The Formation of Christendom, Volume II. Allies Thomas William
the witness to the Truth of which He spoke before Pilate as the object of His birth and advent. But to make the witness operative and fruitful, the greatest wonder in this list of wonders is required, the suffering of the Truth Himself. He said of the corn of wheat, which was to bear fruit in unnumbered hearts, that it would remain alone unless it fell into the ground and died. And so His crucifixion in the nature which He had assumed was the act from which the renewal of truth went forth; and not only in His Person, but likewise in His chosen witnesses this special mode of vivifying the truth, and making it fruitful, should be repeated. Not only must the absolute Truth of God appear in our nature itself in order to be accepted, but the nature in which it appeared should offer the sacrifice of itself; and this particular mode of propagating the truth should be observed in that chosen band whom He termed specially His witnesses. Their witness should be their suffering; in them too the Truth should be crucified, and so become fruitful.
And as man in his original creation had been a copy, however faint, of the eternal relations of the Godhead in itself, so his restoration springs from those same eternal relations. In it the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are seen working.46 It springs from the Father, in that He is the Father of the only-begotten Son, the Original of the Image, and so the Father of all those who are the copies of that Image. It springs from the Son, in that He is the perfect Image of the Father, and by dwelling in a created nature has raised it to the dignity of His Person, from which the grace of Sonship comes. It springs from the Holy Spirit, whose work as the Spirit of the Father and the Son is to imprint the copy of the Son on man. He performs in every one of the redeemed by communicating to them a participation of the divine nature, by dwelling in them, by contact and coherence with them, a work infinitely less in degree, but yet of the same order with that work of His whereby all the fulness of the Godhead dwelt by personal unity in our Lord's Manhood.47
But we left our Lord before Pilate, bearing witness to the truth. It remains to see how that truth became impressed on the world.
Chapter VIII. The First And The Second Man
“Totus Christus caput et corpus est. Caput unigenitus Dei Filius, et corpus ejus Ecclesia, Sponsus et Sponsa, duo in carne una.” S. Aug. de Unitate Ecc. tom. ix. 341.
“Totus Christus, id est, caput et membra.” S. Thomas, Prolog. ad 1 Sentent. art. 4.
Let us look back on the space which we have traversed, and gather up in a few words the sight which it presents to us. We have man before us as far as history will carry us back, as far as reasoning, planting itself on the scanty traces of history, will penetrate into the cloudland of prehistoric times: and the result stands before us exhibited in the manifold records still remaining of the most renowned ancient civilisation. Here, then, we see nations whose genius, whether in history, poetry, and literature, or in works of art, or in civil government, we still admire, comprising men in many of whom the powers of reason reached their utmost limit; nations inhabiting the most varied climates and countries, and amongst them the fairest in the world, nations formed under the most different circumstances and pursuing the most distinct employments, some agricultural, some commercial, some inland, some nautical, but alike in this, that they were enthralled by systems of a false worship, of which it is hard to say whether it was the more revolting to the reason by its absurdity, or to the conscience of man by its foulness. And this false worship does not lie distinct and apart from the concerns of daily civil and domestic life, but is intertwined with all the public and private actions of men, forming their habits and ruling their affections. Moreover, the polytheistic idolatry described above as existing at the time of Augustus in every province of his empire except one, in almost48 every country which touched upon it, or was known to it, is the result, the summing-up, the embodiment of man's whole history up to that time, so far as we know it: it is that into which this history had run out, its palpable, it almost seemed its irresistible, form. And it amounts to a complete corruption, first of the relation between man and his Creator, secondly of the relation between man and his fellow, thirdly of the relations of man in civil government, that is, of states and political communities, to each other.
Now, looking at this polytheistic idolatry simply as a fact, without for the moment any attempt to give a solution of it from authority, looking at it just as modern science would regard the facts of geology or astronomy, there is one thing, we may suppose, which it proves with a superabundance of evidence not found to belong to any other fact of history; and that is, the intrinsic corruption of man as a moral being. That which in theological language is called the Fall of man is, apart from all revealed doctrine on the subject, brought in upon the mind with irresistible force by the mere enumeration of the gods which heathendom worshipped, and of the worship paid by it to them; a force which is indefinitely increased by every inquiry into the moral and religious state of man as he lived under this worship.
Now, then, let us consider what solution the Christian faith does give of this fact, which exists, be it remembered, independently of this solution, and would exist with all its force undiminished, if this were rejected.
I. The Christian faith, as a solution of this wonderful maze of polytheistic idolatry, with all its accompaniments and consequences, carries us back to the first father of the race, whose development we have been following in it. This, it says, is nothing else49 but the body of Adam carried out through thousands of years, the body of Adam fallen under a terrible captivity. Not only does the Christian faith set before us man as one race descended from one, but because he is this one race, descended from one, it represents him as having come into such a state. To understand this we must contemplate the original creation, the fall of man, and its consequences, in their several bearings on each other, which will then lead us on to the nature and mode of the restoration.
In speaking of the creation of man we may first consider the union of the soul and body simply by themselves; that is, in order to obtain a clear view of our subject, we may form to ourselves a purely ideal state of simple nature. Such a state would include two things; one positive, the other negative.50 Positively, human nature in this condition would have all natural faculties in their essential perfection, and the assistance and providence of God naturally due to it: negatively, it would have nothing superadded to nature, nothing not due to it, whether evil or good, that is, neither sin on the one hand, and what follows sin, the guilt which entails punishment, nor on the other hand any gifts of grace, or perfections not due to nature.
Human nature, if created in such a state, would have no supernatural end; its end would be to love God with a natural love, as the Author and Ruler of the world.
Of such a state it is requisite for our present purpose to say only two things further. The first, that it is not contrary to any attribute of God to have created human nature in such a state. The gift of eternal beatitude, arising from the vision of God, which such a creature would not have had for its end, is simply and absolutely a gratuitous gift of the divine bounty, which God is not bound to bestow on any creature as such. Secondly, God did not in fact so create man.
Going on from this state of simple nature, we may consider another state in man, in which, beyond all his natural faculties,51 he would have a certain special perfection, consisting in the absence of immoderate concupiscence, or in the perfect subjection of the sensitive to the rational appetite, so that the inferior appetite should not be allowed to set itself in motion against the superior, or to anticipate reason. For human nature, regarded in itself as the union of a spirit and a body, is as it were divided in its natural affections, which tend in diverse directions, and thus totters, so to say, in its gait; when, therefore, it receives an inward peace in its own proper faculties, it is said to be supplemented, or to receive its integrity.
Now it is much to be noted that this special gift of integrity would not be connatural to man, that is, not given to him by force of his nature itself. It is true indeed that as such a gift perfects nature in regard to all natural acts, and supplies a sort of natural deficiency arising out of the combination of a spiritual with a material substance, wherein a conflict is engendered, in such a sense it may be called natural: but strictly
S. Cyril. Alex.
Petav.
An exception must be made in favour of Persia, where the original monotheism was preserved with more or less corruption.
“Das Heidenthum ist nichts anderes als der gefallene und nicht wiedergeborne Mensch im Grossen.” Möhler,
Suarez,
Suarez,