book review: Reality, A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought

Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought
by Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., 1950

Garrigou-Lagrange is a Thomist of the old school.  We hear nothing but bad about these guys from the theological schools that vanquished them, but how accurate are the criticisms?  They are clearly not as arrogantly rationalist as we’ve been told.  Not only does Garrigou-Lagrange deny that theological truths can be proved, he denies that it can be proved that they are not contradictory!  The most theology can do is to show that any given putative contradiction is not conclusive, and it can provide arguments of fittingness to plausibly relate the truths of revelation.

This book covers nearly all the same ground as the Summa Theologiae.  Rather than review the whole thing, I will concentrate on two topics of interest to me:  the claim that potency is only limited by act and the cause of sin, with its related issues of sufficient vs. efficacious grace, human free will, and predestination.

Act and potency

Thomists claim that act is only ever limited by potency.  Suarez claims that it can also be limited by the outside cause of the act-potency combination.  Garrigou-Lagrange does not think the Thomist position can be proved, but he gives an argument for it, as follows.  Act itself corresponds to some perfection and has no principle of limitation in itself.  Therefore, where it is found to a limited degree, the cause must reside not in the act itself but in its receptacle, whose role is played by a potency–a capacity to receive act.

This argument is open to a number of objections.  The conclusion depends on the fact that acts are treated abstractly (e.g. “wisdom in itself”) while potencies are implicitly individualized.  (Potency in the abstract does not determine how wisdom is limited in a particular intellect.)  However, this assumption–potency, as matter, being the principle of individuation–is part of the Thomist system, so there is no inconsistency (although we have perhaps just pushed back the statement requiring argument).  Second, it is not clear how this applies to attributes that are not perfections:  location, color, electric charge, topology, being this-or-that species.  These at least involve actualizations, but they have no condition of plenitude but must be this-or-that, and the external cause is a plausible reason.  I think the Thomist reply would be that attributes of this sort are mixtures of potency and act, and that to apply Thomist principles one must first parse them more carefully into unmixed potencies and acts.  I have invoked this argument myself, but I think it would be very illuminating if a Thomist would carry out, or at least attempt, a parsing of this sort for some ordinary material object.

Finally, I’ll warn readers that Aristotelian metaphysics is, I think, more confusing than it needs to be, because multiple terms sometimes play the same role, and a single term sometimes has multiple roles whose equivalence is less than obvious.  For example, potency, matter, and substance all sometimes play the role of ultimate subject, while potency refers to the subject of act, to this subject’s bare capacity to receive act, and to dispositions in a formed substance.  I think Aristotelians and Thomists have gotten so used to this that they don’t realize how tricky it is for outsiders.

Predestination and Theodicy

Why does one man respond to grace and another man not, so that the first but not the second is saved?  Invoking free will is tricky, because Christians believe that meritorious acts are an effect of grace from God.  Molina attempts to reconcile these by saying that grace enables a man to do meritorious acts, but given grace a man must choose to do so.  Two men may have the same “level” of grace, but only one chooses to cooperate with it.  Garrigou-Lagrange, speaking for Thomism, will have none of this.  If the one man responds with no extra grace, what is the cause of this?  If it didn’t come from God, it must originate from the man himself.  But this is impermissible:  all goods must come from God by metaphysical necessity.  Nor is this a philosophical imposition; it’s pretty clearly implied by the theology of Saint Paul.  (I suppose one might say that one man had a better natural disposition, but that also is due to God, so if the goal is to get God off the hook for the sin of the other man, this doesn’t help.)  Thus, Thomists maintain that God grants a special (“efficacious”) grace for each meritorious act that causes that meritorious act.

This does justice to the Christian religious sense, which is based not on a sense of our free will but on our gratitude to God who deserves the whole credit for our salvation.  It does leave a pretty big theodicy problem.  Why didn’t God give this extra grace to the other guy?  Isn’t his sin really God’s sin of omission?  The Thomists answer that the sinning man was given “sufficient grace” to enable him to do good, just not “efficacious grace” to actually do it.  The Molinists reply, “In what sense is this grace ‘sufficient’ if it is certainly inefficacious?  It gives its recipient no real chance of doing good, but just justifies his punishment.  Better to be without it.”  To which the Thomist points out that it is possible to have a capacity even if one doesn’t exercise it, even if it is certain that one will not exercise it.  Here the Thomist is correct metaphysically, but his point does nothing to address the Molinist’s moral concern.  Does it not remain true that God engineered the man’s sin by setting up the circumstances and failing to provide efficacious grace which He could have offered, thus upon His own initiative guaranteeing the sin?

Thomists reply that while efficacious grace precedes (indeed causes) the soul’s cooperation, the withholding of efficacious grace follows the soul’s refusal to cooperate.  I’m sorry, but that makes no sense; you can’t have it both ways.  It seems to me that Thomists must bite the bullet and say that God wills sins, not in themselves (His “all-things-being-equal” antecedent will), but for some other purpose.

Indeed, Garrigou-Lagrange basically does concede this in his section on predestination.  It is commonplace to say that God “allows” evil to bring good out of it.  Is this not metaphysically problematic?  How can good be dependent on evil?  Garrigou-Lagrange has a pretty good answer.  Good doesn’t need evil to exist, but it may need evil to be manifested.  A person may have the virtue of fortitude even if he is never in danger, but he cannot display the virtue of fortitude without danger.  God did not need to create the world to be good, but He needed to create to manifest His goodness.  Similarly, He arranges some to be saved to manifest His mercy and others to be damned to manifest His justice.  This is all quite Biblical and traditional, even if it is rather horrible.