In the body, and in this outline of Original Sin rather than of personal sin, we are more concerned with the effect of sin within the material element which integrates man than with the soul, the immediate reaction will be one of fear and panic, as at the presence of an enemy.  The natural reaction of a material organism to anything opposed in any way to its being and personal good is fear of it, and a movement of avoidance.   Man is one personality, and it is not possible to separate completely in him the spiritual and material  elements  of  any  emotion.  But  matter  and  spirit  are  not  the  same  thing,  and  such  distinction, recognisable by us at least in their emphasis, can be justly made, notwithstanding the entitative sympathy and correlation between the two elements of man’s nature.

There would be a physical reaction, which the soul too would share in its own order, but could dare truculently to disregard, and even to resist, for the soul is free.  Even today in the state of fallen nature, the most malicious and hardened of sinners is not able altogether to repress a certain sense of fear which accompanies the commission of shocking, heinous sin.  He may hate himself for it, and resent it furiously;   he may rave about the subconscious drag of silly religious inhibitions, but he never escapes this fear in one form or another, never at least until he has made himself so diseased a neurotic that he is equivalently insane.

When a man accepts in his mind, especially straightway upon the act, that he has sinned against the true good, then, since body and soul are at one in their recognition of this inversion of the true order of things, of their own natural ordering, revulsion and remorse can be very intense, and it varies according to the wilful depth of the evil perpetrated, and the sensitivity and sincerity of the man who sins.  Good men experience more shame of mind and remorse of will in relatively small sins, than degraded sinners do in much greater ones.

This is so because, spiritually and physically alike, the sense of “good”, the urge to life and being of both soul and body, is capable of increase and of decrease.   Something similar is found even in life below man. There are plants which grow well enough in northern climates, but which wax larger and more luxuriant along the Mediterranean; and if they are taken too far north, they struggle alone in a half-diseased life for a few years, and then the cold and the frosts finally kill them.  In man too, and especially in the body of man, the “sense to good” like all physical senses, is capable of further development, or of further disease. Fortunately for man, it can never be killed until a man is killed, and so however deeply sin wounds a man, he can never, as the old Protestants thought, be “totally corrupt”.  In the sunlight of God’s interior grace man can revive in soul and body, and grow green leaves of life again, and bear good fruit, pruning the dead branches of sin, and mastering the disease within his nature, however imperfectly and painfully.

Consciousness of sin

The very “voice” of conscience as it is called, is the resistance of spirit and of matter alike to the denial within themselves  of  their  created  orientation  to  their  true  good,  for  this  contradiction  of  sin  does  put  a  true “antithesis” within man’s being, and tears him apart, an experience known in less or in great to all of us, and by nobody better described as a psychological fact than by St. Augustine in his “Confessions.” (Bk.8. c.8,11,12.)

In as much as concerns the first sin of man, nothing can be more apt, more simple, or more sufficient in this place than the description, profoundly true in all essentials, of the effects of the first, the Original Sin, given in Genesis itself:

“And the eyes of them both were opened; and when they perceived themselves to be naked, they sewed together fig leaves, and made garments for themselves. When they heard the voice of the Lord God  walking in the garden, at the afternoon air, Adam and his wife hid themselves, from the face of the Lord God, amidst the trees of the garden.  And the Lord God called Adam, and said to him:  ‘Where are you’? and he  replied

‘I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’; and He  said to him:  ‘And who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of  which  I commanded   you not to eat?’” (Gen 3: 7-11)

This beautiful account, so perfectly adapted to the times, and the needs, of Moses’ audience, while not to be taken with verbal literacy in every detail, is neither a fable, nor a moral allegory.   It contains with striking clarity all the elements which must have been found in man consequent upon his fall from grace, and from physical  integrity.    Moses  is  not  interested  in  nakedness  in  itself,  there is  nothing shameful  in  physical nakedness, as is clearly implied in the fact that before the fall we are told: “They were both naked; that is Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.” (Gen 2: 25) The inspired writer means that man, being naked, became conscious for the first time of the shameful disorganization of his natural faculties consequent upon sin.

Nothing more than nakedness can bring home to a man the fact that he simply has not self-control over his physical passions.   Even though he can refuse what they impel him to, he cannot prevent their disorderly movements.  Any honest man knows quite well that in ordinary circumstances of life at least, nothing more than nakedness is prone both to arouse, and to manifest, especially the passion of sexual desire, which, together with love of money and food, forms that trinity of vices which are the most ungovernable greeds of men.  For other points contained in the passage quoted, we would refer the reader to an appendix upon the exegesis of certain parts of Genesis which follows an earlier chapter, but it is not necessary here, however interesting it might be, to comment upon texts which are not directly related to the subject-matter of the chapters.

Permanent lesion in Man’s nature – disposition to sin

Through sin, the edge, the impetus, the very élan of the sense of good, and the willingness to respond to good, is blunted in the material organism of man.  The co-ordination of matter to spirit in a perfect harmony of good in a perfect manner is so broken, that while the material co-partner in human sin must try to resist this negation of the good which wells up inside its very substance, it is forced to obey the soul rather than obey the law of good which defines it.

The body, capable of development either way, to more perfect good, or more feverish anarchy, becomes conditioned for the first time to seek selfishly, lustfully, some good for its own sake alone, divorced from, violently divorced from, the integration of the particular good into the total relativity of human nature to its end. The intrinsic sympathy and co-operation of spirit and matter in one orientation to good in man is shattered by the very first sin of man; and we will find that necessarily man’s former immunity from disordered concupiscence is lost at one tragic blow.

As soon as the powers of man’s physical nature are directed for the first time to an end unnaturally, and against nature, then they are driven by the ruling spirit of man against the co-ordination to perfect good of the whole finality of the human person.  The physical emotions of man partake, in their direction, of the state of the soul which sins; they become ends-in-themselves, and are capable, in that initial disorganization, of becoming more and more removed from their natural balance, through reason, in the relative economy which is the spiritual and psychological life of man.  The physical powers have been thrown out of their centre, and they can be even further removed from it.

We all know, apart altogether from this question of Original Sin, and its descent upon all men, that there is a certain level of especially physical abuse and perversion, which kills the very body of a man, either by some neurosis or psychosis which unhinges the brain, and reflects the state of the soul, or by the sheer physical corruption of the organs of the body.  Even when the body has been taught to crave for what is its poison, that poison kills.  There is no natural “death-desire” in man or in anything which lives, but undoubtedly sin can introduce its equivalent, for sin is a principle of internal antithesis, self-contradiction, and self-destruction.

When a material, determined, and automatically operating entity like the body, is ruptured in its organic co- ordination to seek its good, and to respond perfectly to the conditioning of its sense of direction to good, then that physical lesion of its natural powers cannot be perfectly healed by the soul which caused it.  The soul of man could, and did return to its true centre, and repent, despite the fact that it had lost grace, and even after the giving back to it of sanctifying grace in union with God, it would not necessarily be as strong in holiness as before.

Permanent lesion in Man’s material nature – hereditary effect of Original Sin

The soul of man however, whatever qualifications are needed which are beyond our consideration here, could return to its true course because free-will is part of the definition of its nature as spiritual.  Most unfortunately, this is not true of the body, for the material is not free but organically determined. It was by creation determined substantially, as material, to the good, and there is no place in its order for evil, nor for full recuperation from the  material  repercussions  of  the  lesion  of  sin.     The  body  is  an  intellectually  blind,  non-free,  and mechanistically moved element, like all matter, and the disorganisation of that material “nature”is a lesion within a conditioned mechanism, and once inflicted, cannot be perfectly repaired; indeed, it can be greatly exacerbated, and it certainly has been.

The body has been forced, from the time of the first sin, to turn the sense of direction of its organized material life, which is substantially dependent on the soul, to the opposition to good for the first time in the history of the universe. Because this “sense” which is the response of the powers of matter at their apex to the good and true, naturally dependent in man upon the state and the will of the soul, is capable of development, man can, and has come, to respond more easily to the negation of the urge of his material nature to seek good truly.  He has come to respond with less resistance, less fear, less “conscience” - as this affects matter - to a determination to some particular end, even at the cost of depressing, resisting, and further disorganizing the supreme sense of the living thing.

In other words, the material element in man can become more “used” to living in a state of contradiction and confusion, for it must obey evil now in the name of good, and when it obeys the sinful soul, it further confuses, and diseases, its own material organism.  This is quite possible, and is, unfortunately, no contradiction in terms. A man can crave for a drug which as soon as it is taken, further destroys his body;  the body is capable of being made to live in a state of antithesis, or “civil war” within itself, but only because of its relation in one nature to the free-will of the spirit.

Man not totally corrupt – Original Sin belongs in generation to the material

The Lutheran  and extreme Protestant teaching of the “total corruption” of man’s nature rests  on a false understanding of the nature of grace, and the process of sanctification in the theological sphere, and upon an equally inadequate understanding of the relation of a created nature, at least a composite nature, to its good. Sin can degrade and wound the physical nature of man, it can so warp the material in man especially, that a man is now “prone to evil from his youth” but it can never totally corrupt such a nature, nor, if such a nature is forgiven its imperfection by God, remove from it the possibility of reform and of meritorious actions, actions which are intrinsically good however imperfect.

The "guilt and stain” of Original Sin, which the Catholic Church teaches to have descended upon all mankind, is certainly transmitted by natural generation, even though the mode of such causality, and the intrinsic reason for it, is not defined.  It is then of Catholic doctrine that natural generation is the vehicle which is either the cause, or at the very least the occasion, of the incurrence of this hereditary deprivation of due grace and integrity in man.

As the soul is an immediate creation, and in natural generation the parents do no more than provide living matter, substantially relative under the natural law, to the soul, we are justified again in paying, in so short a scope as belongs to us, an especial attention to the existence in the material element of man’s nature, of the cause of the descent upon mankind of this privation of original justice in the nature of man.  The soul comes spotless from the creative will of God, and any cause of original sin as it is a privative factor upon all men, of due holiness, cannot be sought in the soul of a man directly.  Unless Original Sin is the arbitrary curse of God which some theologians come near to making it, any intrinsic factor must be sought in the body of a man rather than in the soul.

There are many things which ought indeed to be said of the soul, the spirit of a man, in a discussion of Original Sin, and of personal individual sin, but if we are forced to pay attention only to the bare essentials, we must rather consider the material element, for we have already stated that there is an intrinsic lesion in the orientation to its natural good of the body of man caused by the first Original Sin.  We will also state that this material  lesion  is  the  intrinsic  factor  which,  at  conception,  causes  inevitably  under  the  natural  laws  of generation and heredity, the incursion of the guilt and stain of original sin, the deprivation of the due grace and holiness proper to the human person as God intended it.

If we have shown why sin must necessarily wound the nature of man, especially the material element of man’s nature, we must also follow on to demonstrate as quickly as possible why that lesion cannot be undone, why it is the material causative factor of Original Sin as it is inherited from the beginning of man’s origins, how it comes to be inherited by natural generation, and why, at the same time, it does not “totally corrupt” man's nature beyond the power to do good, live well, and increase in intrinsic holiness in the order of grace.

Lesion of Original Sin ineradicable in inherited nature

The material lesion cannot be undone because the soul has power to determine, control, and develop the conditioned material mechanism of its body.   It has power of its nature and function, to take over the body which God made according to the law of goodness which defines being, and to develop and to increase that good in the continuity of one creative intention of the Divine Intellect, within the higher finality of the spiritual order.  The soul has power to do, but less power to undo. It can determine, and it can damage what has been created good and perfect in its order, but it cannot create, nor re-create when it has done harm.  The soul did not make the body, it did not make itself either. The body was made for the soul, and the soul, like a malicious workman, can destroy or damage what is beyond its skill to repair.  The soul taught the body to disobey reason, to ignore the good, to seek the particular out of its general organic relativity to good in one finality.

The soul has now disorganized and wounded a conditioned material element, which will now respond to selfishness against the will of God, and even, after a man’s conversion, against the will of the soul.  The soul must now force the body to do with reluctance what of right it should do willingly.  In the presence of some object which inflames passion of either mind or body, the body will often rage with one or another disorderly desire even against the will.   The soul retains  enough  control, except  in neurotics, to refuse consent to disordered desire, and to refuse the object desired by the bodily lust, but the insurgence, and the long and often agonising duration of temptation, it cannot prevent, except perhaps in souls who by long asceticism, and the depth of their union with God, have acquired a very rare degree of control even over the very motions of concupiscence of mind or body.

A man may burn his hand with a red-hot rod, in an act of foolish bravado.  He may soon repent bitterly of the vain stupidity of mind which prompted the action.  He may so sincerely repent of his act, as one of vain conceit and boastfulness, that in humility of soul he may now be more holy before God than he was before the commission of his sin.   The burn in his flesh however will remain, and no repentance will change it, nor suddenly heal it.  If the consequence of that stupid act should be a grievous infection, which makes necessary the amputation of his hand, that man is reaping the consequences of the wrongful treatment of the material by the spiritual.  He had power to do; but not to undo.  He had power to wound; but not to heal.  He inherited a good inheritance, and he had power to squander it, but he had not power to recreate what only God can create.

Because matter is a determined, mechanistic, behaviourist element, man can force it to disharmony by the more potent power of the spirit, but no amount of regrets and repentance can now undo what has passed into matter as a confusion of its powers, and by the very ability of matter to respond to the soul has now become a tendency to seek with craving a poison which destroys it.

Original Sin an inherited state and disposition to sin, not personal culpability

Strictly speaking, it is not Original Sin which is transmitted through natural generation, but the physical privation of Good present in the seed of man, which gives rise to Original Sin upon the necessary infusion of the soul at conception.  The “guilt and stain” of Original Sin in our first parents is not personally culpable in us at all.  A man conceived today, so distantly derived from the beginnings of our species, his soul made by the all-pure hands of God, born into an order of redemption and forgiveness, cannot have had anything to do with it, nor, in the order of redemption, unless there is some intrinsic reason which even God cannot undo, should he “inherit” any “stain” or “guilt” of any sort whatever.

Every man born inherits Original Sin by generative transfusion, because that man, whoever he is, is not conceived a perfect, pure, and integrally good nature.   There exists in the very seed of man a principle of positive reluctance towards the good, a tension against the perfect good, the disorganization of powers bent once, and originally, all in unison and harmony unto God, but now become unbalanced, overdeveloped lust, out of all proportion to any possible human end, and the direct result of the lack of control and direction to good broken in matter by the sin of Adam.

This lesion both affects the body with concupiscence, and influences the soul

Such a nature is now impure in the sight of God.  The sin-broken body pulls, influences, and slows down the impetus of the soul to God, confusing it, and coarsening its spiritual vision.  The soul is always the stronger, it can rise to God, but only with struggle and difficulty.  No man born today can ever attain to the utter perfection of sanctity in the continuity of increase in grace, which would have been possible for him if his nature were in plenary and perfect co-operation with the promptings of God.   Even the most holy will suffer from imperfections, unconscious passions, sluggishness in the good, a now natural ignorance of the perfect good of man, and a reluctance to follow it perfectly even when it is known.

The very soul of man is created under, and in the name of, the physical law of the universe, to inform and vivify in a higher synthesis of being the body made relative to spirit. That very soul will now, by reason of the mutual relativity and inter-definition of body to soul and soul to body, be tempted in its own powers, and weighed down, by the chaotic greed of the disorganised, and over-developed passions of the sensible element in man’s nature.  This radical personal imperfection, this privation of the full integrity, in which God made man pre-destined in grace to a personal destiny in the intuitive fruition of the essence of God, this is “original sin” in all men, and the material basis of that sin, which stands in loss of grace and integrity is concupiscence, the disorganization of the bodily integrity of man, a privation which is passed on naturally and inevitably by generation.  Concupiscence, we have already insinuated, does not mean sexual lust, which is only one obvious manifestation of concupiscence, but the loss in man’s nature of complete harmony between soul and body when a man is conceived.

Original Sin is forgiven in Baptism, but concupiscence remains

Such a nature must either be annihilated, or forgiven.  It was forgiven in Jesus Christ.  It needs to be reaccepted by God, “redeemed” from the unworthiness and slavery to sin it inherits by natural physical generation.  Men are not conceived as units of a mass, but as individuals, and every man needs to be individually forgiven and reaccepted by God as his “son”, every man needs to be washed in the waters of Baptism.

When God pardons our fallen nature because of the merits of Christ, and in answer to the love contained in the sacrifice of Christ, He forgives the guilt and the unworthiness of a fallen nature. But unhappily not even God can, without denying the order of his own wisdom in the universe, remove the root of concupiscence from which the guilt and stain of Original Sin arises.  The inheritance of the disastrous effects of sin through the material factors of generation follows under the natural law of matter; a law which was meant to work only to good, and to greater good, but now works also for the deprivation of good, for the determined nature of matters can only reflect helplessly the results within its order of that determination by a power superior to the material, to which it is subject.

The physical law of heredity is only one aspect of the universal law, physical, and substantial to matter, by which matter is controlled and directed.  This law can only work to good while it is, within the purely material universe, the law of God embodied in material substances When the soul of man intervenes, and instead of developing that good in a higher continuity of wise determination, forcibly withdraws matter from its integral determination to good, the non-free nature of matter can only pass on for loss what it has been made, even as before it passed on for good, what it had been determinedly and finalistically made.

Because the transmission of the lesion made by sin takes place naturally under the natural law, its effects cannot be altered, unless the whole relative fabric of the material universe, and the Law of determination which governs it, were annihilated and made anew.  Such is an impossible presumption on many grounds, the more so because sin always remains a possibility in any spiritual  created nature, until, in the free choice of God according to its nature, it is perfected and consummated by the fruition of its supreme destiny in God.

Redemption

Man today is a fallen, but redeemed personality -His redemption is the gift of God to us in Christ. The miserable effects of concupiscence must remain so long as our race remains, but the mercy of God upon his handicapped creature is greater than the most understanding clemency of men.   We may perhaps console ourselves  with  the  thought  that  sin  would  always  have  remained  a  possibility among  mankind,  and  the multiplication of men would have multiplied the danger of sin, and of its inevitable physical consequences.

The Church teaches that in the order of purely spiritual being, some of those pure intelligences also sinned, and this possibility seems innate to a created spirit, for the grace of God does not necessitate, but only prompts and draws a spirit freely towards deeper comprehension of God.   We may remind ourselves also, that the degree of concupiscence in man is due not only to the Original Sin of our progenitors, but to the cumulative effects upon the flesh of long ages of shocking misuse, abuse, and misdirection of natural physical powers.

So great is the power of the soul still within the fallen flesh of man, that the willful sin of individuals, especially when those sins involve physical passions directly, can immensely increase in the individual the overdeveloped passions of anger, gluttony, sensuality, and many other aspects of physical passion, so that a man becomes the sorry slave of the whirlwinds of habit which he himself has sowed.  In equal manner, with labour and with difficulty, no mean measure of discipline, and even of easier control, can be won back over the flesh by the soul which is fortified by the grace of God.

Original Sin the law of heredity

If anyone should object to the presumption that the material cause of Original Sin is transfused under the law of heredity, we answer that even if we concede, which certainly we do not, that there is no sort of transmission of personally  acquired  characteristics  between  parent  and  off-spring,  there  is  more  than  sufficient  medical evidence for the transmission of privative acquired characteristics.  It is well enough known that certain forms of mental disorder, some sensory diseases too, and irregularities of function, like colour-blindness, are inherited factors.  This very fact is the chief argument, unacceptable to Christians, of those many materialists who preach the “sterilization of the unfit.”

The loss of integrity in man’s nature, which cannot be a truly positive fact, since all evil is a negation of a good due, is also a privative factor which rests in the physical disorganization and “wounding” of the material in man.  It is a true lesion in the highest material sense,  the sense to good, and its effects must have, and did have, immediate repercussions upon all the “senses” of man which flow from this one sense and manifest it. The most obvious and dramatic effect is the over-development, and unnatural excitability of so many physical passions.  Even among the races of men, it is a well known fact that the hotter the climate, the more prone men are to the passions of anger and of sexual lust.  This is not the fault of the material environment but of the soul of man, which has forced into unnatural channels the greater amount of “free” energy which his body derives from a more luxuriant environment.

A lesion which goes to the very heart of the material element, and which must affect most of all the material brain as the control-tower of living matter, will certainly be hereditary, especially in the first members of the human species in whom the urge to further physical development would be very strong, because that body was genetically a new mutant in nature.  We have never been able to understand the mentality of those scientists who deny that personal characteristics, and a personal mode of life, can have any influence at all upon the genes.

An animal form is one living relative whole, and we cannot divide into compartments either its being, its activities, or the mutual impact within the organism of operations and organic repercussions and impressions. It is not necessary that such determination should be immediately, and dramatically manifest, but only that it should register somehow, and show an effect at least in the long run if repeated.  When one recalls that Darwin rejected the theory of immediate creation because he was struck by the sub-specific divergences of similar forms  of  life  living  isolated  upon  lonely islands,  one  can  only say that  the  influence  of  these  different environments upon a common parent type, plus the co-operation of the organism, explains the mutations.

This is merely to say that the personal experiences of the living “soma” does, within the organic relativity of only one living thing, so affect the germ-cells that eventually there is produced a new mutant, and that the mutation has a relation to differences of environment upon originally “identical” types.  To talk of “random”

mutations anywhere in the universe, after what science has already shown us of that universe, is so thick- headed that it is hard to keep patience with such ineptitude.  But for a fuller discussion of this matter, we refer the reader back to our chapter on the origin and nature of life; we need not stay longer on the matter here.  We teach therefore that this imperfection of man’s nature is transmitted in a manner which in the last analysis comes under the natural laws of heredity, and that moreover it is a lesion, a privative factor.

We have already been careful to admit that this is not the defined, or the universal common doctrine, of the Catholic Church, for the Church has never defined the exact manner in which Original Sin is incurred, but only the fact of the transmission of this “sin” through natural generation from the parents of mankind.  We present our thesis upon this important matter not as Catholic doctrine, but as true to Catholic doctrine, true to known scientific laws, true to common sense, and true to the common opinion of the faithful, who in this matter quite spontaneously presume a process of inheritance, which is perfectly in line with our thesis, but irreconcilable with the tenets of much post-Protestant speculative theology among Catholic teachers.

The reality of the lesion of Original Sin is demonstrable to everyone

There can be no honest and thoughtful man who does not recognise how exquisitely material law tempers and rules the functions of life below man, and how powerless such material law is to determine man himself.  There is no man who has never experienced in his own person the tension between the dictates of conscience and the contrary pull of selfish passions, whether they be passions of the mind, or passions of the flesh.  Every man has experienced in himself the struggle between the urgent lust of the body for irresponsible pleasures, and the clear consciousness within his intellect that it would be wrongful to yield to them, and that he need not yield.  If a man has given the lie to the wisdom of his soul, if he has surrendered himself to the lusts of the body and has wallowed in them, then he has eaten Dead Sea fruit of it, and if he denies that he has so eaten of emptiness of spirit, dissipation, and death, we call him plainly a liar.  Man is born to an interior struggle from his mother’s womb. God did not make him a living contradiction; the wicked violence of the created spirit of man has called up a violence of the flesh which cannot be undone.  Of this our present condition which we know so well, St. Paul writes trenchantly:

“Walk according to the spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh;

for these are contrary one to another,

so that you do not the things that you would.” (Gal 5:10-11)

God did not make spirit and matter, which were created complements one to the other, to be contraries against each other so that we do not the things that we would.  No, what God has joined together, man, and man alone, has put asunder.

Material in Man still desires its good and true

It is at this juncture in the exposition of the Original Sin and its consequences that we face the dilemma posed by Protestant theologians, a dilemma which drove so much Catholic speculative theology, in the polemic atmosphere of their day, violently into the extreme positions.  If nature they said, is intrinsically affected by sin, the nature is totally corrupt, a reprobate thing, incapable of personal merits, and in consequence the redemption of man is only one of imputation, man cannot be “holy” in himself by any means, not even with grace.  They overlooked, as after them did many Catholic theologians, the nature of the material thing, and the inherent characteristics of its substance, and indeed there was little they could know of it, given the limitations of the knowledge of the times.

When man ruptured the total orientation of his personality to good, and wounded himself in body and in soul alike, he could never totally corrupt his material body.  Although there has been introduced into that body an inclination to evil, an inability that is, easily and automatically to inhibit material urges in the name of the total finality of the good of a man, he can never remove from the body a natural striving towards re-integration, however dim it may be, and impossible of true and perfect realisation.  As the body strives to repair a physical cut in its flesh, so must it and does it strive, to repair the lesion of sin. But without the assistance of the soul, and the assistance of grace, no sort of renewal of health is possible to it.

The orientation and conditioning to good is substantial to matter, for God made it. Therefore at the peak of the connotation of the terms, truth, goodness, and being, are all synonyms.  Because the material substance is, it is good, however imperfectly good, and however wounded.   The “goodness” which is in material being substantially, defines its essence and all the operations of its essence.   Man cannot undo the law of God in matter,  although  he can  thwart  it.    God’s  law, embodied  in  the substance,  properties and  operations,  of determined material being is stronger than man’s, stronger even than the soul’s,   for it goes to the very substance of the material element in man.   It was determined to good by God, substantially, and that determination, however much denied, blunted and weakened, cannot possibly be destroyed or totally corrupted while the living organism still lives; it abides within its substance; it belongs to its intrinsic finality.

Theologians we suggest, have sometimes erred in the presumption that an entity is not capable of substantial diminution without total corruption, and we urge that such a presumption rests upon an inadequate concept of a composite substance.  When the body of man is wounded by sin that wounding is real, and it directly affects the powers of matter to co-operate in one finality with the soul.  It is true that even the good actions of a man will be less perfect, less good, less pure, than they ought to be, but they will still be good in as much as they are, and as a man increases in holiness, unconscious imperfection will be more and more eliminated.

An imperfect desire for good in need of purgation

The  doctrine  of  the  great  mystics,  especially  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  is  unintelligible  except  upon  this presumption of an imperfect good, a good privatively imperfect and capable of being made more perfect in the “purgative way.”  The very doctrine of the Church concerning the existence of a state of “Purgatory” is founded upon the same sound teaching.  This “purging”, whether it be performed in this life or after it, is a process of healing, a healing and re-formation in the image of God of which the soul and the body of man both stand in need.

In this context of Original Sin we leave out almost entirely the consideration of sin as it directly affects the soul, because we are concerned only with the nature, effects, and transmission by generation of Original Sin in the human species.  There is always some response in the body to the soul, when it determines it towards good, otherwise all physical disorientation would be entirely uncontrollable, and all men would be subject to “irresistible impulses” like those ascribed to chronic psychopathic cases, although many of these “irresistible impulses” even among the mentally sick, are only the manifestation of irresponsible sinning in the past, and are “irresistible” as a consequence of not having resisted, rather than something over which the sufferer at no time had any control.

There are too, many things even within material nature which help and prompt the substantial urge to seek, and to obey, its true good which is proper to the material.  The material environment through which a man partly lives, is good;  the air be breathes, the food he eats, all that is necessary for his material life, is instinct with the law of the good, and his very substance responds to it, or tries to respond to it, as a total relativity of good in an harmonious manner.  The law of sin, introduced by man, does not introduce a new factor, it only breaks, ruptures, and disorganizes the supreme urge of the living body of man to its good.  This urge is the indirect, necessary, and substantial obedience of matter to its God.

Man has caused a clash of two laws, the substantial law and orientation of matter to its good in a planned integration, and an overall harmony of control, in which individual “goods” are subject to the determination of the overall good which derives from the unity of the finality of a being.  Every particular good sought by life before the creation of man was sought within, and subject to, this total integration, this “reasonable obedience” of the living thing.  Because the substance itself was so ordered, it had always obeyed, and this represented the total co-ordination of the powers and senses of life to the one finality realised in many different relations, of the living thing to its end.

Man can direct the body to a particular wrong against this total co-ordination which is actualized in the living organism as its sense of control and direction, its sense of good.  When he does this, he blunts the edge of the highest “sense” of the living substance, and causes individual material emotions to come into play independently of, and even against, the interest of the body, and of his total person, as a unity.  Nevertheless, because this is unnatural to being, a denial of the determined substance of material being, defined substantially unto good, from its very substance matter retains the power to respond to good in the total interests of its own nature, and the nature of man in which it is an element.

Grace and discipline

The grace of God can do great things in a generous soul, even with a fallen body, and the essence of our redemption, as a sublime mercy of God, lies in the very fact that the now “connatural” or rather “unnatural” imperfection of our response to good, and our natural coarseness and meanness of soul, is forgiven by God.  He accepts, and will constantly purify, if we will let Him, the imperfect health, and the feeble steps of our fallen personality.  Non-deliberate and involuntary imperfections are not a sin, not a “corruption”, but the weakness which remains with that health we have through grace.  Even as a sick man does recover health of body by degrees, so we, by real degrees, increase in that health of soul, and even in a true sense of body, which is the interior sanctification of grace.

The mercy of our Redeemer lies in the very acceptance of an offering good indeed, but weak, and less good than it ought to be, because of the handicap of Original Sin.  As his friends rejoice when a sick man is able to walk slowly again, leaning upon a stick, so the angels of God rejoice at our weak steps in grace, for although sin-wounded, they are good, and the grace of God is in us for the increase of that goodness:

“I am the Vine, and my Father is the vinedresser:

every branch that bears no fruit, He will cut away,

and every one that bears fruit, He will prune,

that it may bring forth more fruit.” (Jn 15:2)

A man of good-will can, with the direct assistance within the spiritual substance of his soul of the grace of God, make progress to great perfection, in spite of the fact of sin, and the obstacle of a fallen nature.  The soul remains the dominant and ruling element in man.  There is no personal sin until a man freely consents to evil, and withdraws himself from good, from the love of God.

If a man is true to the grace of God, strong in truth and wisdom, humble also, and faithful to the voice of his conscience, he can not only draw up his soul to God in an increase of all the virtues, and but draw his very body with his soul.  It will come with reluctance, but under discipline and sometimes severe command, come it will, and with time, use, and habit, come more easily.  It can be partially healed, and taught, if not to obey the soul totally, to obey more fully, and with less frequent reluctance.

Many a violent and angry man has so tempered his flesh by the grace of God, that he has come to bear with sweetness and even reasonable ease, provocations which years before would have prompted a bitter outburst. This sort of thing a man can do by the grace of God in Christ, healing and purifying alike both soul and body. He will never extinguish disorderly desire, only the greatest of the mystics even approached that condition, and we have no assurance that this is intrinsic and inevitable to all high sanctity. But any man can ignore the lusts of his flesh and subdue them very much by crucifying them in the good, even as Christ our Lord was crucified by evil.

The flesh struggles against the spirit

Before we conclude this chapter upon the nature of original sin, concupiscence, and the consequences of sin, it will profit us greatly to make an exegesis upon a very striking passage of St. Paul in which the whole issue of original sin and concupiscence is epitomised:

“For I do not do the good I want,

but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Now if I do what I do not want,

it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells in me.

So I find it to be a law, that when I want to do right,

evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self,

but I see in my members another law, at war with the will of my mind,

and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am!

Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ Our Lord!” (Rom 7:19-25)

In this inspired passage, St. Paul speaks in the one personality of a man for the two elements which constitute human nature.  In the first half, he speaks in the name of the fallen body of man, and it will help our understanding, since it most adequately rounds off this chapter, to endure a brief recapitulation.

“For I do not do the good I want.”

The basic law of the flesh, which is compacted under God’s law, is to seek its integral good, and to will it with perfection, according to the wisdom of God embodied in the material nature. This good, which the body seeks and desires as a total subordination of all its acts and functions in one final end and purpose, it does not perform, for the harmony of its powers, and their co-ordination within the supreme sense of good of the living organism, is ruptured. Therefore:

“The evil I do not want is what I do.”

The flesh of man cannot desire or seek after evil as such, for evil is only a defect, a negation. But, since the perfect co-ordination of its faculties is lost, its urge to its finality, manifested in prompt obedience to the soul and a proper integration of its functions, is diminished.  Therefore, in the name of its total, overall good, now wrongly identified with selfish, overdeveloped, and irresponsible passions, the body responds to any given individual object of desire against a proper relation to the integration of that good within its total relativity of function, and against that determination to respond within the harmony of such a total integration, which defines the sense of “good” in the life-principle itself, as a material organic thing.

“Now if I do what I do not want,

it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells in me.”

Although spoken by St. Paul in the general person of a man, these words apply primarily to the fallen flesh of mankind.   If the body does that which contradicts its basic law, and damages its substance as a material nature, then indeed it is no more itself as a nature pre-determined to good in every sense, specific and general which does it, but the defect and disease of concupiscence wrought within it by sin, so that,

“it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells in me.”

Sin, which dwells not as a new principle of being, but rather as a disease, a wound, or lesion, in the very nature.

“So I find it to be a law, that when I want to do right,     evil lies close at hand.”

This is indeed now a “law” within the body of man.  The necessary obedience of matter to the spirit has created a state of response to non-relative, uncontrolled, and anarchic desires.  To accomplish this, the body was forced not to respond to the individual good within an integrated, organic relativity of its total good, but to respond to a determination to a particular good by the suppression, and the diminution of its natural orientation to seek such particular functions in the integration a general substantial relativity.  The effects of sin in the body then, are like the effects of a quite uncontrolled, ruthless, and selfish form of “private enterprise” in economic life.  The total good of the whole is ruptured and disorganized by the bending of the whole, against nature, to a selfish and anarchic particularism.

Manifestations of this disorder

When the body seeks its good, with the soul and under the soul, the disorganization of emotions among themselves and the rupture of their harmonious balance, causes the physical powers to respond to some emotion at first with apparent "reasonableness" and then, very quickly, with lust and unrelated greed.  Again, a very close analogy, close because belonging to the same order of lesion as a “social sin”, marks the worst features of pure Liberal-Capitalism in economics.    We do not desire to speak of economics here, but the illustration is so striking, and so necessarily exact, that we must use it.

The type of Capitalist ruthlessness which was able, in the interests of a few selfish individuals, to drive a society fiercely along the lines of anarchic boom, to anarchic slump, is paralleled exactly, because it springs from the same principle, by the effects of sin in the body.   This type of economic defect represents the subordination of the due and proper balance of all industries, and all social processes within economic life, to the selfish, non-relative greed of a few; it is the privative disorganization of the body social wherever it exists as a uncontrolled dominant.

Sin has done the same in the flesh, it has ruptured the proper harmony and balance of natural functions, overdeveloped   individual   functions,   and   subordinated   partially,   and   privatively   but   not   totally   the “government” of the body, the sense which directs and controls the body in a true harmony, and which we call the “sense of the good” to the selfish lusts of the flesh. But also of the spirit, for as if the evil were not enough, men still sin with abandonment, ruining, deflowering, and damaging yet more the pitiful flesh of mankind.  The body finds then a law, that even when it “wills” or seeks to do good, even then,  “evil is present with me.”  St. Paul, speaking still in the one personality of man, talks rather in the name of the spiritual soul within the nature of man:

“For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self.”

This is the intelligent soul, which itself is capable of sin whether influenced by the body or not, and which alone could have caused the first sin.  It speaks here according to that power of knowing and willing the true and the good which it has by creation.  St. Paul, in both parts of the narrative we quote, is speaking of the body and of the soul as such, we think, as co-elements of man’s nature, and what he says applies most clearly to the state of a man at conception, when the pure soul is wedded to a fallen body.  This “inmost self” is the soul as the principle of intelligence and of knowledge in man.  While this soul is naturally delighted with the law of God, the source of its being, and its final happiness, immediately upon conception, more so even than in adult life, is it forced to declare:

“But I see in my members another law, at war with the will of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am!”

The unruly body no longer obeys the mandate of the soul, owing to the rebellion introduced into the flesh by the sin of the first man, and reinforced in torrential measure ever since by the countless sins of men.  This “law” of sin not only refuses to obey, but fights against the law of the mind, the wisdom of the soul, and at our first conception, more than in our personal sins, “making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.”

This is true through the mutual entitative relativity, sympathy and influence, one upon the other, between matter and spirit in the composite nature of man. The flesh is at conception a drag upon the spirit, a partner which must frustrate to a very considerable degree, the purity and impetus of the response of the soul to the grace of God in the supernatural order of man’s destiny towards the intuitive vision of God.  The soul is thus “made captive” to the law of sin, because the personality of man is now deprived of its total due holiness, is displeasing to God, unworthy of an end towards which it was never worthy, save in the order of God’s free gift, but within which ordering it was made fully relative, in a continuous process, to the vision of God. There was no place for sin in this the intention of God’s creative will.

Redemption through the grace of Christ

Unless this defect and deprivation of due integrity is forgiven by God, and God shall will to love again in mercy, to purify and purge in patient labour the diseased branches engrafted within the Life of the True Vine, then the soul of man, the whole being of man, had better not be born.   Wherefore, looking up to God for forgiveness, help, reacceptance, the race of man, and every single man born into this world, must needs cry out in spirit:

“Wretched man that I am!

Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Who shall deliver me from this body, which at conception, has brought the “death” of the soul, the loss of man’s end and destiny, the despoliation of his noble powers of soul, his gifts also of grace, and even physical death, which without sin, would certainly not have been “death” as today we know and fear it.  The answer, contained in the very pledge of the continuing birth of men, rather than the annihilation of our fallen race is:

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

And then St. Paul, reuniting the two separate voices of his nature, body and soul, in his one person,  sums up in saying:

“So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my body I serve the law of sin.”

He means that now, after the redemption of man in Christ, the soul which cleaves to God with love and faithfulness, that soul serves in deed and in truth the law of God in Christ, but still there is left in the body the bitter  root  of  concupiscence,  which  because  material,  can  be  resisted,  sternly  curbed,  diminished,  even alleviated in the highest stages of prayer, but never removed. In most of us indeed, to serve the law of God with life-long struggle against one or another form of concupiscence, is our lot, from youth to old age.

Concerning this concupiscence, the Council of Trent (Session 5: Can 5.DB 792) defines with gentleness, and with theological exactitude, that:

“While it has been left for our proving, (ad agonem) it does not avail to

harm those who consent not but manfully repulse it, through the grace of Jesus Christ.

Nay, rather the contrary, for ‘he who has rightly won through, he shall receive the victor’s crown.’” (2 Tim 2: 5)

This concupiscence, which sometimes the Apostle himself calls “sin”, this Holy Council does declare never to have been understood by the Church Catholic to be called sin, because it is properly and truly a sin, in those reborn of Christ;  but to be so called, because from sin it derives, and towards sin it inclines a man.

Original Sin and the rejection of Christ

We have written long, and sometimes perhaps tediously and with repetition of this momentous issue of Original

Sin, and the consequences of the fall of man.  Yet so, we have barely touched the fringe of many things that can only be understood in the light, or perhaps rather in the darkness of this profound subject.  Let what we have written, so partially, suffice in this its place until we can come to tell of how:

“The Light shone in the darkness,

and the darkness did not comprehend it”. (Jn 1: 5)

How He came unto his sinful own, and they received Him not, but crucified Him upon a tree, and how their baseness notwithstanding, He loved, and He forgave, and to as many as received Him:

“He gave them power to become the sons of God,

to those who believe in His Name.” (Jn 1: 12)

CHAPTER  16

The Redemption of Man

The  determination  of  man  towards  his  supreme  purpose  and  destiny,  the  determination  of  man  by  the Incarnation of God, was not, we have stressed, a decree of the Divine Wisdom consequent merely upon sin. Rather it is the fulfilment for man of one Law, one creative economy, one process from the beginning of time. Nevertheless sin, the principle of antithesis to good and to God, to the very synthesis which is the possession of God in intuitive vision, has so added to that mission a relation of forgiveness and reacceptance, that we can never separate Christ in historical fact from the Redemption which He wrought.

Redeemer as well as Saviour

There is no one word which adequately expresses the mission of Christ in its entirety.  In many respects the word ‘redemption’ is the least satisfactory, for while it stresses the relation of Christ to fallen man, it can easily take on narrow, and even unworthy meanings, if it is not counterbalanced by other expressions which put the mission of Jesus Christ in a fuller perspective.  When theologians are writing specifically of the redemption of man by Christ they do not find the word ‘redemption’ alone sufficient, even in its own proper context, and prefer to speak of the ‘satisfaction and redemption’ wrought by Christ towards mankind.  For our purposes, the word which most comprehensively embraces the total content of the mission of Christ, is the word ‘Salvation’, because it includes a redemption, but does not refer exclusively to a saving from catastrophe alone, but connotes a making safe, secure, and whole  in  every meaning of those words.  It is also the significance expressed by the very name of Jesus Christ, which means literally the “Saviour King”.

We regard the mission of Christ, in as much as it was historically a redemption, as the confirmation, given back in an act of divine forgiveness, of the original destiny of man.  Sin did not change the nature of man, nor man’s end, nor the decree of the Incarnation, for that is the fulfilment of the Law of Finality on which matter is based.  Sin merely cancelled the terms of that complete relationship between the Divine and the created spirit which subsists, in the creature, in the state of original sanctity and original integrity.

When God pardons man in Himself, in the Word to be Incarnate, there is a giving back of the original dispensation of man, but now conditioned as both a forgiveness and a redemption.   We must examine with some care what this reconfirmation of the original destiny of man entails, for it entails much more than the non- Christian reader would normally read into the connotation even of the word ‘redemption’. The fabric and the plan of the whole universe, and of all material creation including man rests upon, is subject to Christ as to its final term, fulfilment, and purpose. The subjection is in a relation to the Divine Word which is completely gratuitous, without exigencies of any kind, but yet instinct with the unsearchable wisdom, intelligence, and counsel of the Mind of God. Yet this ‘gift’ of being, and of perfection of being, is not one thing with the gift which is the redemption of Christ.

The fact of sin, extrinsic to the divine order, negative in the divine order, adds another and a different charity to the gifts of God.  The giving back to fallen men of man’s original destiny adds to the Incarnation, and to that Redemption from which it is now completely inseparable in thought, and in fact, a further title of gratuity, the tremendous content of which few among Christians bring home to themselves.  The further relation to God of charity which rests upon the reacceptance of a nature now positively unworthy even within an order of charity of an end never commensurate with its nature in any case, adds a new relation to the act of creation itself, at least in so far as it affects the existence of men upon this earth.

Incarnation not determined by sin but conditioned by it

We have said in earlier chapters that the mission of Christ was a necessity for man, so that man might “realise in his substance the divine ordinance of God in man’s regard”, and that at a certain time in the world’s history, men would need, in the supernatural order of their lives, a manifestation of God, man’s supreme determinant, directive, and fulfilling object of desire, which could be given only by God Himself.  The implications of this view of Christ must now be very accurately weighed.  It is possible to weigh the implications of this teaching concerning Christ only now, after we have studied the nature of sin and the repercussions of sin upon the relations which exist between God and the created, and between the created nature and God.

When we teach that the Incarnation of God was a necessity for mankind of the individual, and of the social orders, we mean what we say, but we require the reader to understand precisely what we say, and not to skip as unnecessary subtlety what is of the utmost importance to a correct understanding of Christ.  We do not say that Christ was, and is, for man, as an instrument of a divine purpose,  this would make Christ subordinate to man, and to the necessities of man, and this is impossible, for Christ is God.  Neither do we say, as did many of the more orthodox Protestant theologians before Protestantism ceased to have any clear-cut theology at all, that Christ was freely and willingly an instrument of a divine purpose after the fall of man; that He was given, in a general sense they never define precisely, as a ‘victim’, or ‘immolation’ for human nature after the fall.

The Incarnation is not for a penal substitution atonement

Christology of this type, and it has its followers in a mitigated sense among Catholic theologians too, still makes Christ subservient to men and to their spiritual necessities.  Such a ruling concept of Christ, the concept of ‘victim-hood’ as the supreme note of the Mission of Christ, need not transgress the limits of Christian orthodoxy, but it always infers a mean conception of Christ, and it lends itself most easily, especially when it runs riot in the old ‘evangelical’ theologians of Protestantism to gross anthropomorphic errors, errors in which the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, is figured as an angry and severe Judge demanding the damnation of all men existent, and yet to be, and accepting with pleasure the hideous sufferings of the Second Person of the Trinity in His human nature as the “vicarious” punishment justly due to the entire human race.

This is doubtless, in plain language devoid of euphemisms, the concept of the redemption which many non- Catholic readers, especially Nonconformists, will discover that they hold, or were taught to believe as children. As we have personally heard a street-preacher shout through a loud-speaker, “insure yourselves against the wrath of the Father, in the blood of His Son”.

This ghastly theology of the Incarnation, which, filled with the commercial spirit which infuses so much post-reformation spiritual thought, makes the Son of God an open insurance policy against hell fire, a policy upon which any man may draw by signing the signature of “belief on Jesus”, is utterly, and totally unorthodox. There are many who do not believe so gross a doctrine of Christ, but who approximate to it all too closely.  It remains, whatever view theologians who think the Incarnation is consequent only upon sin may hold, that any teaching which intrinsically subordinates the Incarnation to man, whether fallen or un-fallen, is genuinely heretical.

We consider it to be true to add also, that any system of theology which makes the Incarnation decreed only consequently upon the fall of man, does in fact subordinate God to man intrinsically, and while the qualification that such a decree is the freely given mercy of God to men rules out any question of heresy, it does in fact make Christ, as God made man, relative merely to that sin which was an extrinsic accident of the creative plan of God, and such a subjection of the Incarnation to sin and the consequences of sin is a very unworthy valuation of Christ, and one which contains an unnecessary and undesirable element of subjection of God to human needs.

In the Divine Plan the intention of the Incarnation precedes the foreknowledge of sin

When we said that Christ was a necessity in the order of human life, and human ends, we did not mean that Christ was subject to human necessities, we meant that man was made in the image of God, for God, and that because man was made for God, he was made for Christ, and therefore his very nature witnesses the wisdom of God’s ordinance in its substance and in the necessities of that created substance.  We have meant, and we mean, that the nature of man looks to Christ as the promise of its imperfect fashioning, “expecting the blessed hope, and the advent of the Lord”. (Office for Advent)  The composite nature of man is made with only one personal finality in God.  This one finalism of human nature embraced, and always embraces, both the elements of his being in the unity of his one person,;  matter was not made to be a drag upon the spirit of man, as, without Christ, it must always have been.  As one personality man was ordered to the fruition of his Creator.  Only God is the end, and because God is the end, only God is the sufficient means to the end, and Christ is God as the sufficient means to Himself for mankind.

The intention of God so to give Himself as the fruition of the created spiritual nature, precedes creation, and motivates creation.   Christ is God, the ultimate satisfying end, manifest also as the only means to that end; through Him then, were made all things that were made, and through Him was made man;  man made for Him, not Him for man.  It is truer by far to say that man is created for Christ, than to say that Christ is given for men, though this second proposition is also true and sacred, but only because it is contained in the first.  Christ, we say, was not decreed consequent upon any human action, least of all upon the wicked action of man’s rebellion against God, but men only exist at all because of Christ.

If God had not willed to give Himself to us as Christ, He would not have created the mixed nature of flesh and spirit at all.  The final end, the last purpose, and the last perfection of any nature, conditions the inception of that nature.  It is the perfection of the end given to human nature in sublime and perfect harmony of order, which requires, in the wisdom of the works of self-standing Intellect, that the nature of man shall be consummated in the plenitude of the perfectibility of that nature.  Therefore, God made man, Christ Jesus, can alone be the perfection of the Divine means for an end which is measured only by the Perfection which is God. In this God is not made in any way subservient to man, but human nature is made subject to the Wisdom of the Supreme Intellect which shapes in one decree our beginnings and our end.

Man’s need of Redemption subsequent to plan of Salvation

The advent of sin does not change this intrinsic relation of flesh and blood to the Being of God.  The advent of sin merely makes men wholly unworthy in a positive sense, culpable in the nature, even if not in the person, of an existence and an end which rests upon the grace of God in the very state of original holiness.  Even within the order of a creation in which no imagined natural exigencies upon the Divine have any part, fallen man can, and does, incur that positive unworthiness which consists in not realising in his nature even the integrity of its created gift, for now it is no longer, through sin, so subject to God that it realises in its substance the ordinance of God.  The pardon of man’s unworthiness before God, does not change the essential ordering of man to God through Christ which preceded sin and which preceded creation itself, but it does return to man in the manner of a redemption from sin and its consequences, an original destiny which is annulled by sin when it was never more than the favour of God at all times.

This is indeed a new and tremendous gift of God to man.  The gift of Christ to man which is the redemption of mankind, is equal to, and as tremendous as, the act of creation itself, for both are alike non-necessary in God, and for us, in respect of our fallen nature, the alternative could only be the annihilation of our order of creation. God could not have allowed men to be born the sons of Adam only to incur eternal rejection.  God could not, under the natural law which is the decree of his own wisdom, have created the immortal soul, pure in his own image, only to damn it for an offence of which it was not the author;  but God could have annihilated the human race.

We talk in very human terms, for the knowledge and will of God is not consequent upon created events, but precedes them.  However anthropomorphic this mode of speech may be, the fact conveyed is clear enough. It is that while the decree of the Incarnation precedes all material creation, and is confirmed anew after the Fall, it remains that we owe our existence and our end today to that pardon of God which lies in the redemption of Christ.  Through this redemption we can truly say that we are created twice, for the forgiveness of Christ stands between man and man’s annihilation, and if there is no intelligent life elsewhere in the created universe, it stands between all material creations and the annihilation of matter.

Incarnation now includes Redemption but is itself predestined apart from it

Never therefore can we separate from Christ the act of His redemption of mankind; we stand by it, and without it we would not be.   We belong to Christ upon a twofold title; first because He made us for Himself, and secondly because He redeemed us in Himself.  The word “necessity” becomes intelligible in the context of the Incarnation, when it is remembered that our nature is substantially ordered to an end in the Divine Nature, and in none other.  It is this finality of the intelligent creature which has shaped the material cosmos, its mighty law of relativity in substance and in purpose, the nature of man, and the laws and operations of rational nature. These things did not decree Christ, He decreed them in the fiat of the Incarnation:

“In many and various ways

God spoke of old to our fathers, by the prophets,

but in these last days, has spoken to us by His Son,

whom He appointed the heir of all things, by whom also He created the world.

He reflects the glory of God, and bears the very stamp of His nature,

upholding the universe by his word of power.

When He had made purification for sin he sat down

at the right hand of the Majesty on high”. (Heb 1:1-3)

We must remember that all the striking phrases spoken of Christ in this magnificent epistle, are spoken of Christ, of God made man, not the Word of God in the essence of the Godhead only;  and of Christ, must they be interpreted, for unto Christ is this whole wonderful epistle an apologia.   If the world was made by the Word of God, who is appointed heir of all things, as an heir He was to come into His own at the appointed time. This kingship of Christ is not therefore dependent intrinsically upon the event of sin.  Christ is heir to His own, and sin is not His own.  If Christ upholds all things by the word of His power, His Incarnation is only the fuller manifestation to men of the “word” by which all things subsist, and Christ is intrinsic to the universe, and all things are for Him, and in Him.  Neither is it said of Jesus Christ, a few verses further on in the same chapter:

“Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever, a sceptre of justice is the sceptre of your Kingdom.” (Heb 1: 8)

Because human sin in any way conditioned the Incarnation of Christ. For the sceptre of Christ’s justice could only be fully relative to man’s original justice, and in Christ would man’s justice have been filled out by God’s justice.  Sin alone has contradicted and diminished on earth the sceptre of justice which is the ruling power of Christ.  Sin has never added anything to the sceptre of Christ, but only subtracted, and still does subtract.  What glories are in Christ because of sin are His own victories over the power of evil. Sin gives nothing to Christ, least of all the glory of his Kingship as God made man.  Nor again, because of the Fall is it written:

“Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord, Jesus Christ,

who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,

that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

He destined us in love to be His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will:

His purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” (Eph 1: 3-5)

On the contrary, the inspired writer clearly declares our predestination in and for Christ, and because of Christ; a predestination which precedes the decree of creation itself. The Incarnation is related to the filling out of the spirit of man with “heavenly blessings”, which was decreed relative to the state of innocence, for God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him.”

Redemption in the context of the salvific purpose of the Incarnation

When we meditate upon the divine intention in creation we mean especially of matter and the union of matter and spirit in the mixed nature of man, predestined in Jesus Christ, the heir of the ages, the Redemption takes on an ever more striking lustre.  We call to mind that everything was relative to, and built upon, the Incarnation of God in Christ, “through whom all things exist”, and that the Fall, the always possible frustration of Divine Grace by man’s disgrace, negatives the good pleasure of the Word in his works at one blow.

We begin to perceive why the redemption of Christ is equivalent to a second creation, which alone stands between us and our annihilation.  This is the gift of Christ, personal, free, infinite in mercy.  We are conceived sons of wrath, but redeemed into the order of co-heirs with Christ.   This is the redemption which is truly something other than the original gift of creation to men in the predestination of Christ before all ages.  For this cause is it recorded:

“For it was fitting that He, for Whom and by Whom all things exist,

in bringing many sons to glory,

should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.

For He Who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin.

That is why He is not ashamed to call them brothers.

... since therefore the children share in flesh and blood,

He Himself likewise partook of the same nature.” (Heb 2: 10-14)

The Redemption therefore confirms the decree of the Incarnation in a new state, when the order of creation was ruptured by the sinful will of man.  The essential mission and predestination of Christ which existed before sin, which much more rightfully and gloriously would have been manifested if men had never rebelled from the sceptre of justice by which their nature is ruled, is not caused by sin, but in the free pardon of God is certainly conditioned intrinsically in a new modality of redemption because of sin.   This new modality represents a new relationship  between  God  and  fallen  human nature,  a  relationship  of  pardon  and  re-acceptance which is equivalent to a second creating, so that in Baptism we are most truly “born again, of water and the Holy Spirit.” (Jn 3: 5)

Christ would always have been Saviour in the fullest sense

If men had never fallen, Christ would still have been truly a saviour from sin, besides the Bread of Life, but in a preservative, and not in a liberative sense.  There would always have been the possibility of a fall. There would always have been the need for man to increase in spiritual stature, to grow in knowledge of God, in wisdom, and in the fruition of love which more and more defends a man against the defection of sin.  Man would always have needed of God the positive nourishment which is the increase of inward grace and which is of itself, like robust health in the body, a defence against the languor of disease.   This positive need has not disappeared because of sin, and the weakness sin has induced into human nature, although redeemed.    Far from it, this positive need, now both in one a nourishment and a medicine, has become more terribly urgent because of sin and the lies and errors born of sin.  This need for the Bread of Heaven has never been more terribly urgent since the Incarnation than it is today.  There is nowhere today where a man can go to find rest for his soul, save only in Christ, and to the Love and Wisdom which shines out of the face of God made man.

Christ was born to be King:  if man had never fallen, He would have come into his own, and with joy they would have known Him, and received Him.  If men had never ceased to “know my Father”, then, as He says Himself, they “would have known me also,” for He and the Father are One.  It is in this sense that He addresses the Jews

“If God were your Father you would love me,

for I proceeded and came forth from God.

I came not of my own accord, but He sent me.

Why do you not understand what I say?

It is because you cannot bear to hear my word...

because I tell you the truth you do not believe me.

.. If I glorify myself my glory is nothing:

It is my Father Who glorifies me.

... I know Him and I keep His word.

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day...

Truly, truly I say to you:

before Abraham was I AM.” (Jn 8: 42-59)

The conditioning of the Incarnation by sin

It was human sin which frustrated the fullness of His kingship over all mankind, though sin was not able to do away with it altogether; and it was proclaimed in His title even upon the Cross.  He did not come to die, He came knowing full well that He would die, and all the martyrs since have died in his image and likeness.  When the good Who was God came into contact with malice and wickedness, that same power of evil cried out against Him:

“Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him.

Pilate said to them:  ‘Shall I crucify your King’?

The chief priests answered: ‘We have no king, but Caesar’”. (Jn.19: 15)

The substance of the salvation wrought by Christ lies in the fact that God reconfirmed His work to men in spite of sin, continued it through to the bitter end despite all that sin could do, and forgave the crudity and ignorance of men which led Him not to the throne over the minds and hearts of men that belonged to Him, but to the throne of the Cross.  Even upon that Cross He would cry out: “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” (Lk 23:34)

In spite of the effects of human sin, in part culpable from malice, and in part inculpable from ignorance, He would continue the salvific mission which belonged to Him, and would have belonged to Him in any state of mankind.  He would always have been the Light of the world, the Good Shepherd, the true Bread which gives life to men.  That mission of Christ, which apart from sin, would have built up this earth into a paradise of wisdom and of love, that mission remained after sin, and still remains, even though He is set eternally for a sign which shall be contradicted, and He must first redeem and heal before He can sanctify us in the good.  He must heal and purify all the time He hallows, for while we strive sincerely for the best we know, our ingrained selfishness of soul and body leads us astray in many things.

The Good Shepherd

It is perhaps in the parable of the Good Shepherd that we can see most vividly exactly how sin has affected the Incarnation as a divine economy, and has conditioned it to the mode of a liberating redemption from sin.  In this simile we see better than in most others how his faithfulness which begins with the pardon of the first of our race:

“Jesus therefore said to them again:

‘Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.

All those who came before me are thieves, and robbers,

and the sheep did not hear them.

I am the door, if any man enters by me he shall be made saved;

and he shall go in, and go out, and shall find pasture.

The thief comes only to steal, to kill and to destroy.

I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.

I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

But the hireling, and who is not the shepherd,

whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming,

and leaves the sheep, and flees,

and the wolf catches and scatters the sheep.

For this reason the Father loves me;

because I lay down my life for the sheep.

No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself,

and I have power to lay it down,

and I have power to take it up again.

This commandment I have received from my Father’”. (Jn 10: 7-18)

We remark how, in this parable, Christ makes Himself the one and the only Shepherd of His sheep; the one and only Lord of mankind.  This He is by the decree of His Incarnation before creation was.  As many as have usurped his position and authority are thieves and robbers.  It is only He who can give life, and give pastures more abundantly.  It is sin, and only sin, in malicious men, which is the wolf which catches and scatters the sheep.  Before this wolf the hireling flees, for he is but a hireling, and he has no care for the sheep.  In spite of the presence of the wolf, which is the sinful state of mankind and every evil power which works among men, Christ comes steadfastly to save and to defend his sheep, for He is the good shepherd, and He has a care for His own, notwithstanding the wolf.

The Good Shepherd will not desert His flock as the hireling deserted, but He will resist the wolf, and will resist it to the death.  Christ was not the Good Shepherd before the incursion of sin: He is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life because of sin.  The Good Shepherd did not make the wolf which scatters the sheep, and neither did He come down to His fold only because the wolf was at large, the sheep were His to pasture at all times.  Men, prompted by the devil have made the wolf, and the Good Shepherd has interposed His own flesh between His flock and the wolf.  Therefore does the Father love Him, for He lays down his life for his sheep; He gives it willingly, though originally it was not nor could be, the office of the Divine Shepherd to die for the sheep.  Because of the wolf He must fight for his sheep, and He has power to lay down his life, and power to take it up again.

He will crush the serpent’s head

Not obscurely we think, from the very time of the Fall, we have a clear indication, similar to that contained in the parable of the Good Shepherd, that sin did not motivate the decree of the Incarnation, but rather conditioned the manner of our salvation by God in Christ after the second birth which is the redemptive reacceptance itself. When Satan, the powerful being of intellect and will who is the Prince of the fallen spirits, and the arch-mover of evil in creation, is cursed by God for the part he played in the fall of man, the text of Genesis, always interpreted by the Church as a reference to Christ, tells us that the mind of God is that:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman,

between your seed and her seed;

He shall crush your head,

and you shall squirm under his heel”. (Gen 3: 15 rendered more in conformity with the Hebrew)

It is not said, “I will raise up a seed to the woman, and will put warfare between her seed and your seed”. No, the seed of the woman, Christ, for whom the very womb of woman came into being at all, is presumed and taken for granted.   But now, because of sin, there is war on earth until the end of time between Christ and Satan, good and evil, and in this annunciation of the redemption to man, there is foreshadowed the warfare, which nailed Christ to the Cross, and which was triumphantly concluded in so far as respects the humanity of Christ in His own Person, when He rose from the tomb.

The Kingship of Christ

Most movingly, and in the most touching scene of all, Christ Himself, hauled before Pilate for his lying mockery of a trial, tells him, and in him us also, the nature of his kingship, and the revolt against it by sin and by sinners:

“Pilate therefore went into the praetorium again,

and called Jesus, and said to Him :-

‘Are you the King of the Jews?’

Jesus answered: ‘Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say this to you about me?

Pilate replied: ‘Am I a Jew?  Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you up to me, what have you done?’

Jesus answered: ‘My kingship is not of this world, if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight that I should not be handed over to the Jews;

but now, my Kingdom is not from the world.’

Pilate therefore said to Him: ‘Are you a King then?’

Jesus answered: ‘You say I am a King,

for this was I born, and for this came I into the world:

to bear witness to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice’”. (Jn 18: 33-38)

In this passage the most significant line is “but now, my Kingdom is not from the world.”  If there had not been evil upon earth, the kingship of Christ, which is made in heaven because it derives from his Divinity and is the manifestation of that Divinity to the created nature, would have been recognised and acclaimed also on earth.  In a sinless order, the Kingdom of Christ would have belonged equally to heaven and to earth, and would have dominated every aspect whatever of human life.  All earthly rulers would have acknowledged themselves as delegates only of Christ the King.  As God made man, He would have been, while on earth, in every sense the King of kings.  His kingdom then, would have been fully of heaven, and of this world.

The advent of sin not only frustrated this complete vindication of Christ’s kingship, but the greedy self- interest, corruption, and moral decay so usually associated with political power and political intrigues, would make it impossible for Christ to exercise over men a kingship which perfectly embraced every detail of the lives of men.  The same grossness of concept associated now with earthly power, would make it impossible for men to realise in what manner He was King over them. It would make them refuse to accept Him as King on any terms but their own, and so made Him unwilling to allow the title of King to be used of Him in any earthly sense, because of the gross implications such a title would cast upon  his mission, and the in-eradicable misunderstandings, and corruptions too, that it would have engendered among His followers.

While Christ was on earth He never accepted the title of King in any sense which would have implied temporal dominion over men and over princes, for His kingdom could never be of that world of power-driven lusts and jealousies which He found in possession of so much of his own inheritance.  Therefore He says: “But now, my Kingdom is not from the world.”  By nature it was the fullest kingship that could be predicted of God made man, but since the Fall, He will not contend with men with the power of the sword and all the lusts which go with earthly dominion: “But now, it is not from the world.”

Christ does not deny all title to kingship even though He refuses to allow in it any connotation which would blind men further to those essentials through which his dominion as God subsists.  He did not deny that He was a king; on the contrary, he affirms it forcibly:  “You say I am a king.”  He tells Pilate that He was born to be a king, and to be a king He came into the world, so that He might declare to men all the true and the good.  This is the mission, and the Kingship of Christ we considered when we studied the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John.  A mission it is which belongs uniquely to Christ for the truth belongs only to God, the Absolute Good and Wisdom.   Only God can reveal to man the Truth which is Himself, and this revelation constitutes the essential mission of Christ to mankind, and the essence of His Kingship without respect to the state of man, whether in original innocence or under the yoke of Original Sin.

Redemption should not be seen as secondary

If we say that the all-important element in Christ’s mission which remains with, or without sin, is the revelation to man of God in Christ, the manifestation of the Light of the world, the infallible truth, the love of the Good Shepherd, some would perhaps rest satisfied, and taking the redemption for granted as a pardon manifested in Christ’s endurance even to the Cross, would pursue the essence of man’s salvation no farther.

However, we cannot rest satisfied by any means with those marks of Christ’s mission demonstrated in this chapter, or even in earlier chapters;   the redemption cannot in historic fact be separated from the original destiny of Christ to un-fallen man, but neither is it something secondary to Christ’s mission.   We can only understand the redemption if we include it within the comprehensive salvation of man in Christ; conversely, we can no longer appreciate our salvation except through and with the redemption, for we are “born again” of Christ’s oblation and the Father’s forgiveness, and to be born is never an accidental attribute in a man or in the order of his being.

There is in Christ’s salvation an element to which all the attributes of His work are directly relative, for they are derivations of it, not of themselves the primary factors to which that other element is secondary.   This primary relativity of Christ to man, of which all others are either derivatives, or related aspects, is contained in His function to man as the “Bread of Life” and the “True Vine”, to which we have already devoted a long consideration.  We cannot help referring to those passages of St. John, because they are so significant in the entire economy of the Incarnation in its salvific and redemptive aspects alike.

Every man who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Christ, and recognizes in Him the fulfilment of an imperfect order of knowledge which is made perfect in Christ.  This coming to Christ is itself related to His office to men as the Bread of Life, for the food of an intellectual nature is an increase of knowledge, and of the love which is fruition in the object known.  It is not enough to teach, the substance of what is taught is God Himself, revealed through His own human words, and this union is the object of all the desires of a spiritual nature, in which man must be conjoined to God.  If the teaching of Christ is the manifestation of God in Person, that teaching is truly absorbed within only when it effects an intimate and abiding union within the soul, when through grace, the soul terminates at the object beloved, the real content of the teaching.

This is the principal reason why God is given to man in the flesh, and in this dispensation we can understand the more profoundly why He is given to us under the appearances of bread and of wine in the Sacrament of the Altar.  It is the giving of Himself in plenitude as the food of an immortal life which defines the deep essence of the salvation of Christ.

The same salvific purpose which is operative, after sin, in Redemption

It is the giving back to man of God as the consummation of our human pilgrimage, and the nourishment which supports us on our way, which is also a cardinal factor of the redemption of man from Original Sin and personal sins.  It must be so, for when Christ redeems man, He gives back again to men precisely that relation of God to man which is the means to the Beatific Vision;  the nourishment of the soul in sanctifying grace, the cause and principle of which increase of spirit, is the Bread of Life.  God gives again, in a new act of gracious mercy, his flesh, for the life of the world: “Wiping out the written sentence which was against us; yes, Christ lifted it clear away, nailing it to the cross”. (Col 2: 14)   Therefore, at the Last Supper, Christ links the institution of the Blessed Eucharist with His passion and His death.  It was integral to His mission to be the Life of the world. In reconfirming that mission He also redeemed us from our loss of God.

In the circumstances of sin into which He came, that mission is now worked out through redemption, satisfaction, and the forgiveness of fallen man by God, and hence the supreme manifestation of Himself as the Bread of our life is to be linked for always with the manner in which His mission on earth was accomplished. The consecration of the bread becomes now not merely “my Body”, but “my Body which is given for you”, and the consecration of the wine not merely “my Blood”, but “my Blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for you”, and He ordains that as often as men shall eat his flesh, and drink his blood in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, they shall perform the sacrificial rite so as not only to transubstantiate the material elements, but also to commemorate for all time the immolation of the Cross. For just as the humanity of Christ is inseparable from His divinity, so also Christ’s redemption is one with His salvation.

We have stressed those elements in the mission of Christ which transcend the extrinsic factor of sin among men, elements which remain transcendent and essential in Christ’s salvation, and which are not intrinsically conditioned by sin. Yet it can rightly be urged that we have still to show in what consists the very nature of the satisfaction and redemption inseparable after sin, and the rebirth of man in God’s forgiveness, from the historic mission of Jesus Christ.

The Redemption which is in Christ Jesus

This redemption is an act in God which reconfirms the order of creation, and if it is equivalent to a second creation of mankind, it is insufficient to make of it simply the pursuit by God Incarnate of His predestined mission, with simply the note of pardon added.  Pardon is not redemption and satisfaction.  Much more indeed is required to fulfil the traditional content of Christ’s redemptive salvation in Catholic and Christian doctrine.

An act of the Blessed Trinity

Here  at  once  we  encounter  a  problem  which  is  intransigent  within  the  limits  of  this  present  outline  of Christianity.  We encounter a difficulty which must, unfortunately, make our chapter upon the redemption the least complete of all.  It is not possible to understand completely the nature of the redemption of Christ without a good knowledge of what is meant and implied in the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Christian Church teaches that God is one, in nature, essence, and powers, but that the Divine Being is self-defined in three real and distinct relations unto Itself through one another, which are real relations intrinsic to, and inherent within, the Divine Necessity.   These real relations, or “Persons” of the Trinity as they are called, are three; they are not parts of God, nor different names for aspects of the same thing.  They are three real, and really distinct, relativities within which God is defined in the Divine Nature in what might be called in human language, his own “self-consciousness”.

In the doctrine of the Trinity it is quite as important to know what the Church does not mean when she treats of the intimate nature of God’s active being unto Himself, as to know what she does mean, and a discussion upon the meaning of the most abstruse of the Christian teachings, because the most intimate to God in Himself, would quite disrupt the unity of a theme which is already severely strained, for this work concerns Christ, from the beginning to the end.

No created intellect can ever, in any state of perfection, fully comprehend the infinite measure of God within the finite measure of a created mind.  We therefore omit the doctrine of the Trinity from our synthesis because to treat of it would here confuse the mind of the non-Christian reader, and in that confusion detract from the main purpose of this book, i.e. the proof of God through creation, the spiritual order and its relation to matter, the meaning of Christ, and the Christian Church, in the connected order in which we have tried to present them in an inter-related whole.

While no man can demonstrate the Trinity to be an evident fact from created reasoning, for there is nothing created which admits of the unique prerogatives of God, who is the Cause of causes, and the Reason of reasons, we could show to the non-Christian philosopher an interesting analogy within his own being with the three fold substantial relativity of God unto Himself.   It would only be a deficient analogy, but it would probably be unrealized enough, and surprising enough, to reduce him to a thoughtful silence.

Once an intelligent man has conceded that there are more things in heaven, earth, and the consciousness of man, than are dreamt of in a rationalist’s philosophy, once he has recognized that he accepts his own existence without being able perfectly to analyse and explain to himself all that he is, and has, he can scarcely refuse to acknowledge graciously that there must be infinitely more within the Being of God which surpasses the experience and the knowledge of men.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to treat of the redemption without continual references which presuppose a familiarity with this doctrine of the Trinity.  The redemption of Christ, like every act of God, is an act of the Divine Nature as one, but the Mission of Christ involves most particularly the relation which exists in the Divine Essence between the first and the second “Persons” of the Trinity; between the “Father” and the “Son” to use the terms consecrated by analogy with human relations, and by ancient usage derived from Christ

Himself.  In no aspect of the Incarnation does this relativity shine out more plainly than in those passages which concern the redemption as an act of satisfaction and reconciliation wrought by Christ in, and through his human nature.  It is impossible then, as the barest reading of the Gospels will show, to write of that in which man’s redemption consists without reference to the doctrine of the Trinity.

We can do no more than refer him back to the phrase which opens the Gospel of St. John, and with that phrase in mind, give him an indication of the meaning of “Three Persons in One God”.  An indication which will not be accurate enough to satisfy any theologian, but will have to stand to precise theology in the relation that “popular science” stands to precise science; something very inadequate, but better than nothing at all:

“In the beginning was the Word:

and the Word was with God:

and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God”. (Jn 1: 1-2)

When St. John says “And the Word was with God”, he refers to God the “Father”.  We can get just a glimpse of the meaning of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity if we make an approach to the mystery of the Divine Nature from God’s knowledge and fruition of Himself.   The first term of God “knowing Himself” is the “Father”, from whom there proceeds in an act of intellectual generation substantial to the Divine Being, and involving no relation of time, or of any subordination, the content of the Divine Intellect: the “Word”, the personal term which is distinct within the Divine Nature as the Wisdom of the Father, the content of the Intellect of God.    Through these two distinct personal relatives in which the Divine Being is defined, there proceeds in one relation from these two terms, the third term, or “Person”, in which is defined and expressed eternally in the Divine Nature the fruition of God in Himself.  This is the Holy Spirit, the personal term of God’s own love from Himself.  This triune relationship in which God is existent unto Himself, and defined as God in God’s own “consciousness”, is the necessary activity immanent in God, unto Himself of “being God”.

It implies no created subordination whatever, for it is an immanent and existential relationship which defines the Being of God unto Itself.  Whatever created analogies exist with this relationship within the Divine Being, and  striking analogies  do  exist in  man, are there only because all  things  imitate the First  Case in  their substances from afar off.   Since the Trinity is metaphysical necessity which defines the Absolute as such, analogies, the more striking as the created thing approximates the more in order to the nature of God, must exist in being which is, only because of the Uncreated Exemplar of all being.

Redemption as the reparation by the Son to the Father

The satisfaction to the Father in which Christ’s redemption consists, is understandable only through his human nature.  If, by an hypothesis in the circumstances impossible, the Incarnation had never taken place, but men had been forgiven their fallen nature and still permitted to attain the original end of man through some purification of spirit, then this form of redemption would have stood in a simple act of forgiveness.   The redemption wrought by Christ, however, is a genuine redemption and satisfaction for the unworthiness of human nature, because of the dignity, sanctity, place and destiny of Christ in the plan of creation.

We will see that of His own status, God incarnate could be a true satisfaction for the defect of man, that only He could be such a principle of reconciliation and satisfaction, and that He willed to be so.  Had He not so willed neither the Incarnation would have taken place, nor the race of men, as far as it is possible to conceive, have continued at all.  The refusal by Christ of the mercy of our redemption would have annulled the economy of the Incarnation, and the annulment of that economy would have implied, we say, the annulment of the destiny of man and the order in which man exists.

Insufficiency of Old Testament types to explain the Redemption

Christians frequently fail to understand the nature of the satisfaction for sin in Christ, because they interpret His passion and crucifixion too narrowly in the terms of the primitive and sanguinary types and prophecies of the Old Testament in which it is foreshadowed.  They attempt to interpret the substance by its necessarily imperfect figure, which is a woeful mistake, and leads to serious misunderstandings.  The redemption of Christ cannot be interpreted under the forms and figures of so imperfect a dispensation as the Old Testament.  The significance of the death of Christ upon the Cross is not appreciated, except from afar off, from the ritual offering of the “scapegoat”, or the “offering for sin”.

These figures merely foreshadow what is fulfilled in Christ, their purpose is to show to the Jews, and to us, the fulfilment of the Mosaic dispensation in Christ.  The full meaning of the redemption can be understood only in the full appreciation of the Person of Christ, and the relation of that Divine Person to God and to men.  If we wish to comprehend more fully the nature of Christ’s redemption, we will do better to study such passages as the parable of the Good Shepherd, there we will discover what the Master declares concerning Himself.  After the event, the meaning of types and figures is seen the better in the work and mission of Christ, his mission certainly must not be judged through them:

“Then he said to them:

‘O foolish and slow of heart to believe in all those things of which the prophets have spoken,

ought not the Christ to suffered these things and so to enter into His glory?’

And beginning with Moses, and all the prophets,

He expounded to them in all the scriptures,

the things that were concerning Him”. (Lk 24: 26-28)

An inversion of the true order of reference is responsible for those deviations in theology, especially among extreme forms of Protestantism, in which Christ is made a “pleasing sacrifice” because He is considered to offer vicariously  the suffering “due to us”; or alternatively is considered to be “accursed and punished” as a scapegoat “in our stead”.  Christ is made, in this pathetic and crudely “Old Testament” theology, to have “taken upon himself the iniquities of us all” as a vicarious criminal in a physical manner, as a result of which the “just anger” of the Father “being appeased in the blood of His Son”. Our own sins are now “covered” and “not imputed”, so that irrespective of any internal change or interior purification of a man’s soul, salvation is handed out by the Father like a dole, on the legal title of a “belief on Jesus”.  These deviations from the truth are a macabre misunderstanding of the texts they involve, and they reduce God the Father to a level of meaningless savagery which makes folly of the name of God, and debases the Infinite Wisdom and Love to the mentality of a feuding tribal chieftain.

Pain and suffering do not of themselves effect the Redemption

It ought to be obvious that pain and suffering has not, of itself, any value whatever before God.  God can only love, value, and be satisfied with, that which is in the likeness of His own perfection of being.  In themselves, pain and suffering are privative factors, they manifest the whole or the partial destruction of some being; they do not beautify, reform, or recreate anything.   In fallen man, pain and suffering are necessary and desirable concomitants of self-discipline, purification of soul, and closer union with God, but even in a created nature they have no value in themselves except as a means to an end which either directly or indirectly is an increase of a man’s highest good.  Suffering, and purely vindictive punishment, has no value before God, because the destruction or lesion of a nature has no worth at all, but further subtracts from what a thing is.

Suffering has value before God, and value in men, only when it is either accepted as a purgation for faults and sins, and aids the reformation of what is awry, or when it expresses a love faithful against loss and sorrow; when it continues, prompted by love, to resist evil and persecution through sweat, tears, and death itself.  A love which is faithful to death is the greatest love, and shines nobly through suffering and loss.  The suffering is a witness of the profundity of the love, a love which God blesses, increases in degree and merit, and confirms against the privation which is pain.   Love is the highest expression of being, and Love indeed has value, satisfaction, and redemptive worth before God; for God is Love.

The satisfaction of obedient love of the Word Incarnate - mediation

The satisfaction and reconciliation of Christ was a satisfaction of love:  in all that He was as God incarnate, in all that He said, did, and endured for love of man and of the Father.  This satisfaction could have no meaning apart from the divinity of Christ, but neither would it have had any content without His humanity.

Christ could be, and is, a reconciliation between God and fallen man, because He is the natural mediator in God’s creative plan between the Divine Nature and human nature.  We say the ‘natural’ mediator not simply because Christ is God Incarnate, but because the flesh of Christ is given to man under the Law of Control and Direction, the Law of Finalism in created being, that God may, irrespective of sin, be the adequate means for the determination of man towards the destiny of man, and the only means.  A mediator is one who, having a natural affinity between two extremes, stands between them both, and unites them through his own person. Christ does exactly this.  In his own divine Person He unites the divine and the created human nature, so that in his person God is the determinant of our nature in its ordering to the Divine Nature.

Christ is so much the mediator between God and man, that all material creation is subjected to Him as God

Incarnate in an intrinsic relativity which defines the end and purpose of all matter and all the laws of its being. Christ stands as the supreme expression of the general Law of Finalism in the universe, whether to matter or to matter and mankind.  He appears as the divine expression in matter of the Word, the Wisdom of God, through whom all created wisdom derives, towards whom it looks, whom it expects, in whom it terminates and is fulfilled.

Christ is the predestined mediator between God and the entire material universe, for He is the expression, plenary and final, of God’s providence over an economy of creation which is one continuum.

“But all this is from God, who has reconciled us to Himself in Christ,

and has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation.

For God indeed was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself,

not counting their sins against them.

And entrusted to us the word of reconciliation”.    (2 Cor 5:18-19)

One Divine Economy of Salvation and Redemption

We have said that our human being is intrinsically relative to Christ, not Christ’s to us.  God is not determined to Christ by the creation, but the creation manifests the determination of the material order to Him, and its very existence anticipates His advent.  The perfecting and fulfilling of created being is not a different economy from the actual creation itself.  Christ is not a different act of God from the decree of the Incarnation before time, although the decree is ratified again only in Christ’s redemptive will towards fallen man.  Christ is the plenitude of the act of creation immanent in God, and therein lies the significance of those words of His: “My Father works until now, and I am working.” (Jn  5: 17)  That the Jews had some inkling of what He implied, is clear from the fact that:  “They sought the more to kill Him, because not only did He break the Sabbath-day, but said too that God was His Father, making Himself equal to God”. (Jn 5: 18)

For a similar reason, Christ  in his human nature as  the Divine Person, is named by St. Paul  as:

“The first-born of all creation;

for in Him were all things created, in heaven and on earth,

visible and invisible, whether thrones, dominations, principalities or powers.

All things were created through Him, and for Him,

and He is before all things; and in Him all things hold together.” (Col 1:14-15)

All things were created in the Intellect of the Word of God; in the image of the Word, after the exemplarity of the Nature which is in the Word of God.   Pure spirits, the angels of God, are made immediately in the likeness of the Word as the Only-begotten of the substance of the Father; the content of the Nature of God as known within God.   Men, less than pure spirits in order, made through matter and spirit, are also made as perfectly in the likeness of the Word Incarnate, the exemplar of the human nature. For we were originally made, and now after sin must be reformed, in the substantial likeness of Christ.

Now the decree of creation in the Divine Word is before all creation, before the angels, and before men and matter, and in that eternal prescience, immanent in the Divine Being, the Word Incarnate, Christ, God and man, Creator and creature in one Person, is predestined before time in the will of God which is outside of time. Therefore He is the first-born in His human nature, the first-born of all creatures whatsoever.  All things are made in the likeness of the Word; angels in the divine nature of the Word, man in the divine and in the human nature of the Word:  all things equally are made by Him, and for Him, and in Him all things consist, or hold together, in their very being.

Angels are not made in the likeness of God Incarnate it is true, but because the human nature in Christ is one Person with the Divine, and exists by the divine Being alone, it can never in thought, fact, or dignity be separated from the existence and person of the Word.   Christ therefore, in His human nature, precedes all creation as the first-born; in order of predestination, in place, in dignity, for this is not a man become a god, Christ is the Divine Exemplar expressed in the material as the beginning, means, and fulfilment of a nature, and a created order, in which the spiritual and the material are linked in the unity of one essence.

Christ is the sufficient Mediator of Redemption

Christ, through the status in which He stands to the Father and to men, has power to intercede for us, and to require that notwithstanding the fallen condition of our nature, we might be with Him, who exist through Him. For He is the head and raison d’être of the body which is mankind. So on the eve of his passion he prays:

“Father, I will that where I am,

they also whom you have given me may be with me.

That they may see my glory, which you have given me,

because you have loved me before the creation of the world.

Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you,

and these men have known that you have sent me.

And I have made known your name to them, and will make it known:

that the love wherewith you have loved me,

may be in them.  And I in them.” (Jn 17:24-26)

This text, in which Christ makes it so abundantly clear that He came into the world not because of sin, but as one loved and predestined before the creation of the world, asks that “his own” for whom He came may be with Him, for He has made known to them the name of the Father, and they have understood, however imperfectly, that “You have sent me”.  He asks therefore for the forgiveness of men, He requires it of his own will and status, from the pleasing offering which is his own perfection before, and love of the Father, gathered into the Divinity through his human nature, in which all men stand, and unto which, as the source of life, holiness, salvation and redemption they are relative.  This passage echoes the mighty prophecy of his place and status made of old:

“I have set my king on Sion, my holy mountain.

Let me announce the decree of the Lord;

the Lord said to me:

‘You are my son; this day have I begotten you.

Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance,

and the ends of the earth for your possession.

You shall rule them with a rod of iron,

and shall break them in pieces, like a potter’s vessel.

And now, O kings, understand: be warned,  you that judge the earth.” (Ps 2: 6-10)

We are redeemed because Christ willed that where He was, in the glory of the Father which belonged to Him of right, we might also be with Him; who, but for love of us, had not decreed His human nature nor our own. The redemption is a bringing back, a rescuing, of mankind from the loss of man’s end, and from man’s subjection to evil and chaos in sin.  Because of sin, man is by nature cast off from God, unworthy intrinsically of the gift of being and the perfection of being, because the mind and will of God is no longer mirrored purely in a free nature which has turned away from God, and which bears within itself the marks of its disastrous folly.

Christ therefore suffers evil willingly in the struggle to make satisfaction to the Father

In God the Father, the redemption of man is an act of forgiveness and reacceptance in reconciliation; in God the Son, this forgiveness is shown as caused by satisfaction of love and justice intrinsic before the Father in the very Person of the Son in and through his human nature.  That Christ asks, and is heard “for the reverence due to Him” (Heb 5: 7), is the equivalent of saying that Christ could have refused to continue the plan of creation as it includes the human order, against the revolt of sin and the effects of sin.  We have stated that in the beginning God forgave man in Christ:  this means that Christ continues and confirms that office of his upon which all material creation, as relative to the rational creature, is founded, and that He wills to pursue it towards men as the “natural” and wise determination of the wisdom of God, in spite of the consequences of sin in his creation.

This entails the willingness to endure the conflict of light with darkness, good with evil, love with malice and hate.  It means that Christ wills not to resist by force the power of evil over his human nature, not to ask “twelve legions of angels” against those who will crucify him, but to be led without resistance as a lamb to the slaughter, for which cause He bears the title of the “Lamb of God”.  It belonged to the order and economy of the universe that He should be Incarnate for man’s salvation. It belonged by nature to the same ordering of things that men should receive him of their own free will, and acknowledge him for what he was: “The Prince of the kings of the earth.” (Rev 1: 5)  This status belongs to Him through His Divinity as expressed for men in His manhood, and it would have been unnatural, alien to the wisdom of God, and the order of creation had he resisted evil by anything other than the triumph of good against hate which is a victory of love, not of servile coercion.

Christ cannot save any soul through coercion and fear.  God is love, and the fruition of the comprehension of God in the Divine Nature is the consummation of the love of the Creator and of the creature.  Christ therefore did not resist evil by the sword, or by miracles, but in the love which was faithful to us even to death, a love in the one Person of God the Son which is the infinite satisfaction to the Divine Justice, to the Purity which is the Essence of God, for the injustice, defect of love, and impurity of men.

The satisfaction of love rendered through His human nature, shines out most clearly in the passages of the four Gospels in which the acceptance by Christ’s human will of the bitter course of his mission is declared. The human will of Christ is not at variance with the divine will in his Person, and since the decree of man’s redemption in Christ is free, freely given, and freely offered to the Father, that freedom of the act of Christ from the beginning of our race, is reflected fully and freely in Christ’s human nature, according to the propriety of its own order.  He can say “My Father, if this chalice may not pass away, but I must drink it, your will be done.” (Matt 26: 42)   This is a true human freedom of choice;   the freedom of Christ to give, or refuse, in the beginning of sin, is followed out and carried through in his human nature when it is actualized in time within the Divine Person.

He became obedient unto death

In the human will of Christ the decree of the redemption of man through the Incarnation shines out as an acceptance, and obedience to the mandate and commandment of the Father accepted as a mission in the Son. Christ is truly a man, though not a created human person, and when He accepts the will of the Father that men should be forgiven and redeemed through the Person and the work of the Incarnate Son, then He accepts and wills to pursue the mission with originally belonged to him, and to pursue it with mercy and pardon, with an unfailing  love,  a  faithfulness  and  a  perfection  which  endures  through  all  the  loneliness,  rejection,  and blasphemy that the crude and blinded hearts of men will devise against the Light of the world;  a light which was, and today still is, so painfully blinding to sin-diseased eyes.

In His humanity Christ makes perfect before God the Father the sanctity of human nature as God intended it. He perfects in himself the supreme glory and justice of human nature, and not of any human nature, but of that manhood to which as its source of being, means of sanctification, and principle of perfection, all human nature is substantially subjected.  He witnesses in himself with supreme perfection of love both human and divine, each distinct within its own order, and united in one in the Person of the Word, much as body and soul are united in the one person of a man, the uttermost good, truth and justice.

There is no greater love, either of the Father, or of men, than a love which is faithful even to martyrdom in the doing of the good and the true. And both these loves, for the Father, and for us, were present in the Person of Jesus Christ when He so endured for us, present with the plenitude of their possible perfection in both the divine and in the human natures of Christ.

So perfect a good, so faithful a witness to the truth, so integral a sanctity, which links heaven and earth in one bond in the Person of Christ, which endures, loves, heals, sustains and in the very interior might of its perfect being overcomes evil, this is indeed a perfect reconciliation in Christ between creature and creator.  In Him the Father is well-pleased in truth, and to say more of what is beyond all saying defeats our very pen, for the infinity of God’s perfect works, and perfect ways overwhelms the created mind, whether to know, or to speak, or to write the tithe of it.

Reconciliation and recapitulation

If the Father is well-pleased with the perfection of the Son Incarnate, who has overcome evil by the perfect doing of good, then for the sake of that Son will He accept us back into the glory which belongs to the Son. For we were there, part of His predestined glory, before the world was. Through Him we consist and subsist essentially, in Him we love, and are, and have our being.  He is the Vine, of whom we are the branches, and of Him we draw the sap of life, who is also, under another title, called the Bread of Life.

If He, who for our created sake was faithful with love, and the offering of himself to men even to death, if He who declared the Father constantly against those whose father was the prince of sin, who is our natural and supernatural head, the principle of our created being, and of its increase, if he should pray:  “Righteous   Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you,” (Jn 17: 25) then it is enough, and He has said sufficient.

Repentance and forgiveness

The world which has not known God will be forgiven, if it will accept that forgiveness with repentant gratitude in the persons of individual men.  It is enough that He, the head and purpose of material creation, the life which nourishes every man, should know the Father, and that we should be loved with Him, for His own sake, in that divine recognisance.  For Christ loved us indeed, His human flesh witnesses the love of God for fallen man. He loved us in his own flesh, for we are created again, born and re-born of his flesh more fully than a child of its parent’s flesh.

He loved His sinful own, because they were His own, more than a mother loves her wayward child.  He loved his foolish fallen flock, and not considering their blemishes, went out into the desert seeking the strayed, healing the broken, confronting the wolf alone.  Did not the thunder of His promise, His heart’s desire, roll over Sion from the prophet’s mouth?

“And Sion said, ‘the Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me.’

Can a woman forget her suckling child,

that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?

Yet, even if these forget, yet will I not forget you.

Behold, I have graven you upon the palms off my hands;

your walls are always before my eyes.

Your builders are come:

they that destroy you, and lay you waste,

shall go out of you.

The children of your barrenness shall say in your ears:

‘the place is too narrow for me’.

And you shall say in your heart:

‘Who has begotten these? I was barren and brought not forth,

was led away and was a captive.

I was destitute, and was alone, and these, where were they?’

Thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations,

and will set up my standard to the people

and they shall bring your sons in their arms

and carry your daughters upon their shoulders.

And all flesh shall know that I am the Lord, who saves you,

and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”    (Is 49: 14-26)

For we are one with Him, loved and forgiven by Him, flesh of His flesh, and conjoined in this communion with the life of His divinity;  we are His brethren, fallen though we be.  Therefore He will turn to the Father, the norm, measure, and exemplar of all justice, sanctity, and love, and in his own proper name and right He will require: “That where I am, those also whom You have given me shall be with me.” (Jn 17: 24)

He shall require it, and shall receive it, for He is the heir of all things, as the Father swore to him: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for their inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession”.  When He asks therefore, who is divinely and humanly, the perfect mirror of the Father, the perfection of the divine and the created nature, He shall receive of His own right and His own merit, for we are “those whom you have given me” (Jn 17:24), and He claims his own, the inheritance He has come to vindicate and in the manner of which vindication has pleased the Father in the Son.

Thus Jesus Christ, having loved His own who were in the world, loved them to the end.  Through that love He sought and obtained our pardon. In His person we are redeemed, the head of the body which is mankind, our exemplar, cause, reason and ground of being, who in His merciful redemption is made the perfect lover of our souls.  In Him, the faithful witness of the divine good, the Father is reconciled to created flesh, for He willed that His created brethren should share His glory human and divine, and that His patient mission shall not be in vain.

Reconciliation with the Father

Because of all his merits, human and divine, His intrinsic relativity unto our nature, the Father will not refuse Him, but receives us back with the same glad love as He receives the Son.  We are made co-heirs with Christ, “partakers of the divine nature, fleeing the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world for so an entrance shall be ministered to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.” (2 Pet1:4,11)

Of His sacred flesh, faithful to death in the struggle of God’s goodness with the revolt of sin, we are born back again as sons to the Father in the Son of God, who is also the Son of man.  In His perfect and most faithful flesh the faithlessness of the Fall in our flesh is forgiven, for we are joined to Him as the branches to the vine, and He willed that we be again engrafted in Himself. As the stock of the vine gives being and life to the branches, so is His flesh as man predestined before ours, that in His stock we might bear fruit, when He had made in his branches a purgation of sins; and the stock of the vine which is Christ, is conjoined in one root with the Divinity of God, from whence flows the sap of divine grace for the life of a man.

The Father is well  pleased in Him, for the merit and perfection of His works and of His will, human and divine, sanctifies our human nature in His own, and makes it pleasing to God the Father.  It is required of a man nevertheless, that being redeemed in love, he shall accept in perfect freedom of love the destiny given back to mankind in Christ.   A man must return love for love, gratitude for abounding mercy, faithfulness for the unbroken faith of Christ.  A man must strive sincerely, using the grace which is in him, to reform himself by increasing degrees upon the likeness of Christ in whom he is re-born.  A faith which is without the fruit of works is a dead faith.  The withered branch will not be allowed to remain in the vine, but will be cut off, and be thrown aside as rubbish, fit only for the burning.

The work of Redemption

The redemption wrought by Christ is then not a mere forgiveness, but a work.  It is His own personal gift to men, a gift of God other than the original decree of Incarnation and creation; for that decree is valid only through, and because, it is reconfirmed in the redemptive love of the  Word of God.   Much less is this redemption only a “moral redemption”, deriving from the heroism, virtue, and example given to men in Christ. The redemption of Christ is for us a pardon in Him, and a true reconciliation and satisfaction before the Father, a salvation which inheres in all that Christ is, did, and desired, in respect of the will of the Father and in respect of the race of men.

For Christ is the natural head of mankind, the unique mediator between God and men, and what he was, he is, and ever shall remain.  Everything else, the suffering joyfully undergone that his mission might be fulfilled among sinners, and through contradiction, the fortitude, example and heroic virtue of Christ as a man, all these are there, and they are part of his redemption, but they are all of them aspects, and facets of one total work of salvation through, and in, and with redemption.   This is the salvation and redemption which is interior and substantial, worked in the Person of the Son as He stands between us and the Father.

This theme of the Redemption is so vast, so profound, so intimate, that we fear to confuse by saying more, even though much indeed has not been said.  We ask only of a man that he should strive to see in Christ’s work as Saviour, those essential relations of God to man which belong to Christ as the fulfilment of the law of entitative finalism for men, as the Wisdom of the world.  He must come to see that working of God to men is the fulfilment of the divine intelligent wisdom, which operates through the complex unity of the natural laws of matter, which passes into the law of the spirit of man, which is consummated in Christ as its authoritative Word of wisdom.

Together with all this, which belongs to Christ before matter and time were, before man was, before man spurned the law of his being, and was forgiven in his shame, together with all this, let a man bring home to his soul with awe the mercy and the wisdom of God, how now, since sin, the Salvation of Christ is also a redemption, and as an economy preceded by a forgiveness, is other than the primary and original mission of Christ which was annulled by the very act of the first sin.  Sin has not changed the essential plan of God, nor his immutable will, but sin required God's pardon, Christ's  pardon, and Christ need not have given that pardon. Sin has conditioned the salvation of Christ, reconfirmed so that it is equivalent to rebirth for men, to the manner of a redemption wrought by pain and suffering, for sin can, and did, and still does, resist the goodness of God, even when that goodness is itself a pardon for men’s transgressions.

Yet to as many as receive Him, He gives them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in His name, for unworthy and ungracious though we are, our flesh and our spirit is linked under one overwhelming law of wisdom to the flesh which in Christ gives the Divinity of God to be the food and life of the sin soiled souls of men.

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER   17

Conclusion

It is in the outline of a new synthesis in Christian thought between the eternal truths of the Catholic Christian Church, and the new discoveries of natural reason, that men will find the solution to those many difficulties upon the satisfactory resolution of which the future of mankind now depends.

The storms which today buffet mankind are not primarily storms of social and economic disorder. These social troubles are the more superficial and arresting symptoms of the deeper decay within Christendom and within the life of the whole world. They do but manifest in those activities of men in which greed most easily overreaches, and discontent of soul finds a tangible object on which to vent its pent-up tension, the frustration of spirit within the modern world.  This is a frustration grown out of the dissipation of spirit, loss of ultimate certainties, and the absence of inspiration in personal and social motivation, which has now for a long time been building up to storm point over our heads.

Forgetfulness of the Control and Direction of Christ

The fundamental causes of our disquiet lie deep within our own hearts and souls, particularly in the Christian  provinces  of  Europe,  where  men  subconsciously  remember  something  better,  and  this frustration and gloom which hangs over us is no more than the outward manifestation of an inward yearning.  In Europe above all, the heart of the culture of Christendom, men recognize with a sense of anger and of loss that there is nothing in their personal and social living which offers them any inspiration upon which to build a new order of life, and that there is little within them or their culture in its present state of decadence which can fortify them to resist either in the spirit or with the sword against the relentless pressure of the totalitarian philosophy of force now centred in the East.

No degree of unification in Western civilization, no panoply of apparent strength, can save Europe from breaking like a rotten bough under this continuous pressure if the spiritual morality which is the sap of her life does not begin at once to surge more strongly.  It is time to tell all Europe straight-forwardly, and with Europe all Christendom and the non-Christian cultures which are not yet overwhelmed, that none of them can hope to survive Marxism, or whatever new tyranny might conceivably replace Marxism from within itself, until their own people have the assurance in their private minds that as individuals and as nations they live a way of life which is true, noble, and well-worth living for. And this is an assurance that they certainly do not possess at the moment.

The middle-aged and the old may be resigned to the weary materialism, and the formless futile agnosticism which has dogged their own span and enforced their mediocrity, but their children are not so tolerant.   The most intelligent of the young minds, who are the natural leaders of men in the next generation, are bitterly resentful of the pettiness of spirit and the negativism of the civilization in which they are coming to maturity, the social and cultural contortions of which reflect so faithfully the empty, pathless, track of a great civilization in urgent need of reform from within.

We wrote at length in the beginning of this book of the failure of human rationalism or of scientific positivism to control man’s reason, or to keep his purposes positive and constructive.  At this juncture of our cultural crisis, perhaps the young and spiritually pure at least, can see that human vanity and the self-assured conceit of the human mind when it arrogates to itself its own sufficiency, can do nothing else except sink to lower levels of disruption, self-indulgence, and wearisome foolishness of spirit.

Symptoms of the disorder of Man estranged from his spiritual Environment

The miseries we now endure are the inevitable result of long years of persecution of the Church, the whittling away of her prestige and her authority in faith, morals, and cultural inspiration.  This egoistic individualism has long ceased to persecute to blood, but the persecution has continued as a contemptuous harassing of the mind so subtle and so long drawn out, that it has broken the spirit of many who declare themselves staunch Christians, but who have come nevertheless to accept as their satisfactory lot the meagre influence which the Church is permitted to exercise within society.  We now reap the fruits of that arrogant human rationalism which otherwise and within its rightful competence, has swept impressively to triumph in all the sciences of matter, and has failed so disastrously in the ultimate science of human life, where mind, not matter, is the object of knowledge and interpretation.

These men have gloried in the weight of wisdom, embodied in recondite law, which spans the forceful fabric of the universe, and has yielded up its first-fruits to modern man.   They have known intelligence and wisdom, and control, direction and purpose, but they have not understood that these laws were  One  Law  and  One  Intellect  the  centre  of  that  Law.  Neither  have  they  understood  that  its manifestation beyond mere matter to the order of mind was a plenitude which continues and surpasses its competence in matter, even to the determination of the soul of man through matter in the Word of God.

Denial of Man’s true Control and Direction from God

These wise simpletons knew everything, except the one thing which explained and gave purpose and unity to everything. The human reason, and a culture of Humanism divorced from God and from certain human purpose, has been set upon a pedestal and adored in the name of God, and our civilization has crumbled round its own idol. For man is not his own light and his self-sufficient wisdom; left to himself he  can  decrease,  but  not  increase.  For  man  is  relative  to  God  for  being  first,  and  then  for  the consummation of his being in God his final end.

We know the truth at this present time when we see mankind to hold in its hands gifts of our own discovering so rich with desirable potential, so fearsome because we are not sure how we ought to employ them, and by what guiding star we ought to navigate the community of men to those new shares of history these powers bespeak.  We drift from catastrophe to catastrophe, from the despairs of corrupted egoism to the fresh despair of authoritarian tyrannies of the mind, and all of it because man’s science of matter has so gravely outstripped the science of his mind.

The flower-strewn progress of Christendom along a path which plunges over the precipice, was largely hidden from us in the nineteenth century because while the philosopher and the scientist found any stick good enough to beat the Church, however often it broke across her back, the mass of the people still lived upon the capital of the Christian Faith, upon the heritage of the past, a heritage of Christian culture which the Church strove through oppression to maintain, and still works to uphold now entirely alone.  Then the irresponsible and arrogant clique of scornful sceptics could afford to enjoy themselves at her expense, for they were not yet asked to lead mankind, and when at last they were invited to form the souls of men the reckoning came rapidly upon us.

It is easy to break a man, hard to make a man, and when the atheist banished God from His own Kingdom within the human heart, he turned the sons of God into a newly fallen race.   It was hardly unexpected for he had always taught that man was only a risen ape, and he had come down not from an ancient heaven, but up from an earth of human pride to set him free from the religious “inhibitions” which bound the sons of God.

Disaster of rationalism and pride

There is no ruin so pathetic, or less lovely in decay, than a broken man, and we have seen a plenty of them, but it was not God’s plenty.  That there has been a contributory arrogance and dullness of mind among the leaders of Christian thought we have frequently confessed, and we do not refuse to bear the just reproaches which men may make for our own sins. But nevertheless, there has been no wrong-headed arrogance of Christian theologians and philosophers in speculative and cultural matters, which for disastrous irresponsibility and recklessness of spirit can match the prophets of scientific positivism and “free thought” who proclaimed their infallible dogmas concerning man from the natural revelations they received from the sub-human order which man had outgrown.

The disaster would have been less severe if they had even interpreted that lower order in correct perspective, but for the most part they have erred on all the ultimate values of knowledge, whether in matter or concerning mind.  They have dislocated the compass needle of man’s soul from its only natural and supernatural pole, and have set him loose thus muddled full upon the murky flood of every perilous frailty, every passion of mind and flesh.

When the Rationalist, and his fellow-traveller in religion the Modernist, were called upon to offer a constructive alternative to the Church as the foundation of the civilization of Christendom, they came with empty hands.  There was nothing they could offer, since their whole philosophy of values is a code of non-relative individualism, of intellectual and moral egoism, of denial of any authority over the mind of man beyond his subjective thoughts and desires.  They left no lasting norm of true or false, noble or base, for God was banished, and there remained only man.

Now, after three generations of universal  education in which historic Christianity has been pushed further out of the schools, the universities, and the public life of nations, the brave new world liberated by reason is lost in personal and social aimlessness.

Opportune time for the Church to present a new synthesis

In this welter of human sin and human error, through the truth of God which lives and speaks in the Church Catholic, universal over nations, times and places, we offer an answer to the errors of a false human individualism and human authoritarianism equally.   In this book we have given in a bare, but sufficient outline, the principles on which can be built up a new and more stable synthesis of natural and revealed truth in one totality, a synthesis which removes the root of those anxious doubts and painful difficulties which have hampered the Church in her mission to the modern world, and blunt the impetus of that revival of apostolic vigour which the Spirit of God has begun again to enkindle more strongly within her.

The basic principles which underlie this work, itself only a partial aspect even in outline of what should be written, give to the Church the new key she needs to unlock a deeper treasure vault of the deposit of the Faith, and to bring forth from its depths new things and old for the salvation of men.  For the Church stands today on the threshold of such a majority given her by Christ, that looking backwards in the days to come, her heart will grow warm and abound within her, and she will know that what went before was but her childhood, her growing in wisdom, age, and grace before God and men to the stature of the maturity of Christ which is her measure.

Christ the Wisdom of God and the Power of God

We show in the name of Christ and for the cause of Christ, how all wisdom issues from God in a Law one in principle, manifold in manifestation, by which control and direction is at the heart of all created things, how  finality  of  substantial  being  and  connatural  end  enters  into  all  natures,  defines  them  in  their substance,  laws,  and  affinities,  how it makes  all  things  within  the cosmos  relative in  attribute and potencies to harmonious development, to maturity from thesis directly to synthesis.   We have demonstrated how this Law of wisdom which derives from the Absolute Intellect argues of itself from created natures to the existence of God; proves it and manifests it beyond doubt.

We show a Law which working through matter, sweeps out beyond matter till matter requires the spiritual soul of its own material order under the same Law, and how Man, this synthesis of spirit and matter in one being, is not left un-provided, but is guided, if he will have it, by the Intellect which is God both inwardly and outwardly, until the Law is fulfilled in the Origin of the Law, the Word which is made Flesh for the light of the intellectual creature.

We indicate to men lost and confused, the full and perfect measure of the truth in greater depth of understanding than before, the fulfilment of all wisdom human and divine in the sacred face of Christ, the Prince of all who are wise, and the ultimate reference of their science in whatsoever field of knowledge their wisdom may be.

In this we vindicate anew in this our age the truth of the Church of Christ which abides forever, for we draw from the deep waters of truth which well up within her, waters renewed of their undying Source in every age for the refreshment of the souls of men.  From these deep wells of Christ we draw not something new and uncontained before, we draw in richer measure from the fountains of the Christian Faith a larger portion, given for the larger needs of men.

The new synthesis: Christ’s gift to Man through His Church

So has the Master provided for His own, and not belied that promise with which He heartened His distressed Apostles when He said: “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when He the Spirit of truth comes, He will lead you into all truth, and reveal to you the things which are to come.  He shall glorify Me, for He shall take what is mine, and shall reveal it to you.” (Jn 16:12-14) Therefore in the pressing needs of the Church and of all mankind, a new insight is given into the things which pertain to Christ, and it is given to her, the Holy Christian and Catholic Church, the sole Bride of Christ, and alone of all who bear His name the faithful custodian of the words of the Word of God.

To all men who in sickness of soul had come to doubt the very providence of God, and of His power hymned so long ago to vindicate the things which are His own, and feed His flock, we proffer a theme of comfort and hope. We hope that in the guiding theme which underlies this book, principles of wisdom and interpretation of the order of the real which will deepen to embrace all knowledge of heaven and of earth in one wisdom; a unity of wisdom through and in Christ which while it expands grows always more coherent in itself, and more strongly knit to those essentials which define its most simple presentation.

There is given in this synthesis an inspiration, increasing over time, which will fire individuals, societies, to great and splendid purpose, to life more abundant in the peace of a man’s heart, and to purposes bound in peace between the nations.   For in its prime principles and essential minimum this word we offer is no human word, but Christ’s own sign and answer in the spiritual and intellectual needs of the times.

APPENDIX 1

Evolution and the First Chapters of Genesis

The concordance of an evolutionary view of man’s origins with the first three chapters of Genesis calls for some consideration, particularly as we raised certain such difficulties in the chapter on the decline of Christian belief, and so we raise briefly some of the main problems therefore, as an appendix.

There are many exegetes today who would relegate the whole of these first chapters of Genesis to the level of folk-lore, and who make them a beautiful fable, elevating in the circumstances.  It is true of course that the allegorical and parabolic style of narrative so native to the East, and to the ancient Semitic peoples especially, does not admit of the logical and severely literal interpretation natural to the Western European mind, so long formed upon the logical thought and realist modes of expression which are the inheritance of the Romano-Hellenic culture.

At the same time, when all such allowances are made, and when the metrical composition of the Hexaemeron and the pictorial presentation of the second and third chapters is taken into account, there must be, to satisfy the Christian concept of scriptural inspiration, a substantially true and factual content in passages of prime importance which have always possessed a dogmatic value for the Christian Church.

The nature of the text and approach to interpretation

There are  no  quotation  marks  in  ancient  Hebrew,  and  there  is  no  direct  way of  indicating  the introduction  of  popular  secular  traditions  or  quotations  from  other  documents  or  from  popular tradition into the sacred text.  In any case, it is not customary among primitive writers in any ancient language to make fine distinctions concerning the sources of their information, or to indicate the relative religious value of different parts of a narrative:   the story is  written continuously right through.

We must therefore expect to trace implicit citations from secular documents and traditions occasionally among the books of the Old Testament, the more especially since the record of the chosen people there portrayed, covers the secular as well as the religious life of the Jews in one unity. The content of the inspiration contained in the book of the Old Testament need not be identical in form in every book.  In some it may be dogmatic and moral, in others primarily moral, with the mode of presentation not necessarily verbally literal.  The main purpose of the Old Testament is to show the main lines of the development of that primitive revelation which leads to Christ and is fulfilled in Him, and it belongs to the Church, the only authoritative interpreter of the mind of God contained in the Scriptures, to be the final arbiter of their religious significance.

We are not here concerned with the general question of the nature of scriptural inspiration, its extent and its subject-matter, but only with the significance of certain plain and straightforward statements of fact from the first three chapters of Genesis, which concern the origins of man, and with these only in so much as they have, and have always had, a definite doctrinal value for the Church Christian and Catholic.

Genesis chapter 1

In a mere appendix we can leave aside altogether the account of the creation of the universe and our world, because it presents no fundamental difficulties, especially when the metric composition of the Creation Hymn is realised.  We need only remark that this first Chapter presents God as distinct from creation, and creation as dependent upon God for being. It presents God as One, and it describes a creation by succession which accords excellently with an evolutionary process of creation, especially in the fact that man stands out as the last of the works of God and the culmination of the creative process.

The purity and accuracy of the thought contained in this chapter is startlingly different from the blood-thirsty pantheism and the spawning of deities which mark the Sumerian and Assyrian creation fables from which some non-Christian exegetes try so captiously to derive the substance of Genesis. Any such attempt to put the theologically and philosophically pure account of the creation contained in the Hexaemeron, and the accounts of the Egyptian and Babylonian civilisations into one common category is more than an error, it is an act of dishonesty.

Genesis 2-3 and the creation of male and female

In these first chapters, the need for an interpretation which will vindicate the substantial truth of the sacred text and at the same time adequately meet the needs of modern knowledge regards above all the creation of the woman, and in a much lesser degree the accounts concerning the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and the “tree of life”.

According to the thesis we have already given of the evolutionary origin of the body of man, we state unambiguously that there exists the clear necessity for the first man and woman to have been both equally conceived in the womb as men are today.  How then, can one explain in any factually true sense at all, the story of the taking out from the first Man of a “rib” upon which is built up the woman, while Adam is cast into a “deep sleep”?  The taking out of this “rib”, the division so to say of Adam’s being, is to be interpreted of the separation of the male and female counterparts in the lower forms of life  before the emergence of man;   a process which undoubtedly occurred, for life in its beginnings was unisexual.  This is a fully sufficient understanding of the text.  Woman, physically regarded, is the more dependent party, and one does not speak of the stronger being taken from the weaker.  This manner of expressing the mutual relation of the sexes as two in one flesh is reasonable and beautiful when we consider the limited capacity of Moses to understand in the circumstances of his day, and still more the wild and illiterate condition of the race of barely liberated slaves to whom this primitive revelation was addressed.

But can the separation of the sexes millions of years before man, honestly be considered as the division of sexual functions in man himself?  It certainly can;  from the time that primordial life first began upon this planet as an actuality potential to further development, the raison d’être, the impetus, the finality of the whole order of evolution, is to Man and for Man.  The separation of the sexes then, is in view of Man, and in this lies the meaning of the “deep sleep” cast upon Adam.  The Hebrew word here means a deep and dreamless sleep, unconsciousness, or a state of trance.  The development of life which was ordered towards Man was a “deep sleep” or a period of unconsciousness, because it was the order of instinctive life, without the self-conscious knowledge which belongs only to the spiritual soul.  At the same time, even as deep and unconscious sleep is in no way a denial of life, so the period of evolution which preceded man was a period of abundant and developing animal life.  It was in this period upon the path to man that the sexual functions were divided into male and female counterparts, in which the “woman” was built upon the “rib” of the “man”.

This interpretation seems to us to receive its final certainty from the history of the word rather crudely translated here as “rib”.  This Hebrew word is vague in its meaning, it means in general “a curved thing” or a “support”.  Hence it means the side or flank of anything, a “rib”, and is used of the beams which “rib” the hull of a ship.   While the meaning of this word, even in later Hebrew is generalised and vague, a first-class clue to its real meaning can be obtained from the Sumerian and Assyrian root to which this word is cognate.  At the time of Moses, and much more so before him, the Hebrew dialect was strongly cognate to Sumerian especially.   In the Assyrian this word may be transliterated as “TILU” and in the Sumerian as TI(L)  and in both cases the meaning is the same - it means “life”, or “power of generation” and is written by the sign of the arum lily, which stands for the male penis.  There is no doubt that the sign of the lily, which here stands for the male genital organ, means “principle of life” or “power of life”.

It is well known too, that the phallic symbol of the penis as the source of life and fertility was common to the ancient Eastern Mediterranean civilizations.  The original significance at a time when Hebrew was hardly more than a Sumerian dialect, of the word rendered “rib” must be directly referred to the genital organs, the reproductive organs, as the source of life.  The text means then that God divided the sexual powers of life in Man into male and female, for he took out of Adam a “principle of generation and fertility”.  We have every reason to believe, especially if the narrative of Genesis here is an authoritative and inspired redaction of an earlier creation tradition among the Israelites before Moses, as seems quite likely;  that this original meaning of the word rendered “rib” was known to the ancient Israelites, or that at least it was the primary meaning among several derived meanings.

There can be no more apt interpretation of this text than the one we offer, especially given  the affinity of the word translated “rib” to a word of phallic significance.  Even without such an affinity this interpretation fits the text supremely well, and with this affinity we consider the evidence for such an interpretation conclusive.

In all this matter of the inspiration of the Scriptures it must be borne in mind that it is not necessary for the human author to know, or even to suspect the full bearing of what he is shown by God and expounds.  God is the principal author of an inspired writing, and what he makes known by infused knowledge or intellectual vision to the seer, he is capable of so ordering in the mind of the sacred writer that while the text is a faithful reproduction of the character, mind, and even the limitations of the human author, it will also contain a substantial truth preserved from error, a truth capable of fuller development as the revelation of God to men develops in its content.

The manner of the creation of Man

The question of monogenetic or phylogenetic evolution of the human race does not strictly enter the scope of this limited work, but because of the number of times it is raised perhaps we had better touch briefly upon it.   We do not feel theologically competent to assert that phylogenetic evolution, the evolution of separate races of men from separate races of anthropoids, is certainly incompatible with orthodox Christianity, but we venture the personal view that the origin of all men at all times from one first pair, and only one pair, is of Catholic doctrine in the strict sense in which this phrase is a theological note of importance.  It follows from this view that we do not think even that the evolution of many men from the same species of simian at different times, or over a long period, is tenable.  We hesitate however to express too strong a disagreement with phylogenesis or multiple monogenesis, because we are not convinced that these theories necessarily contradict the essentials of the doctrine of Original Sin, which alone would be a supreme objection.   The argument from Christian tradition however is so strong, it seems to us, that no other view besides the existence of one original pair can be maintained.  Nevertheless, until the Church should decide such a matter, if it became necessary, by solemn public act defining the traditional view as of faith, we would not be over-assertive, because such a mentality has done great harm in the past, and arrogates to an individual an authority which belongs to the Church alone.

Nevertheless, neither the format of the text, sound reason, or necessity, force us here to deviate from the obvious sense, for there is no weighty scientific evidence for phylogenesis.  It is impossible to defend any theory of evolution at all except one of purposive and mechanist determinism which requires the existence of God as its centre of reference.  In this case, one would expect the urge of evolutionary development to ascend like a pyramid, so that recognisable “progress” in terms of great development of the brain would narrow at the apex to one stock, as it did, then to one species or to related species of one stock - as the evidence increasingly suggests it did  -  and finally to one supreme mutant, the peak of the pyramid, at which organised matter required the soul under its own material laws.

There seems to be no reason to make the first pair among men more than a first pair in this case; the offspring of one animal pair possessing this supreme mutant.  There is no fabulous coincidence or wonderful chance in this;   before man was made there was not a free or random act in the whole universe, and God well knew what he was doing.  Mutations are not common in Nature, and to expect the supreme material mutant to be a repetitive and haphazard business extending over thousands of years and diverse species, or sub-species, seems to us to be quite arbitrary.

Anthropologists, we suggest, make too much play upon factors such as the structural differences between Neanderthal human types and primitive types of modern man; moreover, they throw out dates with ex cathedra authority which are “devalued” five hundred per cent ten years later.  We see no reason to believe that the structural diversities could not easily have developed after the creation of Man through evolution, for even physically considered, Man is a distinct species, and distinct species admit of surprising variations of build.

When one considers the weird and wonderful varieties of domestic dogs which have been bred during the last three hundred years from one biological species, or the striking varieties of domestic cattle and fowl bred scientifically in a few generations from members of the same species, the amount of by-play made by some anthropologists with the heavy brow-ridges of Neanderthal man, and his lack of a chin-prominence seems remarkably rash.    If much more striking differences  of bone- structure can be induced by scientific breeding of animals in a few generations, the differences between primitive races of men can surely be accounted for by the adaptation to environment of a truly new species, full of those versatile powers of organic adaptation that so many other true species show in their sub-divisions.   The soul would so vastly extend the range of animal experience and habitat for Man’s body that structural variations, especially in the beginning of his existence as a distinct species, ought we think, to be anticipated.

Again, all known races of men are inter-fertile, nor is there any reason to presume that the opposite was true at any time, and in fact anthropologists do not presume it.  There is no reason, in the absence of definite factual evidence, to believe that a true species can every be fertile and viable with a truly distinct species.  Men are inter-fertile, but not  even artificially can a human ovum be fertilized by any species of anthropoid.  A true species implies the emergence of a new mutant factor which reorganises the total genetic factors of the seed, and in the case of man, this material factor is uniquely relative to the spiritual soul.  Wherever there are races of men however primitive, who can inter-breed, the soul must be present, and the natural presumption must be that these distinct races of men are descendants of a common stock.  If this is presumed of animal species below man, much more must it be presumed of Man.

Finally, what evidence exists, either from palaeontology or from modern research in genetics, tends to  support  a  theory  of  evolution  “per  saltum”,  by  sudden  discontinuous  mutation,  not  by  the continuous accretion of slight variations, and this is what one would more probably expect, for the emergence of a true species, itself relative to development and to a life-cycle quite distinct from that of its progenitors, would seem to involve a radical reorganisation of the substance-pattern potential in the genetic content of the new mutant.  For example, archaeopteryx is a true bird, however primitive, and the life-cycle of bird and reptile is very different.

We readily concede that there is no strong factual evidence  as  yet concerning the origins of biologically distinct species, but the universe is all of one piece, and since the higher forms of material being, such as living organisms, are built upon and embody in their structure, laws and substance- relations of non-living matter, the parallelisms and the analogies of physical non-living phenomena have a deep significance.  The value of an atomic element for example is fixed and definite, and new combinations of atoms into synthetic elements are not effected by infinitesimal continuous variations, but by sudden discontinuous mutations, and these mutant values are fixed and definite for each element in relation to hydrogen, the presumed simple atom.  In like manner the new element is a total realignment of its constituent factors into a new pattern of substance, itself a new unity with properties native and peculiar to that unity.  The analogy here between distinct species of life and their distinct life-cycles is very considerable.  Energy too, can only be absorbed and emitted in “quanta” which are not continuous, but are variations by sudden,  but definite, mutation, a fact which is even more strikingly at variance with what a superficial reasoning would expect.

This list could probably be lengthened and much improved by the scientist, but for our purposes there is no real need, the essential point has already been made.  There is every reason to believe that the processes of the living “value” follow the same basic laws as the physical “values” of the universe upon which their own entity is built up in one relative economy of matter.  We would expect then that the human race itself, the absolutely supreme and unique material mutant from the purely material order to a common relativity of matter and spirit, is above all others an emergent “per saltum”, one species, not several, and there is no cause to multiply the number of times this physical “value” which required the soul occurred.

For the same reason we consider that the preoccupation of anthropologists with the “missing link” is doomed to frustration.   They will find simians which markedly approximate to man in physical structure, and they will find primitive human types with markedly more simian characteristics of structure, but they will never find something that is neither the one nor the other.  If by a “link” they mean the point where men and apes “merge” they are looking for their own dreams and looking for dreams is an unrewarding labour.   An ape is an ape, and a man is a man, two completely distinct species, more distinct than any other living species; there is no such thing as an ape-man. In a few generations the human soul would so enormously develop the human body, itself a physical mutant relative to such development, that the divergence between man and beast, especially in brain development, would be equal to millions of years of mechanist physical evolution of the living.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” admits perhaps of a number of variant  interpretations, all with the same substantial content, and capable of making a sound sense.  We suggest that it is to be understood in the following manner.

The knowledge of good and evil is well likened to a tree, because knowledge is present in the universe, in the soul of Man, as something which grows and develops.   Because Man, though a created being is free, governed by love, not by determinism, he is capable of deliberate aversion from God, he can make himself his own final end to his own undoing. He can say “I will not serve”.  Man then can sin, and because sin is knowledge used ill. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is necessarily planted in the midst of paradise which is the sinless earth made for originally sinless man. Man is not forbidden to eat of a tree of knowledge, we notice, but of the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil” in one root.  The knowledge of good and evil in one root can only be had in sin itself, in which good is known and rejected, and evil, the living of a lie is embraced.  The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is sin, the act of consent which after the counter-poise of good against evil in a man’s soul, is the fruit of the delectation in a lying pride which precedes sin and forms its occasion.

There is no need to interpret the words spoken, “behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil” as a divine “irony”.  Sin in man is the will to do as one likes, to make oneself a god unto oneself, and from this human selfishness proceeds the appalling personal and social tragedies of human life.  In sin man arrogates to himself a divine prerogative - to be his own end, norm, and centre of reference.   This for man is the denial of his relative and dependant being, the undoing of his potential created nature.  God is necessarily his own end, norm, and centre of reference, God can and must “do as he likes”, for God is the indefectible good, and all that God does and wills can only be good.  When man imitates the prerogatives of God with insolent and lying pride, the result is deadly to man, and this leads us to our suggested interpretation of the “tree of life”.

The Tree of Life

“And He said,  behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil;  now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.... and he cast out Adam;  and placed before the paradise of pleasure cherubim, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life”. (Gen 3: 22-24)

When Man makes himself the end of his being and admits no law but himself, the result is the very contradiction of God’s works and of God’s ways.  Life also is as a tree in the world, something which developed and which branched upwards even to Man himself.   We consider that the placing of “angels” (cherubim) to guard the fruit of the tree of life in case man should eat of it, and “live for ever”, that is “indefinitely”, means that the secret of life, or at least the discovery of sufficient about the nature of life for Man to prolong his physical existence indefinitely, is not outside the power of man’s intellect, but is something within the universe which man could discover.

Because of the disastrous effects of sin upon man, both personally and socially, and the certain abuse of such a power, much more fundamental to man than the discovery of the secrets of the atom, or of any other natural discovery, Man will never be permitted to so discover the secret of life that it would be at the discretion of man to prolong his physical existence indefinitely, or at the discretion of the rulers of men to abuse such a power at will.  The discovery that the “cherubim with the flaming sword” or the “caribu” are sculptured devices, representing apparently minor deities of some sort, found over Sumerian temples etc, with the apparent significance of entry forbidden by supreme authority, with the implication of power to implement this command, seems to us to make such an interpretation very reasonable.

There are other phrases of these three chapters which could usefully be discussed, but they do not present any very severe exegetical problems, and it seems wiser to conclude with the points already raised, lest a mere appendix go on indefinitely.

APPENDIX 2

The Place of the Womb of Mary in the Incarnation

The Incarnation of the Divine Word in the flesh for the life of the world, does not demean God, and is in no way “unthinkable” in itself.  The human nature assumed by the Divine Being in the Incarnation does not make the divine a human personality; God does not become created.  The human nature of God in Christ is the instrument of the communication of God in the fullness of the Godhead to man, fully, perfectly, according to the nature of man, and in a measure of plenitude, defined by the infinite bounty of God in the status given to all spiritual creations in the decree of their creation.

Creation need not have taken place, but the breathtaking grandeur and greatness of the life given to created spirits is the witness of the infinite bounty and love which is God Himself.  Man is rightly awed, even overwhelmed by its splendid sweep, so far above his created capacity, but it is not lawful for man to disbelieve because of this lack of proportion between the created nature and the end appointed for it in the beatific vision of God as He is.  It is not lawful for man to measure the Infinite by the smallness of the created nature, especially when that vision is the more small and crude as a result of the damage done to it by human sin.

The Incarnation as the manifestation of the final End of Man

It is not more demeaning for God to create spiritual beings with an end and happiness only in the love of Himself eternally, than to be incarnate as the means to this end.  The Incarnation is a manifestation of man’s final end, and the means towards it, for body and soul alike share in this one finality.  Man is a personality in matter and spirit, not in the spirit alone.  It is however foolish to speak at all of God suffering humiliation or demeaning, in the dispensation of the Incarnation for God is incapable of any humiliation in the Divine Being.  A being can only be “humiliated” if it can suffer loss or diminution of its nature, and the Divine Nature is incapable of diminution or loss in any way.  God does nothing much which humiliates Himself, for all He does is the manifestation of His own Majesty. God can, however, without indignity do much that dignifies the created, and the Incarnation is the supreme dignification of man.

We have set forth the economy of the Incarnation of God in the flesh as the fulfilment for man, in the flesh of human nature, of the Law of Finality, the law of control and direction, to the proper fulfilment of man’s being.  It is required, as a metaphysical necessity of the nature of being, that what controls and directs, shall not be caused by, nor intrinsically subject for existence to, what it controls and directs.  This is simply a statement of the “principle of contradiction” as philosophers commonly call it.

If God is to determine man through the Divine Intellect and Will communicated to man’s intellect and  will,  and  in  that  communion  of  love  and  knowledge  to  begin  his  fulfilment,  until  it  is consummated in the beatific participation of the Divine Nature by the created nature, then the Divinity will have need, as the incarnation in matter of the Divine Word, to appear on the scene of history as a man among men, with the senses of human nature, which are the natural medium, inseparable from human activity, through which wisdom and goodness is adequately assimilated by human beings.

The Incarnation determines the womb of woman from the eternal Plan of God

If the universe was from the beginning made relative to man - a unity of matter and spirit as co-relatives - and if man has no meaning except for his perfection and fruition in union with God - so that man is intrinsically relative to God, and to Christ as the manifestation of that relationship and the means to its perfect consummation, then the whole order of the universe, matter and spirit alike in the unity of one economy, is intrinsically relative to Christ. Somewhere within this orientation of creation to Christ there exists within the material Universe the proportionate means of giving God to man as Christ as the perfect principle of man’s control and direction to his end.

If it were not for the material element in man, the Incarnation would have no meaning at all as a divine economy.  If God is to take flesh for man to fulfil the purpose of His own supreme Law, then the material vehicle which is the natural means of giving God to man as the Word made flesh must exist within the universe as the proper and natural instrument of the Law of Control and Direction for man’s salvation.  We say this means, or vehicle, must exist, because the Incarnation is the supreme final end of the material universe from the beginning of time, the consummation and fulfilment in God of the Law of being which proceeded from Him in creation, and had worked throughout the evolution of matter back to its consummation in the Divine Intellect made man.   Because the Incarnation is intrinsic to the plan of material creation the Law which poised the first nebulae in purposive and coordinated development, looks forward to, and was leading up to, the Incarnation as one total process, one economy, one dispensation, one unity of creative wisdom.   As it is written concerning Christ:

“He is the image of the invisible God,

the first-born of all creation:

for in Him were all things created, in heaven, and on earth, He is before all things and in Him

all things hold together.

He is the Head of the body,

the Church;  He is the beginning, the first-born of the dead,

that in all things He might be pre-eminent

for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell...” (Col 1:14-19)

The coming of Christ was not accidental to the universal cosmic order, but implicit in it from its beginning, so that all things look forward to, and anticipate, Christ; God becomes flesh, in whom is the perfection of the Godhead, and the totality of the created order in one person and two natures.  The whole universe subsists in Him, and consists or stands as one economy of wisdom in Him, and because of Him, all is one economy of the wisdom of God, and the natural and the supernatural are made correlatives in Christ, in his created nature, not accidentally, but intrinsically.  There is nothing in God made man accidentally related to the Person of God.

If the whole fabric of the created universe is framed in mighty expectation of the King of kings, and Lord of lords, then because the Incarnation of God is decreed in and through the laws of the material universe, and is sub-served by the total economy of matter, there exists within the universe, as part of the economy of the Law of Finality, that material vehicle which is the natural and normal means of providing the Godhead with the instrument through which to take to Himself the nature and senses of a man.  It must be of itself the natural and sufficient vehicle of such co-operation with the Godhead, because the Incarnation is the summit and purpose of the whole of material creation, and under the Law of Control and Direction, matter itself co-operates in the bringing to be of the Flesh of God made man. The vehicle required within the material universe is therefore present under the natural law, as a natural fact, because of the supernatural orientation, through the nature of man, of all creation, back to God.

Sexual difference exists for the womb of woman as a distinct vehicle

This means is so provided under the natural law;  the vehicle by which matter co-operates of its own, and from its own, with the Godhead in the fulfilment of the Law of Control and Direction in the Incarnation of the Word of God, is the womb of woman.  Scientists not infrequently wonder at the separation of the reproductive power of life into complementary sexes. Whatever reasons of convenience can be reasonably brought forward independently of our thesis for this division of life, the fundamental reason is the place, need, and decree of the Incarnation in the plan and purpose of the universe, and the subservience of all material life on this planet to that end from the dawn of natural history.

The womb of woman is the natural vehicle for the formation of a human nature, and therefore in its own right it is the natural and suitable instrument which under the Law of final determination co- operates with the supreme controller and determiner, God Himself.  The womb of a woman, and only the womb of woman, is the means under the laws of nature of giving God to man in the flesh.  If God is to determine man with the plenitude of perfection for his mixed nature, He must determine man through the senses of a man. The Word must be made flesh, and the Word of God cannot be the Word Incarnate, a Divine Person acting through the instrumentality of a human nature except through the womb of woman.  For this cause were the senses divided in all higher life.  The plan of creation upon this earth is intrinsically relative to the Incarnation, and the means by which it can be naturally brought about.

The whole order of the universe in which we live is orientated to a supernatural finality through Christ made men for the life of men.  There is no natural purpose or meaning in creation outside this fact.  Moreover, the Virgin Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “Our Lady” to all true Christians, is thus a fact of science as well as of theology.   The incarnation is the fulfilment of the Law of Finality relative to man, whose only finality is, or can be, in the beatific fruition of God in that love of the good and delightful, which is the essence of God.  The Virgin Birth is a necessity to this fulfilment of the Law, and therefore, far from conflicting which any reasonable law or requirement of nature, the Virgin Birth fulfils the requirements of the Law of Control and Direction in science, in philosophy, in theology alike.  All wisdom is one in God, all creation is one economy, there is no autonomy between science, philosophy, and theology; these are all bound intrinsically within one economy of wisdom.

All that God made He made relative to Himself;   it all begins from Him, and ends in Him;   the wisdom of science looks to philosophy for its fuller interpretation and integration;   the wisdom of human philosophy looks to God and the theology given to man from God for its final synthesis in the truth.    God is  one Wisdom,  and  the  economy  of  His  created  wisdom  is  one dispensation,  one economy, one unity of purpose and of cause.

The Divine Person of Christ cannot have an earthly paternity

God could not have been born of the human conception which follows the sexual intercourse of created male and female counterparts.  This would have been a contradiction of the Law of the Divine Wisdom embodied in material natures, and God cannot contradict Himself.  The Divinity could not have  been  “infused”  into  the  fertilized  ovum  of  a  human  conception  following  from  human intercourse.

It is a necessity under the Law of Finality, that such natural human generation is intrinsically and substantially relative to the spiritual soul, it is a material complement, perfect in itself as a potential, ordered  intrinsically and  substantially within  the  same  created  order  of  potency and  act,  to  the actuality which is the soul. The union of soul and body, matter and spirit in this created order, gives a perfect and complete human personality through a created existence.  God was not, nor could He be incarnate in the human person.  God becomes incarnate as a Divine Person in a human nature, but the only personality in God made man is the Divine Person.  Jesus Christ is God, and man, two distinct natures, but only one person as the Council of Chalcedon defined.

“Nature” and “Person”, and the Divine Person of Christ

A “person” and a “nature” are not the same thing.   It would be impossible here to discuss the distinction between personality and nature in God Himself, because this would involve the doctrine of the Trinity, which is beyond our scope in a work so elementary as this, but some idea of what it means can be given from created things themselves.  A “person”, although the term is usually reserved only to spiritual or rational beings, is the totality of the perfect and fully integrated nature, with the substantial finality proper to that nature in its own potentiality, made actual as an existent in which that finality, through the act of existing, is the ultimate finality, and not itself subordinated as a potential to any further actuality, any further existent of a higher order into which it is, or could be, synthesized.

For example, an atom of hydrogen, existing by itself as an atom of hydrogen, would fall into the category of a “person” in the sense given above, because it is an existing nature with a finality proportionate to that existence, which is the only finality, or act of being, which defines the totality which is the atom of hydrogen.  An atom of hydrogen functioning in its proper nature in the body of an animal or a man, would not be a ‘person’ in that sense, because the “personality” which defines the atom of hydrogen in its last existential reference, is no longer the definition of a hydrogen existent in its own propriety.  The existent as an entity is become totally potential to a higher synthesis of reality, an animal nature and existence, to which it is actually subordinate and to which its existence sub- serves,  and  therefore  it  is  actualized  in  the  ultimate  reference  by  a  higher  act  of  being.    Its “personality” has become potential, and when personality becomes potential while the nature remains, the “person” ceases to be a person because it does not subsist only through the act of existence proper to that nature and none other.  Its own “personal'’ finalism therefore as an atom of hydrogen is not the “last word” in what it is, because it is not adequately defined except through, by, and in, the existence of a higher synthesis of being of which it is totally a relative integrant, and which is built up upon and through such actualities which are able to lose their personality’ and become potential to existence through the personality of something else defined through them.

The word “person” means “standing alone”, or “through itself’, and if God becomes a man, quite obviously His human nature, while remaining truly itself, and human, like the atom in the body of an animal, lives by and through the Divine Existence, and by none other, and which, as an instrument of the Divine intellect and will, it totally subserves.  God can never be a created person; the two concepts are simple, contradictories.

The womb of Mary enables the Divine Person to have a full human nature

The womb of Mary was therefore necessary in order that under the Law of Control and Direction, the Godhead could determine matter in such a way that naturally the human nature of a man could be given, without the intrinsic relation, through sexual complements, which is the determination under the laws of nature of a human and created person, not merely a human nature.   Christ therefore, through the womb of Mary, is one with man in nature, but not in person.  While He is born according to  the  natural  law  of  human  conception  and  birth,  through  his  birth  in  the  flesh  by the  direct determination of the seed of Mary by the Divinity, and not by the created order, He remains extrinsic to the created order in finality, in order of existence, and is not subject in His Divine personality to any determination by the created order which He is born to control, direct and fulfil.

The womb of every created thing that exists on earth is thus made because of the Incarnation, and the need for the womb of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God.  There is no radical reason besides this need, as far as we can see, why life should diverge from its primitive uni-sexuality.   Most of the arguments which immediately come to mind which make such an order of division of procreative labours seem either necessary, or at least very advantageous, when examined deeply presume an order of life and environment in which living things could not otherwise survive.  This is however to argue in a circle, and to beg the question.  For our own part, we say openly that apart from the need for God to determine man perfectly towards the perfection of his fulfilment through the words and senses of a man, we see no reason why life must be conceived of as organized within its present bi-sexual orientation.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God

For us, flesh is divided because of Christ, and because of the vocation and need from before all time of the Mother of God.   Rightly do we Catholic theologians call her the ‘Mediatrix of all graces’, because her blessed womb is the mediating vehicle between matter and the Divine Word by which Christ alone is given to men as the Life of the World.  This status she has under the very laws of nature from the dawn of time.  She is the Mother of Grace Incarnate. To her womb is directed the course and impulse of evolutionary development before man.  Unique among all creatures, she stands between God and man, Creator and the created universe, as the means by which God and his creations are united in blessedness and because of the fruit of her womb, all generations shall call her blessed. There is no lustre too high, no majesty too splendid, no praise too extravagant which, remaining the glory of a creature, is too high for the majesty which is in the Mother of God, and the vocation bespoken by her womb.  In this sense we interpret the words of the Apocalypse of St. John:

“And a great portent appeared in heaven,

a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet,

and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

She was with child, and she cried out in her pangs of birth ...

She brought forth a male child who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron,

but her child was caught up to God, and to his throne.”  (Rev 12: 1-5)

The “woman” here seen in prophetic vision, is the earth, who indeed is clothed with the sun, and has the moon “under her feet”, and is crowned with twelve stars, which number denotes in Hebrew a perfect complement. She is with child, because Christ is decreed within the fabric of the laws of the universe and of this earth, and the earth is impatient through the needs and the sorrows of men, to be delivered of Him, and she, this earth, and through it the whole material order, brought forth a man- child in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who was to rule all nations with unquestioned and unchallengeable power, the iron rod of Divine Intelligence and Authority. Her son, after the manifestation of his kingship, its contradiction upon the Cross, and its vindication in the Resurrection, was taken up to God, and to his throne.

APPENDIX 3

Nature and the Supernatural

It will have been obvious that we diverge sharply in our synthesis of theology, philosophy, and science, from the concept of “nature” usually presented today in theological manuals.   It will have become clear that for us nature is not accidentally, but intrinsically related to the supernatural order, and that we do not accept the presumption, essentially Aristotelian, that every created nature, spiritual or material, has a ‘natural’ sufficient finality in the same order as its perfectibility, or potency.  There is no need for panic at this divergence, it represents only a return to the substantial teaching of a much older tradition than the present dominant theology, for the school of thought which at present prevails most widely among theologians, goes back only to the seventeenth century, and has always been the storm-point of acrimonious disputes in the theology of grace.

The tradition to which we return  - and there are many retracing their way back along the same path at present - is beyond any doubt the tradition of St. Augustine, of the more important mediaeval schoolmen, and in particular of St. Thomas Aquinas.  The more usual concept today of the relation between the natural and the supernatural orders, would make of man a “pure nature” self-defined within a created order to a connatural end within the same order of act and potency.  To this natural end the nature is held to possess a true “exigency” upon God, after its creation.  The relation between this “natural” order, and the “supernatural” order of man’s de facto destiny, is therefore “accidental”, and is taught explicitly as such.

Created in grace or constituted in grace?

Close to this view, it is interesting to remark a less important, but significant, controversy among modern theologians, which arises from the same school of thought: the question whether, in strict propriety, they should speak of man as originally “created in grace”, (creatus in gratia) or rather “constituted in grace” (constitutus in gratia).  While the majority prefer, and defend the traditional formula “created in grace”, it must be obvious that the logicians among them who raised the point have really won the day.  If the supernatural order is merely accidental to the nature and its substantial order, then man could only have been “constituted in grace”, for the nature must first exist in its essentials in order to be capable of receiving any “accidents”, whether natural or supernatural.

This controversy is significant because it marks the complete dichotomy between nature and the supernatural taught by so many modern theologians, and points also to the stresses between the traditional ethos of Catholic thought, and the development of this post-reformation “liberalism” in theology, which have increasingly manifested themselves.  For such theologians, while we live in a “supernatural” order, and while man at no time existed under any other order, this supernatural destiny of man is simply an external accident in relation to his essential being, so that the whole economy of God, and the majesty of Christ the King, rests upon an “accidental order”, which is only another example of how the facts and life of the Church sit uneasily together with this type of theology.  They teach moreover, that this “pure nature” which is man in his essence as a man, is the status, undamaged and entire in all essentials, in which men are born today, so that “concupiscence” however privative a factor in the order of grace, is good, because natural, in this basic state of “pure nature”.

The physical “integrity” of man’s nature is for them something which is entirely a gratuitous gift of grace, non-relative to the relation between matter and spirit in man as such.   They teach this not merely of integrity in that comprehensive sense in which it means the total content and end of man’s powers, vivified by grace, and directed to the Beatific Vision.   If they were speaking only of this comprehensive  connotation  of  man’s  original  integrity  we  could  not  disagree,  save  perhaps  to challenge the philosophical grounds on which they based their analysis of what is otherwise of Faith.

Most modern theologians however go much farther, and make integrity, in that restricted sense in which it means the harmonious obedience of matter to the spirit in man, also a purely gratuitous gift of grace in such a way that such integration between the natural complements of man's nature is again non-essential and non-relative to the definition of human nature as substantially good.  In this we must entirely disagree with them.

The concept of “pure nature” – from Aristotle not Aquinas

In the first place, the very concept of a “pure nature” which begins, and ends, in the created order with a finality proportionate to that entity in justice, is not an element of Catholic tradition as it has come down to us from the Fathers of the East, or the West.  It is not the common doctrine of the schoolmen, and in the Eastern Christian Church is still today unknown and unconsidered.  It is a purely extraneous element of speculation borrowed from Aristotle, a development of his philosophy altogether valid, in Aristotle, but out of keeping with the correction of that philosophical system in the Christian schools, introduced by Aquinas.   Perhaps, but we do not concede it, this concept may be defended as a development of St. Thomas’s own philosophy in so far as his fundamental definitions of substance, of act, and of potency, are those of Aristotle. The remarkable fact remains that St. Thomas teaches exactly the opposite for very clear reasons, reasons which introduce a basic correction into Aristotle’s philosophy which is overlooked by many modern Catholic theologians.

The fault seems to us to lie not with St. Thomas the Master, but with his later disciples.   It has become so customary among modern theologians to claim a foundation in St. Thomas for anything at all they wish to present, that we may be pardoned if we suspect that they have been also in the past more anxious to wear the Thomist colours,  and thus guarantee their theological respectability,  than to examine the thought of the Master on its merits. Of one thing we are certain, and we will defend our position very strongly from the works of St. Thomas, namely, that concerning the final end of man, and the nature of Original Sin as an intrinsic lesion, St. Thomas taught the same doctrine as we are here defending.

The theological speculation today concerning the relation of nature and the supernatural, was developed only after the bitter theological controversies with the Calvinists and the strict Lutherans.  It represents an  exaggerated answer to what  was  found to  be a troublesome dilemma.   The post- Reformation  Catholic  theologians,  already  heavily infected  with  a  Nominalist  outlook  since  the decline in the schools of the prestige of Scholasticism, failed to see how they could admit that nature was “intrinsically wounded” by sin, without being forced back and back, by the stern logic of Calvin, to the point where they would have conceded a “total corruption” of man already defined at Trent as heresy.

It was natural in the circumstances that they should re-examine the philosophical definition of man’s “nature”, and should seize upon, and exploit, any element which offered a more complete answer to their adversaries.  As so often happens in human affairs, a movement of the extreme “left” prompts a reaction towards the extreme “right”, and truth is slain in the strife.

Catholic/Protestant controversy on Nature and Grace

For the theologians of the seventeenth century, Aristotle’s concept of nature was a blessing in their controversies with the Protestants, and the more so because in him one sternly coherent logician could be counter-poised against another, against Calvin.   Theologians could now by-pass the treacherous defiles of Augustinianism, where many a would-be champion of orthodoxy, like Jansen, had so easily lost his way.   The dispute could be so simply resolved by the concept of a created nature, a “pure nature”, which had no possible claim on the actual destiny accorded men by God, and a “supernatural order” into which man was accidentally elevated.   These two states stood opposed as an order of natural justice, against an order of super-natural charity.

After sin, the nature of man remained substantially as good as before, if it was “wounded” at all, and in deference to ancient formulas, the not very happy expression had to be accepted, the “wound” was extrinsic and accidental, it consisted in the deprivation of a state which, in the intention of God, man was meant to enjoy with its proper privileges and supreme end.  It still remained true after the fall, that while man was thereby robbed of a state of holiness due to him in the original intention of God, he had merely lost, relative to his nature, an “accident”;  his nature was as good as ever, and it was impossible to speak of man being “corrupt by nature”.   It was all very neat, though not very traditional, and it was full of loopholes which did not much worry an age when all monarchs were absolutists, and legalism and formalism dominated every aspect of life.

This  theory  made  the  descent  of  Original  Sin  simply  an  arbitrary  curse  of  God.    Whether theologians held the “Pact” theory or the “Moral Imputation” theory of the descent of Original Sin by generation, it was still an arbitrary curse put upon a man for something he had never had any part in.

He was “condemned” to inherit Original Sin, even though his soul, the only element capable of responsible imputation in any way, was only now created pure by the pure Being of God!

There was added to this contradiction the teaching that man, body and soul, was “naturally” pure in the state of nature at birth, and so why, in an order of Redemption always claimed by universal Christian tradition to be in Christ the complete victory over “sin and death”, men should be born without the “accident” of grace and the supernatural order, born so that the fate of un-baptized babies worried the theologians more than a little, simply did not, and could not appear.  God had so decreed it; and that, without any softening whatever, was the only answer they could give.

The more recent theory that original justice was to be in the beginning an “inheritable accident” which Adam lost, and we in consequence could not inherit, is equally open to criticism.  If nature is not wounded intrinsically, there can be no direct, and real, relation between the material seed, and the “accident” of God’s grace.  Matter cannot be a factor which receives directly “supernatural” graces, until it has been informed by the soul.  A material element, of its own, is only capable of material accidents, not of spiritual ones.  Once more the theologians meant that Original Sin was to be regarded “as if it were” an inheritable accident, but in effect they taught only an arbitrary imputation of sin by God.  Indeed, once they agreed that man was a perfect and integral “pure nature”, what connection “Original Sin” could have at all with natural generation, directly, simply does not appear, for neither positively, nor privatively, has matter, or generation, anything entitative and real to do with the incurring of this state of sin.

The Aristotelian concept of nature should not have been so incautiously lifted bodily into theology. Aristotle erred concerning God, the relation of the creature to God, creation in time, and the destiny of a spiritual nature in itself.  Aristotle knew nothing of God as revealed in Christ, and it was inevitable that the whole orientation of the spiritual nature to its end, should be deficient in his philosophy.  The mind of God measures the nature of man, and without Christ, no philosopher can avoid grace errors. God is a “supernatural end” in his very definition as the Supreme Being, and any nature whose end terminates in a union the object of which is God, in any degree, is in a “supernatural order”.

The modern scholastics should have remembered their own principle of “the object specifies the act.” God is a supernatural object, the supernatural object. He is never capable of being the “natural” end in any way of a created nature.  God is not divided against Himself, He is not able to be in two really distinct objectives the “natural” and the “supernatural” end of a spiritual being.  If God were the “natural” end of a “pure nature” in any sense which was a real end in God, an end which in act terminated at and in the Divine Nature, a created thing would have a necessary, substantial exigency upon God, which is against the Faith, as well as against reason.

The only alternative is to say, if a state of “pure nature” is the minimum substantial end of man, that the end of man, as a nature, is not really and actually in God in any sense, a thesis so contrary to the whole of Christian teaching, and Christian theological thought, that no man would dare to propose it.

The final end of a spiritual being is God, and only God

It is impossible for a spiritual being to have a “natural” end in God as Aristotle’s philosophy would insinuate, or to be a “pure Nature” in the sense which so many theologians presume.  The final end of any spiritual being is God and only God.   The concept of a “pure nature” presumes that spiritual beings can have a natural end, to which they possess a natural exigency, proportionate to their nature. This is not so, a created being of intellect and will has only one intelligible finality -  the possession of God in fruition as its final cause, and such an end can never be proportionate to any created nature, nor within its natural powers to attain.

Do we therefore state a paradox?  We say that the only ultimate end of a spiritual nature is God, and at the same time that such an end always exceeds the powers, exigencies, or proportion of its nature and natural powers?  Yes, we say precisely that.  We are saying that God makes spiritual beings for Himself, and that man has no claim upon that end, the only conceivable end of his being, and that this end totally exceeds the powers of his unaided nature to achieve.  If this paradox seems absurd, we beg  for patience,  for  we believe it  can  be shown that  the consequences  of any other view  are ultimately absurd, and that the view we propose will alone stand philosophic and theological scrutiny.

The underlying presumption of the theory of a “pure nature” with a concomitant natural end, is that any nature at all has an intrinsic exigency upon its proportionate end, once actualized;  an exigency in the order of necessity,     and therefore of justice.   This implies reductively that once a being is actualized by God, it has upon Him a necessitating claim to its proportionate end.   This is not a tenable proposition, for the entire order of created being, spiritual and material alike, is at all times, and in all respects, relative to God only in the order of His own charity, or free-will.  Created being is always non-necessary intrinsically before God, neither can it oblige Him at any time in any sense.

The profound Thomist teaching of the real distinction between “esse” and “essentia” in created things implies just that  -  the created is intrinsically non-necessary relative to God, and a substantially non-necessary entity can never intrinsically determine the alone Necessary. An exigency can only exist when two entities are mutually, and entitatively inter-defined in one order.   The one “must receive of its nature”, the other either “must” or “ought” to give, of its own nature. Whether it be “must” or “ought” there remains an intrinsic obligation, and intrinsic obligation entails subjective potency.

In the purely material order, because it is not free, all exigencies are of physical, substantial inter- determination, in the order of “must”.  There is, within the “closed” order of the purely material which can have no personal end in God Himself, a true order of natural exigencies among themselves, because to material causality, and material finality they are substantially defined;  this is within one same order of act and potency.

God and His creatures are not thus related as cause, and as end, in the same order of act and subjective potency.  When God creates the non-necessary spiritual entity, it is a distinct nature, within, as a substance, a “natural” order, but its material and its final causality are not in the same order, for its end, and its orientation to that end, is the “supernatural order” which is objectified in God Himself as a Being possessed by the created spirit.  God cannot be susceptible of any necessary determination, any obligation of “ought” in respect of any creature, for there is nothing in the non-necessary which can necessitate God, nor is there any sort of subjective potency whatever in God.

Man is naturally ordained in charity to the supernatural

An entity which does not admit of subjective potency, the principle of intrinsic relativity, cannot be determined in justice by an exigency of a created nature in either a natural of a supernatural order. God cannot will anything but Himself with intrinsic necessity; otherwise He would not be God.  God wills to create in His own free charity, and He wills, in so creating in an order of charity, to bring created beings to their determined perfection within the same one order, in one continuous process. The created natures of angels or of men are created, in the order of a gift, of freedom, of charity relative to God as their destiny. This order is totally one of love, not one of natural exigencies.  When God creates a being made in His own image and likeness, made substantially like the nature of God through the powers of intellect and will, that being can have no other natural finality but God Himself. Because that being is not necessary to God, but willed to be through love, therefore it is naturally ordained, in charity alone, to the Supernatural, ordained to God who totally exceeds its nature, and upon whom it has at once a total dependence, in that order of charity for being, and for intelligibility, but no intrinsic claims.

Theologians agree that man is made in the “image of God” because as a being defined through intellect and will he participates, though contingent, in powers which in God are synonymous with Necessary Being.  It is only because of this substantial analogy of being that man can be united with God in the Beatific Vision at all.  God is The Supernatural, by definition of His Being, and a creature which is related only to God as its final end, is substantially relative in the order of charity to the supernatural, for charity, not justice, defines its nature.

The error of de Bay, of Pelagius, and of every other heretic who has denied the gratuitousness of the historic end of man, consists radically either in the attribution to a creature of a natural or supernatural exigency upon God in the order of God’s own being, or else in a theology, essentially legalist, of justification by the “imputation” of merit upon a legal title.  The theologians whom we criticize rebut this dangerous error by denying any exigency in a ‘supernatural’ order, but admitting a ‘natural’ exigency to a ‘natural’ end which does not exist, never did exist, and because it still attempts to bind God with a created chain, we say never could exist.  God is not bound by chains of intrinsic obligation whether fashioned in heaven, or upon earth.

The witness of St. Thomas Aquinas

At this stage we can well hear St. Thomas Aquinas upon the subject;  there are several passages which would serve our purpose, but if one only must be selected, we choose.

“A debt can be understood in a twofold manner.  The one is the debt  which derives  from     merit, and  which  is  referred  to  a  person  to  whom  it  belongs  to  perform  works  meritorious  of themselves of due reward;  according to the text of St. Paul: “To him who labours,     wages       are imputed according to debt and due, not according to grace and favour.” (Rom.4: 4)   The second meaning of the word “debt” concerns what  is due according to the condition of a nature itself, as, for example, when we say that it is due to man that he have reason, and whatever else pertains to human nature.  But in neither case is something said so to be due because God is under  obligation to a creature, but rather in the sense that the creature must be subject to God, so that His     divine plan (ordinatio) may be fulfilled in it; and this means that a given nature should  possess     definite conditions, and properties, and that if it posit a given action, given  consequences should    ensue. The gifts of nature therefore, are not due in the first meaning of the word “debt”, but they   are  due in the second.  Supernatural gifts however,  are not “due” in either   manner, and  hence,  in     a special connotation are they called “graces”.”(2a. 2ae. Q3. Art.1. ad2)

We call the attention of the theologian to the statement that in neither sense of the word “debt” which here might well be translated “exigency” is God under any obligation, any relation of justice, to the creature.  St. Thomas states carefully that even in the sense in which the integrity of natural powers is due to a nature, it is due only “in as much as the creature must be subjected to God, that it may realise his divine ordinance in itself.”  In other words, in so far as the nature must, in its substance, be equated with the intention of its exemplar, the creating Intellect and Will of God.  In this second sense only, is there any question of a “due” and even then, not a due arising from the created which obliges God, but a necessity in the creature, as totally subject to God for its being, to realise in its actuality the ordinance of its essence in the Intellect of God.  Supernatural gifts, because they do not constitute the entity as a being outside of its cause, but draw it towards an end which overpasses nature, are not “due” in either sense.  If supernatural gifts were due to the integrity and substantial definition of an entity, they would necessarily belong to it, constitute it, and could never be lost unless it were annihilated.   In the last analysis, such an intrinsic claim upon the Being of God would equate the creature with God, as, in the last analysis, does the error of de Bay.  We quote this passage to indicate how carefully St. Thomas removes from God any relation of “justice”, “obligation” or “exigency” in any meaning of the word “debt” when he discusses the relation between God and creatures.

At the same time, a spiritual creation can, and must have, an end in God.   A “must” in the order of its nature, and in the order of charity, for God made that substance relative to such an end, and this relativity stands revealed in its substance, powers, and final orientation. It must have such an end, not by exigencies of nature, but “in as much as the creature must be subjected to God, that it may realise the divine ordinance (manifest) in itself.”

A creature must exist before it can attain its ultimate finality; and that created existence, or “esse” is  not  identical  with  God.    Neither  is  the  fact  of  being  created  necessarily  conjoined  with  the realisation of its created finality.  If supernatural gifts were “due” to a created nature as constitutive and integrating powers, neither angels nor men could be damned.  The essential distinction between ‘nature’ and the ‘supernatural order’ rests not on a twofold possible order of created end, but on two other twin factors.  The first is the real distinction between God and creatures; the second is that the created is not necessary to God in its nature nor able to determine Him. And, inversely, because God is not an element of the created substance, nor necessary to its created being in its nature as such. God, from the very powers of that nature, although He is the perfecting principle of that nature, can be rejected.  Damnation, as well as fulfilment, is possible to the created spirit.

Once constituted in its ‘nature’ created only relative to the ‘supernature’, God must offer, and the creature must accept.  God offers Himself, in charity, but the creature is not necessitated to accept, for to be, and to be perfected, are neither one thing, nor the same one order.  Nature is a distinct order from the supernatural, but relative, as a thing made imperfect, and expecting perfection, only to the supernatural.   The co-operation of the created is essential to the continuance of the economy of creation unto consummation, and the free nature can refuse, can rebel, even to the limit of substantial loss of the perfection to which God made it relative in charity:  even, that is, to hell.

Man’s natural desire for God

There are too many passages in which St. Thomas clearly makes the nature of man relative as a nature

only to a supernatural consummation to admit of exhaustive quotation, nevertheless a few places, quoted only in part, will suffice to show that St. Thomas thought in a mental ethos quite different from that of so many modern theologians:

“Likewise, our desire of the good cannot be sated in this  life; for a man  naturally desires       the good he possesses to be permanent.  But the goods of this present life are transient,    they        pass even as life passed away, that very life which we love, and would have last forever; for a man naturally shrinks from death.  Therefore it is impossible to have true beatitude in this life. And the argument is confirmed if we consider that in which above  all, beatitude does consist, namely the vision of the essence of God, to which a man cannot come in this life, as we have shown above. From all of which consideration, it is manifest that in this life a man cannot lay hold on true, and perfect, happiness.” (1a. 2ae. Q.5. art.3.)

It will be seen that man’s natural desire for happiness is related by St. Thomas to the one permanent Good.  It is because there is no permanent good given to man in this life, not even mortal life itself, that St. Thomas relates the natural desire of man for his perfect happiness, to the next life, and to the Beatific Vision.  Let us also take such passages as these:

Objection “It seems that man can reach beatitude by natural means, for a nature does not lack  what is necessary for it, and nothing is more necessary to man than the means of pursuing his ultimate end.   Therefore human nature cannot be deficient in this; a man must be able to obtain true happiness by his natural powers.”

Reply “I answer that even as nature has not failed man in his necessities because it has not clothed him with natural hair, and organic weapons, like other animals, for it has given him a head, and hands, by which he can acquire these things for himself, so also man is not naturally lacking in what he needs, because nature has not given him any principle by which he might reach his true happiness:  for this was not possible.  But nature itself, has given him free-will by which he might turn himself to God, who would render him happy.”

Objection. (substance of  in brief) “To be truly happy is the perfect operation of any nature:  but it belongs to one and the same nature to begin any vital operation, and to perfect the same. Therefore it belongs to man to perfect the operation of acquiring his happiness    through, and in, those same powers by which he begins it.”

Reply . “I answer that when the potential, and the perfect to which it is directed are of the same order, they can be effected by the same causative principle;  but this need not apply when they are of different orders.  For not everything which can effect some     disposition in a potential, towards its end, can also confer the final perfection of the potential inception.  Now that imperfect operation which is within a man’s natural power, is not of one order with that perfect operation which is the ultimate beatitude of man, since the genus, or order, of any active operation depends upon the object to which it is directed (i.e. God.).” (1a. 2ae. Q5. Art.4. ad.lam et 2 - 3 am.)

The whole passage should be read here, not merely our two brief transcripts.  It will be seen that St. Thomas relates the nature of man directly, and from its essence, to an end in the supernatural, above its natural created order.   If St. Thomas had thought in the mental climate of so many modern theologians, that acute and concise genius could so much more easily, and correctly, have answered all the difficulties by saying:  “If man’s nature were directed to his natural and proportionate end in a state of pure nature, I concede the objection, but man’s being is directed to a supernatural end which inheres as an accident, in relation to his nature, and is above his natural order, therefore, etc.”  In fact however, St. Thomas says nothing even remotely akin to this.  St. Thomas clearly believes that there is no “alternative” natural end for man, other than a union with God which attains to the essence of God, and is “comprehensive”;   a “laying hold on” God, which is not the fruit of reasoning or the contemplation of abstract ideas:

“Therefore, in true happiness three things must concur, namely vision, which is the perfect cognition of man’s intelligible end:  comprehension, which implies the presence of that end:  and delight, or fruition, which means the abiding of the lover, in his beloved.” (Vg.la. 2 ae. Q.4. art.2.)

God is the final end of Man

Can any theologian, considering the nature of the soul, and its powers, deny that these three elements must concur in any final happiness “natural” to man?  If God is the final end of man in any order of nature, how could these elements be realised even in a union much less than the intuitive fruition of the Divine Essence,  without  their being nevertheless  in  a “supernatural  order”?    How can  God communicate Himself to man in any order, unless that created nature be lifted up by God to Himself? Whatever degree of these three attributes listed by St. Thomas exists between God and man, the relationship remains in the supernatural order, for it is specified by a fruition in God Himself.  Upon this we must hear St. Thomas again:

“I say there is no ultimate, and perfect happiness, save in the intellectual vision of the Essence of God, … First indeed, because a man is not perfectly blessed while there remains to him something to be sought and desired.  ...  Now the understanding of a man, is the “quiddity”, the essence of a thing, according to the usual term.  If then, any intellect knows the essence of some effect, but from it cannot know the essence of its cause, cannot that is, know what exactly the cause is in its own substance, that intellect is not said to know the cause wholly, and without qualification, although from the effect    itself it knows the cause as existent.  And therefore there remains naturally in a man, the  desire, since he knows the effect, and that it has a cause to know also concerning the cause, exactly what it is in itself …..  If therefore human intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows of God only that He is, the perfection of his human knowledge does not attain the First Cause in itself (simpliciter), but there remains still within him a natural desire of seeking the very cause; from whence his happiness is incomplete.   For perfect happiness therefore it is required that the intellect attain to the very essence of the First Cause, and so will a man have his perfection through union with God as the object of his soul, in which alone the blessedness of a man consists, as we have said above in the preceding article, and in the first article of this third question.” (From the corpus articuli of 1a. 2ae. Q.3. art.8)

Also, in dealing with substantially the same matter, St. Thomas is even more devastatingly clear: “Since  the  final  happiness  of  man  consists  in  the  operation  of  his  highest  power,  namely intelligence, if no created intellect could ever attain the Essence of God, a created  intellect        will either never attain beatitude, or else its beatitude consists in something other than God;  which is alien to the Faith.  For in Him is the final perfection of the rational creature, who is the source and principle of its existence as actual.   For a thing is perfect only in so far, and in as much as, it approximates to the principle of the perfection which it participates.  ….  Now there is innate (in est) in man a natural desire   of knowing the cause, when he perceives the effect, and from this there derives wonder, and curiosity, in man.     If then, the intellect of the rational creature cannot attain the first cause of things, then the desire of the nature remains without purpose.  So we must concede, without quibble, (simpliciter) that the Blessed see the very essence of God.” (1a.2.ae. Q12. Art.1)

This is a very striking passage, because St. Thomas quite obviously does not envisage any other end as possible for man except the beatific vision of the essence of God, if indeed the end of man is God Himself.  This is reasonable truth, for God is the most pure and most simple of spirits, and either He is attained as an end, or He is not attained; there is no intermediate state of comprehension of God which while not in any degree a true union with God in Himself, will yet suffice to justify the proposition that God is directly the end of man.  In this passage St. Thomas rejects all knowledge about God as a satisfactory end for the spiritual creature for he requires an actual union which entails vision, comprehension, and fruition.

In other passages, not quoted here, but commonplace texts of quotation, he rejects as insufficient a knowledge obtained through an “infused species”, which would be the only intelligible alternative left to the advocates of a “pure nature” and an end in essentially a “natural” order.  We do not consider it necessary even to quote these passages as references, partly because they are so well known, and partly because any such alternative is ruled out of court for St. Thomas when he requires for true happiness what no deep philosopher could fail to require:-  vision and comprehension of the object of fulfilment, from which arises fruition, the abiding of the lover in his beloved.  Nobody can abide in an “infused species”, it is not a thing, only representative of a thing, and in the unique case of the Divine Nature, there can be no adequate “species infusa” or “representiva”, for nothing created adequately represents God.

This natural desire for God is innate

Lastly, St. Thomas relates man’s natural desire of knowing God to the essence of God “simpliciter”.

He does so straightforwardly here, and in many parallel passages, and it is impossible to gainsay what so precise a Doctor makes so clear.  We must not be presented with the plea that when St. Thomas clearly speaks of an “innate natural desire” he really means a “supernatural desire which is not innate”.  There is no Doctor of the Church in either the East or the West who is the superior of St. Thomas in clarity and in accuracy of exposition.  It would be a derogation from St. Thomas’s genius to imply that so profound a thinker failed in this context to make a distinction of the very greatest importance, but rather wrote many passages which are grossly misleading in their import.

If many modern Thomists do not follow their master in this part of his theology, for reasons they consider good and weighty, let them say so honestly, for no man, neither they, nor St. Thomas, can write at length of the most recondite things of God without some human errors.  Whatever they do, they should not suggest that in the pages of St. Thomas “white” is to be interpreted as if it meant “black”.

There is only one sincere interpretation of St. Thomas’s teaching upon the relation between the natural created order and the supernatural order to an end in God, one namely, which makes nature relative solely to a supernatural order, and one which recognizes no “dues” or “exigencies” at all in the creature upon the Creator.  St. Thomas concedes, as we have proved, that nature not only is, but must be unable to attain of its own principles the only end intelligible for it in the light of those principles One must say that a wisdom, and a providence, born solely of charity defines the very essence of man, so that man is not fully intelligible except in the light of God’s supernatural order of charity.  At once of course we deny in this the strict autonomy of philosophy and theology, but we do not intend to weep any tears over that when God created all things in one total economy of creation, one "“communion of saints"” one communion of love from angels to atoms, He had never even heard of Aristotle, and that, we think, explains a lot of things.

Is immunity from concupiscence natural to Man?

Another important matter in which we cannot concur with the dominant school of modern western theology, concerns of course the relation between ‘nature’ and the ‘supernatural order of grace’ in respect of the physical integrity of man’s nature originally.  When our concept of the relation between the natural and the supernatural is so different from definitions developed from the Aristotelianism of St. Thomas divorced from his Augustinianism, it is hard to present the case simply.  Once we deny any sort of exigency upon God in created natures, and relate the created nature in an order of gratuitous charity to a supernatural end only, every natural created attribute in man, especially one like immunity from concupiscence, which entails the freedom from sin that man could never have maintained without habitual grace, everything in man is within, and depends upon, the supernatural order.

Perhaps we can make a beginning of the presentation of our point of divergence, by asking whether or not immunity from concupiscence, or physical integrity, is constitutively natural to man “due” to man, “that the nature, as in all things subjected God, may realise in itself the divine ordinance of its substance”.  (St. Thomas, cited earlier), or whether such integrity is something beyond, beside, and “accidental” to the constitution of man’s nature as created.  If we put the question in this way, then undoubtedly we will reply that perfect substantial harmony between body and soul, in the order of the finality of man’s person is, in any and every hypothesis, a constitutive necessity of his being.

We remark that many theologians presume that the “blind” or “spontaneous” reaction of physical desire to an object of appetite, irrespective of the proportion of the desire or its object to the general good of the whole of a material substance, is perfectly “natural” to man, and follows the nature, laws, and material relativity of matter.  This is crudely wrong, and if unreasoning animals acted thus in their natural life-cycles, the whole order of animal life below man would collapse in chaos.   These theologians have failed to observe that the living organism does not find the total law of its being within itself, innately, but is subjected to the environment, naturally, and that it is equally natural in all forms of material life below man to respond to such laws which diminish pleasurable appetite, as to respond to those stimuli which excite it.   It is remarkable how closely in material life, the sexual appetite especially, is controlled in a direct relation to the life-cycle of the species. There is none of that irresponsible lust, and seeking of pleasure divorced from responsible function, which makes so many men monsters of iniquity.

It is not correct to think, with certain theologians, and many materialistic scientists, that because material life is determined and mechanistic, it is a chaos of wanton lusts.  It is true that left to itself, or removed from its proper environment, these determined physical mechanisms will react irregularly and with unbalance to stimuli, simply because they are mechanisms of nature, and their full determinant is lacking.  One cannot judge of the response of material nature to its proper good in its proper environment from what can be seen of the behaviour of the artificial race of the dog, living in the artificial environment of the street!  Any elementary study of biology suffices to show, over the balanced realm of the animal kingdom, that there are strong material determinants of countless types by which the organically determined body of the animal is held within the functional round of the cycle proper to its species.

Disordered desire is the fruit of Original Sin

Before man was man, this rule was true of the animal flesh through which his body derived.  It was not only sinless flesh, but wholly good, conditioned to a good end contained in the intention of God, and realised in the actual existent.  Nothing is wanton in Nature, the body and its environment are complementary, and active complements, of wise determination to end.   The body of man was not suddenly abandoned to a state of indifference to physical determination when it came under the princely rule of the soul!   The soul is the natural control and direction of the flesh, even in a hypothetical state of “pure nature”.  The determining force of the Law of Finality expressed through other material determinants upon a given living thing, was much more adequately replaced by the intelligent soul, and it was both natural, and necessary, for the material element to respond.  It had always responded fully to God’s control, God’s wisdom, embodied in material laws, and on what possible principle could it have refused to obey such wisdom, and law, personified in the soul, unless sin had intervened?

These  theologians  define  concupiscence  not  indeed  as  a  resistance  of  the  flesh  to  reason intrinsically, but rather as an indifference of the flesh to the mandates of the soul.   But this “indifference” is reductively a positive contradiction, for it always shows itself as a positive response of fleshly desire against the will of the soul, even in the state of grace.  Can we really believe, even as philosophers, let alone as theologians, that God, with whose Being wisdom and perfect good is synonymous, can will to make a composite nature which is only one person, with one finality, but in whose nature one element is “naturally” indifferent to that finality, and reductively a principle of antithesis to that finality; whatever order that finality is in?

God cannot create a nature divided against itself, and against His Wisdom:  to urge otherwise is to violate the principle of contradiction in metaphysics.  We respectfully suggest to all theologians, that apart from contexts which were heretical, or suspect, this objection to the presumption that a being with only one finality, realised through intelligence, can admit of an indifference, or a contradiction to that finality of its essential nature, is a metaphysical contradiction, and violates the definition of being and its convertibility with “one”, “good”, and “true”.  On grounds of metaphysics alone, we contend that our objection is unanswerable.  We have found here also, that St. Thomas does not differ an iota from the thesis we defend, he writes:

“I reply that the word “habit” has a twofold meaning.  There is the habit by which a power is directed to its acts, and in this sense the sciences and the virtues of both mind and body are called ‘habitual’.   The other sense of the word ‘habit’ is that in which it means the disposition of a composite being in relation to its parts, according to which it  stands  well,  or  ill,  in  respect  of something;   above all, when such a disposition is expected of the nature, as for instance in the dispositions which are health and sickness; and in this sense, Original Sin is a ‘habit’.  For it is a certain disordered disposition,  which derives from the rupture of that original harmony in which consisted the condition (ratio) of the state of original justice;  just as likewise bodily illness is a certain ‘disordered complexion’ of body by which is ruptured that balance in which the  essence  of good health consists.   For this reason Original Sin is called a ‘sickness of the nature’ (languor naturae).   To the first objection, I say then, that just as physical sickness has a negative side, because  it  takes  away the  balance  in  which  health  consists,  and  a  positive  side,  to  wit,  the disorganization of the physical properties of the body, so also Original Sin manifests both the loss of original holiness, and together with this a disorganized disposition  of the powers of the soul as principle of life (partium animae)   from which this state is not a sheer privation, but is a certain state of degeneration (habitus corruptus).” (1a. 2ae. Q82. Art.1.)

Original Sin an intrinsic lesion in human nature

Who can read this crystal clear passage, and honestly doubt that, for St. Thomas, Original Sin was as much an intrinsic lesion of man’s nature, as the bodily sickness to which he likens it in a perfect analogy of essential proportion, is a true intrinsic hurt?   He is careful to make sure that we cannot understand his words to mean merely a “privation of original justice”, no, he states explicitly that Original Sin has a positive side, which consists in the disorder of the “parts of the soul”.   These powers can only, in St. Thomas’s philosophy, be referred to the powers of the body and soul alike for St. Thomas admits of only one substantial act, or form, in man - the spiritual soul.  Moreover, the rarely used phrase “partium animae” would not be accurate unless St. Thomas was speaking of the soul as the “act” which informs the total powers and functions of a man.

For the theologians whom we criticize, Original Sin is nothing more than a “sheer privation”. They fall into two classes, those who teach that human nature is “extrinsically wounded”   (vulneratio extrinseca)  by  sin,  in  as  much  as  the  loss  of  the  supernatural  “accidents”  of  grace  and  its consummation in glory has lowered the actual historic condition of man, and those who, insisting upon the identity of “pure nature” as substantially the same in Adam as in us, prefer not to use the term “extrinsically wounded” with any real content, and only mention it sometimes out of deference to tradition.   This latter class openly teach that the substance of Original Sin consists merely in a privative factor.

At bottom both groups teach the same thing, but the extremist minority is more consistent.   An “extrinsic lesion”, connected with an accident of a totally different order, the supernatural order, is a meaningless phrase.  If a nature is truly wounded at all, it must be damaged in the content of what it is, intrinsically therefore.  No nature, remaining whole and entire in its substantial content as such, as a “pure nature”, can be said to be “wounded” by the non-possession of what is not necessary to it nor directly relative to it.  The historic pedigree of the phrase “nature vulnerata” goes back beyond Trent, to the Schoolmen, and St. Augustine, and everybody knows quite well that in that ancient context it meant a true lesion of the nature.   Many modern theologians have emptied all meaning out of the phrase, but although they have abandoned the traditional speculative teaching, they are embarrassed by the obvious break with the past that the abandonment of such once coherent phrases would clearly manifest.

This sickness calls for redemption and interior healing

What we have taught in the previous chapter, and in this specialised supplement, is the unambiguous doctrine of St. Augustine, of all the prominent schoolmen, and, above all, the clear teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas.  We teach an intrinsic lesion of the nature, negative and positive alike, according to its aspects; a disorganization of human nature from which arises the privation of original justice, which in every man conceived calls for the pardon of God, and the reacceptance given back in baptism.   Nevertheless, the nature is not, cannot possibly be, “corrupt”.   A “languor naturae”, a sickness of the nature, is not a death.

It is because the nature of man, though sick, is still capable of purification and interior healing, that it admitted of redemption, and of an increase of sanctification towards its original end.  This is the most ancient, most traditional, and, we think, most reasonable concept of the detailed nature of Original Sin, its consequences, and its connexion with natural generation.

The pastoral experience of the Church

It is what, in sheer fact, is actually taught, and has always been taught, by us parochial clergy from the pulpit, and within the confessional, and we, with the Faithful, under the Bishops, we are the “teaching Church”  (Ecclesia docens).  The priest about the parish forgets the speculations which he could never truly make real in any event. He always teaches the facts of the Faith, the “Adam historicus” of the Church (man as God made him).   He teaches the people that in Adam all men fell, that the Fall produced concupiscence, that we are thus a fallen and unworthy nature, redeemed by the loving mercy of Christ.  He never even mentions “states of pure nature”, he attempts no nice distinctions between “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” wounding; and in this, according to many theologians, he leads the people gravely astray, because they naturally interpret him according to the simple, common-sense, meaning of his words, and that spontaneous understanding is far removed from an “extrinsic” wounding of an “intact pure nature.”

Our ordinary good Christian people, as every experienced missionary priest knows full well, have, in their struggles and in their sins, a very keen awareness that their nature is fallen, and that they are far from “naturally intact”.  They are willing to concede with the universal tradition of two thousand years of the Faith, that they are fallen indeed,  in every sense that the theologians have, within orthodoxy, proposed.  Their Parish Priest too, made wise, deep, and merciful, by many years of living among human sorrows in the likeness of the crucified Master whom he serves, is well content to agree with his flock in this well-founded attestation of the “sense of the Faithful” (sensus fidelium).