Teleology and the Natural Law – Part IV: Nature, Grace, and Obediential Potency in 20th Century Theology

In 1957, the Jesuit father Karl Rahner published a book titled Natur und Gnade. Although primarily a philosophical and dogmatic theologian, Rahner observes that the topic of his treatise touches on the core of what it means to be human and the actions that one can, properly and formally, describe as human.¹ This rather prophetically-toned volume offers Rahner’s cautionary observations for contemporary theology.² He is intent that human beings not view the moral guidance of the Church as a surrogate-self through whose rulings they may be “freed from themselves.” Rather, the individual person “must know that moral theology and casuistry, however necessary they both may be, are no substitute for the gift of discernment of spirits.”³ This “discernment of spirits,” is the “technique” (or techne, “art”) of “conscience” which enables the individual to apprehend “the demands of this strict individual morality.” Conscience is not merely that “which tells a man’s subjective self the universal norms of ethics and moral theology and applies them to his ‘case.’” Rather, it is also the means “by which the individual hears God’s call to him alone,” and this is something “which can never be fully deduced from universal norms.”⁴ The “discernment of spirits” is not merely “the perfection of the casuistical application of theoretical norms.” More profoundly, “it is the ability to hear and recognize God’s call to this man alone among the many voices all calling him in different directions, the ‘spirits.’”⁵ The truly moral man, for Rahner, is not freed from himself, but is instead freed to himself. This freedom receives concrete expression through a proper exercise of “the burden of having to take initiative and make decisions.”⁶

Rahner does not believe that any potential ambiguity conjoined to moral discernment leads necessarily to moral license. Although he maintains human autonomy in moral discernment, Rahner opposes an antinomian expression of this responsibility that would encourage the individual to do “whatever he wanted” against “the many exactly formulated rules of divine and ecclesiastical moral law.” He is clear:

If induced abortion or contraception can be universally recognized as morally wrong and are declared to be morally wrong by the Church, then there is no appeal against this in the name of individual conscience; as long as it is something objectively right the universal norm must be repeatedly taught to the individual so that he won’t go against it.⁷

What Rahner has in mind precisely is that which is located “within the morally possible and allowable in the abstract.” Therein one finds “a field of individual obligation and individual duty.”⁸ It is within the sphere of the morally possible and allowable that the “danger of an ecclesiastical collectivism is hard upon us; not by the Church overstepping her limits, but by the individual not being able to hold out and bear his responsibility any longer.” Rahner exhorts the individual Christian to cease “clinging onto the Church’s apron-strings.”⁹ The Christian must stop expecting the Church’s moral theologians to do the individual’s moral discernment for him. Here, one might summarize Rahner’s analysis and exhortation as calling for a subjectively located, “charismatic moral theology.”¹⁰ It is within this arena of individuality, grace, and “charismatic action” that the person’s full encounter with God as an individual (albeit an individual living within the community) is legitimately—and fully—realized.¹¹ This work of grace which leads to a “direct dealing” with God can claim the legitimate status as “the beginning of a genuine charismata” within the individual.

Rahner believes that his conception of the dynamics of the moral life is fundamentally incompatible with “neo-scholasticism’s standard view of the relationship between nature and grace.”¹² He considers this account of the nature-grace relationship under the aspect of human experience. Nature is thus defined as “what we experience of ourselves without revelation, for this is nature and nature only… only nature and its acts constitute that life which we experience as ours.”¹³ This neo-scholastic account reduces the nature-grace relationship to that of “two layers laid carefully one on top of the other so that they interpenetrate as little as possible.”¹⁴ The word “interpenetration” is significant. As two layers, the natural and the supernatural run parallel to each other without intersecting at a unified point. Hence, “nature’s orientation towards grace is thought of as negatively as possible… [the orientation is grounded in the] mere absence of a contradiction to such an elevation of nature.”¹⁵ The neo-scholastic account of “nature in itself” retains “only a potentia obedientialis” vis-à-vis man’s “supernatural life and destiny.” A natural account of obediential potency is theologically insufficient because it implies that “nature itself can be fulfilled in a purely natural destiny, content and harmonious in its own sphere, without direct contact with God in the Beatific Vision.”¹⁶ The end, or “destiny,” of human nature is, according to this account, purely natural.

As a result, Rahner suggests that “in practice” the “standard” neo-scholastic view of the nature-grace distinction-relation “is not without danger” of a morally theological sort.¹⁷ He suggests that this articulation of the nature-grace doctrine merits blame for much of the contemporary indifference to the supernatural. “If it is true that the modern lack of interest in the supernatural could only have developed on the basis of this [‘two-layered’] conception of grace (which is of course in some measure nominalistic)?”¹⁸ This suggestion—that the traditional account of nature and grace—is “in some measure nominalistic” merits close attention.¹⁹ Rahner believes that a two-layered conception of nature and grace is nominalistic because, putatively, the order of grace remains something fundamentally extrinsic to the order of human nature even when the former is duly applied to the latter. The latter is never integrally conjoined to the former. Rather, it is simply “added on” as a second layer to the essence of human nature. In this way, human nature is never radically graced. Nor can it be (because of the autonomy of its proper teleological nature and constitution). Within Rahner’s understanding of Neo-Scholasticism’s account of nature-grace doctrine, one can only describe the conjunction and relation as “nominal” at best. The supernatural teleology of grace is thus a non-essential (and essentially foreign) covering for the self-standing natural teleology integrally constitutive of human nature.

In light of this analysis, Rahner’s proposed solution to this moral theological difficulty gains greater intelligibility and elicits a genuine sympathy. Like de Lubac, Rahner was troubled by something truly troublesome.²⁰ And also like de Lubac, Rahner’s solution was to compress radically the natural and the divine into a single unified teleology in which the supernatural alone retained fundamental intelligibility.²¹ Nonetheless, unlike de Lubac, Rahner effects his teleological compression from a different direction. While de Lubac’s compression essentially elevates the natural teleological order to that of a supernatural teleological order, Rahner’s compression existentially lowers the supernatural teleological order to that of the natural teleological order.²² While de Lubac and Rahner share a compressive resolution, the alternative directions of their respective teleological compressions are genuinely (and significantly) distinct. Within de Lubac’s teleological compression, an essentially supernatural desire motivates and informs all human desires and motions, and it renders them supernatural in order. Within Rahner’s teleological compression, all human desires and motions are supernatural in existential (though not essential) constitution.²³ He wants to retain at least the concept of natura pura. De Lubac’s teleological intelligibility is grounded in man’s natural desire for God as supernatural end. Rahner’s intelligibility is grounded in the existential identity of natural teleological intelligibility and supernatural teleological intelligibility. In other words, de Lubac renders supernatural the fundamental teleological essence of human nature, while Rahner renders supernatural the de facto existence of human nature.²⁴ Human nature is supernatural in existence not because it must be so (unlike de Lubac, Rahner does not believe that a state of pure nature is per se unintelligible) but simply that it is actually so.²⁵ De Lubac’s solution to what he perceived to be a radical separation of the human and the divine was to supernaturalize the essential teleology of human nature, and Rahner’s solution was to supernaturalize the existence of human nature itself.²⁶ “The difference between Rahner’s approach and that of de Lubac… can be summarized, very roughly and schematically, in the following way: while Rahner’s thought tends to naturalize the supernatural, de Lubac tends to supernaturalize the natural.”²⁷ Through his account of the supernatural existential, “Rahner strikes a middle ground between the position of de Lubac, which to some seems to compromise the transcendence of grace, and that of the ‘standard [neo-scholastic] view’ which compromised the immanence of grace”²⁸

Speculative precision regarding the exact nature of Rahner’s supernatural existential is difficult to achieve.²⁹ Nonetheless, one thing is certain: “there is in everyone something supernatural, prior to any baptism or act of belief. There is something not proper to human nature as such but to all the children of Adam called to Christ.”³⁰ This, of course, is the foundation for Rahner’s famous notion of “Anonymous Christianity.”³¹ Moreover, the soteriological extension of Rahner’s conception of “Anonymous Christianity” is realized in his “fundamental option” theory.³² In the light of this analysis, Rahner’s diagnosis of (and solution for) the moral theological problems of the twentieth century comes into better view. If the traditional Thomistic account of the nature-grace relationship does actually assert not just the per se teleological integrity of human nature, but also the per se teleological autonomy of human nature (i.e., as per se unconformable to the teleology of grace), then it is indeed “not without danger.” A fundamental “lack of interest in the supernatural could only have developed” if the graced teleology of the supernatural order was completely inaccessible to the essential autonomy of human nature’s natural teleology. One will not be (practically) interested in something that lies wholly outside of his proper order. A facile, nominalistic account of the relationship between the natural and the supernatural cannot produce an authentic, existential dynamism between the two. Certainly, the authentically Catholic theologian should indeed eschew such a nominalistic account of the natural-supernatural dynamism.

De Lubac and Rahner on the Teleology of Obediential Potency

As Rahner was critical of de Lubac’s essential identification of the natural and the supernatural, so de Lubac considered Rahner’s emphasis upon the supernatural existential to be “a useless supposition, whereby the problem of the relationship between nature and the supernatural is not resolved, but only set aside.”³³ Perhaps they are both correct. According to de Lubac, obediential potency accounts merely for “the possibility of miracles” and thus “is not adequate as a definition of the relationship of human nature to the supernatural.”³⁴ Rahner’s teaching on obediential potency is best understood in relation to his account of the supernatural existential. While Rahner clearly disapproves of “neo-scholasticism’s standard view” of obediential potency, he does not reject obediential potency whole and entire. He explains his doctrine regarding the Christian life:

If I have understood these remarks on the Christian life correctly, then it is clear, as the sacraments show, that a Christian does indeed live a tangible and ecclesial life, but that the ultimately Christian thing about this life is identical with the mystery of human existence. And hence we can readily say that the ultimate and most specific thing about Christian existence consists in the fact that a Christian allows himself to fall into the mystery which we call God; that he is convinced in faith and in hope that in falling into the incomprehensible and nameless mystery of God he is really falling into a blessed and forgiving mystery which divinizes us; and that he also knows this on the level of reflexive consciousness and of his explicit faith, and he hopes for it explicitly, and does not just live it out in the anonymity of his actual existence. And to this extent to be a Christian is simply to be a human being, and one who also knows that this life which he is living, and which he is consciously living, can also be lived even by a person who is not a Christian explicitly and does not know in a reflexive way that he is a Christian.³⁵

For Rahner, obediential potency is primarily an active potency and not primarily a passive potency.³⁶ Obediential potency must be seen “as an active longing for God that is present in the human pre-apprehension (Vorgriff) of everything—an openness to for the whole realm of being—that is granted in every act of understanding and constitutes the uniqueness and self-transcendence of the human subject.”³⁷ While not formally identified with the supernatural existential, it is certainly related. “This potentia is, for Rahner, a movement or ordination within the postulated pure nature that constitutes an openness for the supernatural existential.”³⁸ In the life of a human person, grace has always and already de facto activated obediential potency.

De Lubac’s restriction of obediential potency to the mere susceptibility of miracles stems from his denial of the theonomic nature of created reality. Because he denies an authentic place for natural (physical) and natural-moral (authentically human even without grace) teleologies within the eternal law, “miracle” is all that remains. In this case, a “miracle” is not something that assumes, conforms, and orders its object to a higher teleological principle. It is something that completely changes the nature of its object.³⁹ Because de Lubac rendered human nature essentially supernatural, then it cannot stand in passive potency to a supernatural principle. A supernatural teleological principle cannot, strictly speaking, “supernaturalize” an already teleologically supernaturalized being. Hence the appeal to miracles.⁴⁰

For Rahner, obediential potency—as an active potency—is only properly obediential in the abstract and never in the existential. Active potencies do not retain any per se obediential content. A supernatural principle of teleology standing in active potency cannot “supernaturalize” a being that is also constituted as a supernatural principle of teleology standing in active potency. Active principles, by definition, cannot effect a change in beings that are also active in the same teleological plane and order (in this case, the order of grace). This analysis helps explain Rahner’s attention to individual “moral discernment” in the Christian life. If the human subject supernaturally exists in a de facto state of active supernatural potency, then he must look to his own supernatural inclinations, movements, and activity to discern moral order. The supernatural is something he recognizes within himself (perhaps in the form of certain discrete charismatic inspirations, but the subjective location of discernment remains the same). Thus, in order to grasp the structure of certain ambiguous areas of human moral reality, he must turn inward in order to find the moral order God’s grace invites.

In summary, because of his understanding of the essentially supernatural teleology of human nature, de Lubac framed obediential potency as a mere susceptibility to miracles. Obediential potency for Rahner is understood as a de facto always and already activated existential mode of being. In both cases, the supernatural teleology of divine motion (grace) is already and intrinsic (whether essentially or existentially) to the human person. Neither view admits to any (actual) per se natural or moral teleologies. The supernatural teleology the man’s “natural desire for God” or his “supernatural existential” renders such sub-ordinate teleologies either non-existent (de Lubac) or non-applicable (Rahner). In either context, the theonomic teleology of the eternal law is formally and (at least de facto) exclusively supernatural.

An Analysis of Human Nature and Divine Teleology

After the above engagement with Rahner and de Lubac, we now proceed to a consideration of human nature and divine teleology. The teleological order of all created reality is called “theonomic” because God has impressed his ordering wisdom upon the whole of the eternal law. The eternal law (as the ratio aeterna of God himself) is saturated with teleology throughout. Each participation in the eternal law—natural, moral, and supernatural—bears this divinely impressed order. Additionally, each unique participation in the eternal law retains its own proper, per se integrity and identity. However, each initial participation (i.e., natural and moral) stands in potency to direct super-ordering activated by its proximate higher principle. Natural teleology stands in moral potency to moral teleological order, and its moral potency is reduced to moral act through its conformity to human rationality (i.e., the natural law). Moral teleology stands in obediential potency to the supernatural teleological order, and its obediential potency is reduced to theological act through its conformity to divine motion (i.e., grace). In this Thomistic account of the teleology of the eternal law, rational human nature is unique because it is both an active principle (vis-à-vis natural teleology) and a passive principle (vis-à-vis supernatural teleology). The moral potency of natural teleology is not an active principle vis-à-vis moral teleology, nor is it a directly passive principle vis-à-vis supernatural teleology.⁴¹ Supernatural agency per se is not in any way able to be a passive principle vis-à-vis either natural or moral teleology. Additionally, supernatural agency is only indirectly an active principle vis-à-vis natural teleology. Thus, rational human nature is special because it per se retains both active and passive principial orientations (albeit, vis-à-vis different objects).

Natural agency (while necessarily retaining its own essential teleology) stands in moral potency to moral agency. The moral teleology of human action formally assumes and conforms the natural teleology of a given natural object. Through this conformity to a moral end, the natural teleology of a given object becomes the moral object of properly human action. The natural law is the moral-teleological matrix of human action, and it is through moral action that the rational participation in the eternal law proper to the natural law is actualized.

Additionally, moral agency (while necessarily retaining its own essential teleology but in no way fundamentally divided against the per se teleology of natural agency) stands in obediential potency to supernatural agency. The supernatural teleology of divine motion formally assumes and conforms the moral teleology of a given moral object (i.e., moral being). Through this conformity to the formally supernatural end, the moral teleology of a given moral object becomes the supernatural object of properly divine action. The new law (of grace) is the supernatural-teleological matrix of divine motion, and it is through divine motion that the theological participation in the eternal law proper to grace is actualized.⁴² Because of this, only properly ordered moral being and agency stands in obediential potency to supernatural agency (per se).⁴³

A dis-ordered natural being or motion, by definition, stands outside of the teleological order proper to its natural being. Additionally, it also stands outside of the moral-teleological matrix of moral motion, because as lacking due order vis-à-vis its natural act, it does not attain to a fully moral objectivity.

To draw a parallel with artistic human agency, a carpenter, for example, is per se unable (as carpenter) to assume and conform a naturally disordered object (rotten wood) into its artistic motion towards an intended end (a sturdy bridge). This results from the fact that the naturally disordered object itself lacks due integrity on its own proper (natural) order. A weak piece of lumber per se does not attain to a sturdy bridge. Similarly, morally disordered being and action (e.g., adultery) stand outside of the supernatural-teleological matrix of divine motion (vis-à-vis God as supernatural end), because as lacking due moral order they do not attain to a fully obediential objectivity. Supernatural agency (i.e., grace) is per se unable (as ordered to God as supernatural end) to assume and conform a morally disordered object (adultery) into its supernatural motion towards its intended end (God). Adultery per se does not attain to supernatural union with God. This results from the fact that the morally disordered object itself lacks due integrity on its own proper (moral) order. Natural, moral, and supernatural participations in the eternal law—while all properly distinct—are all deeply integrated through teleology. The theonomic nature of the eternal law (as both passively and actively participated) is essentially teleological.

Neither de Lubac’s nor Rahner’s view of supernatural teleology correspond to the authentic teaching of Aquinas vis-à-vis the theonomic nature of the eternal law. Both de Lubac and Rahner effect a fundamental reshaping of moral theology because they deprive natural law teleology of any real order and meaning as properly human (and therefore) moral. And hence, discerning the intelligible order proper and due to each kind of teleology (natural, moral, or supernatural) is virtually impossible. The traditional Thomistic account of supernatural teleology vis-à-vis natural and moral teleology is more satisfying—both speculatively and practically.

Within the Thomistic account, obediential potency is essentially a rational and moral potency. Because of his rational nature, the human creature stands in obediential potency to divine motion in a way that non-rational (and inanimate) creatures do not. Conversely, if one begins speculative analysis of moral motion under an exclusively supernatural conception of the eternal law—as de Lubac and Rahner have both done, even if in different ways—then the per se teleological integrity of the eternal law is forfeited. A break in the teleological chain uniting the natural, moral, and supernatural is introduced. If this happens, the “meta-teleological” structure of all of reality (encompassing the teleologies proper to natural, rational, and supernatural being and order respectively) is compromised. One is no longer able to distinguish between (in order to unite) the human and the divine.

The traditional Thomistic account of the obediential order of (moral) nature to grace is essential to the integrity of the eternal law and moral theology. Thus, unlike Rahner’s account, the Thomistic synthesis does not require a spiritually “moral discernment” in order to understand moral truth (directly and personally). Additionally, and the Thomistic synthesis does not suffer some from the problematic ambiguities which potentially follow Rahner’s essentially supernatural understanding of the eternal law (e.g., fundamental option). The Thomistic synthesis basis its supernatural evaluations upon the nature and integral perfection of the teleologies of those beings assumed therein and thereto. Because of his account of the teleology of the supernatural existential, Rahner was required to replace the rational participation of the moral creature in the eternal law’s theonomic teleological order with a charismatic discernment necessitated by its exclusively supernatural existential constitution. Rahner’s speculative system replaces natural and moral objectivity with a discerning subjectivity.

This could be problematic for a theology that seeks to account faithfully for the Church’s moral teaching. If one attempts to establish moral teleology without natural teleology then intentionalism results. If one attempts to establish supernatural teleology without moral (and its conformed natural) teleology, then the difficulties associated with fundamental option theory follow because the (even objectively disordered) moral teleologies are essentially defined vis-à-vis their fundamental supernatural orientation.⁴⁴

---

1. Karl Rahner, S.J., “Natur und Gnade,” in Fragen der Theologie heute, eds. Johannes Feiner, Josef Trutsch, and Franz Böckle (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1957). It was later published in English with the title: Nature and Grace: Dilemmas in the Modern Church, trans. Dinah Wharton (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963). All quotations are taken from the English edition.↩︎

2. “The greatest dangers are always so particularly dangerous because they go unnoticed. It is the same in the Church. She is always threatened by dangers. The greatest are those from within; all those from outside only become dangerous to her if they touch upon a weakness within… When men feel safe and assured because ‘nothing can ever really happen to the Church,’ then they always find out sooner or later that indeed nothing can ‘happen’ to the Church, who is God’s hand, but quite a lot can happen to the men who out of idleness or timidity do nothing and rely on this. The dangers to the Church are often unnoticed” (Nature and Grace, 5). Emphasis original. Interestingly, Rahner denied that he was acting as a prophet in Nature and Grace (7).↩︎

3. Ibid., 28. Emphasis original.↩︎

4. Ibid., 20. Emphasis original.↩︎

5. Ibid. The role of “discernment” in the natural law is something that Charles E. Curran also emphasizes. Curran asks: “How did the Church at this time come to a moral judgment about these and other [morally sinful] actions when there was no well-developed theory that everyone agreed upon as the method to apply to particular issues as they came along?” The answer Curran offers is discernment—a process that involves many different aspects: “the teaching of Scripture, the tradition of the Church, and the role of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian and in the life of the community.” Curran is clear that “this discernment process involves not only the intellectual and the rational but also the affective and intuitive aspects of the human and the Christian.” Curran believes that there is no unified natural law theory proposed by the Church throughout history. Thus, discernment is perennially necessary in any natural law application. However, he emphasizes that “it is erroneous to see the discernment process as only going from the theory of natural law to the solution of particular issues… Natural law theories deal with the objective aspect of the act. Discernment brings together the subjective and the objective. The individual person or subject discerns what is to be done. In this process the Holy Spirit, the emotions, the virtues, the background, and the past experiences all come together” (Charles E. Curran, The Development of Moral Theology: Five Strands [Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013], 126). These themes resonate deeply with Rahner’s articulation of the role of discernment in individual and personal moral matters. See Richard M. Gula, S.S., Moral Discernment (New York: Paulist Press, 1997); and Mark A. McIntosh, Discernment and Truth: The Spirituality and Theology of Knowledge (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2004).↩︎

6. Rahner, Nature and Grace, 29. The complacency of hiding behind the Church’s directives and avoiding this burden is what Rahner calls “collectivism,” and he sees this exemplified in “the noticeable disappearance of a private thanksgiving after Communion,” and “when someone cannot pray by himself at a private Low Mass.”↩︎

7. Ibid., 30.↩︎

8. Ibid. Rahner cites certain forms of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary as an example of something that, perhaps, could “not be imposed as a duty for everybody by the Church and yet be an obligation and duty before God and his conscience for an individual.”↩︎

9. Ibid., 31.↩︎

10. Ibid., 33.↩︎

11. Rahner is clear, however, that such charismatic movements need not be “something manifestly extraordinary or miraculous” (ibid.).↩︎

12. Ibid., 115.↩︎

13. Ibid.↩︎

14. Ibid., 117.↩︎

15. Ibid.↩︎

16. Ibid.↩︎

17. Ibid., 118.↩︎

18. Ibid., 119.↩︎

19. Of course, “Neo-Scholastic” and “traditional” retain some ambiguities in. He is referring to the “traditional” Thomistic account (rather than the “traditional” Suarezian or Scotistic accounts, et al.).↩︎

20. See William Dych, S.J., Karl Rahner (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 32-48; Duffy, Graced Horizon, 85-114; and Patrick Burke, Reinterpreting Rahner: A Critical Study of His Major Themes (New York: Fordham University Press), 47-72.↩︎

21. Recognizing the disadvantages of a (Molinistically inspired) bifurcation between human and divine teleologies and motions (as expressed against each other), Steven A. Long argues that Henri de Lubac proffered a theological alternative: a compressed (compressio) fusion of natural and divine teleologies and motions that failed to distinguish their unique integrities and, subsequently, was unsuccessful in bringing about their genuine, integral union. See Steven A. Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” Nova et Vetera 4, no. 3 (2006): 557–606. Although the semantic nuances connoted by the words “expressed” and “compressed” in relation to “impressed” is ours, the speculative narrative is (essentially) Long’s.↩︎

22. Here “lowers” is solely meant to denote spatial relocation and not “dishonoring” or “debasing.”↩︎

23. Some Rahnerian scholars have observed that this sentiment is more noticeable in Rahner’s later writings than in his earlier writings. “In his earlier work and in line with conceptualizing and distinguishing side of his thought, Rahner sees divine revelation as coming to man’s elevated subjectivity from without… However, by the 1960s a change of emphasis appears. Now, in line with the dynamic and unifying side of his thought, Rahner, although never actually denying the grace-nature distinction, stresses even more their existential unity and by interpreting transcendentally given grace as revelation in itself (a real novelty in Catholic theology), which is expressed categorically in history even outside of official revelation, begins to see categorical revelation as only the posterior explicitization of what man originally is, the clearest expression of grace and the final cause to which all grace tends” (Burke, Reinterpreting Rahner, 47-48). Emphasis added.↩︎

24. “De Lubac conceives our ordering to the supernatural to occur in the nature itself as it concretely exists, whereas Rahner locates this ordering not in the nature as such, but in something supernaturally added to it and transforming it—a ‘supernatural existential’” (Feingold, Natural Desire to See God, 334). Emphasis original.↩︎

25. Although Rahner acknowledges that some concept of natura pura is necessary as “a concept contraposed to the supernatural, [and thus] is consequently a remainder concept,” he also notes that “this ‘pure’ nature, in spite of the fact that its possible existence must be affirmed, is not an unambiguously delimitable, definable quantity. Given that all men in the concrete order of existence live under the influence of the supernatural existential, no clear and absolute distinction can be made between this nature and the supernatural” (Burke, 58-9). Emphasis added. “Rahner stresses, too, that the supernatural existential is not a ‘thing’ or a ‘link’ between nature and the supernatural order of grace. To understand it this way, as explaining why nature has a certain affinity for grace, merely shifts the problem to explaining why nature ha san affinity for the supernatural existential, and so would solve nothing. It is rather the concrete mode in which human nature was created and actually exists as a result of God’s intention in creating it” (Dych, Karl Rahner, 37).↩︎

26. “Thus, it is never nature which of itself has any call on the supernatural: it is the supernatural which, so to say, must summon up nature before nature can be in a position to receive it” (de Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 124). Emphasis added.↩︎

27. See S. Joel Garver, “Rahner and de Lubac on Nature and Grace”

    (https://www.scribd.com/document/227405645/Rahner-and-DeLubac-on-Nature-and-Grace).↩︎

28. Duffy, Graced Horizon, 85.↩︎

29. “What more precisely is the supernatural existential? Rahner provides no clear and definite answer. It would seem consistent with his exposition to say that it is a positive modification, an inamissible [sic], a priori constituent of the concrete quiddity of historical humanity. The existential is a reality in humanity in virtue of its situation and perdures independently of refusal or acceptance of the love God offers. It is itself already a grace, the finite term of the loving decree summoning humans to divine life and endowing them with an unconditional openness and orientation to the life of grace. In virtue of this existential humanity is not neutral with regard to God, but positively susceptible to willing accepting as a gratuitous gift a reality not alien to it but striking a resounding cord in its most profound depths” (ibid., 99).↩︎

30. Ibid.↩︎

31. “One is drawn to God by far more than logic or the attractiveness of the man Jesus. God ‘the answer’ provokes a vital resilience in humanity ‘the question.’ One is oriented to say ‘yes’ before doing so. To say ‘yes’ to oneself is to become an ‘anonymous Christian.’ The anonymity gives way to explicit Christianity when one expressly gives oneself to Christ and incarnates inner assent in external Christian symbols” (ibid.).↩︎

32. See Karl Rahner, S.J., “On the Question of a Formal Existential Ethics,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 2, Man in the Church, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (Baltimore, MD: Halicon, 1963), 217-34. For critical engagement with Rahner’s fundamental option theory, see: Benedict Ashley, O.P., “Can We Make a Fundamental Option?” in The Ashley Reader: Redeeming Reason (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2006), 203-24.↩︎

33. De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 132.↩︎

34. Ibid., 185. Interestingly, de Lubac believes this interpretation of obediential potency is the authentic teaching of Aquinas (see page 184).↩︎

35. Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William V. Dych (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978), 430. Emphasis added. Dych says that Rahner’s phrase “the grammar of God’s possible self-expression” is Rahner’s understanding of obediential potency (Karl Rahner, 77). Emphasis original.↩︎

36. “Against the extrinsicism of the Scholastics and in line with the dynamic, unifying side of his thought, Rahner also defines human nature as pure transcendence to all being, as an active potentia oboedientialis that must look to supernatural grace for its absolute fulfillment” (Burke, Reinterpreting Rahner, 70).↩︎

37. Garver, “Rahner and de Lubac on Nature and Grace.”↩︎

38. Ibid.↩︎

39. See Steven A. Long, “Obediential Potency, Human Knowledge, and the Natural Desire for God,” in International Philosophical Quarterly, 37, no. 1 (1997): 45-63 at 52.↩︎

40. For an interesting example of Aquinas’s analysis of specified passive potency (i.e., “obediential”), see De virtutibus in communi, a. 10, ad 13. For helpful considerations of obediential potency within Aquinas’s writings, see: Mark F. Johnson, “St Thomas, Obediential Potency, and the Infused Virtues: De virtutibus in communi, a. 10, ad 13,” in Thomistica, ed. E. Manning (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 27-34; Feingold, Natural Desire to See God, 110-120; Long, “Obediential Potency,” 45-63.↩︎

41. Natural teleology can indeed come under the influence of supernatural agency, but this only occurs indirectly: insofar as natural teleology has been assumed into and conformed to the moral teleology of human rationality (which includes both intellect and will), which has itself been assumed into and conformed to the supernatural teleology of divine agency, can we speak of natural teleology coming under the influence of supernatural agency. Thus, natural teleology is virtually assumed into supernatural agency through its relation to the moral teleology of a graced rational creature. This is necessarily the case. The essential teleology of natural being is not per se super-orderable to the supernatural teleology of divine agency because natural being is per se non-rational. The proper object of supernatural agency is a proper to a rational being (see STh I-II, q. 110).↩︎

42. See STh I-II, q. 106.↩︎

43. Of course, God in his omnipotence can bring good from anything. However, properly speaking, such any such good derived from something not properly per se ordered is per accidens related to the per se disordered.↩︎

44. See Veritatis splendor, no. 65.↩︎