Church is to State as Grace is to Nature

Part I. From Aristotle to Aquinas

Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

The solution to the modern problem of Church-State relations lies in the modern debate on grace and nature. If grace and nature concerns the mystery at the individual level, the Church and State concerns the same mystery at the collective level. As nature is to grace, so civil society under the temporal authority is to the perfect society of the Church. And the answer to the grace-nature question, Lubac found in the Aegidian tradition. This paper will trace the historical development of the Aegidian tradition on the grace-nature and Church-State question from its influences to its founder to its disciples. In this Part I, I will trace the tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas.

In philosophy, Plato began the pagan conversation when he made an analogy between the soul and the city in his Republic, which primarily deals with the temporal order of the polis, and his Laws, which mainly deals with the polis’s relationship to the spiritual order.

Advancing from Plato’s divine idea to a divine intelligence, Aristotle continued the conversation when he finished his Nicomachean Ethics by beginning his Politics, both of which culminate in man’s contemplation and communion of the divine. At the end of his Ethics, Aristotle arrives at the conclusion that natural happiness is not sufficient since our nature desires the divine:

“We should not follow those who tell us that, being men, we should think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things; rather we should make ourselves immortal as far as possible and do all in our power to live in accordance with the best thing in us" (10.7).

Given this natural desire for a supernatural end, Aristotle teaches in his Politics that the religious temple should be given the highest location within a district dedicated to activities of leisure:

“But it is fitting that the dwellings assigned to the gods and the most important of the official messes should have a suitable site, and the same for all, excepting those temples which are assigned a special place apart by the law or else by some utterance of the Pythian oracle. And the site would be suitable if it is one that is sufficiently conspicuous in regard to the excellence of its position, and also of superior strength in regard to the adjacent parts of the city. It is convenient that below this site should be laid out an agora of the kind customary in Thessaly which they call a free agora, that is, one which has to be kept clear of all merchandise and into which no artisan or farmer or any other such person may intrude unless summoned by the magistrates” (7.12).

Plato and Aristotle showed that reason alone should arrive at both the individual and communal desire for divine fulfillment. Nevertheless, the light of reason permitted them only to see that God is impersonal or unaware of his imperfect creatures, not Love itself that gives Himself to man. Aristotle could only conclude that “only a madman would say that he loved Zeus” (Ethics 2.11). Similarly, reason allowed them to see that contemplation of the divine begins and ends in man, not in the divine. Thus, pagan contemplation is essentially different from Christian prayer. For Aristotle, the axiom nature does nothing in vain extends to nature contemplation of the divine. Aristotle could rest in the supremacy of philosophy and the attainment of nature’s end in the individual and society.

In theology, Augustine began the Christian conversation when he stated the fundamental paradox of man in his Confessions: “Our heart is restless until it rests in You” (1.1). “Heart” is singular here as if man shared the same beginning and end of desire; it suggests that both every individual human and collective humanity desire beatitude. From this spiritual autobiography to treatises on the nature of man and society, Augustine related the question on grace and nature to Church and State.

“Just as an individual’s fallen nature is trapped in a world of self-desire in De Trinitate, the fallen community is shaped by self-love in De civitate Dei. Where fallen man organizes his life around the search for the fulfillment of his desire in De Trinitate, the fallen community organizes its life around–indeed is defined by–the object of its love in De civitate Dei. Where grace converts the heart to long for true happiness in De Trinitate, the same grace converts the community to love the source of true happiness in De civitate Dei” (Wood 15).

From this perspective, just as nature fails to attain its end of the beatific vision without grace, a pagan natural society fails to attain temporal justice because it fails to render to God His due honor by means of the true religion. If pagan idols are actually demons, then their false religion is harmful to the republic. As a result, there is no pagan society worthy of the name republic, that is, a common wealth that achieves justice.

Augustine and Aristotle find their reconciliation in St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas balances Aristotle's hopeful nature and Augustine’s despairing nature. His solution in the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae includes both the integrity of human nature and human community while it excludes the possibility of a purely secular worldview. At the same time, his solution shows both the absolute gratuity of grace and its relative fittingness to nature’s desires. Aquinas identifies two creatures with distinct natures: the old and the new. On the one hand, the old creature can be understood by natural reason alone and can furnish us with a philosophical anthropology and ethics. While this first nature can explicitly provide us a theological defense of the active openness for gratuitous grace, it implicitly remains in search of its fulfillment in the second nature. On the other hand, the new creature cannot be understood apart from Christ and its fulfillment takes place in the Trinitarian vision. That remains the gratuitous hope of the Pilgrim Church and the gratuitous reward of the Church Triumphant. 

Aquinas’s perspective on grace and nature follows his perspective on matter and form. Regarding active desire and passive reception, nature is to grace what matter is to form. Aquinas claims that within matter itself there are rationes seminales, which are the germinatory properties in things according to which some things arise from others, like a grain comes from a seed. Matter never existed without these seeds. Thus, these seeds make matter stand in privation to the forms which it has not yet received. As a result, this privation in matter is the principle of passivity to natural and supernatural change. Privation takes center place in the openness of not only matter to form but also nature to grace. For Aquinas, matter’s passive privation of form explains grace’s operation in nature without the need for any so-called obediential potency. Therefore, although Aquinas believes that man has a natural desire for the vision of God, that natural desire of the will is not positively ordered toward the particular end of vision of God but the general end of the Good.

Aquinas’s political theology developed in De Regno follows his arguments on matter and form. What matter is to form on the individual level, society is to God on the collective level. Or better put, the body is the soul what the soul is (and all souls are) to God. Thus the ruler should be in temporal society what the soul is in the body and God in the world. Given such proportions,

“because a man does not attain his end, which is the possession of God, by human power but by divine, according to the words of the Apostle: By the grace of God, life everlasting (Rom 6:23)—therefore, the task of leading him to that last end does not pertain to human but to divine government. Consequently, government of this kind pertains to that king who is not only a man, but also God, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ, who by making men sons of God brought them to the glory of Heaven… Thus, so that spiritual things might be distinguished from earthly things, the ministry of this kingdom has been entrusted not to earthly kings but to priests, and most of all to the chief priest, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff. To him all the kings of the Christian people are to be subject as to our Lord Jesus Christ himself” (2.3).

In other words, all temporal rulers are subordinated to the spiritual ruler. Although there are pagan rulers unsubordinated to the spiritual ruler, their explicit end remains a general understanding of the common good. Nevertheless, with the advent of Christ the King who reveals the ultimate end of humanity in beatitude, Christianity specifies the ultimate common good in the Triune God. Therefore, according to Aquinas, “since the beatitude of heaven is the end of that virtuous life which we live at present, it pertains to the king’s office to promote the good life of the multitude in such a way as to make it suitable for the attainment of heavenly happiness. That is to say, he should command those things which lead to the happiness of Heaven and, as far as possible, forbid the contrary” (2.4). This political theology parallels his doctrine of grace and nature. Just as matter is open to an unspecified form, so too the temporal society desires the unspecific common good. Thus, pagan societies are real societies and pagan authorities have real authority, but even these implicitly desire beatitude.