114. The documents of the Church which we must keep before our eyes in this matter are chiefly these. The Vatican Council (Dei Filius, ch. 2), after handing down the true idea of revelation, adds: “To this divine revelation it must indeed be attributed that those things which in divine matters are not of themselves inaccessible to human reason can, in the present condition also of the human race, be known by all readily, with firm certainty, and with no admixture of error. Nevertheless, revelation is not to be called absolutely necessary for this reason, but because God, out of His infinite goodness, has ordered man to a supernatural end, namely to sharing in divine goods which altogether surpass the understanding of the human mind; since eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love Him.” And (can. 2 in the same chapter): “If anyone shall say that it cannot happen, or is not expedient, that through divine revelation man be instructed about God and the worship to be offered to Him, let him be anathema.” To these must be added proposition 4 condemned in the Syllabus: “All the truths of religion derive from the native force of human reason; hence reason is the chief norm by which man can and ought to attain knowledge of all truths of whatever kind.” Footnote continued from PDF page 87: “of truths; but they are not contrary to our reason and do not contradict any of the truths to which this chain can lead us. As for the question whether we know the conformity of our mysteries with our reason, I answer that at least we never know that there is any deformity or any opposition between the mysteries and reason; and since we can always remove the alleged opposition, if one calls that reconciling or agreeing faith with reason, or knowing their conformity, it must be said that we can know this conformity and this agreement. But if conformity consists in a rational explanation of the how, we would not know it.”
115. In order that the Catholic doctrine concerning the necessity of revelation, which the Vatican Council proposed, may be rightly understood, let us first recall that the objects of divine revelation pertain to a twofold order. For some are “not of themselves inaccessible to human reason”; but others are those “which altogether surpass the understanding of the human mind.” Now it is evident that revelation of truths of this latter order is absolutely necessary, once the elevation of the human race to a supernatural order and end is supposed. For an end of this sort, by the very fact that it is supernatural, can neither be found nor explained by the natural light of reason; and likewise the means of positive institution and supernatural means proportioned for attaining that end exceed the natural light of reason. Hence the Vatican Council said: “revelation is to be called absolutely necessary… because God, out of His infinite goodness, has ordered man to a supernatural end.” “No one,” says St. Thomas (Contra Gentiles, book 1, c. 7), “tends by desire and zeal toward anything unless it is known beforehand to him. Therefore, since men are ordered by divine providence to a higher good than human frailty can experience in the present life… it was necessary that the mind be summoned to something higher than our reason in the present can reach, so that thus it might learn to desire something and tend with zeal toward something which exceeds the whole state of the present life. And this belongs chiefly to the Christian religion, etc.” But anyone sees that all these things do not so much establish as suppose the necessity of revelation which unbelievers attack; for it is founded wholly on the elevation of man to the supernatural order, and that elevation can become known only from revelation.
116. We could indeed stop here, and not inquire further into the necessity of revelation. For since the Christian religion and the whole economy, as far as it goes, are exhibited as altogether supernatural, once the possibility of revelation and of the supernatural order has been demonstrated, it would suffice for the demonstration of the truth of the Christian religion to show that it in fact has a divine origin; this, as we shall see, is established from the criteria of revelation, or motives of credibility. Nevertheless, in order that we may overthrow the system of the rationalists from the foundations, and unfold the true doctrine completely, the necessity of revelation must be considered with respect to truths of the first order.
117. Therefore the question is restricted to those truths “to which natural reason can attain,” and which accordingly “are not of themselves inaccessible to human reason.” Indeed, here this very range of “natural truths” must be restricted. For 1) the question concerns truths not of themselves inaccessible to human reason, but pertaining to religion, or to the due worship to be offered to the true God, and to life rightly established in order to the ultimate end. For if the whole complex of rational truths were in question, whether they pertain to religion or not, it is too evident that without an entirely extraordinary charism they cannot be known; nor is there any necessity of knowing all truths of this sort; nor are they known or able to be known by revelation alone, which was made for all. 2) Nor is this knowledge of the complex of truths pertaining to religion considered here in relation to all and each individual man. For that all and each individual cannot attain that whole complex by the light of reason alone is almost as evident as the inability to know all natural truths simply. Nor do we determine how many and which are the truths which individual men could and ought to know without revelation, in such a way that ignorance of the rest would be excused in them on account of invincible ignorance; for invincible ignorance itself in the greatest part of men concerning truths necessary per se would exist as an argument for the necessity of revelation of those same truths for the whole human race. 3) Therefore the necessity of revelation of truths pertaining to religion is considered in relation to the human race viewed in common; and the proper question is whether these truths should be considered so manifest from intrinsic and objective principles that the human race in common does not need revelation in order to know them, or whether, on the contrary, revelation is necessary for this.
118. The substance of the knowledge of the aforesaid truths must be distinguished from the supernatural mode of knowing them. Now it is evident that the revelation with which we are dealing is, in the present order of providence, absolutely necessary by reason of the mode in which those truths must be known. For they must be known insofar as they are referred to the ultimate end, and in a mode proportioned to that end. But in the present order of providence the end is supernatural; therefore they must be known in a supernatural mode. But the proper mode of supernatural knowledge on the way is faith; therefore those truths must be known in such a way that they are believed by divine faith. But faith rests upon revelation, as we showed in the treatise On the Infused Virtues (disp. 2, art. 4). Therefore, in the present order of providence, the very truths pertaining to religion which are not inaccessible to reason, by reason of the mode in which they must be known, absolutely require revelation.
119. Therefore the question turns only on the substance of the knowledge; and accordingly we inquire “whether in the present order revelation of natural truths pertaining to religion is so necessary for the human race in common that without revelation they cannot be known.” We say in the present order; for we would by no means deny that many other aids are available to divine omnipotence for relieving the defect of our nature. And therefore, even supposing the inability of the natural light, the necessity of this aid, which is revelation, would not necessarily follow. But since God, from those many aids, has already chosen revelation, once this choice is supposed, that is, in the present order, revelation is rightly called necessary.
120. Now in this matter some err by defect, others by excess, while Catholic doctrine holds the middle way. For rationalists, if any seem to admit the possibility of revelation, deny absolutely and simply all its necessity, maintaining that the force of human reason left to itself is so great that it alone suffices for itself in those things which pertain to religion. “Rationalism,” says Wegscheider (Institutions of Theology, section 7), “is that law or rule of thinking by which we judge that, in examining and judging all things whatever which are presented to us in life and in the range of every discipline, and also in the gravest matters which pertain to religion and morals, the norm of reason rightly applied, as the highest faculty of the mind, must be vigorously followed by us.” And (proleg., c. 1): “The very nature of the human mind,” he says, “and the idea of the Supreme Deity rightly formed exclude every necessity of supernatural revelation. For just as all other living things have been endowed with those powers by which they can attain the ends of their nature, so undoubtedly men, by the reason granted to them, surpass the remaining living things, and to them has been given the faculty of understanding and observing all those things which pertain to obtaining the highest ends of the human race, namely to preserving duties and cultivating religion… But whoever, with this supremacy of human reason despised, establishes that revelation, which is said to have been brought in a supernatural mode to certain men, has such authority that it must be obeyed without any doubt by some blind instinct or sense [elsewhere we proved that the assent of faith is neither blind nor from instinct], that person takes away and overturns the true nature of man.”
121. Others, on the contrary, who are called Traditionalists, thought that revelation of natural truths pertaining to religion is absolutely necessary; or that without revelation man labors under a physical inability to know those truths, or to acquire any clear and certain moral notion. The philosophical refutation of this error is usually handed down in metaphysics, and can be read especially in Liberatore (On Intellectual Knowledge, V, 1). It will suffice for us to note these things. 1) The Vatican Council teaches that “God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason from created things”; but if man labored under that physical inability, he truly could not know God, just as, if revelation were absolutely necessary for knowing God, He could not be known from created things by the natural light, contrary to that saying (Rom. 1:20), His invisible things through those things which have been made, etc., which the Council itself cites. 2) The Council itself teaches that revelation of truths which are not of themselves inaccessible to human reason is indeed expedient; but it immediately adds: “Nevertheless, revelation is not to be called absolutely necessary for this reason, but because God, out of His infinite goodness, has ordered man to a supernatural end.” This certainly cannot be reconciled with a physical inability (1) Bonnetty, for example, had written (Annales de philosophie chretienne, 4th series, vol. 8): “when we have said that philosophy ought not to seek truth, by the word truth we have understood only the truths of dogma and morals necessary to believe and to practice, taught in philosophy, that is, the following truths: God and His attributes, man, his origin, his end, his duties, the rules of civil society, etc., etc.” And D. Bautain, before he submitted, wrote to the Bishop of Strasbourg (1837): “What else does the assertion that man can demonstrate the existence of God and His infinite perfections by the arguments of reason alone mean, except that man can ascend to God by his own powers and know God without God?” These things correspond to that axiom, as it were, introduced by Lamennais: “all certainty rests on faith.” Compare the propositions which the Sacred Congregation of the Index judged must be corrected (1843, 1844); this mandate was also confirmed (1864, 1866) by the Sacred Congregations of the Holy Office and of the Index. to know those truths without revelation. 3) Omitting other points, a natural faculty which could not be developed without supernatural aid would import confusion and would import destruction of both orders. For that faculty would demand that aid; but an aid for which there is a demand in nature is owed to it, or natural, not unowed, or supernatural.
122. Therefore, in Catholic doctrine, revelation of rational truths pertaining to religion, although it is not absolutely necessary, is nevertheless morally necessary. Before necessity of this sort is established, it needs to be declared briefly. And so the necessity of revelation cannot be conceived unless there is supposed in nature some inability to know the truths of which we are speaking. Therefore, according to the different character of the inability, the necessity also will be different. Now a twofold inability must be distinguished here, physical and moral. Physical inability properly consists in a physical defect of proportion between the faculty and the act, here between the human intellect and the knowledge of truths pertaining to religion. But that defect can arise from a twofold head, namely: 1) from a defect of the intrinsic power necessary for placing some act. Thus, for example, sense cannot have universal concepts; sight cannot perceive sounds, etc. 2) From a defect of some extrinsic condition necessary according to the physical laws of nature, so that the faculty can put forth its powers, or come forth into act. Thus, for example, in the present state of the union of soul with body, the due disposition of the senses is necessary so that the intellect can exercise the act of understanding; due distance or light is a necessary condition so that sight can reach some object. Yet the defect of a physically necessary condition is sometimes such that it can be removed; and then there will be physical inability temporarily, or accidentally. To physical inability corresponds physical necessity, on the hypothesis that the act must be placed.
123. But moral inability is had when a faculty, physically capable of some act, does not put it forth because of an impediment which, according to the morals and ways of men, is accustomed to hinder its exercise. Hence moral inability supposes physical power, and is founded solely on difficulties of the moral order which would impede its exercise. These difficulties can arise on the side of the knowing subject, on the side of the object to be known, or on both sides. But what the obstacles are which impede human reason from being able, without revelation, to know the complex of truths pertaining to religion will be clear from the demonstration of the thesis to be established. Finally, the very nature and foundation of this moral inability causes it to admit degrees; and thus it is greater or lesser according to the greater or lesser number and efficacy of the impediments. Compare what we said in the treatise On Grace (nn. 353-355; 378-381).
124. To moral inability corresponds moral necessity, on the hypothesis that the act must be placed. For when obstacles are so great that they hinder a faculty from some act for which it is physically capable, some extrinsic aid is necessary for that faculty, so that it can overcome the obstacles and come forth into act. But just as degrees are given in moral inability, so also there is a diversity of degrees in moral necessity.
125. Therefore, with these things set forth beforehand: Section II. The proposed question is solved. PROP. VI. So far is it from being the case that all truths of religion derive from the native force of human reason, that, even if the question concerns truths pertaining to natural religion, reason is morally unable to attain them. For in the present condition of the human race, they cannot be known by all readily, with firm certainty, and with no admixture of error, without revelation.
126. I. It is proved by the argument of St. Thomas (Contra Gentiles, book 1, c. 4), who at the same time shows the causes of the moral inability of which we speak. “This,” he says, “must first be shown concerning that truth which can be accessible to the inquiry of reason, lest perhaps it seem to someone that, since it can be had by reason, it has been handed down in vain to be believed by supernatural inspiration. “Nevertheless, three inconveniences would follow if truth of this sort were left to the inquiry of reason alone. “One is that the knowledge of God would be present in few men. For very many are hindered from the fruit of studious inquiry, which is the discovery of truth, by three causes. “For very many are hindered from the fruit of studious inquiry, which is the discovery of truth, by three causes. “Some indeed are hindered because of an indisposition of temperament, from which many are naturally indisposed to knowing. Hence by no study could they reach this point, that they attain the highest degree of human knowledge, which consists in knowing God. “Some, however, are hindered by the necessity of household affairs. For it is necessary that there be among men some who devote themselves to administering temporal matters; they could not spend so much time in the leisure of contemplative inquiry that they would reach the highest summit of human inquiry, namely, knowledge of God. “Some, moreover, are hindered by laziness. For for the knowledge of those things concerning God which reason can investigate, many things must first be known, since the consideration of almost the whole of philosophy is ordered to knowledge of God. For this reason metaphysics, which is concerned with divine things, remains the last to be learned among the parts of philosophy. “Thus, therefore, only with great labor of study can one arrive at the inquiry into the aforesaid truth; and few indeed are willing to undergo this labor for love of knowledge, for which nevertheless God has inserted a natural appetite into the minds of men. “The second inconvenience is that those who would arrive at the knowledge or discovery of the aforesaid truth would scarcely reach it after a long time, both because of the profundity of this sort of truth, for the grasping of which by the way of reason the human intellect is found fit only after long exercise; and also because of the many things which are required beforehand, as was said; and also because, in the time of youth, while the soul is tossed about by diverse movements of the passions, it is not apt for knowledge of so lofty a truth, but by becoming quiet it becomes prudent and knowing, as is said in the seventh book of the Physics (text comm. 20). Therefore, if only the way of reason lay open for knowing God, the human race would remain in the greatest darkness of ignorance, since the knowledge of God, which especially makes men perfect and good, would come only to certain few, and to these few only after a length of time. “The third inconvenience is that falsity is very often mixed into the investigation of human reason because of the weakness of our intellect in judging, and the intermingling of phantasms. And therefore among many persons those things which are most truly demonstrated would remain in doubt, while they are ignorant of the force of the demonstration, and especially when they see different things taught by different persons who are called wise. Among the many true things which are demonstrated, something false is also sometimes mixed in, which is not demonstrated, but is asserted by some probable or sophistical reason, which is sometimes reputed a demonstration. And therefore it was necessary that, through the way of faith, the truth itself concerning divine things be presented to men with fixed certainty. “Therefore divine clemency has provided salutarily that even those things which reason can investigate should be commanded to be held by faith, so that all might easily be able to be participants in divine knowledge, and without doubt and error.”
127. Hence also Tully, lamenting this difficulty of finding truth, especially from perverse education and from prejudices, writes (Tusculan Questions, book 3, c. 1): “Now nature has given us little sparks, which we quickly so extinguish by bad morals and depraved opinions that the light of nature never appears… as soon as we are brought forth into the light and received, we are at once occupied in every depravity and in the greatest perversity of opinions, so that we seem almost to have sucked in error with the milk of the nurse. But when we have been returned to our parents and then handed over to teachers, then we are so imbued with various errors that truth yields to vanity and nature itself to confirmed opinion… But when there comes to the same point, as if some greatest teacher, the people and the whole multitude from every side consenting to vices, then we are plainly infected with the depravity of opinions and fall away from nature.”
128. II. It is a public, universal, and constant fact that no people, whether barbarous or cultivated, so long as it was destitute of revelation, either because it lacked it from the beginning or because it rejected or corrupted it, offered to God a worship worthy of Him and avoided the most disgraceful errors against the principles of sound ethics. But this argues the moral inability of human reason to attain the complex of truths pertaining to law and religion without revelation, since no other constant and universal cause can be assigned for this constant and universal fact. Therefore. The major of this argument could be illustrated by many points; we shall select a few. And 1) certainly among the nations the Greeks and Romans stand out. Although they flourished in other sciences, disciplines, and arts, and in these reached a more than moderate degree of culture, nevertheless concerning religion they were turning about in the greatest darkness and errors. Their creed did not propose one God, but gods and goddesses; and to these were attributed not only origin, dependence, and other human attributes, but also the most disgraceful crimes. What could they teach concerning worship to be offered to gods of this sort? This is all the more so because, erring concerning the providence of God, often devoted to fatalism, they ascribed to themselves the gift which is greatest, and therefore disfigured or even wholly removed the idea of divine remuneration. Behold what Cotta says in Tully (On the Nature of the Gods, book 3, c. 36): “All mortals indeed hold this, that they have external advantages, vineyards, harvests, olive groves, abundance of crops and fruits, and finally every advantage and prosperity of life, from the gods. But no one has ever referred virtue received to God. No doubt rightly; for on account of virtue we are justly praised and in virtue we rightly glory; this would not happen if we had that gift from God and not from ourselves… For who ever gave thanks to the gods because he was a good man?” With these Ovid agrees (From Pontus, book 2, ep. 1): “May the gods give you years; for the rest you will take from yourself; only let long times be given to your virtue.” And Horace (book 1, ep. 18, to Lollius): “But it is enough to pray to Jove, who gives and takes away; let him give life, let him give wealth: I myself will prepare an even mind.” Hence St. Augustine, although he celebrates certain natural virtues of the Romans in relation to other nations, nevertheless writes these things (City of God, book 5, c. 12): “Therefore the old first Romans… although, like other nations, with the single exception of the people of the Jews, they worshipped false gods and sacrificed victims not to God but to demons, nevertheless, greedy of praise, they were generous with money. They wanted immense glory and honorable riches. This they loved most ardently; on account of this they wished to live, for this they did not hesitate even to die; they pressed down other desires by the immense desire of this one thing.” 2) Indeed, the chief men among the philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, than whom pagan antiquity knew nothing more sublime, privately mocked the gods, but publicly worshipped them, and said with one voice that in those things concerning religion established by ancestral custom, nothing was to be changed, and that no one of sound mind would ever undertake it. Socrates approved that response of the Delphic oracle, that the gods must be worshipped according to the institution of the city; and, when near death, he asked his friends to sacrifice for him to Aesculapius the rooster which he had vowed. Cicero agrees, writing (On Laws, book 2): “It has pleased us that the gods received from the fathers be worshipped… that, from the institutions of the pontiffs and haruspices, it is not to be changed with what victims sacrifice must be offered to each god.” Seneca, in St. Augustine (City of God, book 6, c. 10), says: “We shall adore that whole ignoble crowd of gods, which long superstition has heaped together, in such a way that we remember that this worship pertains more to custom than to the thing itself.” And (book 3, c. 12): “All these… and Plato himself thought that sacred rites should be performed for very many gods.” On this passage Vives comments thus: “In the Timaeus he enumerates the gods Saturn, Ops, Juno, and the others as brothers and relatives among themselves. In the book On the Republic and On the Laws, he orders sacred rites and ceremonies to be performed for gods, demons, and heroes. But in the eighth and twelfth books On Laws he names those to whom the condition and happiness of the city must be commended by vows and prayers.” We know that idolatry, with one almost single exception, was common to all peoples. Hence Horace (book 1, Satire 8) sang: “Once I was the trunk of a fig tree, useless wood; when the craftsman, uncertain whether he should make a bench or Priapus, preferred that I be a god. From then on I was a god.” And Juvenal (Satire 15): “O holy nations, for whom these divinities grow in gardens!” 3) If the question concerns the immortality of the soul, Cicero (Tusculan Questions, book 1) says: “Those things which you wish I shall explain as I can; and yet not as though I were Pythian Apollo, so that the things I have said are certain and fixed, but as one little man from among many, following probable conjectures. For I have no point beyond which to proceed except that what I see may seem likely.” In the same place he writes: “I do not know how, while I read them, I assent to those things by which the immortality of the soul is concluded; but when I have put down the book and have begun to think by myself about the immortality of souls, all that assent slips away.” “I easily believed,” says Seneca, “the opinions of great men, promising a most pleasing thing rather than proving it.” Socrates himself, who had spent his whole life in moral philosophy, spoke doubtfully about the future life in the last discourse which he had with his friends; this gave Tertullian occasion to write these things: “So all that wisdom of Socrates had then come from the deliberate purpose of studied equanimity, not from confidence in discovered truth.” Now, as Cicero himself admits, “unless these things are held as certain, men must necessarily be occupied in ignorance of the greatest matters; and when these have been removed, or called into doubt, there can be no piety, no sanctity, no religion; and disturbance of life follows, and great confusion; even trust and the society of the human race, and justice, the one most excellent virtue, is taken away.” 4) While thus erring concerning the primary truths of natural religion, what could they teach as regards morals? Plato commended community of wives; he permitted wandering intercourse or fornication. The exposure of infants, so cruel and so abhorrent from the natural love of parents, he not only did not disapprove, but even commended, where they were not well formed. Finally, in the feasts of Bacchus he does not condemn drunkenness. Aristotle wrote so obscurely about God that he has been held an atheist by many. With what foolish arguments he tried to confirm his new opinion about the eternity of the world! He does not reject abortions, nor cruelty toward infants; he excuses or even approves disgraceful and lascivious images of the gods. The Stoics were especially obscene in their writings. For them God was fiery; most defended a fatal concatenation of things; all approved fornication; they did not even shudder at incest most abhorrent from nature, the intercourse of father and daughter, of mother and son. How absurd their dogmas are! 5) But if various truths pertaining to religion were seen by philosophers both ancient and more recent, it must first be noticed that they taught them with an admixture of many errors, nor did they attain full certainty concerning them, namely that certainty which induces the persuasion necessary for morally establishing life. Moreover, no one is ignorant that revelation was made from the beginning to the first man and to the Patriarchs; that certain seeds of it, as all learned men concede, penetrated even among the nations; which is a fortiori true of Christian revelation. Hence Locke rightly wrote (Reasonableness of Christianity, chap. 14): “He who now completes long journeys commends his own strength, by which in so brief a space of time he has measured out so great a road. He ascribes the cause of such speed to the vigor of his own body, and does not consider how much he owes to those who cut down the woods, dried the marshes, built the bridges, and paved the road; if these had not been done, worn out long ago by the journey, he would have advanced only a little. There are many things which we have learned from infancy onward, so that, since now the notions of them are implanted in us and as if born together with us under the Gospel, we regard them as truths which cannot be attacked, easy to discover, easy to prove most evidently, not noticing that we would have doubted about them or been ignorant of them for a long time, unless revelation had disclosed them to us. And thus we are greatly bound to revelation even without knowing it.” 6) But even after Christian revelation, those who deserted it brought again into the light the absurdities of the pagan philosophers. Materialism, observes Knoll (General Theology, part 1, section 58, c. 2), to which the theory of John Locke gave occasion, who derived all ideas from the senses, was developed in all its enormity by the author of the impious book On the System of Nature, whom some followed, denying the spirituality and immortality of the soul. David Hume and Bayle renewed the skepticism of the Pyrrhonists. Benedict Spinoza was the restorer of pantheism. Kant, having established the autonomy of practical reason, admits God only as Rewarder, but not as supreme Legislator, and altogether denies immediate duties toward Him, and by this paradoxical assertion itself overturns the right idea of religion. Those who came forth from Critical Philosophy, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, etc., spoke of God in such a way that they seem to defend not theism, but autotheism, pantheism, or atheism. Besides, they propose such opinions as are more incomprehensible than all the mysteries of revealed religion, since they not only surpass reason but openly contradict it. Thus, for example, Fichte establishes the Ego, which posits itself and does not posit itself, as at once finite and infinite, absolute and relative, dependent and independent, and by arriving at the unknown point X becomes master of itself, etc. Schelling posits nature, subject to time, as eternal, and beholds and declares the origin or evolution of God from its obscure abyss! Hegel, having rejected the principle of contradiction, tries in his logic by a futile sophism to prove another principle, namely: being is non-being, and non-being is being! Valsecchi, among others, develops this argument learnedly (On the Foundations of Religion, book 2, cc. 1-5). 7) Hence it is that the pagan philosophers themselves asserted the inability of reason to know with certainty the truths which concern the worship of God and the right establishment of morals. Lactantius had already collected their testimonies; but they can be seen in Bergier (Theological Dictionary, s.v. Revelation).
129. Wherefore, since, with revelation rejected, even the principal truths of natural law and religion are obscured or lost, the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX rightly taught (n. 34) that not only when every religion has been removed, but also when this doctrine of divine revelation alone has been repudiated, those evils follow for society which we demonstrated (nn. 36 ff.).
130. You will say I: The asserted necessity of revelation does not seem to cohere with the concept of divine justice and providence. For why would God have left men for so many centuries destitute of that means which is called necessary for the worship of God and the right establishment of life? It is answered: Those who object these things seem to suppose that, in Catholic doctrine, revelation began when the Word of God made flesh appeared to the world. But the matter is otherwise. For all monuments testify that God, at the very beginning of things, manifested Himself to men by revealing religious truths. God also kindly provided that this primitive revelation, renewed in the Patriarchs, be preserved and transmitted through successive generations. “Therefore let the complaints of those cease,” says St. Leo (Sermon 3 on the Nativity, c. 4), “who, speaking against the divine dispensations with impious murmuring, complain of the lateness of the Lord’s nativity, as though that which was carried out in the last age of the world had not been bestowed in former times. For the Incarnation of the Word conferred that what was to be done should be done; and the sacrament of human salvation never ceased in any antiquity. What the Apostles preached, this the prophets announced; nor was that fulfilled late which was always believed… Therefore God did not consult for human affairs with late counsel, nor with late mercy, but from the constitution of the world He instituted one and the same cause of salvation for all.” But that men by their own fault lost or disfigured this precious deposit of truth must be charged to them and not to a fault of divine providence. In the same way, if a prince distributed to the poor means by which they could obtain necessary things for themselves, to be transmitted to their sons and grandsons, it would have to be attributed not to the prince, but to the fathers, if, rejecting the means received, they cast themselves and their children into want. Nor does the economy of divine providence stop here (compare On Grace, n. 838 ff.). For if any among men, without fault of their own, were ignorant of revealed doctrine, yet kept the natural law while cooperating with medicinal grace, God would not deny them the aids necessary so that they could arrive at faith. “If someone,” says St. Thomas (De Veritate, q. 4, a. 11, ad 1), “nourished in the forests, or among brute animals, followed the guidance of natural reason in seeking good and fleeing evil, it is most certainly to be believed that God would either reveal to him by internal inspiration those things which are necessary to be believed, or would direct some preacher of the faith to him.” But we have fully satisfied this difficulty in the treatise On Grace (n. 848 ff.).
131. You will say II: If man could not know truths pertaining to natural law and religion without revelation, revelation would be owed to man. But what is owed to human nature cannot be called supernatural (n. 104). Therefore. I answer by distinguishing the major: If man could not by physical power, I concede; by moral power, I subdistinguish: if there were another means proportioned to nature, I deny; if such a means were lacking, let it pass. In order that this solution may be understood, let us briefly note: 1) Revelation is not the only means by which God can relieve moral inability to know the truths of natural religion; rather, other means are available to Him, both internal and external, which are contained in the very order of natural providence. 2) Hence revelation would not be morally necessary, speaking simply, but only disjunctively, as we said, unless, namely, God by another providence were to provide for the moral possibility of acquiring this necessary knowledge. But since, in the present order of providence, God wishes to use not other supports but revelation, revelation is now necessary. 3) Nevertheless, it does not follow from this that revelation is now not an unowed gift; for not only is it now directed to the supernatural order and end (n. 127), but also, considered in itself, it is a mode of knowing truth exceeding the demand of nature (n. 104), and therefore unowed to it. 4) But to one asking whether, in another possible order of providence, for instance in the state of pure nature, God would have relieved our moral inability by other supports of the natural order, the answer is that this indeed would have been very fitting to the providence of a good and wise God, as all admit; but that it certainly be clear to all that He would have had to do so is not established. For God can, they say, create and leave finite nature with the defects which naturally follow upon it; but the moral inability of which we are speaking, as is plain from the proofs given, naturally follows upon human nature itself. Nevertheless the more common opinion affirms that in the state of pure nature, if it had existed, other means of the natural order would not have been lacking for relieving the moral inability of man. Compare the things which we discussed more fully on this matter in the treatise On the Grace of Christ (nn. 396-403).