Ave Maria!

While he may have been sympathetic toward an unconditional Incarnation, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., was not a Scotist. At any rate, since his name comes up in discussing the primacy of Christ, especially when using the biblical titles of Alpha and Omega, we do well to keep the solid reflections of the great Catholic philosopher Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand in mind. I post it here in full.

Fr. Maximilian M. Dean

Teilhard de Chardin: A False Prophet

From: Trojan Horse in the City of God,
by Dietrich von Hildebrand
(Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1967.
Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1993.)

I MET TEILHARD DE CHARDIN in 1949 at a dinner arranged by Father Robert Gannon, S.J., then president of Fordham University. Previously, the noted scholars Father Henri de Lubac and Msgr. Bruno de Solages had highly recommended him to me. I was, therefore, full of expectations. After the meal, Father Teilhard delivered a long exposition of his views.

Teilhard’s lecture was a great disappointment, for it mani­fested utter philosophical confusion, especially in his conception of the human person. I was even more upset by his theological primitiveness. He ignored completely the decisive difference between nature and supernature. After a lively discussion in which I ventured a criticism of his ideas, I had an opportunity to speak to Teilhard privately. When our talk touched on St. Augustine, he exclaimed violently: “Don’t mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural.” This remark confirmed the impression I had gained of the crass naturalism of his views, but it also struck me in another way. The criticism of St. Augustine, the greatest of the Fathers of the Church, betrayed Teilhard’s lack of a genuine sense of intellectual and spiritual grandeur.

It was only after reading several of Teilhard’s work’s, however, that I fully realized the catastrophic implications of his philosophical ideas and the absolute incompatibility of his theology fiction (as Etienne Gilson calls it) with Christian revelation and the doctrine of the Church.

Teilhard was not a careful scientist
Many Catholics view Teilhard de Chardin as a great scientist who has reconciled science with the Christian faith by introducing a grandiose new theology and metaphysics that take modern scientific findings into account and thus fit into our scientific age. Although I am not a competent judge of Teilhard as a scientist, this opinion may be questioned without expertise. For one thing, every careful thinker knows that a reconciliation of science and the Christian faith has never been needed, because true science (in contradistinction to false philosophies disguised in scientific garments) can never be incompatible with Christian faith. Science can neither prove nor disprove the truth of the faith. Let us also note several judgments of Teilhard by outstanding scientists.

Jean Rostand has said of Teilhard’s works: “I have argued that Teilhard did not cast the slightest light on the great problem of organic evolution.” Sir Peter Medawar, the No­bel Prize winner, speaks of Teilhard’s mental confusion and the exaggerated expression that borders, he says, on hysteria. He insists that The Phenomenon of Man is unscientific in its procedure. Sir Peter adds that Teilhard’s works in general lack scientific structure, that his competence in his field is modest, that he neither knows what a logical argument is nor what a scientific proof is, that he does not respect the norms required for scientific scholarship.

Thus, since the halo surrounding Teilhard is not unrelated to the opinion that he was a great scientist, it should be noted that his scientific accomplishments are, at the very least, controversial. My purpose here, however, is to examine Teilhard’s philosophical and theological thought and its bearings on Christian revelation and the doctrine of the Church. I wish to make it clear from the beginning that writing on Teilhard is no easy matter. I do not know of another thinker who so artfully jumps from one position to another contradictory one, without being disturbed by the jump or even noticing it. One is driven therefore to speak of the underlying trend of his thought, to identify the logical consequences of the core of his doctrine – of what was dearest to him.

Teilhard fails to grasp the nature of the person
One of the most striking philosophical shortcomings of Teilhard’s system is his conception of man. It is a great irony that the author of The Phenomenon of Man should completely miss the nature of man as a person. He fails to recognize the abyss separating a person from the entire impersonal world around him, the wholly new dimension of being that a person implies.

Teilhard sees “self-consciousness” as the only difference between man and a highly developed animal. But a comparison of the limited type of consciousness that can be observed in animals with the manifold aspects of a person’s consciousness shows instantly how wrong it is to regard the latter as merely an addition of self-consciousness. Personal consciousness actualizes itself in knowledge – in the luminous consciousness of an object that reveals itself to our mind, in the capacity to adapt our mind to the nature of the object (adequatio intellectus ad rem), in an understanding of the object’s nature. It also actualizes itself in the process of inference, in the capacity to ask questions, to pursue truth, and last, but not least, in the capacity to develop an I-thou communion with another person. All of this implies a completely new type of consciousness, an entirely new dimension of being.

But this marvel of the human mind, which is also revealed in language and in man’s role as homo pictor (imaginative man, man as artist),is altogether lost on Teilhard because he insists on viewing human consciousness as merely an awareness of self that has gradually developed out of animal consciousness.

The schol­astics, on the other hand, accurately grasped the dimensions of personal consciousness by calling the person a being that possesses itself. Compared with the person, every impersonal being sleeps, as it were; it simply endures its existence. Only in the human person do we find an awakened being, a being truly possessing itself, notwithstanding its contingency.

Teilhardian “fusion” of persons is impossible
Teilhard’s failure to appreciate the person again comes to the fore when he claims in The Phenomenon of Man., that a collective consciousness would constitute a higher state of evolution:

The idea is that of the earth not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of thought but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope so as to form, functionally, no more than a single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale.

Here several grave errors are combined. First, the idea of a non-individual consciousness is contradictory. Second, it is wrong to suppose that this impossible fiction could con­tain something superior to individual personal existence. Third, the idea of a “superconsciousness” is, in fact, a totalitarian ideal: It implies an absolute antithesis to true community, which essentially presupposes individual persons.

The existence of a human person is so essentially individual that the idea of fusing two persons into one or of splitting one person into two is radically impossible. It is also impossible to wish to be another person. We can only wish to be like another person. For at the moment we became the other person we would necessarily cease to exist. It belongs to the very nature of the human being as person that he re­main this one individual being. God could annihilate him, though revelation tells us that this is not God’s intention. But to suppose that a human being could give up his individual character without ceasing to exist, without being annihilated by that act, amounts to blindness to what a person is.

Some men claim to experience a kind of “union with the cosmos” which “enlarges” their individual existence and presents itself as the acquisition of a “superconsciousness.” In reality, however, this union exists only in the consciousness of the individual person who has such an experience. Its content – the feeling of fusion with the cosmos – is in reality the peculiar experience of one concrete person, and in no way implies a collective consciousness.

Our consideration of Teilhard’s ideal of the “col­lective man” reveals that he fails to understand not only the nature of man as person but also the nature of true communion and community. True personal communion, in which we attain union much deeper than any onto­logical fusion, presupposes the favorable individual character of the person. Compared to the union achieved by the conscious interpenetration of souls in mutual love, the fusion of impersonal beings is nothing more than juxtaposition.

Teilhard does not recognize the hierarchy of being
Teilhard’s ideal of “superhumanity” – his totalitarian conception of community – shows the same naive ignorance of the abyss that separates the glorious realm of personal existence from the impersonal world. It also reveals his blindness to the hierarchy of being and to the hierarchy of values. Pascal admirably illuminated the incomparable superiority of one individual person to the entire impersonal world when to his famous remark, “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature,” he added the words, “but if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him. He knows that he dies, and the advantage which the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of this.”

Another aspect of Teilhard’s blindness to the essentially individual character of the person is his inordinate interest in man as species. Again he overlooks the differences between humans and mere animals. A dominant interest in the species is quite normal as long as one deals with animals, but it becomes grotesque when human beings are involved. Kierke­gaard brought out this point when he stressed the absolute superiority of the individual human being to the human species. Teilhard’s own approach is betrayed by his attitude toward the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The “progress” of humanity which he sees in the invention of nuclear weapons matters more to him than the destruction of in­numerable lives and the most terrible sufferings inflicted on individual persons.

It is true that time and again Teilhard speaks of the per­sonal and of the superiority of the personal over the impersonal. Indeed, he often explicitly rejects the possibility that the existence of the individual person will dissolve. He writes, for instance, in Building the Earth: “Since there is neither fusion nor dissolution of individual persons, the center which they aspire to reach must necessarily be distinct from them, that is, it must have its own personality, its autonomous reality.” Yet just a few pages later we find him rhapsodizing: “And lastly the totalization of the individual in the collective man.” Teilhard then explains how this contradiction will dissolve in the Omega: “All these so-called impossibilities come about under the influence of love.”

Teilhard tries to eliminate antitheses
It has recently become fashionable to accept contradictions as a sign of philosophical depth. Mutually contradictory elements are regarded as antagonistic as long as the discussion remains on a logical level, but are considered unimportant as soon as it reaches the religious sphere. This fashion does not do away with the essential impossibility of combining contradictories. No number of modish paradoxes, of emotional effusions, of exotically capitalized words can conceal Teilhard’s fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of the person. The notion of the “personal” in Teilhard’s system is stripped of any real meaning by the system’s underlying pantheism. In Teilhard’s thought “collective man” and the “totalization” of man represent an ideal that is objectively incompatible with the existence of the individual person – or, rather, that necessarily implies the annihilation of the person.

His monistic tendency leads him to try to liquidate all real antitheses. He wants to keep the integrity of the person, but raves about totalization. He reduces all contraries to different aspects of one and the same thing, and then claims that the antithetical nature of the propositions in question is due merely to the isolation or overemphasis of a single aspect. Yet by reading Teilhard closely, one can always detect his primary concern and see where he is going.

A passage comparing democracy, communism, and fascism in Building the Earth illustrates this. A superficial reading of the passage (which, incidentally, contains several excellent remarks) might give the impression that Teilhard does not deny the individual character of man. A closer, critical study against the background of other passages clearly reveals not only an impossible attempt to link together individuality and totalization, but also Teilhard’s intention, what his main ideal is, where his heart is. It is, once again, with totalization, with superhumanity in the Omega.

Teilhard misunderstands communion and community
The penchant for liquidating antitheses also sheds light on Teilhard’s false conception of the community, of the union of persons. It is all conceived upon the pattern of fusion in the realm of matter, and thus misses the radical difference between unification in the sphere of matter and the spiritual union that comes to pass through real love in the sphere of individual persons. For Teilhard, love is merely cosmic energy: “That energy which, having generally agitated the cosmic mass, emerges from it to form the Noosphere, what name must be given to such an influence? One only – love.” A man who can write that has obviously failed to grasp the nature of this supreme act which, by its very essence, presupposes the existence both of a conscious, personal being and a thou.

Teilhard leaves no place for love
There is no place in the unanimity and harmony of Teilhard’s totalitarian communion for a real giving of oneself in love. This unanimity and harmony is actualized through a convergence into one mind; it thus differs radically from the concordia, from the blissful union of which the Liturgy of the Mandatum speaks: “Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.” (The love of Christ has gathered us into one.) The latter is not a “co-thinking,” but rather a mutual, reciprocal love and a unification in Christ based on the per­sonal love-response which every individual gives to Christ.

In a monistic world, there is absolutely no place for the intentio unionis (the intention of union)and the intentio benevolentiae (good will) proper to real love. For in such a world “cosmic energy” moves everything independently of man’s free response. When we interpret things that are merely analogous as constituting an ontological unity, or when we use as literal and univocal a term that is analogous, we necessarily bar the way to a real understanding of the being in question. Every monism is ultimately nihilistic.

Teilhard misses the difference between matter and spirit
Another grave philosophical error is closely linked to Teilhard’s conception of man: his failure to grasp the radical difference between spirit and matter. Teilhard deals with energy as though it were a genus and then proceeds to make matter and spirit two differentiae specificae (distinct species) in this genus. But there is no genus energy. Energy is a concept applicable to both of these radically different realms of being only in terms of analogy. Teilhard does not understand this; he even speaks of the “spiritual power of matter.”

Teilhard forces reality to fit into his system
Teilhard, then, is the type of thinker who indulges in constructions and hypotheses without caring much about what is “given.” Maritain once said: “The main difference be­tween philosophers is whether they see or do not see.” In Teilhard, there is much imagination but no intuition, no listening to experience. From this comes his attempt to project consciousness into inanimate matter – a project for which there is simply no foundation apart from Teilhard’s desire to erect a monistic system. Instead of listening to experience, to the voice of being, he arbitrarily infuses into the being in question whatever corresponds to his system. It is indeed surprising that a man who attacks traditional philosophy and theology for abstractness and for trying to adjust reality to a closed system should himself offer the most abstract and unrealistic system imaginable into which he attempts to force reality, thereby following the famous example of Procrustes.

The ambiguity underlying Teilhard’s thought also emerges in a passage that accuses Communism of being too materialistic, of striving only for the progress of matter and, consequently, ignoring spiritual progress. His admirers might point to this passage as proof that Teilhard clearly distinguishes between matter and spirit and acknowledges the superiority of the latter.

Actually, it proves no such thing. Teilhard always distinguishes between matter and spirit, but he regards them as merely two stages in the evolutionary process. Physical energy becomes – is transformed into – spiritual energy. But to regard the difference between the two as simply stages of a process – or, as we may put it, to regard the difference as a “gradual” one – is utterly to fail to understand the nature of the spirit. Again, monism prevents an understanding of reality and creates the illusion of being able to combine what cannot be combined.

Teilhard implicitly denies man has free will
Teilhard’s incomprehension of man’s nature is further evidenced in his implicit denial of man’s free will. By grounding man’s spiritual life in an evolutionary process which by definition acts independently of man’s free will and transcends the person, Teilhard clearly denies the decisive role of human freedom. Freedom of will is obviously one of the most significant and deepest marks of a person. Thus, once again, he overlooks the radical difference between man as person and a highly developed animal.

The role of freedom of will emerges decisively in man’s capacity to bear moral values and disvalues. This highest characteristic of man presupposes free will and responsibility. But Teilhard blithely reduces the antithesis between good and evil to mere stages of evolution, to mere degrees of perfection – surely a classic case of philosophical impotence. Moreover, he ignores the critical importance of the moral question, which is strikingly expressed in Socrates’ immortal dictum: “It is better for man to suffer injustice than to commit it.” In Teilhard, the entire drama of man’s existence, the fight between good and evil in his soul, is ignored or, rather, overshadowed by the evolutionary growth toward the Omega.

Teilhardism and Christianity are incompatible
Teilhard’s thought is thus hopelessly at odds with Christianity. Christian revelation presupposes certain basic natural facts, such as the existence of objective truth, the spiritual reality of an individual person, the radical difference between spirit and matter, the difference between body and soul, the unalterable objectivity of moral good and evil, freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and, of course, the existence of a personal God. Teilhard’s approach to all of these questions reveals an unbridgeable chasm between his theology fiction and Christian revelation.

Teilhard adapts religion to modern man
This conclusion inescapably follows from Teilhard’s oftrepeated arguments for a “new” interpretation of Christianity. Time and again he argues that we can no longer expect modern man, living in an industrialized world and in the scientific age, to accept Christian doctrine as it has been taught for the last two thousandyears. Teilhard’s new interpretation of Christianity is fashioned by asking, “What fits into our modern world?” This approach combines historical relati­vism and pragmatism with a radical blindness to the very essence of religion.

We have considered the myth of modern man throughout this book. It suffices here to insist that man always remains essentially the same with regard to his moral dangers, his moral obligations, his need of redemption, and the true sources of his happiness. We have also examined the catastrophic error of historical relativism, which confuses the socio-historical aliveness of an idea with its validity and truth. Now, if it is sheer nonsense to claim that a basic natural truth can be true in the Middle Ages but is no longer so in our time, the absurdity is even greater when the subject is religion.

With a religion the only question that can matter is whether or not it is true. The question of whether or not it fits into the mentality of an epoch cannot play any role in the acceptance or the rejection of a religion without betraying the very essence of religion. Even the earnest atheist recognizes this. He will not say that today we can no longer believe in God; he will say that God is and always was a mere illusion. From the position that a religion must be adapted to the spirit of an epoch there is but a short step to the absurd drivel (which we associate with Bertrand Russell or the Nazi ideologist Bergmann) about having to invent a new religion.

In 1952 letterTeilhard wrote: “As I love to say, the synthesis of the Christian God (of the above) and the Marx­ist God (of the forward) – Behold! that is the only God whom henceforth we can adore in spirit and in truth.” In these remarks the abyss separating Teilhard from Christianity is manifest in every word. To speak of a Marxist God is very surprising to say the least, and would never have been accepted by Marx. But the idea of a synthesis of the Christian God with an alleged Marxist God, as well as the simultaneous application of the term God to Christianity and to Marxism, demonstrates the absolute incompatibility of Teilhard’s thought with the doctrine of the Church. Note, moreover, the words “henceforth” and “can.” They are the key to Teilhard’s thinking and expose unmistakably his historical relativism.

Teilhard’s Christ is not the Christ of the Gospels
In Le paysan de la Garonne,Jacques Maritain remarks that Teilhard is most anxious to preserve Christ. But, adds Maritain, “What a Christ!” It is here, indeed, that we find the most radical difference between the doctrine of the Church and Teilhard de Chardin’s theology fiction. Teilhard’s Christ is no longer Jesus, the God-man, the epiphany of God, the Redeemer. Instead, He is the initiator of a purely natural evolutionary process and, simultaneously, its end – the Christ-Omega. An unprejudiced mind cannot but ask: Why should this “cosmic force” be called Christ?

It would be utter naiveté to be misled by the mere fact that Teilhard labels this alleged cosmogenic force Christ or by his desperate effort to wrap this pantheism in traditional Catholic terms. In his basic conception of the world, which does not provide for original sin in the sense the Church gives to this term, there is no place for the Jesus Christ of the Gospels; for if there is no original sin, then the redemption of man through Christ loses its in­ner meaning.

In Christian revelation, the stress is laid on the sancti­fication and salvation of every individual person, leading to the beatific vision and, simultaneously, to the communion of saints. In Teilhard’s theology, the stress is laid on the progress of the earth, the evolution leading to Christ-Omega. There is no place for salvation through Christ’s death on the Cross since man’s destiny is part of pancosmic evolution.

Teilhard redefines basic Christian doctrine
Teilhard’s conception of man and his implicit denial of free will, his tacit amoralism and his totalitarian collectivism cut him off from Christian revelation – and this notwithstanding his efforts to reconcile his views with the Church’s teaching. He writes: “Yes, the moral and social development of humanity is indeed the authentic and natural consequence of organic evolution.” For such a man, original sin, redemption, and sanctification can no longer have any real meaning. Yet Teilhard does not seem quite aware of this incompatibility:

Sometimes I am a bit afraid, when I think of the transposition to which I must submit my mind concerning the vulgar notions of creation, inspiration, miracle, original sin, resurrection, etc., in order to be able to accept them.

That Teilhard applies the term vulgar, even if not in the pejorative sense, to the basic elements of Christian revelation and to their interpretation by the infallible magisterium of the Church should suffice to disclose the gnostic and esoteric character of his thought. He writes to Leontine Zanta:

As you already know, what dominates my interest and my preoccupations is the effort to establish in myself and to spread around a new religion (you may call it a better Christianity) in which the personal God ceases to be the great neolithic proprietor of former times, in order to become the soul of the world; our religious and cultural stage calls for this.

Not only, then, is the Christ of the Gospels replaced by a Christ-Omega, but also the God of the old and new covenants is replaced by a pantheistic God, “the soul of the world” – and again on the strength of the unfortunate argument that God must be adapted to the man of our scientific age.

Teilhard banishes grace and the supernatural
No wonder Teilhard reproaches St. Augustine for introducing the difference between the natural and the supernatural. In Teilhard’s pantheistic and naturalistic “religion” there is no place for the supernatural or the world of grace. For him, union with God consists principally in assimilation into an evolutionary process – not in the super­natural life of grace which is infused in our souls through baptism.

Why does the one tend to exclude the other? If Teilhard’s notion of a participation in an evolutionary process were reality, it could only be a form of concursus divinus. Yet great and mysterious as is the concursus divinus – that is, the support God gives at every moment of our natural existence, without which we would sink back into nothingness – there is an abyss separating this natural metaphysical contact from grace.

Whether or not Teilhard explicitly denies the reality of grace does not matter much: His ecstasy in the presence of the natural contact with God in the alleged evolutionary process clearly discloses the subordinate role, if any, that he assigns to grace. Or, to put it otherwise: After Teilhard has replaced the personal God, Creator of heaven and earth, by God the soul of the world, after he has transformed the Christ of the Gospels into the Christ-Omega, after he has replaced redemption by a natural evolutionary process, what is left for grace? Maritain makes the point admirably. After granting that Teilhard’s spectacle of a divine movement of creation toward God does not lack grandeur, he observes:

But what does he tell us about the secret path that matters more for us than any spectacle? What can he tell us of the essential, the mystery of the Cross and the redeeming blood, as well as of the grace, the presence of which in one single soul has more worth than all of nature? And what of the love that makes us co-redeemers with Christ, what of those blissful tears through which His peace enters into our soul? The new gnosis is, like all other gnoses, ‘a poor gnosis.’

Teilhard inverts the hierarchy of values
In Teilhard we find a complete reversal of the Christian hierarchy of values. For him, cosmic processes rank higher than the individual soul. Research and work rank higher than moral values. Action, as such (that is, any association with the evolutionary process) is more important than contemplation, contrition for our sins, and penance. Progress in the conquest and “totalization” of the world through evolution ranks higher than holiness.

The vast distance between Teilhard’s world and the Christian world becomes dramatically clear when we compare Cardinal Newman’s priorities with Teilhard’s. Newman says in Discourses to Mixed Congregations:

Saintly purity, saintly poverty, renouncement of the world, the favor of Heaven, the protection of the angels, the smile of the blessed Mary, the gifts of grace, the interposition of miracles, the intercommunion of merits, these are the high and precious things, the things to be looked up to, the things to be reverently spoken of.

But for Teilhard it is otherwise:

To adore once meant to prefer God to things by referring them to Him and by sacrificing them to Him. Adoring today becomes giving oneself body and soul to the creator – associating ourselves with the creator – in order to give the finishing touch to the world through work and re­search.

Teilhardism is incompatible with Christianity
Teilhard’s ambiguous use of classical Christian terms cannot conceal the basic meaning and direction of his thought. We find it impossible, therefore, to agree with Henri de Lubac that Teilhard’s theology fiction is a “possible” addition to Christian revelation. Rather, the evidence compels our argeement with Philippe de la Trinité that it is “a deformation of Christianity, which is transformed into an evolutionism of the naturalistic, monistic, and pantheistic brand.”

Teilhard’s theories are based in equivocations
In his works, he glides from one notion to another, creating a cult of equivocation deeply linked with his monistic ideal. He systematically blurs all the decisive differences between things: The difference between hope and optimism; the difference between Christian love of neighbor (which is essentially directed to an individual person) and an infatuation with humanity (in which the individual is but a single unit of the species man). And Teilhard ignores the difference between eternity and the earthly future of humanity, both of which he fuses in the totalization of the Christ-Omega. To be sure, there is something touching in Teilhard’s desperate attempt to combine a traditional, emotional attraction to the Church with a theology radically opposed to the Church’s doctrine. But this apparent dedication to Christian terms makes him even more dangerous than Voltaire, Renan, or Nietzsche. His success in wrapping a pantheistic, gnostic monism in Christian garments is perhaps nowhere so evident as in The Divine Milieu.

Teilhard substitutes efficiency for sanctity
To many readers, the terms Teilhard uses sound so familiar that they can exclaim: How can you accuse him of not being an orthodox Christian? Does he not say in The Divine Milieu, “What is it for a person to be a saint if not, in effect, to adhere to God with all his power?” Certainly, this sounds absolutely orthodox. Nonetheless, his notion of adhering to God conceals a shift from the heroic virtues that characterize the saint to a collaboration in an evolutionary process. Attaining holiness in the moral sphere through obeying God’s commands and imitating Christ is tacitly replaced by an emphasis on developing all of man’s faculties with – this seems the appropriate word – efficiency.
This is clearly the case, although Teilhard veils the point in traditional terminology:

What is it to adhere to God fully if not to fulfill in the world organized around Christ the exact function, humble or important, to which nature and supernature destine it?”

For Teilhard, then, the very meaning of the individual person lies in his fulfillment of a function in the whole – in the evolutionary process. The individual is no longer called upon to glorify God through that imitation of Christ which is the one common goal for every true Christian.

Teilhard’s “religion” is worldly
The transposition of the Cross into the Christ-Omega is also wrapped in apparently traditional terms:

Towards the summit, wrapped in mist to our human eyes and to which the Cross invites us, we rise by a path which is the way of universal Progress. The royal road of the Cross is no more nor less than the road of human endeavor supernaturally righted and prolonged.

Here, Christian symbols conceal a radical transformation of Christianity that takes us out of the Christian orbit altogether into a completely different spiritual climate. Sometimes, however, Teilhard does discard the Christian guise, and openly reveals his true stand. In 1934,in China, he wrote:

If in consequence of some inner revolution, I were to lose my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God, my faith in the spirit, it seems to me that I would continue to have faith in the world. The world (the value, infallibility, and goodness of the world) this is – definitely – the first and only thing in which I believe.

Teilhard’s optimism wins converts to his views
Yet, clear as is the heterodoxy of Teilhard’s theology, some Catholics have elevated him to the rank of a Doctor, indeed, even a Father of the Church. For many unsophisticated Catholics, he has become a kind of prophet. That “progressive” Catholics relish Teilhard is, of course, not surprising. The “new theologians” and the “new moralists” welcome Teilhard’s views because they share his historical relativism – his conviction that faith must be adapted to “modern man.” Indeed, for many “progressive” Catholics, Teilhard’s transposition of Christian revelation does not go far enough.

But it is astonishing, on the other hand, that many faithful Christians are carried away by Teilhard – that they fail to grasp the complete incompatibility of his teaching with the doctrine of the Church. This popularity, however, becomes less surprising when viewed in the context of our contemporary intellectual and moral climate. In a period familiar with Sartre’s “nausea” and Heidegger’s conception of the essentially “homeless” man, Teilhard’s radiant and optimistic outlook on life comes for many as a welcome relief. His claim that we are constantly collaborating with God (whatever we do and however insignificant our role) and that “everything is sacred” understandably exhilarates many depressed souls. Another reason for such enthusiasm – perhaps more important – is that Teilhard is credited with having overcome a narrow asceticism and false supernaturalism.

Teilhard claims Catholicism disparages nature
There is no doubt that in the past many pious Catholics con­sidered natural goods primarily as potential dangers that threatened to divert them from God. Natural goods – even those endowed with high values (such as beauty in nature and in art, natural truth, and human love) – were approached with suspicion. These Catholics overlooked the positive value that natural goods have for man. They frequently advocated the view that natural goods should only be used, that they should never evoke interest and appreciation for their own sake.

But in this view, they forgot the fundamental difference betwen natural goods and wordly goods (such as wealth, fame, or success). They forgot that natural goods, endowed as they are with intrinsic value, should not only be “used,” but appreciated for their own sake – that it is worldly goods that should be “used” only.

It cannot be denied, moreover, that this unfortunate oversimplication often gained currency in seminaries and monasteries, notwithstanding the fact that it was never part of the doctrine of the Church.

This is why Teilhard is able with superficial plausibility to accuse the Catholic tradition of disparaging nature; and because he himself praises nature, it is understandable that for many his thought has seemed to be a just appreciation of natural goods.

Teilhard accuses Christianity of dehumanizing man
And Teilhard’s related claim that traditional Christianity has created a gap between humanness and Christian perfection has also impressed many sincere Catholics. In The Divine Milieu he attributes to traditional Christianity the notion that “men must put off their human garments in order to be Christians.”

Again, it cannot be denied that Jansenism reflects this attitude, or that certain Jansenistic tendencies have crept anonymously into the minds of many Catholics. For instance, the arch-Christian doctrine that insists that we must die to ourselves in order to be transformed in Christ has often been given an unwarranted dehumanizing emphasis in certain religious institutions. The view has been encouraged in some monasteries and seminaries that nature must, in effect, be killed before the supernatural life of grace can blossom. In the official doctrine of the Church, however, such dehumanization is flatly rejected. As Pope Pius XII said:

Grace does not destroy nature; it does not even change it; it transfigures it. Indeed, dehumanization is so far from being required for Christian perfection that this may be said: Only the person who is transformed in Christ em­bodies the true fulfilment of his human personality.

Teilhard’s own theories dehumanize man
Now, the point we wish to make is that Teilhard himself ignores the value of high natural goods and that, contrary to his claim, a real dehumanization takes place in his monistic pantheism. We have seen that his ideal of collective man and superhumanity necessarily implies a blindness to the real nature of the individual person and, derivatively, to all the plenitude of human life. But dehumanization also follows inevitably from his monism which minimizes the real drama of human life – the fight between good and evil – and reduces antithetical differences to mere gradations of a continuum.

Teilhard misses the supernatural aspect of natural goods
Teilhard’s failure to do justice to the true significance of natural goods is clear at the very moment he stresses their importance for eternity. Anyone can see that in dealing with natural goods he is primarily concerned with human activities, with accomplishments in work and research. He does not mention the higher natural goods and the message of God they contain, but only activities, performances, and ac­complishments in the natural field. Teilhard applies to these actions the biblical words “opera ejus sequuntur illos” (His deeds follow them.), but he does so in contradistinction to the original meaning of opera, in which “works” are identical with morally significant deeds.

Still more important is the relation he sees between natural goods as such and God. Teilhard sees no mes­sage of God’s glory in the values contained in these great natural goods; nor does he find in them a personal experience of the voice of God. Instead, he posits an objective and unexperienced link between God and our activities that results from the concursus divinus. He says: “God is, in a way, at the end of my pen, of my pickax, of my paintbrush, of my sewing needle, of my heart, of my thought.”

The real object of Teilhard’s boundless enthusiasm, then, is not natural goods themselves, but an abstraction: the hypothesis of evolution. The nature that moves him is not the colorful, resounding beauty of which all the great poets sing. It is not the nature of Dante, Shakespeare, Keats, Goethe, Hölderlin, Leopardi. It is not the glory of a sunrise or sunset, or the star-studded sky – the evidences of the natural world which Kant regarded, along with the moral law in man’s breast, as the most sublime thing of all.

Teilhard levels the hierarchy of values
There is another way in which Teilhard’s thought necessarily results in a dehumanization of the cosmos and man’s life. In his world view there is no place for an antithesis of values and disvalues. Yet every attempt to deny these ultimately important qualitative antagonisms always produces a kind of leveling, even a nihilism. The same thing happens when the hierarchy of values is overlooked, if only because man then responds to all levels of value with the same degree of enthusiasm.

The principle “everything is sacred,” which sounds so uplifting and exhilarating, is in reality fraught with a nihilistic denial of low and high, of good and evil. This fallacious and treacherous approach of praising everything actually results in denying everything. It reminds me of a remark made by a violinist I once met. “I love music so much,” he said, “that I do not care what kind of music it is, as long as it is music.” This statement, designed to suggest an extraordinary love for music, in fact revealed an absence of any true understanding of music and therefore of any capacity to love music. The same thing happens to man when qualitative distinctions are not made.

Let us now examine a little more closely the Christian view of nature, as compared with that of Teilhard. The revelation of God in nature has always been affirmed by the Christian tradition. The Sanctus says, “pleni suns caeli et terra gloria tua.” The Psalms are filled with praise of God as the Creator of the marvelous features of nature. St. Augustine’s exemplarism emphasizes time and again the message of God in the beauty of nature. The same idea is found in St. Francis’ love of nature.

Teilhard’s nature has no transcendent dimension
But an appreciation of this natural revelation of God implies an “upward direction toward God” – to use Teilhard’s terminology. Natural revelation speaks to us of God by suggesting the admirable wisdom that pervades creation and by providing a reflection, in the values of natural goods, of God’s infinite beauty and glory.

Our response to this revelation is either trembling reverence and wonder for the wisdom manifest in the finality of the cosmos and its mysterious plenitude, a looking up to God the Creator; or, at least, a deep awareness of the beauty of nature and of all the high natural goods. The latter also lifts up our vision. In either case, we are able to grasp the message from above; for all true values are pregnant with a promise of eternity. By lifting up our hearts we are able to understand that these authentic values speak of God’s infinite glory. All of this unmistakably implies an “upward direction.”

But Teilhard’s “nature” is not linked to an “upward direction”; it is not a message from above. Since, for Teilhard, God is behind nature, we are supposed to reach Him in the Christ-Omega by moving in a “forward direction.”

In Teilhard’s forward direction, where everything is involved in an evolutionary movement, natural goods lose their real value. The suggestion they contain of something transcendent is replaced by a merely immanent finality; they become links in the chain of evolution.

When evolution is viewed as the main and decisive reality – when it is, in fact, deified – then every natural good becomes, on the one hand, a mere transitory step in the forward movement of the evolutionary process, and, on the other hand, a mute thing, cut off by a leveling monism from its real, qualitative, inherent importance.

It follows that we can do justice to high natural goods only if we discern in them a reflection of an infinitely higher reality, a reality ontologically different from them. This “message character” of natural goods is admirably expressed in Cardinal Newman’s remarks about music.

Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of the heart, and keen emotion, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be brought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere, they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes of our home; they are the voice of angels, or the Magnificat of the Saints.

Teilhard overvalues industrialization
Another aspect of this problem deserves notice. The fact that Teilhard sees a higher stage of evolution in today’s industrialized world reveals the lack of a real sense of the beauty of nature and of the qualitative message of God that it bears. Even the most enthusiastic “progressive” cannot deny that industrialization consistently ruins the beauty of nature.

Moreover, industrialization (though perhaps the process is inevitable) certainly cannot be considered a univocal progress, either from the point of view of increasing human happiness or of fostering higher culture and a real humanism. As Gabriel Marcel correctly shows in his Man Against Mass Society,industrialization implies the danger of a progressive dehumanization. The replacement of the “organic” in human life by the artificial – from artificial insemination to social engineering – is symptomatic of this dehumanization.

Yet Teilhard heedlessly jumps from an enthusiasm for nature to elation over the progress of technology and industrialization. We are thus again confronted with his blind­ness to antitheses, with his monistic leveling.

It is clear, nevertheless, that Teilhard’s first love is technological progress. The creation of God has to be completed by man – not in St. Paul’s sense, not by cooperating with nature, but by replacing nature with the machine.

Teilhard does not give the response due to matter and spirit
The poetic expressions that appear when Teilhard presents his vision of evolution and progress make clear that he never saw the authentic poetry of nature or of the classical “forms” of creation. Instead, he tries to project poetry into technology – again revealing a monistic denial of the basic differences between the poetic and prosaic, the organic and the artificial, the sacred and the profane.

To be sure, it is always impressive when a man seems to have achieved a deep vision of being, and, instead of taking it for granted, gives it a full and ardent response. So with Teilhard. We are far from denying that he discovered in matter many aspects which had generally been overlooked. For example, the mysterious structure and the multiplicity of matter, which natural science is increasingly unfolding, call for genuine wonderment about this reality and respect for this creation of God.

But because Teilhard does not recognize the essential differences between spirit and matter and because his response to the spirit is not in proportion to his praise of matter (recall his “prayer” to matter) the advantage of this unusual insight into matter is, for him, quickly lost.

We must put this question of “matter” in its proper perspective. To overlook the marvels hidden in a creature that ranks lowest in the hierarchy of being is regrettable. But the oversight does not affect our knowledge of higher ranking creatures; it is therefore not a catastrophe.

On the other hand, to grasp the lower while overlooking the higher is to distort our entire world view; and that is a catastrophe. Moreover, to esteem a lower good as a higher is to misunderstand the hierarchical structure of being and thus to lose the basis for property evaluating either higher things or lower things.

Teilhard’s blindness to the real values in, for example, human love is shown in these unfortunate remarks about eros and agape:

Naturally, I agree with you that the solution of the eros-agape problem is simply to be found in the evolutionary trend (dans l’évolutif ),in the genetic, that is to say, in sublimation. [It is to be found in] the spirit emerging from matter through the pancosmic operation.

Teilhard misses the grandeur of conscience and morality
We have already seen that Teilhard’s conception of the moral sphere (virtue and sin) is incompatible with Christian revelation. We may now note that the role he grants to the moral sphere is yet another factor leading to dehumanization.

The unique contact with God that takes place in one’s conscience, in one’s awareness of his moral obligations, plays no role in Teilhard’s system. He does not understand that man in the realm of nature never reaches so intimate a contact with God as he does when he listens to the voice of his conscience and consciously submits to moral obligation. In comparison, how pale – in purely human and natural terms – is Teilhard’s notion of the “conscious” and the “unconscious” participating in a “cosmic progress”!

And how pale are the scope and breadth of cosmic events in contrast with the liberating transcendence of a man authentically contrite! What event could hold more grandeur than David’s response to the challenge of the prophet Nathan? The secondary role which Teilhard assigns to man’s conscious and personal dialogue with Christ – Teilhard’s preference for objective cooperation in the “evolutionary process” – reveals as clearly as anything can the truly dehumanized character of his “new world.”

Many people are impressed by a thinker who constructs a new world out of his own mind in which every thing is interconnected and “explained.” They consider such conceptions the most eminent feat of the human mind. Accordingly, they praise Teilhard as a great synthetic thinker. In truth, however, the measure of a thinker’s greatness is the extent to which he has grasped reality in its plenitude and depth and in its hierarchical structure. If this measure is applied to Teilhard, he obviously cannot be considered a great thinker.

Let us once again dramatize the non-Christian nature of the Teilhardian speculation by comparing his presentation of the meaning and purpose of Christianity with that of Cardinal Newman. Teilhard proclaims that Christ becomes

the flame of human efforts; he reveals himself as the form of faith which is most appropriate for modern needs – a religion for progress, the religion even for progress on earth; I dare say: the religion of evolution.

Cardinal Newman, however, reveals the true purpose of our faith:

St. Paul . . . labored more than all the Apostles; and why? Not to civilize the world, not to smooth the face of society, not to spread abroad knowledge, not to cultivate the reason, not for any great worldly object . . . Not to turn the whole earth into a heaven, but to bring down a heaven upon earth. This has been the real triumph of the Gospel . . . It has made men saints.

The following is an excellent exposition of the absolute primacy of Christ by perhaps one of the greatest Scotists of the 20th century who penetrated and proclaimed the exceedingly beautiful Christology and Mariology of Bl. John Duns Scotus. This is my translation of the first chapter of his book “Mariologia del B. Duns Scoto” [a full English translation by Fr. Peter M. Fehlner, F.I. is available in English from the Academy of the Immaculate under the title of “Mariology of Blessed John Duns Scotus”] which lucidly unveils how the doctrine of the absolute primacy of Christ is key to understanding the position of the Blessed Virgin Mary in God’s decree of the Incarnation and grasping the significance of all of her privileges (a point which is emphasized in a particularly way in Ven. Mary of Agreda’s “Mystical City of God” chapters 1-13).

Brief biography of Fr. Ruggero Rosini, OFM (1913-1998)

The author of this treatise, perhaps the only truly comprehensive presentation of Scotus’ Mariology in modern times, Fr. Ruggero Rosini, was born in 1913, in the small town of Zanigrado di Lonche (Villa Decani) near Pola (Pula), then in the Austro-Hungarian empire, annexed to Italy at the end of the first world war, then at the end of the second world war made part of Yugoslavia, now belonging to the Croatian Republic. As a teenager Fr. Ruggero entered the Franciscan Province of Venice, was professed in 1930 and ordained in 1938. He studied under the famed Croatian scotist, Fr. Charles Balic, and after being awarded the doctorate in theology was associated with Fr. Balic in the work of editing the works of Scotus and promoting the cause of Scotus and Mary. He died at the end of 1998 in the hospital of Motta di Livenza. [from Fr. Peter M. Fehlner’s Presentation of the book]

Mary in relation to Christ

When one speaks of John Duns Scotus in relation to Our Lady our thought usually goes immediately to the Immaculate Conception to which his name is commonly linked, so much so that he is called “Doctor of the Immaculate”.

However, this privilege—as Scotus himself will make us understand—does not stand on its own: this too, like all the other marian privileges, presupposes a source or principle that gives them life.  And what is this Principle to which Mary is indebted for all her gifts?

It is easy to specify: it is Christ.

Through this there is formed a most perfect bond between her and Him, between Christ and Mary; this is so true that only in the light of this association can all of the marian privileges be explained.

Our task, then, will be to specify above all the nature and origin of that bond existing between Christ and Mary, following the thought of the Subtle Doctor.  And we will see that this bond has for its foundation the motherhood and grace of Mary.  Both of these privileges, in fact, immediately bind Mary to Christ: the first (motherhood) with natural bonds; the second (grace) with moral bonds.

Yet these two bonds, dependent on Christ, presuppose another bond, one more remote and which depends upon God; hence there is the need to point out that decree of predestination with which Christ and Mary were foreseen together and above all in the divine plan.

Behold, therefore, our outline in this first section: first the predestination, and then follows Mary’s motherhood and her grace.

Chapter I

The predestination of Mary

Duns Scotus does not speak expressly of the predestination of Mary anywhere in his numerous works.  However, his immediate disciples[1] and afterwards his many commentators,[2] in treating of this material, applied to Mary the various principles which Scotus had posed for Christ, placing her, however, immediately after Christ.

They see the two predestinations of Christ and Mary as being intimately connected and correlated: they are interconnected in one and the same decree.  This shall later be seen in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus according to which Christ and Mary were precisely foreseen “uno eodemque decreto” [in one and the same decree].[3]

It should be sufficient, therefore, to find Christ’s position according to the divine plan in order to assign Mary her position.

We must be aware, however, that this doctrine shall be better understood if it is examined not only in relation to Christ’s place, but also in the order of the very nature of predestination itself, as it is understood by our Subtle Doctor.

If predestination is above all, as we shall see, ordered to the end which is glory—according to Scotus—which is the same for all the elect, Christ and Mary included (the only distinctive difference consisting in the ranking of the elect from the highest position to the lowest), then this means that the only distinction admitted from predestination itself is that of anteriority and posteriority: before or after predestined.[4]

Let us examine the nature of predestination according to the thought of Duns Scotus, and then we shall determine the respective places of Christ and Mary.

The nature of predestination

Predestination constitutes the key point of the entire philosophical and theological system of Scotus; that is to say that the Subtle Doctor manifests to us the mode of how he conceives the origins of all things outside of God.[5]

First of all, predestination is characterized by two activities: one eternal regarding the divine intention, the other temporal regarding the realization of the things foreseen.[6]

Obviously among the two activities—that of intention and of execution—the first always precedes and the second follows: the sculptor must first conceive the statue which he intends to produce and then he shall execute the project conceived.  It is logical that the sculptor, in his work, proceeds in a diverse mode than that of intention: from the lesser perfect (the block of marble), he heads towards the more perfect (the statue).  And so it is that that which was first in the intention (the statue), becomes the last in execution.[7]

Hence this process, from the imperfect to the perfect, as it slowly develops, becomes a disposition towards the actualization of the intention and this, in its turn, is moved solely by the end which, in our case, is realized in the glory of the creature.

Every artist who wants to work wisely must first pre-establish the end of the work which he is about to begin.  Certainly God conforms to this rule as well.  In willing to initiate the things outside of Himself (ad extra), He first fixes the end with an act which is called predestination.

Duns Scotus defines predestination as “an act of the divine will, which chooses the intellectual creature for grace and for glory”.[8]  Thus understood, predestination encloses within itself several characteristic marks.

Above all predestination is free because it is “an act of the will”.[9]  The will, and not the intellect, is formally the cause of all contingent things, whether in the natural order or the supernatural order.[10]  This is the point of scotistic doctrine which, besides distinguishing the Subtle Doctor’s entire philosophy and theology from others, marks the primacy of charity in the divine plan of things, now brought into the light by Vatican Council II, especially in its Decrees and its Constitutions.

Moreover, predestination is absolute.  His own goodness[11] is the singular motive for which the divine will moves externally (ad extra), desiring to communicate Himself to other beings.  In fact, it is unthinkable that any creature could have influence over the divine will in the act of predestination of creation itself because at the moment of predestination, not only was there no merit or demerit by any creature, but no creature existed.[12]

Finally, predestination is simultaneous.  One can rightly say that God, with one single act of the will, simultaneously conceived all of the elect to glory.  Consequently, right from the first instant, the number of the elect is complete; therefore, it cannot be either augmentable or diminishable without compromising the very immutability of God.[13]

As a conclusion to this doctrinal point about predestination, we add the following affirmations of the Subtle Doctor.

First, he affirms that since the divine will is the cause of the intrinsic goodness of things,[14] these naturally measure their objective quidditas (thisness) in relation to the “motive” from which they proceed.  Therefore, these will be more or less perfect, more or less good, disposed in various degrees, according to their derivation from a greater or lesser spontaneity of the very will of God.[15]

He also maintains that the predestination of no one was occasioned by any fall: neither that of man by the fall of the angels; nor that of Christ by the fall of man; and this is so ture that no one may rejoice in the fall of another.[16]

Furthermore, he maintains that all of the elect—angels and men—form but one “family”, namely “the heavenly court”, disposed “in certain and fixed ranking”.[17]

Keeping these characteristic notes on predestination in mind, it shall be easier to specify the position of Christ in the first place, and then the position of Mary.

The position of Christ

As we have seen, the entire theology of Scotus is drawn from the nature of predestination which is marked by this thesis, of capital importance, namely that the first free act which is encountered in all of being is an act of love: precisely of that love which from eternity unfolds in the bosom of the Trinity.  Our present subject is this: how is this manifested externally?

And here our Doctor responds: “I say, therefore, God loves Himself in the first place; in the second place He loves Himself in others and this love is holy; in the third place—speaking of love of an extrinsic being—He wills to be loved by Him who can love in the highest degree; and finally, in the fourth place, He foresees the union (to the Word) of that nature which shall love Him in the highest degree, even if no one had fallen”,[18] or even more emphatically, “even if no one but Christ had been created”.

It is clear, therefore, that the Incarnation, the “greatest work of God”, could not possibly be occasioned, nor could it occupy a secondary place in the divine plan.

In fact, if every soul’s predestination to glory precedes the foreknowledge of sin, then it is even more true of that soul which is predestined to the maximum glory.[19]

If He, who wills with order, first wills that which is closest to the end,[20] then it is logical that the first place goes to Christ, predestined precisely to be the Head of the heavenly court.[21]

If all of the elect were foreseen and willed to be “co-loving” (condiligentes),[22] how much more the scope of such foreknowledge for Christ.  He can glorify, and in fact glorifies, the Trinity in a measure greater than all of the other beings put together.  Rather, their praises can rise to God only by means of Christ and with Christ: “co-loving” (loving with Him and not without Him).

Therefore, Christ too has been foreseen like all of the rest of the elect, according to St. Jerome’s expression, “ante fabricam mundi” [before the foundation of the world].[23]  He also proceeds from the divine Goodness which in a singular way desires to communicate Itself externally and therefore makes up part of the absolute predestination: together with all of the elect Christ also is included in the “complete” number of predestination.  What distinguishes Him from the rest of the elect is that of being willed first, being closest to the end.[24]

It must be noted that neither the divine plan—as understood by our Doctor—nor the personage which dominates that plan are simple hypotheses, as some would have us believe.[25]  It is revealed truth that the world was conceived and willed as good (cfr.  Gen 1:1-31), and likewise that this was realized in Christ and through Christ (Jn 1:1-3, Eph 1:3-6, Col 1:15-20, Rm 8:29-30).

Before closing this section it is fitting to point out some points regarding the particular mode of Christ’s predestination, which will have repercussions on various Mariological problems.

In order to be better understood we will present these points in the form of questions.

1) In all creation Christ has the supreme glory; what is the cause of this?  Scotus responds that Christ owes the gift of supreme glory to the fact of the hypostatic union which, in the order of execution, precedes that glory and therefore becomes a disposition to that glory.[26]  He writes that Christ “would not have had such glory, nor would He have been so full of grace and truth, unless His nature had subsisted in the subject [Person] of the Word”.[27]

2) Was Christ predestined first to glory or to the hypostatic union?  It is a question which arises from Scotus himself: “Utrum prius praevidebatur isti naturae unio vel gloria?”[28]  And he responds to that question in this way: “Videtur quod gloria prius…”[29].  Sticking to his principle that predestination first regards the end (which is glory) and then regards the means (the hypostatic union being among these), Christ too, according to the Subtle Doctor, was first predestined to glory and then to union.[30]

3) Did Christ merit for Himself union and grace?  He merited neither the one nor the other for Himself, and this absolutely.  Both of these—union and grace—were conferred without any merit, neither from Himself nor from another.  This is the fundamental privilege which belongs solely to Christ.  On this subject our Doctor is categorical; he maintains: “in the universality of God’s works there was no work of pure grace, if not the Incarnation of the Son of God alone”.[31]  And this is so because such a conferral “had to manifest the supreme mercy of God by giving the supreme good of grace without any merit”.[32]

However, what Christ did not merit for Himself He merited for everyone else, without exception (neither angels nor men), He being the single depository and unique source of grace since God established that “there would be but one Head in the Church, from whom grace would flow into the members”.[33]

Hence “every other glory, of everyone capable of blessedness (angel or man), falls under and is foreseen through merit (not of one’s own, but those of Christ), by which these merits too (of Christ in relation to the blessed), fall under predestination”.[34]

The position of Mary

Having examined the nature of predestination and determined the place which Christ occupies in the divine decrees, we can readily pass to specifying the place which Mary occupies in relation to the same decrees.

We must recall that as the characteristics of predestination according to Scotus concern all of the blessed equally, Christ included, they concern Mary as well.  Hence she too was foreseen with Christ and with all of the other blessed “before the foundation world was made”,[35] independently of any personal merit or demerit whatsoever; she too, like Christ and the blessed, was uniquely willed in order “to love”, namely to be “co-loving”;[36] she too, like Christ and all of the blessed, makes up part of that “heavenly court”, divided into various degrees where Christ is the “Head”;[37] in summary, she too belongs to that absolute and simultaneous predestination in so far as it is formally an “act of the divine will”.[38]

Once predestination is seen from this angle the formula of Ineffabilis Deus , “uno eodemque decreto”,[39] not only holds for Christ and Mary, but for all of the blessed as well who are predestined with them for glory.  In other words the Bull expresses that Mary was not foreseen first (before sin) and Christ after (after sin).  In that case we would have two separate decrees.  Rather all were predestined with one and the same decree which—according to the scotistic understanding—cannot be other than absolute and simultaneous, Christ, Mary, and all the other blessed included: one and the same decree for all, foreseen before sin.

With regards to the end, namely glory, we have perfect unity.  Glory by its nature is one and the same for all since it is a gift which excludes any personal merit whatsoever by the blessed; this is so true that not even Christ—as we have said—merits glory for Himself.  Therefore, the distinction of that same glory into various degrees is to be sought in relation to the proximity to that same end.

Indeed our Doctor writes thus: “In general, he who wills with order, first wills that which is closest to the end”.[40]

It is from this principle that all the degrees of predestination are revealed: from the highest to the lowest.  Naturally, the highest is assigned to Christ; Scotus holds, “God first wills the glory of Christ’s soul, and not the glory of another soul”;[41] this is so because Christ’s soul is closer to the end by virtue of His union to the Person of the Word.

From this highest rank there descend all the other rankings in conformity with their proximity to the end.  And who shall be, after Christ, closest to the end?  The answer can be none other than this: Mary.

We are not dealing here with a simple deduction, but rather a logical consequence.  No creature—angelic or human—can have or even claim to have a more intimate proximity to Christ than that which existed between Him and her by virtue of her maternity.[42]  Therefore, if the Master’s principle, “In general, he who wills with order, first wills that which is closest to the end”, helps us to locate the transcendence of Christ in predestination, above all other creatures, likewise it can help us, rather it must help us, to locate Mary immediately after Christ.  She, after Him, is the one creature closest to the end intended by God in predestination.

It follows that while Christ owes—as we have said—everything (glory, grace and hypostatic union) to the pure and simple liberality of God, Mary, for her part, owes—as we shall see—everything (glory, grace and maternity) to the pure and simple liberality of the Son.  Thus in the divine plan as understood by Scotus, Christ is “the greatest good of God”[43] and Mary is “the greatest good of the Mediator”.[44]

Franciscan Christology starts with St. Francis

In the 28 Admonitions of St. Francis of Assisi, the Seraphic Father makes a subtle point which underscores that man was created for Christ, that man was created in the image of Christ. The theological implications of his teaching verify the truth of the doctrine of the absolute primacy of Jesus Christ.

First let us see his text (the important Christocentric phrase is emphasized), then we can draw out some if its implications, tying it in with Sacred Scripture, especially St. Paul.

Admonition 5: That no one should glory save in the Cross of the Lord

Consider, O man, how great the excellence in which the Lord has placed you because He has created and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body and to His own likeness according to the spirit. And all the creatures that are under heaven serve and know and obey their Creator in their own way better than you. And even the demons did not crucify Him, but you together with them crucified Him and still crucify Him by taking delight in vices and sins. Wherefore then can you glory For if you were so clever and wise that you possessed all science, and if you knew how to interpret every form of language and to investigate heavenly things minutely, you could not glory in all this, because one demon has known more of heavenly things and still knows more of earthly things than all men, although there may be some man who has received from the Lord a special knowledge of sovereign wisdom. In like manner, if you were handsomer and richer than all others, and even if you could work wonders and put the demons to flight, all these things are hurtful to you and in nowise belong to you, and in them you cannot glory; that, however, in which we may glory is in our infirmities, and in bearing daily the holy cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Obviously the central point of the Poverello is that no one should glory (like a demon) in anything except the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but should humbly acknowledge that he, through his sins, has crucified the Lord of glory.

The sublte Christological point that we want to consider briefly here is the fact that St. Francis, in making this admonition, presumes that man’s excellence consists in having been created and formed according to the image of the Word Incarnate – “His Beloved Son according to the body.”

This phrase, if it is true, bores a hole in the Thomistic position on the Incarnation (namely, that the primary motive of the Incarnation is to redeem man from sin and, therefore, if Adam had never sinned Christ would never have come). Why does this ruin their argument? Because the position of St. Thomas would fall into what is called a circular argument (circulus in probando). Here’s why: If, as the Thomists maintain (and some of them dogmatically!), the Incarnation of the Word was willed primarily as a remedy for sin (so man in the divine priority is foreseen and willed by God first, then in foreseeing man’s sin Christ is willed by God as a remedy). But if man “before the creation of the world” (Eph 1:4) was created in the image of Christ, the Incarnate Word, then we would have a logical impossibility: God wills to create man in the image of Christ “according to the body”, but foreseeing the sin of man He wills Christ as the remedy of sin, yet had Adam not sinned Christ would not come, but that would mean that man would not have been created in the image of Christ to start with. If all of this is confusing to you, then you have followed my point well because the Thomist argument has a hole in it.

The Franciscan school on this point, it would seem to me, is more scriptural and logical. Scriptural because it lines up with the creation account, the Wisdom literature, the Pauline Epistles and even the scriptural interpretations of Bl. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body; logical because it just makes sense. 🙂

With regards to the Scripture, St. Paul gives us the hermeneutic (the interpretative key) for understanding Genesis 1 & 2. How do we interpret correctly the creation of man ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram (Gn 1:26)? Very simply put, since God first and foremost willed the Incarnation – His Masterpiece, the summum opus Dei as Bl. John Duns Scotus puts it– and then wills everything else in view of the Incarnate Word, it follows that God made us in His image and likeness because we are made in the image likeness of Christ: “He has created and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body and to His own likeness according to the spirit,” as St. Francis states.

Examine, for example, St. Paul’s teaching on Christ. Christ, the Incarnate Word, “is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). Therefore, as I wrote in my book on the absolute primacy:

The Eternal Word [not Incarnate] is not the image of the invisible Godhead because He Himself is the invisible God—“God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God… one in being with the Father.” Furthermore, the Apostle indicates by the word “invisible” that this “image of the invisible God” is a visible image; otherwise the verse makes no sense. So he is referring to the Word Incarnate as the visible image of the invisible God. In describing to the Corinthians the Gospel he preaches and mentioning those who are perishing, he adds: “In their case, the god of this world has blinded their unbelieving minds, that they should not see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Notice who the image of God is — Christ!

The Greek word that is translated ‘image’ is eikon. Since we are familiar with icons in the Eastern Churches, perhaps Paul’s meaning is more clear if we translate “He is the image of the invisible God” as, “He is the icon (eikon) of the invisible God.” Now an icon implies two things. The first is representation. In this case the sacred humanity of Christ re-presents to us the Divinity. As the Church teaches, “Everything in Christ’s human nature is to be attributed to His Divine Person as its proper subject.” Thus the Christ re-presents the Godhead to us in flesh and blood, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of Godhead bodily.” (Col. 2:9).

Another aspect of an icon is manifestation. The humanity of Christ is the icon that visibly manifests God in the created universe. In fact, St. John’s Prologue, after declaring that “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (Jn. 1:14), goes on to announce, “No one has at any time seen God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed Him.” (Jn. 1:18). Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, reveals the invisible God to us in His sacred humanity. “He who sees Me, sees Him who sent Me.” (Jn. 12:45). Hence, He is the visible, manifesting icon of the invisible God.

What follows is this:

the Franciscan view of the creation of man: “Let Us make man to Our image and likeness.” (Gen. 1:26). According to the Franciscan thesis, when God creates He already foresees the Heart of Jesus—Christ is the ‘first predestined’ before the foundations of the world. He sees Jesus and He wills Him to be the perfect image and likeness of the invisible Godhead in the created universe by means of the Incarnation; then, beholding the excellence and perfection of Jesus Christ from all eternity, He creates the world. Christ is thus the Exemplar, the Model, the Alpha, the First. So God makes men according to His image and likeness with Christ in mind. Christ is the Prototype and we are modeled on Him. Consequently, when Adam falls and mars man’s likeness to God, Christ repairs what was lost by His redemption so that we can indeed be conformed to Him. Is this not what Paul indicated in Romans? “For those whom He has foreknown He has also predestined to become conformed to the image of the Son.” (Rom. 8:29). According to the Franciscan thesis, then, Jesus Christ is truly the raison d’être of all creation, of all that is not God.

This interpretation of Christ as the image of the invisible Godhead, foreknown before the creation of the universe, is found in the Church Fathers when they comment on the Wisdom passages of the Old Testament. For example they consistently interpret Proverbs 8:22-9:6 as referring to the Incarnate Word: “I [the Word made flesh] was set up from eternity… when He prepared the heavens, I was present… when He balanced the foundations of the earth, I was with Him forming all things, and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times; playing in the world. And My delights were to be with the children of men…” That God had Incarnate Wisdom before Him when creating the universe according to this passage was held by St. Justin Martyr, St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and many others as well.

If, as St. Francis says, we are “created and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body,” what logically flows is that God first willed Christ, predestining His Sacred Humanity to grace and glory, and then predestined us “in Christ before the creation of the world” (Eph 1:4). That fact of sin created the need for our Redemption; but had man not sinned, he would always have been made in the image and likeness of God according to the image of Christ – “For those whom He has foreknown He has also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He should be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rm 8:29; cfr. Col 1:15).

This insight is but the tip of the iceburg. The Seraphic Saint of Assisi indicated in many ways that he held the doctrine of the absolute primacy of Christ to be true, even if he did not use our present terminology in expressing it. This can be clearly seen in Fr. Johannes Schneider’s conference (audio and written), which we hope to post here soon.

Pax et bonum!

St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us!
In Corde Matris,

Fr. Maximilian M. Dean

Ave Maria!

“Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.” St. Basil the Great

Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Guardian Angels. Angels, as we know, are creatures endowed with intellect and will; they can, therefore, as personal creatures, know and love God. They already possess the Beatific Vision of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in glory and are faithful, humble servants of Christ the King and Mary the Queen.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ is the center of the entire angelic world. They were created through Him and for Him – the Alpha and Omega of all creation. It is the Franciscan tradition that the test of the Angels where they freely chose to love and serve God forever in Heaven was a vision or infused knowledge of the Incarnation of the Word in the womb of the ever Virgin Mary, Mother of God. At this knowledge they had an immediate, but eternal choice: humbly serve Jesus and Mary or reject God’s plan. We know the response of Satan and his minions: Non serviam! Whereas the Holy Angels, like St. Michael, marvelled at God’s designs to elevate all of creation to Himself through the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and said: “Who is like God!?!”

[VIDEO on the test of the Angels]

What a privilege, then, for us to know that day and night that our glorious Guardian Angels “in Heaven always behold the face of My Father in Heaven” (Mt 18:10). Why is it that the Angels render such service to us when beholding the face of God unveiled? The answer lies in the fact that they exist for Christ. Their role as Guardians can be seen in two ways: they serve Christ in us; they serve us in Christ.

Serving Christ in us: We are made in Christ’s image. As St. Francis of Assisi states in his Admonitions to the Friars: “Consider, O man, how great the excellence in which the Lord has placed you because He has created and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body and to His own likeness according to the spirit.” When God created us, He created us in view of Christ (Col 1:16) and with Him as our Head. And in our Baptism we were incorporated into Christ’s Mystical Body. Hence the Holy Angels are sent to serve Christ which they see in us. While they never abandon us, one thing is for sure, their service of Christ in us becomes more powerful the more we resemble Christ. They want us to grow in union with Christ, to arrive at the full stature of Christ – in mensuram aetatis plenitudinis Christi (Eph 4:13), and the more they see Christ in us the more complete their service to us, especially in our tempations (Jesus in the desert – Mt 4:11), agonies and death (Jesus in Gethsemani – Lk 22:43), and finally in rising to glory (Jesus Risen from the tomb – Mt 28:5).

Serving us in Christ: Since they are forever united to God through, with and in Christ, they serve us in Him. In a particular way, while they cannot imitate Christ in the flesh, they can and do imitate Him in being sent by God. Christ was sent by God the Father; the Angels, in joyful imitation of the humility and obedience of Christ, rejoice to be sent in our service in imitation of Him who came to serve, and not to be served (cfr. Mt. 20:28).

May these, our precious companions, find us docile to their guidance and inspiration. May we, like them, seek to serve Christ in others and be Christ for others so that Jesus may be “all in all” (Col 3:11).

In Corde Matris,

Fr. Maximilian M. Dean

Ave Maria!

Here are two photos from the Beatification of Bl. Gabriel M. Allegra which took place yesterday (Sept. 29th, 2012) in Sicily, Italy.

With the help of God, I will be beginning a series of posts here this week reflecting on the writings of this great Scotistic Theologian, Bl. Gabriel Allegra, on the subject of the absolute primacy of Christ according to the thought of St. Paul and Bl. John Duns Scotus.

Blessed Gabriel Mary Allegra, pray for us!

In Corde Matris,

Fr. Maximilian M. Dean

The Marian Coredemption in Bl. Gabriel Mary Allegra (+ 1976)

By Fr. Stefano M. Manelli, F.I.

Friar Minor, missionary in China and celebrated biblical scholar, Bl. Gabriel Allegra supported and defended the truth of Marian Coredemption and Mediation by demonstrating authoritatively the dogmatic definibility of the universal Coredemption and Mediation of all graces.

The thought of Bl. Gabriel Allegra on Marian Coredemption reveals itself as theologically “clear and integral, luminous and harmonious,” says Fr. L. Murabito, particularly rich in its biblical authority and spiritual intonation. Above all on this subject of biblical authority, “Fr. Allegra,” continues Murabito, “insists that, read well, Scripture teaches the entire design of God about Mary: her predestination to be the Mother of the Word Incarnate, her Coredemption at the foot of the Cross, her sweet office of Mother of the Church, her victory over the dragon, participating in the glory of her Risen Son.”

With significant expression, for example, Bl. Allegra calls Our Lady the “new Eve-Co-redemptrix,” to indicate with clear biblical reference that the first Eve was the cause (secondary) of our fall with the first Adam (primary cause), while the second Eve has been the cause (secondary) of salvation with the second Adam (primary cause): He, the new Adam-Redeemer, she the “new Eve-Co-redemptrix.” With another expression, no less clear, the Blessed writes that “the Mother of the Word Incarnate was also the Co-redemptrix, the new Eve, as Jesus was the new Adam.”

Elsewhere on other pages of his Marian writings Bl. Gabriel Allegra speaks of the “mystery of the Immaculate-Mother-Co-redemptrix” and calls Our Blessed Lady the “Sorrowful Mother-Co-redemptrix,” and again: “our Co-redemptrix,” thus employing the term Co-redemptrix with great freedom,
without any reserve or preoccupation over the dangers of such usage, which presently some would like to describe as presumptuous, risking to obscure the term Redeemer. On this point the decisive affirmation of Bl. Allegra is authoritative; he writes:

“I firmly believe, and with all my strength I will preach to the rest of the faithful, that the title of Co-redemptrix is theologically exact in explaining the part that Mary had in the work of our salvation.”

This is the word of a great biblical scholar, one who is about to be honored at the altars.

Bl. Allegra expounds the truth of the term Co-redemptrix and its theological significance in terms of a balanced and secure Marian soteriology: that is, the term Co-redemptrix signifies the dependent participation, nonetheless direct and immediate, of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the work of the universal Redemption:

“Mary’s cooperation in our Redemption,” writes the Blessed, “is such that Mary merited the title Co-redemptrix,” above all because “she intimately united herself to her dying Son on the Cross as our Co-redemptrix,” and thus she was united with Him by means of that maternal compassion which “intimately unites us to the dying Christ. . . The Compassion constitutes the Coredemption.”

And again: To be the Co-redemptrix means to be a “partaker of all the mysteries of the Son on earth,” explains Fr. Murabito, “a partaker of the definitive battle and eschatological triumph of Jesus,” according to Bl. Allegra.

He structures the Marian Coredemption, therefore, entirely in terms of the intimate and total union between the divine Son and Mother, between Jesus the Redeemer and Mary the Co-redemptrix. It is in the union of both their sorrows offered together that the universal Redemption is effected.

“The afflictions of Mary and those of Jesus,” the Blessed stirringly writes, “were but one affliction which made two Hearts to suffer. . . The Compassion of Mary increased the suffering of Jesus and the Passion of Jesus was the source of Mary’s sorrows. This double offering redeemed the world.”

Furthermore, Bl. Gabriel also points to the celebrated Franciscan thesis of the predestination of the Blessed Virgin “together with her Son from all eternity. Jesus is the King, and Mary the Queen of the universe; Jesus is the Redeemer, Mary the Co-redemptrix,” and at that fixed moment, “when the fullness of time arrived” (cf. Gal 4:4), the Immaculate Conception became “the Mother of the mystical Body of the Lord, in virtue of the ‘fiat’ of the Annunciation, of the Coredemption on Calvary and of the glorious Assumption.”

Regarding the doctrine of the absolute primacy of Christ and Mary, Bl. Allegra “knew well,” Fr. Murabito points out, “that not a few theologians ignored the Franciscan and Scotistic doctrine on the Incarnation and absolute predestination of Christ together with Mary,” and yet the Blessed, as early as 1945, noticed: “I hear that the exegetes and biblical theologians are ready to direct themselves towards the doctrine of the absolute Primacy of Christ…;” and Fr. Murabito adds that the Blessed was already speaking of the “necessity to make known to the faithful the doctrine of the predestination of Mary in the mystery of Christ and the pilgrim Church and in history, because this doctrine sheds the most light on the doctrine and mystery of Mary Mediatrix and Co-redemptrix.”

As to the thorny problem of ecumenism, in particular, the Blessed suffered and lamented because, to cite Fr. Murabito again, “the theologians, whether under the influence of protestantism or just lacking conviction of the transcendent dignity of the Mother of God and of her mission in the Church, were becoming silent, when they were not directly denying this or that prerogative of the Immaculate Mother. From this arose their more or less open opposition to the doctrine of the universal Mediation and Coredemption of Mary.”

Bl. Gabriel Allegra, to the contrary, and in perfect accord with St. Leopold Mandic, was thoroughly convinced that “the Immaculate Mother, the Mediatrix and Co-redemptrix, would be the Victor of the ecumenical battle because, as he would say, the Immaculate will triumph.”

The doctrine of Bl. Gabriel Maria Allegra on Mary Immaculate, universal Co-redemptrix and Mediatrix-Dispensatrix of all graces, is filled with light, is anointed with inspiration, is solid in its structure, grounds a most lively hope for the whole Church and for all humanity. The Immaculate Co-redemptrix and universal Mediatrix is an entirely maternal Heart for us.

Ave Maria!

Today, the vigil of Ven. Fr. Gabriel M. Allegra’s beatification, we rejoice with all of the Church – Angels and Saints in Heaven, the souls in Purgatory, and the entire Church militant on earth. I will be posting a series of translations of his pertinent writings on the Absolute Primacy of Christ according to St. Paul and Bl. John Duns Scotus shortly, but for now thought I’d post some photos/images.

He was a man of great courage and generosity, not afraid of the difficult mission in China (language, culture, climate, etc.), not afraid even of dialoguing with and censuring Fr. Pierre Teilhard (while maintaining utmost charity and respect towards Fr. Teilhard, he remained firm in censuring him because of the dangerous ambiguities and at times ideas in Teilhard’s writings that could have compromised the Catholic Faith), not afraid to say the “whole truth” about Our Blessed Mother as the

Coredemptrix of the human race and Mediatrix of all graces as taught in Scripture and Tradition. In a word, our new Blessed was a modern Apostle of God’s Holy Word and of the Catholic Faith to China, and now, elevated to the honors of the altar, a missionary beacon to the entire Catholic Church.

Here is a video which, although in Italian and with a modern taste in music, has lots of photos of our “saint”.

Come back for more posts on Bl. Gabriel M. Allegra, in particular on Our Lady in God’s plan and, of course, his writings on the absolute primacy of Jesus in creation.

Blessed Gabriel Mary Allegra, pray for us!

In Corde Matris,

Fr. Maximilian M. Dean

Would Christ Have Become Man If Man Had Not Sinned?

The following is an excerpt from an article by Philippe Yates in Faith Magazine on the absolute primacy of Christ. To read the full article with all of the footnotes go to their website: FAITH Magazine January-February 2008

The Primacy of Christ in John Duns Scotus: An Assessment
by Phillippe Yates

The Primacy of Christ

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which the Church definitively approved and declared infallible in 1854, was predicated upon the primacy of Christ. For it is precisely because Christ is the summit of creation and the first-born among creation that it is fitting that his mother should be preserved from all stain of sin. It is only fitting that the one for whom creation was made should be born of the holiest of the saints, indeed anything less is scarcely conceivable.

But to understand the primacy of Christ and the novelty of what it means, we should first contrast with it the doctrine that is more familiar. The doctrine that the deacon proclaims in the Exultet on Easter night is what we might call the anthropocentric doctrine of the Incarnation. Adam and Eve were created good, but sinned and fell into the grip of the devil. Their sin cut them off irrevocably from God and so God decided to repair the damage done by sending his Son to take that sin upon himself and so restore human beings to righteousness. But the redemption won by Christ’s death was greater than the original state of innocence for it brought humanity to an intimacy with God that they had not known in Eden, for in the person of Christ humanity was brought into union with God. This is the doctrine that Anselm proclaimed and Aquinas followed. It is a doctrine that is perfectly orthodox.

But there is another manner of looking at the Incarnation, that is also permitted by the Church, although you will find it less widespread. It is a Christocentric thesis, which includes creation and Incarnation in one great theory of the love of God that underlies all existence. This is the theory proposed by Blessed John Duns Scotus in which everything that is is viewed through the lens of the primacy of Christ, the freedom of God and the contingency of the world.

The Purpose of Creation

God is absolutely free and therefore if he creates it is because he wants to create. He wants to create in order to reveal and communicate his goodness and love to another. So creation is a freely willed act of our God who loves and who, St. John tells us, is love. Only a Christian can say that God is love, none of the other religions, monotheistic or other, could possibly make such a claim. But a Christian can, and in order to be true to revelation, must affirm this about God. For God to be love he must be more than one person, for love requires a lover and a beloved. In Scotus’ theology God is the Trinity in a communion of love – an eternal movement of the lover (the Father), the beloved (the Son) and the sharing of love (the Spirit). This Trinity who creates is the model of all reality and especially of human relationships.

God’s love is the cause of creation and it is also at the root of all creation. Because God loves, he wills that the creation he makes should also be infused by love. Since love must go out to another, it is only right and good that the highest object of creation’s love should be God himself, for nothing within creation could be a more fitting object of love than the God who lovingly created.

So God made creation in such a way that it should love, and above all love the divine nature that is the object of love of all the persons in the Trinity. Now for creation to be able to love to the highest extent, there must be at least one created thing capable of the highest love. That created thing is the human nature of Christ. The human nature of Christ was predestined by God to that highest glory of the beatific sharing in the inner life of the divine persons. Once God had decided upon this predestination of Christ’s human nature, then he willed the union of Christ’s divine nature with his human nature in the person of Christ since only a human nature united to the divine nature in one person could love to the highest extent, the extent to which God loves. St. Paul tells us that Christ was the first-born of all creation, and Scotus’ theology makes sense of this affirmation. Scotus did not believe that the acts of creation and Incarnation were separate, but part of one divine plan. So rather than the Incarnation being a sort of “Plan B” to rescue humanity after the fall, in Scotus’ theology it is the whole purpose of creation. Christ is the masterpiece of love in the midst of a creation designed for love, rather than a divine plumber come to fix the mess of original sin. Thus the Incarnation is placed by Scotus in the context of creation and not of human sin.

Since all of creation is made for Christ, then for the coming of Christ there had to be within creation a nature capable of understanding and freely responding to God’s love. Humanity is free to love and has the capacity to understand God, precisely because such a nature is desired by God to be united in Christ to the divine nature of the Son. Creation is a preparation for the Incarnation which is the outcome that God willed from the very outset. St. Paul puts it like this “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now” (Rom 8:22)

Christ and Creation

Aquinas emphasised the material and formal causes in creation, but Scotus placed his emphasis on the final cause as determining the work of the artist. In other words it is the purpose of creation that determines its form. Since creation is created to love, it is ordered to allow it to fulfil the role for which it was created. So we find ourselves in a universe united around its purpose – which is to reflect in love the loving God who created it.

The highest expression of this purpose is the one who loves most perfectly, Christ who is the goal of creation and to whom all of creation tends. For Christ is the meaning and model of all that is created and every creature is made in the image of Christ. Every leaf, stone, fruit, animal and person is an expression of the Word of God, spoken in love. Christ’s entry into creation is not then an entry into an alien environment, but the culmination of all that creation is and means. The Incarnation completes creation rather than supplementing it, as the anthropocentric view of creation would have us believe. Scotus’ theology is an expression of the insight that St. Francis of Assisi expressed in his poem the “Canticle of the Creatures”: God is praised through creatures, precisely because all creatures have life through Christ, in Christ and with Christ. For Christ is the Word through whom all things were made.

This Christoform theology of creation presents Christ as the blueprint for creation. In Christ the divine-human communion reaches its culmination and so in Christ the meaning and purpose of creation reaches its highest point. In Christ, what all of creation is ordered towards, that is the praise and glory of God in a communion of love, finds its centre and its highest meaning. With the Incarnation at its centre, creation becomes a cosmic hymn to the Trinity, in which the universe, bound together in and through the cosmic Christ, offers praise and glory to God.

One Order of Being

So we know God through the created world, but we have not yet looked at howw e know God through the created world. Scotus teaches that the path to knowledge of God runs through our being. For our being and God’s being are of the same order. That is to say that there is a common meeting ground between the Creator and his creatures since all possess being. This doctrine is called that of the univocity of being. For Aquinas God’s being and created being are of a different order and so while we can in some way participate in God’s being we will always be separate from it. Thus, for Aquinas, created reality can teach us what God’s being is like but can never show us what God’s being is. Scotus teaches, by contrast, that there is only one order of being. The first principle of being is one, true and good and all beings are related to it in a way that brings out the unity of all that is. So it is not that there is God on one side in His state of being and creatures on the other in a separate order of being. Instead all being is related in the order of being of which God is the first principle but is not inherently separated from created being.

Scotus does not teach that God’s being and created being are one and the same thing but God’s being and created being are two different modes of being. God’s being is infinite and created being is finite. We can see the sense of this intuitively – for the most surprising thing about existence is that there is anything. What is striking about all that is is that it exists at all, that it “has being”. The only alternative would be for there not to be anything. So it seems reasonable to say that being is one concept.

Because things are, because there is being, we seek to know. What we get to know when we know being, is not just being as created but, because there is but one concept of being, we get to know the first principle of being, God Himself.

Thus our seeking to know creation is not something separated from our seeking to know God. All created things have a dignity in that they all share being not only with one another but with God. So the ineffable being of God is made known through the known existence of creation. In this way, through our contemplation of creation we can apprehend the divine mystery – it is no longer beyond reason. Although of course, since God’s being is infinite and created being finite, the fullness of the mystery still lies beyond reason. Thus in Scotus’ theology creation is endowed with a light that is of the same order as the light that shines in God. Just as looking at a fire we understand what light is so that when we see the sun we can know that it is light that we see – so by looking at creation we can see a spark of life that radiates something of God’s life. Or as Ilia Delio puts it “Creation is not a window but a lamp, and each unique created being radiates the light of God.”

It follows from the essential univocity of being that the divine mystery can be perceived from within the created order. In the Incarnation what is true in the basic created order of things (that God is at the root of all that is and all that is shines forth with the light of God) becomes even more explicitly expressed when a created nature becomes united in one person to the divine nature of the Word. In this way creation reaches its fulfilment.

The Specificity of Being

But if Christ is the pattern of everything in creation, does this not make creation too uniform, too bland, too samey? In Scotus’ philosophy each particular being has its own intrinsic, unique and proper being. Thus everything has an inherent dignity, an essential “thisness” that makes it itself and not something else. So while univocity of being provides a philosophical basis for the unity of all created things his understanding of “thisness” ensures that within that unity each created thing has its own place, a place that can be taken by no other. We tell one thing from another by perceiving the “thisness” that each thing possesses.

When we combine the notions of the primacy of Christ with those of univocity of being and the essential thisness of each thing then we can see a powerful ecological message emerging for the people of our day. For if all things are rooted in a being which is of the same order as the being of God, if all things are predicated on Christ as the first-born of all creation, and if each thing expresses this in a unique, and uniquely beautiful way – then we are forced to contemplate our created order with awe and reverence. For each creature shines with something of God that can be expressed by no other. Each sun, star, proton, grape and grain is charged with a divine meaning – a meaning that no other can express. And each creature speaks to us of Christ who is the first among creatures.

I approach Merton with great caution because towards the end of his life he showed a seemingly excessive openness to non-Christian religions and praise of Eastern methods of meditation which are not rooted in the Scripture or the Tradition of the Church. Nonetheless, he wrote many beautiful books on contemplation before his oriental fascination and in the following passage he shows his devotion to Our Lady, his stark evaluation of our times (“terrible times”), his study of the Papal documents (“Quas primas”) and his hope to see the Scotist doctrine of the absolute primacy of Christ defined like that of the Immaculate Conception. On November 10th 1947, Thomas Merton wrote in his journal, among other things:

Today also I thought of St. Leornard of Port Maurice—off my usual track!—and his fight to get the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception defined one hundred years before it was.

It seems to me that definition was a turning point in the history of the Church.

The world has been put into the hands of our Immaculate Lady and she is our hope in the terrible days we live in.

Perhaps another turning point will come when her prayers at last obtain the definition of the other great Scotist doctrine with which her Immaculate Conception is so intimately connected: the Absolute Primacy of Christ.

At first sight these things seem abstract and trifling, but they are of tremendous importance because the salvation of the world depends on what people know and believe about God and the economy of salvation. Christ’s Kingdom will not come until the universal Church declares just how much His Kingship really means and that has not yet been done, even by Quas Primas .

May Our Lady indeed obtain us this grace… the definition as revealed doctrine of the absolute primacy of Christ!

Mater Christi, ora pro nobis!

fr. maximilian mary dean, F.I.