Chapter 3.

Rosmini's Theological Teaching (1)

Introduction

DESPITE the systematic attention paid at least in Italy to his philosophical teaching, Rosmini's theology and the theological aspects of his philosophical output have been largely ignored. There are many reasons for this, amongst them the originality of certain treatises and hypotheses of his which gave rise to bitter polemics; the lack of any organic treatment of theology, caused by Rosmini's other occupations which prevented him from completing his theological works; the suspicion of heterodoxy after the condemnation by the Church of forty propositions, mostly theological in character, taken posthumously from Rosmini's works; and the need for familiarity with Rosmini's fundamental philosophical principles prior to the study of his theology.

Nevertheless, theology was of extreme importance to Rosmini himself who considered it both as the point of arrival of philosophy, and as a kind of 'golden cupola' resting on the edifice of philosophy and human knowledge, which it protects and embellishes. Theology even plays its part in human knowledge by raising questions which would otherwise be totally neglected by philosophy - the nature of 'body', for example, is inevitably re-examined in the light of the mystery of the Eucharist.

In Rosmini's 'system of truth', theology is considered from two points of view. Although its object is always the supreme Being, God, theology may be confined within the limits of unaided natural reason (natural theology), or treat of God as he is known through the data provided by revelation only (positive theology). Data which can be known by reason, whether it is in fact known by reason or with the help of revelation, is the object of natural theology.

In natural and positive theology we are dealing with branches of knowledge, and it is this characteristic which distinguishes theology of any kind from religion. 'Theology is a science; religion is action; the former is knowledge, or theory, the latter worship, or practice ... the theologian is not always a religious person, and the religious person is not always a theologian' (2). Religion is present when spiritual beliefs issue in interior and exterior actions of adoration and prayer. Religion becomes supernatural when God himself acts in the human spirit with what Christians call 'grace'.

Grace

We have already spoken about Rosmini's natural theology under the heading 'The Theory of Being', when we saw that little can be known about God with the light of reason alone. We can affirm his existence, and certain characteristics of his essence such as his goodness, justice and perfection, but we cannot know them positively or directly because we lack experience of God. Naturally speaking, we do not know him concretely and really in the way that we know the created things which fall under our sense-experience. Hence the theologian who speaks of God on the basis of natural reason alone is like a person blind from birth who speaks of sight: different arguments allow him to affirm the existence of sight, but without his grasping positively the reality of what he can affirm.

Such affirmation requires the real perception of the object of affirmation. In our case, God must be perceived really. But this can only happen if God offers himself to be perceived; God acts in the human spirit without any possibility that human beings can bring this about as, for instance, they could produce new feelings through their natural activity. Such an action freely given on God's part is what we call 'grace'. It constitutes the essence of supernatural religion and the object of positive theology.

Grace, therefore, is a real, efficacious action, a force, 'an interior, powerful aid'. It operates in the intellective essence of the human soul because 'the supreme Being can communicate only with what is most noble in the human being' (3). In the essence of the human spirit the real, immanent action of God produces a supernatural feeling which although passively received, as every feeling is, produces in human beings an action corresponding to the nature itself of the feeling. In other words, 'a truly new principle of action', called by Rosmini an 'instinct of the Holy Spirit', arises in the essence of the soul and allows us to speak of 'a new creature', who as 'reborn' is capable of entering the kingdom of heaven (4).

Deiform grace

Not all God's actions are equal. For example, creation and the government of the world begin in God, but terminate in something produced by God's operation, that is, in something altogether different from God. Such operations are divine. Grace, however, is a 'deiform' operation, in which God is principle (beginning) and term (end) of the action. Through the action of grace, God is formally united to the human being and constitutes for the human spirit raised up to the supernatural level what we may call its 'quasi-form'.

In positing God as the form of the understanding, Rosmini would seem to run the risk of falling into pantheism. But God, Rosmini would reply, is the objective form of the human spirit, and as such is present to the spirit without becoming part of it (just as light allows us to see without its becoming part of ourselves). At the same time, he is not present to the spirit in the way that, on a natural level, ideal being is present to the intellectual soul as its natural form. Ideal being allows us to intuit being in its initial mode; but through grace we perceive Being in its term so that the substance of Being becomes the form of our supernatural reality.

As we have seen, God's operation creates a supernatural feeling in the human spirit. We feel God operating in us and simultaneously we experience the presence of a feeling of perfect satisfaction. This feeling does not, however, necessarily bring consciousness in its wake. In fact, grace as creative (in its first act on the spirit) cannot be adverted to, just as our natural creation cannot be adverted to. Other acts of grace, which can be adverted to, are known only with difficulty. But the effects of grace, 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control' (Gal 5:22-23), are easily recognised.

Moreover, grace is not the final action of God in the human spirit. The supreme Being reveals himself through grace indistinctly, not clearly. The certainty of the interior presence of the ALL is not accompanied by a perception which is total: totum, sed non totaliter, as the theologians say. Faith begins with the indistinct perception of God, and draws us on to what remains hidden of God.

When God is perceived distinctly, as he is in the other life, we pass from a state of grace to a state of glory.

Triniform grace

The grace which unites human beings to God is the indwelling of the divine substance in the soul. United to God in this way, we enter into the life of the one God in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus Rosmini lays the foundation for his understanding of the distinction between deiform and triniform grace.

The feeling imparted by deiform grace is of some indistinct ALL which encloses within itself every possible force and energy. But the same feeling imparted by triniform grace is of an ALL unfolded to the human spirit in three modes. The same ALL is now perceived as a creative force, the source of every other force, and gives rise to the 'fear of the Lord'; it is perceived as knowledge of God which enlightens the intellect and gives rise to faith; it is perceived as willed love of God and gives rise to perfect satisfaction. The feeling of omnipotent force that acts, of subsistent truth that illumines, and of unlimited love that expands and attracts the will, comprises triniform grace.

Although deiform and triniform grace do not differ in essence, they possess different grades in the sense that the first can be perceived by human beings without the second. There will be times when God gives to human beings the capacity to perceive the one but not the other. Thus for Rosmini, the grace of the Old Testament is pre-eminently deiform; of the New Testament, pre-eminently triniform.

When the human spirit is in possession of triniform grace, or rather possessed by it, humans come to the final perfection for which their nature and the gift of God has made them suitable. On the level of nature, in contradistinction to the supernatural level, we find ourselves open to the infinity of ideal being but at the same time in possession of only limited satisfaction through feeling that can never actually exhaust the infinite possibilities revealed to us in the idea. This natural imbalance drives us to seek something really infinite, or infinite knowledge, or infinite love, any one of which will envelop the others and bring us to the infinite Being who alone can put an end to human travail. The search, however, is destined to failure. We cannot satisfy these exigencies of ours. But God, in revealing the mystery of the blessed Trinity, furnishes us with the final link of the chain. Triniform grace, which will one day be triniform glory, constitutes life, knowledge and love operating supernaturally within the human being. Truth and love find their definitive meeting place in God: 'the work of Christian wisdom truly consists in this charity exercised in truth (6)'. Religion, and philosophy also, find their completion in Christian wisdom where 'charity is simply the execution and the substantiation of truth' (7).

Original sin

Within the context of the divine economy, grace is imparted through Christ. The revealed religion which he has brought us is based essentially on two truths: original sin and redemption. Grace comes to us therefore in the circumstances provided by original sin and our redemption.

The first human beings committed sin, and committed it freely, losing grace and the fruits of the grace which they had possessed from the beginning. Their human will remained, but without the capacity to command the other human faculties. Indeed, disordered in itself, it produced disorder in the faculties dependent upon it and, as the supreme activity within human beings, provided the basis for that twist of human nature called in them and their descendants 'original sin'. But the difference between original sin in our first parents and in us lies in the quality of will with which the one, same sin is incurred. In Adam and Eve, the will is free and therefore guilty of fault as well as of sin. In us, original sin, although an act of the will, is not free. Deprived of grace through Adam's sin, his descendants have no choice at the moment of conception. They have no means of withdrawing their will from submission to their human instincts and turning it to God as their supreme Good. The supreme activity of the will, dedicated now to what is less than God, has turned, but not freely, from the supreme Good to a lesser good, and surrendered to it entirely. According to Rosmini, disordered nature necessarily infects the person of the newly conceived human being.

Rosmini's distinction between sin and fault, which he used to safeguard the true nature of sin in the newly conceived, was intended as a defence against the errors of Baius, who maintained that the human will was irredeemably corrupt and impervious to the healing power of interior grace, and the opposite errors of Pelagius and the Jansenists who thought that only some exterior help was needed for us to act supernaturally. Rosmini was to come under severe attack for his teaching on original sin, and in particular for his distinction between sin and fault.

Redemption

Within the circumstances created by sin in the human race, God helped human beings by means of revelation and grace. The principle of supernatural revelation, and therefore of grace, is Christ, known incipiently in the Old Testament through the gradual unveiling of the divine plan of redemption, and known fully in the New Testament through the Incarnation.

It is the humanity of Christ that provides the vehicle for the manifestation of the Word of God who, through his body, communicates with his fellows and provides them with the necessary sanctifying grace, obtained through his death and resurrection, to raise them from sin. Having gone up to his Father, he now unites himself with his brethren on earth through the sacraments. These are signs which effectively bring us into contact, in various ways, with the human nature of Christ, and hence with his divine healing power. In other words, the grace that now saves mankind is a communication of the Word to human beings through the human nature assumed by the Word. According to Rosmini, this explains why we speak of 'incorporation in Christ,' and of incorporation in him as the beginning of eternal life.

the visible effect of which in this world is the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Character

According to Rosmini, union and incorporation with Christ is made up of two elements. The first establishes a stable contact between Christ and the human spirit, and is brought about by the work of Christ at the moment of baptism when the light of the Word is impressed upon the soul, leaving there an indelible mark or character which distinguishes Christians from non-Christians. Such 'enlightenment' provides the soul with new, supernatural capacities enabling it to receive and administer the sacraments, and placing it once and for all on a supernatural level. The character is also the fount of grace within the Christian.

When the character is left to expand its power unhindered in the Christian, grace, the second element of incorporation in Christ, enters and informs the will of the Christian (only sin, by which the will impedes the action of the character, prevents final incorporation in Christ).

Thus it is Christ himself, 'the human, perfect nature of Christ, triumphant over death' (9), who operates in and with the Christian. One of Rosmini's own prayers is in line with this truth. 'Father,' he prays, 'as your divine Son would pray in me, so I would pray to you' (10). Moreover, as a result of the interior union between Christ and his disciple, two basic feelings are present in the Christian: that by which he perceives his own nothingness, and that which speaks to him of his dignity, power and greatness. The former is the source of the Christian's humility; the latter provides that greatness of soul which enables the Christian to undertake anything whatsoever in the service of his Lord, and consider all things as loss for the sake of serving him.

Christian life in the Church

It is clear that for Rosmini, Christian living is reduced ultimately to the Christian's grace-inspired willingness to allow the Spirit of Christ himself to have the final word in all that the human person thinks and does. Rosmini prays:

The spiritual endeavour of the Christian is nothing more than the effort and sacrifice he makes to die to self and live according to the Spirit of Christ within him. The struggle which looms so large in every truly Christian existence is again the outcome of the presence within the soul of two elements: the wounded, disordered nature of the human being, and the life of Christ himself. The decision facing the Christian consists in the choice he has to make of living in accord with one or other of these elements. If he chooses life in the Pauline sense, the outcome will be expressed in the words: 'I live, yet not I. It is Christ who lives in me' (Gal 2:20).

The life of Christ will therefore draw the Christian to love and desire the things that Christ desired, and supremely to devote his life in whatever way he can to the well-being of the Church founded by Christ which, as the 'supernatural society of mankind', is the beginning on earth of the kingdom, the final source of the glory of God and the good of humanity. In the Church, the Christian will find the strength he needs, above all through the sacraments of confirmation and the Eucharist, to seek 'first, the kingdom of God and his justice' (Mt 6:33), the will of God as the source of all his thoughts and actions, and the humble, untiring service of his neighbour.

Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist

Rosmini's writings on baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist offer special insight into the nature and effects of these three sacraments of initiation which sanctify the whole human being, mind, will and body.

As we have seen, baptism impresses the light of the Word on the human spirit. Through this light, the Word continually offers the spirit an object of love that can draw the soul's will away from its mortal preoccupation with self, and thus release it from the sin in which it was conceived. Moreover baptism, according to Rosmini, brings to the soul the gifts of the Spirit in the wake of the Christ-life.

Confirmation, which confers the presence of the person of the Holy Spirit on the Christian soul, impresses the character more deeply in the human spirit, 'confirming' all that has already been gifted, assuring Christians of the indwelling of the third Person of the blessed Trinity in their souls, and baptising them with fire intended to set the whole world ablaze.

But the crown of the sacramental system is the Eucharist, 'the most ineffable of all the sacraments' (12), as Rosmini calls it. According to the hypothesis advanced by Rosmini, transubstantiation, or the conversion of the whole substance of the bread and wine into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, 'takes place in a way analogous to that in which we convert the food we eat, through nutrition, into our own body and blood' (13). The change takes place by means of a supernatural operation (14), with which the Word appropriates the substance of the bread and wine, making it the substance of his own body. When we eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, however, it is we who are assimilated into Christ through the superior power of his divine humanity which allows us to share in his eternal life. Indeed, the body of Christ of which we have partaken assures us of life after death when, until the resurrection of the body, we shall be without any corporeal element other than that granted to us through our assimilation into the life of Christ.

Baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist together re-create the whole human being. Although each of these sacraments brings in its wake at least indirectly the effects of them all, it is in baptism principally that the Christian's intellect is enlightened anew by the light of the Word; in confirmation that the Christian's will is renewed by person of the Holy Spirit, Love in person; and in the Eucharist that his body receives the seed of Christ's resurrected life which ensures the Christian a share in the resurrection itself.

Notes

(1). Cf. Antropologia soprannaturale (Supernatural Anthropology) [1884], EN, Roma 1955; L'introduzione del vangelo secondo Giovanni commentata (Commentary on the Introduction to the Gospel according to John) [1882], EN, Padua 1966; Il razionalismo che tenta insinuarsi nelle scuole teologiche (Rationalism and its Attempt to Infiltrate the Theological Schools) [1882], EN, Padua 1967; Dell'idea della sapienza (The Idea of Wisdom), in the Introduzione alla filosofia [1850], EN, Rome 1934.

(2). AS, EN, vol 1, p. 27.

(3). Ibid, p. 48.

(4). Cf. ibid, p. 59.

(5). Ibid, p. 65.

(6). Ibid, p. 152.

(7). Ibid, p. 174.

(8). IG, p. 153.

(9). Ibid.

(10). Rosminian Spirituality, p. 405.

(11). Ibid, p. 409.

(12). AS, EN, vol 2, p. 275.

(13). Ibid, p. 276.

(14). Ibid, p. 297.

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