Natural and Supernatural - Part Two

However, I must say at the outset, because I am writing mainly from memory, with no access to my library, I beg the reader to check on everything I say. There is no consensus of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church about precisely when God raised Adam to the supernatural order of Divine Grace. But it is certain – according to St. Thomas, that Adam (and so also Eve, though later) was given the Divine Life of supernatural grace concurrently with his creation in the natural order. And this is the crucial distinction that must be honored if theology is to avoid not only error, but heresy. And so, since this data of theology based on Divine Revelation, tells us that the supernatural order of divine grace, sanctifying grace in particular, and all other types of actual, efficacious, sufficient, - graces are created participations in God’s own Life, it is obviously incorrect to speak of the Creator as if He were also some kind of created participant in His own Life. This subject arises in Christology – concerning Our Divine Lord’s Human Nature; but this does not concern us here. What is so very important to understand is the distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders as created by God in the beginning.

While it is absolutely true now, since the fall of Adam, in our state of fallen nature, there is no such thing as a purely natural state in human life. As fallen human beings, every single one of us, including the most remote member of the most remote and “primitive” tribe in the as yet undiscovered regions of the world – every one is either in a state of grace or a state of sin, as of Original Sin, as are babies until baptized, and anyone unbaptized. At the same time, as the theology of St. Thomas teaches, there are still in us the workings of our human nature as God created it. Although our intellect has been darkened, and will weakened, and our nature inclined to evil as a consequence of Adam’s Original Sin, there remains in us enough of the original natural order to enable us, indeed, to oblige us to acknowledge the existence in us of the original nature in such vestigial form that even the child, before coming to the age of reason, recognizes certain things as bad and certain other things as good. The most ancient pagan religions possessed this natural law to do good and avoid evil.