Lawrence Feingold on the Natural Desire to See God

Br Daniel Turski, LC
Seminar on the Natural Desire to See God with Fr Alain Contat
The two orders [of nature and grace] cannot be partitioned off one from the other, for the rational
creature naturally desires to see God, and has a specific obediential capacity to receive the vision
rooted in its spiritual nature. The two orders are in profound continuity, despite the transcendence of
grace and glory.1

1. Biographical and Bibliographical Information

Dr. Lawrence Feingolds father was Jewish and his mother a
Protestant, although neither truly practicing, and when Dr. Feingold was a
child, his family only attended Unitarian services from time to time. Feingold
obtained an undergraduate degree from Washington University in 1981. At
Washington University, Feingold was greatly inspired by Norris K. Smith, an
Art History professor, who taught him to see art primarily as the expression
of convictions and beliefs concerning God, man, and the world. This same
professor taught him that the greatest works of art were sustained by a true
and profound view of the nature of reality and the human person, and that
the gradual dehumanization of modern art and architecture was tied to the
progressive loss of Christian faith in society and its resulting secularization 2.
At the time, Feingold was an atheist, but art, beauty, a profound interest in
comparative religion, and suffering, would be the constant and principle
vehicles that would bring him to believe in God:
I remember being in the Sistine Chapel shortly before our
conversion, admiring the Last Judgment of Michelangelo and
thinking how incongruous it was that I as an atheist, together with
many other tourists, was admiring the Last Judgment without
posing the question of the truth it portrayed. As if the truth of the
Last Judgment was irrelevant to the work of art! 3
In 1988, Feingold was living in Pietrasanta, in Tuscany, together with
his wife, Marsha, a conservative Jew who stopped practicing her faith in
college. While she was pregnant with their first child, she was overcome by
anxiety and said that she did not want to live. It was at that moment that
Feingold recognized in his wife the human hearts infinite desire to love and
to be loved; a desire that Feingold knew he could not fulfill. And thus, at 29
years of age, he claims to have prayed for the first time in his life, knowing
that only God could satisfy such a profound and vast desire of the human
heart.
Turning to a greater power as a last resort to their crisis, and being
surrounded by Italys magnificent Catholic art and culture, Lawrence and
Marsha gradually came to know and love the Catholic Church, growing in
their conviction of Her identity as the One, Holy, True and Apostolic Church
founded by God Himself. They both officially entered the Church, being
baptized on March 25, 1989:
1

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and
His Interpreters, Ave Maria, FL, Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 2010, xxxvii.
Emphasis is personal.
2
Cf. L. FEINGOLD, Account of My Conversion, in Association of Hebrew Catholics,
[http://hebrewcatholic.org/accountofmyconve.html, 2008]
3
Ibid.

In the first years after our conversion, people often asked me why
I chose Christianity or the Catholic Church, and not Judaism or
Buddhism or Protestantism. The question is framed in the
language of religious liberalism, as if religion were a matter of our
personal sentiments, personal preferences, personal loyalties or
choices. The experience of converts is not that we have chosen
anything, but that it is God who has chosen to redeem us through
the Incarnation and Passion of the Messiah, which is continued
and made present in the Catholic Church, and it is God who called
us to enter that ark of salvation. We who have been given the
grace to hear, through no merit of our own, have the duty to pray
for those who have not yet been given that gift 4.
After his conversion, he studied Philosophy and Theology at the
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome from 1990 to 1999, earning a
doctorate in Dogmatic Theology. From 1995 to 1996, he studied Biblical
Hebrew and Greek at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem. In
1999, he went on to teach Philosophy and Theology in the House of
Formation of Miles Christi in Lujan, Argentina. He remained there until 2004.
He is currently an Assistant Professor of Theology in the Institute for Pastoral
Theology of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, and Associate Professor
of Theology and Philosophy at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, in St. Louis,
Missouri. He is also the Director of Theology for the Association of Hebrew
Catholics.
Dr. Lawrence Feingold has published the following books:
1. The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas
and His Interpreters, Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria
University, 20105.
2. The Mystery of Israel and the Church:
a. Figure and Fulfillment (Vol. 1). St. Louis: The Miriam Press,
2010.
b. Things New and Old (Vol. 2). St. Louis: The Miriam Press,
2010.
c. The Messianic Kingdom of Israel. (Vol. 3). St. Louis: The
Miriam Press, 2010.
The fourth volume of the Mystery of Israel and the Church is
forthcoming. Dr. Feingold has also published countless articles and
continues to give talks on a variety of philosophical and theological topics.
2. Analysis of His Position
a. Feingolds Anthropological Stance
Dr. Feingold claims that the debate on the meaning of natural desire
in St. Thomas texts could be reduced to the question of whether its found
in a movement of will that follows knowledge (posterior to intellectual
4

L. FEINGOLD, Account of My Conversion, in Association of Hebrew Catholics,

[http://hebrewcatholic.org/accountofmyconve.html, 2008]
5
In his Curriculum Vitae (cf. http://www.salvationhistory.com/personnel/Dr.
+Lawrence+Feingold), Feingold writes: This is a second extensively revised edition
of my doctoral dissertation, originally published in Rome, 2001.

knowledge) or if its innate, found in lower nature, prior to knowledge 6.

The position that the author defends can be better understood by
highlighting three points written in the books introduction. The first text is
the following:
The natural appetite placed by God in things without knowledge
has come to be referred to as innate appetite or natural
inclination. It flows from the very essence of a thing in a constant,
immutable, and unconscious way, and inclines each thing to its
proper and proportionate end. Innate appetite or inclination is
common to all being, each of which is inclined to its end,
whatever it may be7.
Thus, an innate appetite or desire simply refers to the ultimate metaphysical
movement of a being towards its ultimate perfective end. It is a natural
appetite that always flows from a given form, independently of knowledge,
as matter towards its form, or as a heavy object toward the center of a
gravitational field. Feingold identifies it with absolute willing, and writes that
this appetite is not a secondary act at all, but is caused by the presence of
active and passive potencies which determine a relation, order, inclination,
or aptitude toward the natural actualization of these potencies 8. Thus,
innate appetite refers to an order of potencies, and powers of the soul with
an appetite for an object, prior to cognition, such as sights appetite for light
and hearings appetite for sound. This proportionality between faculty and
object implies that the natural appetite of our faculties is limited to a certain
range of objects to which the faculty is proportioned by its natural active
powers. And according to Feingold, an innate desire is automatically natural,
but he also claims that there are natural appetites which are not innate, and
these are elicited appetites.
Before explaining this further, it should be mentioned that Dr. Feingold
follows Thomas triple division of appetite into natural, sensitive and
rational9. Sensitive appetite is excited by sense knowledge, as in the case of
an animal desiring some particular good. The rational appetite is the will,
which is aroused by intellectual knowledge, and the act of willing is
elicited or drawn out by the object that is known to be good in some
way10. This leads to the second important text found in Feingolds
introduction:
An elicited desire, on the contrary, is a particular conscious
movement of the will or sense appetite attracted by some object
known either by the senses or the intellect the desire is said to
be elicited in that it is drawn out, as it were, by the
desirability of the known object. All the conscious movements of
our sensitive appetites and our will are said to be elicited and not
innate11.

Cf. L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 11.

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, xxiv.
8
Ibid., 13.
9
Ibid., 12.
10
Ibid., 13.
11
Ibid., xxiv.
7

Up until this point, it has been seen that desire or appetite, which is
ultimately a tendency toward greater participation in divine goodness
according to each beings nature or mode of being, can be fundamentally
divided into three categories:
Natural
Always flows from a
given form
Most characteristic of
lower natures, and
found in all beings

Sensitive
Excited by sense
knowledge

Rational
Aroused by intellectual
knowledge

Only found in animals

Only found in rational

beings

Dr. Feingold, however, introduces a second distinction into the triple division
of appetite in man, which is the following:
Natural
Solely and strictly from
God
INNATE

Sensitive
Rational
From God and ourselves, because it results from
knowing
ELICITED

This distinction basically implies the impossibility, on the part of man, to act
contrary to his naturally innate appetite, since it leaves no room for his own,
free intervention. But in the realm of sensitive and rational appetites, mans
freedom, which ultimately means self-possession, comes into play. This
distinction is fundamentally based upon a desires independence of
knowledge.
This distinction also leads Feingold to claim that the faculty of the
soul, which in this case is the will, can desire objects in two fundamental
ways: through an innate natural appetite, which is a natural inclination that
is always present, and secondly, insofar as an object is known to be good for
the creature as a whole, resulting in an elicited and conscious desire. The
object of the first appetite, according to Feingold, is its natural end, which is
the universal good or happiness. It should be noted that this distinction is a
reference to Cajetan, and is taken from his commentaries, and not directly
from St. Thomas texts. The reason behind this is, according to the author,
because the specific vocabulary that distinguishes between an innate and
an elicited appetite was only introduced after St. Thomas, even though he
himself often made the distinction without the specific terminology. Those in
favour of the distinction were Cajetan, Sylvester of Ferrara, Francisco
Surez, and John of St. Thomas, while those against it were Sestili, De
Broglie and William OConnor12.
Thus, to recap what has been seen thus far in this second point,
mans rational appetite can desire an object in an innate way, or in an elicit
way. This distinction leads Dr. Feingold to identify the very heart of the
problem, to which he dedicates his entire thesis:
Does this natural elicited desire correspond to an underlying
innate appetite for the vision of God? It is clear, for example, that
the natural elicited desire for happiness in general corresponds to
an innate appetite or natural inclination of the will itself, which by
12

Cf. L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 16.

its nature is ordered to happiness. Is this also the case with the
natural desire to see God? Is the natural elicited desire to see God
a sign that our faculties of will and intellect are ordered by their
very nature to the vision of God?13
In other words, when one experiences and observes the natural
phenomenon of a persons desire for happiness, is this desire simply and
ultimately directed toward connatural ends the final and highest being the
metaphysical consideration of God as First Cause which cannot be directed
toward the direct vision of Gods essence without the divine gift of grace, or
is it an extremely imperfect confused innate tendency of the will toward the
vision, which it cannot obtain without the gift of supernatural grace? Dr.
Feingold will opt for the initial explanation, admitting an innate desire
toward a connatural end following Cajetans distinction but not toward
the beatific vision itself, which can only be desired in an elicited and
conditional way, after the intervention of grace and because of mans
specific obediential potency. Two more distinctions in Feingolds
anthropological explanation need to be clarified in order to understand this
better.
First, mans rational elicited appetite can be divided into natural and
free. Natural basically refers to voluntas ut natura, and signifies an elicited
desire without deliberation. A free elicited desire refers to voluntas ut ratio
and signifies a movement of the will that follows on deliberation. A natural
elicited movement of the will refers to natural knowledge of the first
principles of the practical reason, which generates natural willing. The object
of natural willing is that which is spontaneously perceived as good for the
whole creature, such as health or life. A free elicited desire already refers to
deliberation of reason regarding the ordering of means to an end,
generating deliberated willing. Thus, having spontaneously desired health as
something good, a person deliberately desires to see a doctor in order to
recover.
Secondly, the voluntas ut natura or natural willing implies a
necessitation of the will, according to specification but not according to
exercise. Backtracking a couple of steps, it should be remembered that the
will has an innate desire for happiness, which finds its ultimate metaphysical
explanation in the goodness of the ends toward which it tends. Every man
operates, ultimately, for the sake of achieving happiness. However,
according to Feingold, and following the Cajetanist school, beyond the level
of innate desire, but still on the level of natural, spontaneous willing without
deliberation, everything that is essentially contained in happiness, as a
secondary object, such as being, life, friendship, and knowledge of the truth,
is also necessitated by the will, but again, according to specification and not
exercise. What does that mean? It means that they necessarily attract,
without necessitating choice. In other words, they attract in an incomplete
or conditional way, leaving room for free choice. It also means that the
rejection of a secondary object is always per accidens, and always in
relation to some other good. For example, suicide can be chosen as a
rejection of life, but in light of perceiving any type of afterlife as something
better than the current one. And third, the rejection of a secondary object is
only after deliberation, even though its naturally willed before deliberation.
13

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, xxv.

Thus, after a first glance at Feingolds position, it seems that, while he

wants to defend the gratuity of grace, he also wants to be able to explain
the possibility of rejecting God and turning away from Him. Following the
explanation that has been given thus far, Feingolds position can be
summarized as saying that mans innate natural desire of the will tends
toward happiness in general, since the object is proportionate to the faculty.
Now, in relation to happiness or the universal good as final end, there are
secondary objects which are contained in it, and which are naturally willed
without deliberation, but not innately. The knowledge of God is included
among these secondary objects. Because these secondary objects
necessitate the will according to specification, but not according to exercise,
they attract in an incomplete or conditional way, leaving room for free
choice, including that of rejecting them, always per accidens and only
deliberately. Thus, the desire for the vision of God is natural, but not
innate14, leading Feingold to write: this would also apply to the natural
desire to see God to choose the vision of God as our final end would require
deliberation, faith, and the aid of grace. Nevertheless, the mere
consideration of it would seem to necessarily attract the will to desire it in a
conditional way: if such a thing is possible15. In other words, mans natural
desire to see God is a conditional one, and can be referred to as incomplete,
imperfect, inefficacious, simple, or antecedent willing, or voluntas ut natura,
all of which can be referred to as a wish (velleitas) if impossible to realize.
According to Dr. Feingold, for the desire to see God to be innate, it would
have to be an unconditional act of the will, which would make it absolute,
perfect, completed, and efficacious. The natural desire for the secondary
objects of natural willing (life, health, honor, etc.) is formed in a conditional
and imperfect way, prior to deliberation. Thus is can be overruled by the
deliberated will, and yet coexist with it in conditional for. 16
Dr. Feingold makes the following three conclusions at the end of his
anthropological analysis of man, while following St. Thomas texts:
(1) Elicited acts of the will are not always free, but rather are
spontaneous and natural when no deliberation is necessary to grasp
the goodness of an object.
(2) Innate appetite is limited to what is proportionate to the nature
of the faculty, and is incapable of growth or self-transcendence,
whereas elicited natural desire, based on knowledge, can aspire to
disproportionate objects, transcending the limits of human nature.

14

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 19: It is very important to note that
the term natural has a broader sense than the term innate in this discussion.
The word natural applies both to the innate inclination of the will (which St.
Thomas refers to as natural appetite or natural inclination), and to elicited acts
of the will which spontaneously (naturally) arise before deliberation: natural
desire. Every innate inclination is said to be a natural appetite, but an elicited
natural desire is not said to be innate. Much confusion with regard to the
interpretation of the natural desire to see God comes from not understanding this
critical distinction, thinking that natural desire must always refer to innate
inclination and forgetting that there are such things as elicited acts of natural
desire. It should be noted that Feingold adopts this distinction from Cajetan.
15
Ibid., 23.
16
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 23.

(3) Elicited natural desires can be conditional; and this is doubly true
when what we naturally desire transcends the limits of all natural
power.17
b. Interpretation of Thomas Texts
i. Is the Desire Innate or Elicited?
In the introduction to his book, Feingold presents the problem of
twofold happiness, or as he says it, the two types of beatitude, which are
the connatural and the supernatural. Connatural, in this case, means
proportionate to nature. Following the Cajetanist interpretation, Feingold
states that the natural inclination of our will is directed to our connatural
end, but is insufficient to order us to our supernatural end. For this reason
grace and the theological virtues are necessary first to order us to the
vision of God. He thus denies a natural, innate appetite for the vision of
God. Feingold also claims there to be numerous texts in which St. Thomas
Aquinas denies that natural inclination can extend beyond the limits of the
natural order. The following section will be a presentation of the principle
Thomistic texts chosen by Feingold, in which there seems to be a denial of a
natural inclinations incapacity to transcend the natural order.
ii. Is the Desire Absolute or Conditional?
According to Feingold, this problem was not explicitly treated by St.
Thomas in the texts that speak of the natural desire to see God, even
though certain questions in the Angelic Doctors texts provide the necessary
principles to solve the problem. The view that the natural desire to see God
is naturally formed only as a conditional or imperfect desire was first
formulated by theologians of the late sixteenth century: Medina, Bez,
Surez, and John of St. Thomas. The resolution of this problem will be briefly
seen later on.
iii. The Actual Analysis
Dr. Feingold begins this chapter with a contextual introduction. He
mentions the fact that many theologians sought to defend the Neoplatonic
notion of an unknowable God whose supreme eminence implied complete
transcendence. Consequently, this notion was taken to extremes, and in the
1230s, Dominican theologians in Paris began asserting that man shall not
see Gods essence in heaven, but only the manifestation of His attributes.
Throughout his writing, St. Thomas would refute these claims, and Dr.
Feingold decides to focus on De Veritate, q. 8, a. 1. Feingold simply
highlights the fact that the Angelic Doctors argument is based upon the
principle of perfection, and the fact that mans noblest faculty can only be
perfected by the noblest object, and if he were not able to see the divine
essence, that means that he would be beatified through a creaturely
mediation; something with is impossible and absurd.
Without formulating any type of extensive evaluation, Dr. Feingold
simply writes that the argument is one of fittingness, and not a strict
demonstration. In other words, because God has immediately created the
17

All three quotes taken from L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 26.

soul from nothing, it is fitting that its final beatitude should also lie in an
immediate contemplation of God. It is fitting that the final end of a creature
consist in a perfect return to its principle, and with the same immediacy. 18
But, according to Feingold, its not strictly demonstrative because, even
though it may seem less fitting, there is no contradiction in God destining
the rational creature to an imperfect return to its source, which would be the
contemplation of God through creatures. According to Feingold, this would
constitute an imperfect beatitude, but yet proportionate to a finite creature
such as man19.
Feingold prefers the Aristotelian argument based on mans desire to
know. He highlights eight texts in which St. Thomas uses this argument 20:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 25, 50 51, 57.

Comp. theol. I, ch. 104.
Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 1.
In I Cor. 13:12.
In Matth. 5:8.
In Ioan. 1:18.
Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 3, a. 8.
De Virtutibus, q. un., a. 10.

According to Feingold, the arguments in favour of the natural desire to

see God in these texts are already in fully developed form in SCG III, ch. 50
51. From this time onwards it is repeated in various contexts but without
any substantial change21.
It would be exhaustive to describe all of Dr. Feingolds arguments
based upon his analysis of SCG III, ch. 25, 50 51. It is sufficient to highlight
just a few texts in order to illustrate how and why he believes St. Thomas is
speaking of an elicited desire, and not an innate one.
While analyzing the eleventh argument in chapter 25, Dr. Feingold
argues that the desire to know the first cause is the result of a certain chain
reaction which follows knowledge. The conclusion of the argument is the
fact that man naturally desires to know the first cause as his final end.
According to Feingold, some argue that precisely because not every man
always takes efficacious measure to learn the truth about God 22, St.
Thomas is not speaking of an elicited desire at all, but of an innate desire
independently of knowledge and incapable of being experienced 23. But
Feingold immediately rejects this hypothesis, since St. Thomas is speaking
of a desire aroused specifically by knowledge of effects whose cause is not
yet known24. He concludes with the following words:
St. Thomas understands the term natural here in terms of the
modality by which the act comes into existence. An elicited
18
19
20
21
22
23
24

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 30.

Ibid., 30.
According to chronological order provided by Jean-Pierre Torrell.
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 34.
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 35.
Ibid., 35.
Ibid., 36.

natural desire is one whose movement is determined by nature.

The observation of effects spontaneously triggers the desire to
know their cause, and this leads to the desire to know the cause
of that cause, and so forth, until the very first cause is reached 25.
The analysis of the thirteenth argument in the same chapter is based
on what would be called a general principle of progressive acceleration: the
closer to its end a creature is, the greater its velocity to that end 26. As a
man comes to know progressively, his desire to know increases, and
because it would be impossible for this desire to grow ad infinitum, it must
have a definitive end, which, according to Feingold, is the knowledge of God
as first cause, on the metaphysical level, and the beatific vision, on the
supernatural one. As seen before, an innate desire is unconscious, constant,
and immutable, thus being deprived of an intrinsic principle by which it can
be intensified, and this is why Feingold concludes that the desire for God has
to be elicit.
The analysis of chapter 50 follows the same line, emphasizing in
different ways the underlying Aristotelian principle of mans natural desire to
know as the basic demonstration of mans naturally elicited desire to know
God.
It should be noted that Feingold does admit, in accordance with St.
Thomas, that the beatific vision must be the final end of intellectual
creatures. This is evident in his brief commentary on St. Thomas text in the
Compendium Theologiae I., ch. 104, in which the Angelic Doctor explains
why the vision of God, alone, could bring our desire to know completely to
rest. Throughout his book, Dr. Feingold does emphasize the importance of
defending the logical possibility of pure nature, but he doesnt defend two
independently perfect ends: the metaphysical contemplation of God as first
cause, and the beatific vision of the divine essence. He recognizes the fact
that the first is an imperfect reflection of the latter.
After analyzing some of St. Thomas texts, Feingold concludes by
saying that:
i. The natural desire for God is based upon mans natural desire to
know.
ii. It is a naturally elicited desire of the will, spontaneously seeking the
perfection of the intellect.
iii. The desire is based upon the self-evident principle that it is good
for man to know the ultimate causes of things, and their essences.
iv. It is natural inasmuch as upon considering the mystery of God,
man spontaneously and necessarily wonders what and who He is; the
necessitation concerns specification, but not exercise.
v. It is a conditional movement of the will, without the virtues of faith
and hope.
Dr. Feingold sees these problems as unresolved by St. Thomas 27:

25
26
27

Ibid., 36.
Ibid., 37.
Cf. L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 44 45.

i. Because the beatific vision completely transcends our intellect and

will, and is impossible to achieve without grace, in what sense is the
natural desire to see God a natural desire?
ii. St. Thomas frequently states that our supernatural end is above
the power of natural reason to know. However, St. Thomas argument
from the natural desire to God seems to provide a strict
demonstration of our supernatural end.28
iii. How can there be a natural desire for something that exceeds what
is due to nature?
iv. How can there be a natural desire specifically to see God?
v. What is the relationship between the natural desire and the
theological virtue of hope, and how do they differ?
c. Cajetans Position
Feingold makes an interesting observation when he writes that
the brevity of [Cajetans] commentaries on the texts of St.
Thomas dealing with the natural desire to see God reveal that this
problem had not yet fully come to the fore, as it would in the
following two generations. Cajetan focused his energies more
deeply on countering Scotus conception of the natural
appetite of the will for our supernatural beatitude, than
on interpreting the natural desire to see God29 .
Feingold wishes to defend Cajetans position, along with his name,
which has been refuted by recent authors, especially De Lubac and tienne
Gilson. But it is no surprise to see that some consider Cajetan to be a
corruptor of, rather than a contributor to, St. Thomas texts on the natural
desire to God, since in attempting to refute some of Scotus metaphysically
formalistic notions, he simply fell into opposite extremes and missed St.
Thomas original intentions30.
Duns Scotus presented two fundamental problems that Cajetan
sought to refute: a certain reduction of the spiritual faculties to the level of
lower faculties, and the nature of the wills potency with regard to the
beatific vision. With regards to the first point, Scotus claimed that the desire
to see God could only be an innate desire, since innate desires were those
which were truly natural. This, according to Feingold, is based on the
assumption that a natural desire must always be in act, and since we do
not consciously experience any appetite to be always in act, [Scotus]
concludes that natural will is not an elicited act all 31. In brief, Scotus
seemingly categorizes the voluntas ut natura as innate, and deliberate
28

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 45.

Ibid., 81 82. Emphasis personal.
30
The subtle but nevertheless significant differences between Cajetans and St.
Thomas positions is due to the different ways they interpreted and used
metaphysical notions in their theological compendiums. Its beyond the scope of
this paper to begin analyzing these differences, but one only need to recall
Cajetans notion of essence as another type of act (esse essentiae) and subsistence
as a tertium quid, as opposed to St. Thomas notion of potential essendi and
subsistence as signifying the possession of ones own act.
31
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 49.
29

elicited desires as unnatural and free, since they depend upon free will.
Feingold refers to Capreolus in explaining that Scotus comes to this
conclusion because he has failed to understand the distinction posed by St.
Thomas between a necessity with regard to specification and with regard to
exercise32. The second issue logically stems from the first one: if the desire
to see God is an innate and unconditional inclination, then the object will be
God Himself. This is what led Scotus to affirm that man has a natural
potency for the vision of the Most Holy Trinity. The problem here is the
deification of nature, independently of the gift of grace. According to
Feingold, natural potency and natural desire are practically identical notions
in Scotus writings, and the distinction between natural and supernatural is
not clear at all. According to Scotus,
A receptive potency can be considered either with regard to the
act which it receives, or to the agent from which it is received. In
the first way, the potency will either be natural, violent or neutral.
It is natural if it naturally inclines to the act, violent if it goes
against a natural inclination, and neutral if it neither inclines to
this or to its opposite. In this comparison there is no
supernaturality33.
With regards to the natural desire to see God, Cajetan refuses the
idea of a natural inclination toward a supernatural end, and along with it,
the idea of a natural potency toward supernatural perfections. When Scotus
writes that every being desires its own perfection, he is indicating that man
naturally desires supernatural beatitude, but
when we say that everything naturally desires its own perfection,
Cajetan points out that the words its own should be interpreted
in terms of natural proportionality. In other words, everything
naturally desires the perfection which is proportionate to its own
nature: its proper perfection34 .
For example, in the case of a marble slab, its natural desire to be
marble and have all the properties that go along with it. But it doesnt have
the natural desire to be sculpted into a beautiful statue by an external
agent, because this is disproportionate to its nature. The same goes for
man: he can only naturally desire what is proportionate to his nature, which
is less than supernatural perfection, because it goes beyond what is his
own, and exceeds what is due to human nature.
Dr. Feingold takes a number of St. Thomas texts which illustrate and
justify Cajetans refusal of Scotus position. It is enough to take the first one
in order to understand Feingolds train of thought. The text is De Veritate q.
27, a. 2, which is the distinction of grace and charity. In order to make a
distinction between sanctifying grace and charity, St. Thomas refers to the
threefold distinction of nature (providing the basis of the natural inclination),
the natural inclination which follows on that nature, and the exterior act
which is a consequence of that inclination in order to obtain the end
naturally desired. Man has a rational nature which gives rise to a natural
32
33
34

Ibid., 50.
Ibid., 53.
Ibid., 84.

inclination of the will for the end to which we are naturally proportioned, and
which can be naturally attained by the operation of our natural faculties.
According to Feingold, in this text,
St. Thomas seems to limit natural appetite in man to that end
for which man has both a natural proportionality and the natural
active forces to achieve. In other words, he does not equate
natural appetite in man with the natural desire to see God! There
is no mention in this context of the natural desire to see God, and
the same holds for all other parallel texts dealing with the
necessity of grace and the theological virtues, independently of
their chronology. Instead, (innate) natural appetite or inclination is
considered to exist only with regard to a naturally proportionate
end35 .
By faith, it is known that man is destined toward an end which is
disproportionate to his nature. This means that all three previously
mentioned dimensions need to be re-proportioned in order to make man
capable of contemplating the divine essence: The new proportionality is
given by sanctifying grace, the new inclination by the theological virtue of
charity, and the acquisition or meriting of the end is given by means of the
other infused virtues, which are directed by charity 36 .
In brief, everything naturally desires its own connatural and
proportionate perfection. In response to Scotus arguments, Cajetan states
that the natural inclination toward a supernatural end would imply a
deification of the rational creature which is solely the result of grace.
Furthermore, Cajetan writes that natural inclination is based on the presence
of some fundamental similarity to the object desired:
The greater the similarity, the greater will be the inclination; the
more distant the similarity, the weaker will be the inclination. A
proportionate perfection, although small, actually attracts more
than a disproportionate greater perfection, as we know from
human experience. A maximum perfection that is maximally
distant from and disproportionate to our nature will not arouse a
maximum natural inclination, but at most a wish. The attraction
resulting from the fact that the vision of God would constitute the
maximum perfection of the intellectual creature is counteracted
by the attenuation of the attraction resulting from the excessive
distance. It is like the gravitational attraction resulting from a
maximally heavy object at a maximum distance. This is why we
need grace and the theological virtues to be rightly attracted to
our supernatural end. In effect, they overcome the distance by
establishing a new supernatural proportionality which enables the
attraction stemming from the maximum perfection of the
supernatural end to become effective and to be experienced as a
good which pertains to oneself as a son of God 37 .

35
36
37

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 87.

Ibid., 87.
Ibid., 98.

In response to the Scotist notion of the desire as being a natural

potency, Cajetan presents the idea of specific obediential potency, which is
the aptitude for there to be realized in a thing whatever God has decreed
to work in it above its nature 38. Cajetan saw in Scotism the refusal of an
important Aristotelian principle: the actualization of a passive potency can
only be done by a proportionate agent. Because the will can only be
actualized by a connatural active power, on the natural level, it cannot be
moved by a supernatural end without the intervention of grace. Thus an
obediential potency, which is specific because only mans nature can be
raised without being completely changed or destroyed, such as in the case
of Sons of Abraham being raised out of rocks. Cajetan ultimately seeks to
defend the gratuitousness of grace and Gods freedom.
At the end of this chapter, Dr. Feingold seeks to respond to de Lubac
and Jorge Laportas critical responses to Cajetans writings. For the sake of
brevity, it should simply be noted that in one of the points, Dr. Feingold
writes: Although St. Thomas does not explicitly state in so many words that
there is only an obediential potency in the intellectual creature for the vision
of God, this clearly follows from the way in which he defines natural passive
potency and obediential potency39. The definition of obediential potency
was never provided by St. Thomas, but by Cajetan and other posterior
authors, and even Dr. Feingold admits of a lack of explicit reference to
obediential potency in St. Thomas texts dedicated to the actual beatific
vision.
d. The Consensus
Dr. Feingold recognizes four merits in the thought of Medina, Baez
and Surez:
i. The denial of the desire to see God as an innate one.
ii. The continuation of Sylvester of Ferraras affirmation of the desire
as an elicited natural one.
iii. The development of the idea of conditional desire, or imperfect
willing.
iv. The emphasis of the fact that St. Thomas arguments in ST I, q. 12,
a. 1 and SCG III, ch. 51, n. 1 are ones of fittingness, and not strict
demonstrations40.
Of the three authors, Dr. Feingold considers Surez to be the most
complete and profound, combining the insights of Medina and Baez with
reflections on the possibility of a state of pure nature and the gratuitousness
of grace, forming a synthesis which dominated Thomistic theological
reflection for over three centuries41.
Medina and Baez studied under Domingo de Soto, who affirmed a
pondus naturae in man toward the vision of God. Both rejected this view,
and followed Cajetan in refuting the notion of pondus naturae, which
appeared to be very similar to Duns Soctus notion of an innate inclination
(voluntas naturalis).
38
39
40
41

Ibid., 101.
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 163.
Cf. L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 211.
Ibid., 212.

Surez would also deny the possibility of the desire for the vision of
God to be innate, using philosophical and theological arguments which are
intimately tied to one another. On the philosophical level, its the return to
the ever-present Aristotelian principle of natural passive potencies always
being correlative to natural active powers. Here, two things should be
mentioned. First, Feingold writes that St. Thomas very frequently states this
principle as universally valid without ever alluding to any exceptions or any
limitation of its validity with regard to rational creatures 42. The innate vs.
elicit debate centers precisely around how this universal principle is to be
applied to the soul, and simply because St. Thomas doesnt clarify how the
soul can be a natural potency, Feingold defends the theory of specific
obediential potency. Sometimes it seems that he relies more upon noncontradictions between his own thought and St. Thomas texts, as opposed
to direct references to texts that explicitly the points of contention.
Second, when Feingold refers to this universal principle, he quotes J.H. Nicolas, who in his book, Les profondeurs de la grce, writes: If St.
Thomas never repudiated the principle of Averroes, if he never excluded
intellectual natures from its field of application, it is because it is truly a
universal and binding principle43. This puts into question the entire defense
of the universal application of the principle, and knowing how opposed St.
Thomas was to certain Averroistic theories, especially concerning the human
intellect, the denial of the desire for the vision of God based on this theory
would merit a deeper historical study.
The theological argument offered by Surez is based on what is truly
debitum naturae. Referring back to the philosophical argument of
proportionality, that which is due to nature once man is created is that
which will sustain him in his existence. That is to say, the natural agents
which will actualize his natural potencies. That which is disproportionate to
his nature, which is grace, is not due to him, because it goes beyond his
natural potencies, and his innate desire. Furthermore, if grace was due to
man in anyway, it would no longer be grace, because the very nature of
grace is to be freely given. Because grace is not due to man in any way, the
possibility of a natural end for man logically follows, but this aspect of the
argument will be left aside for the sake of brevity.
According to these three authors, once it is demonstrated that the
natural desire is an elicited one, and not an innate one, it is logical to
conclude that the desire is naturally formed as a conditional and imperfect
movement. The development of this notion comes in three responses to
difficulties which Surez posed for himself:
Difficulty
How can the elicited desire be
natural if it has a supernatural
object?

42

Response
It is natural inasmuch as it is
conditional
and
imperfect.
An
absolute and efficacious elicited
desire can only come as a result of
infused hope. It is because of this
grace that mans will is strengthened

Ibid., 223.
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 223. The translated quote is taken
from page 347 in the original book.
43

in pursuit of his ultimate end, and he

no longer sees it as something
impossible (before grace) but as
something perfect, proportionate
and possible (a perception which
cannot be rooted in his nature, but
which must proceed from grace).
How can it be natural if this would Pure man has an unconditional and
imply not allowing man to find proportionate (innate) desire for
repose outside of that object, beatitude or the knowledge of
thereby eliminating the possibility of causes in general.
natural beatitude?
After discovering God as first cause,
his elicited desire is conditional and
disproportionate (he sees it as
something impossible).
After hearing Revelation, the notions
of possibility and order are added to
the elicited desire, which can thus
generate a movement of hope. Faith
in Revelation transforms the quality
of the elicited desire into hope.
After infused hope, man has an
absolute and efficacious desire for
the vision of God.
How can the elicited desire be Innate appetite is directed toward a
natural if it must be based upon on a general object, insofar as it is
prior innate appetite, and since proportionate to the creature a
there can be no innate appetite for naturally elicited desire that is a
supernatural end?
consequence of an innate appetite
can
extend
beyond
the
proportionality of the creature, and
thus beyond the innate appetite
from which it is born. This is because
elicited desire follows on knowledge,
and one can know and naturally
desire disproportionate objects, such
as the vision of God. However, when
an elicited natural desire goes
beyond
the
bounds
of
proportionality, as in the natural
desire
to
see
God,
the
disproportionate
object will be
desired with an imperfect movement
of the will.44
In this way Surez considers that he has resolved the problems
posed by Cajetan, and the three difficulties he himself had posed.
There can be a natural elicited desire for an object that cannot be
naturally obtained if it falls under a universal object naturally
desired by an innate appetite45.
e. Dr. Feingolds Response to Henri de Lubac
44
45

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 266.

Ibid., 266

Henri de Lubac wrote, in Mystery, that Cajetan rejected St. Thomas

principle of the soul being naturally capable of grace and reduced the case
of the supernatural destiny of created spirits to a particular instance of
miracle, and the fundamental reason for this reversal is that he has first
reduced human nature itself to a case merely of one species among others
in his consideration of natural beings 46.
As an initial response, Feingold claims that potentia obedientiae was
used by St. Thomas himself throughout his writings. He also argues that St.
Thomas does not exclusively or primarily identify obediential potency with
the capacity for the miraculous, but uses it especially to explain the capacity
of the spirit for supernatural elevation 47. Here it should be noted that in
order to prove this point, Feingold refers almost exclusively to other
theologians who commented on St. Thomas texts, such as Baez and his
reference to the Summa, I-II, q. 113, a. 10, and III, q. 9, a. 2, ad. 3 48. Third,
while de Lubac wrote that Cajetans notional reversal was due to a reduction
of human nature, Feingold argues that specific obediential potency is
precisely what makes people special and spiritual, since their nature can be
raised by grace to the beatific vision, without losing their rationality.
The following are Henri de Lubacs principle points, and Feingolds
response to them:
Henri de Lubac
The vision of God is mans essential
finality, and cannot be changed
without changing mans nature. The
extrinsicist view, which is directly
linked to the possibility of a state of
pure
nature,
comes
from
a
weakened view of finality in the
writings of Cajetan, Baez and
Surez49.
Mans finality is inscribed upon his

46
47
48
49

Lawrence Feingold
Making the vision of God an
essential finality would imply mans
natural ordering to a supernatural
end, which would provide him with
natural powers to achieve something
supernatural, thus compromising the
gratuity of grace.
This goes against the Aristotelian

Ibid., 103.
Ibid., 120.
Ibid., 118.
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 297.

very being, causing him to naturally

desire what is supernatural. This is
clarified through the distinction
between desiderium naturae and
desiderium naturale: the first speaks
more of just an elicited desire which
can arise from nature. It is the very
ontological appetite of the being as
a whole toward what it was
ultimately created for.

The desire is not only innate, but the

most absolute of all desires. That
means that the desire to see God
cannot be frustrated without causing
an essential spiritual suffering.
Therefore, without its satisfaction,
no beatitude would be possible.

50

Ibid., 319.

principle of a natural passive

potency
being
ordered
to
a
proportionate object. The notion of
finality is generally expressed in St.
Thomas by saying that something is
ordered to an end, for which it has
a natural inclination or appetite.
Thus when St. Thomas repeatedly
teaches that a rational creature
cannot be intrinsically ordered to a
supernatural
end
without
the
addition of supernatural principles
(grace and the theological virtues),
he is saying that the nature of the
rational creature does not have a
supernatural finality inscribed upon
it
without
those
super-added
principles.50
This would logically make impossible
the existence of any natural
beatitude or a state of pure nature
for man. Furthermore, if St. Thomas
was affirming the desire to see God
as an innate one, he wouldnt have
admitted a natural beatitude without
the vision of God consisting in
natural knowledge and love of God
through the mirror of creation
which is possible for souls in limbo,
who certainly do not experience
spiritual sufferings. This is also an

argument against the notion of the

vision of God being an intrinsic
finality.
To show the negative consequences Feingold responds with four points:
of maintaining the possibility of a
- St.
Thomas
and
his
state of pure
nature, de Lubac
commentators always identify
charges it with a tremendous
God as mans final end. The
historical responsibility: abetting the
distinction between two ends
secularization of the modern spirit
simply
underlines
the
and the growth of atheism, leading
immeasurability
between
man to think that perhaps his
natural
beatitude
natural end if it is so real and
proportionate
to
mans
coherent as theologians argue
nature, and the beatific vision
would be completely sufficient.51
proportionate to Gods nature
alone. The naturalism of

51

Ibid., 314.

modern society ignores the

contemplation of God and
places
happiness
in
the
subjugation of the world.
Thomism lost a lot of force
after the counter-reformation
because of the Enlightenment,
largely inspired by Descartes,
which culminated in Kant,
Hegel
Feuerbach,
Comte,
Marx and Nietzsche.
The
Thomistic distinction
between a natural and a
supernatural end is essential

to
maintaining
a
clear
distinction
between
the
natural and the supernatural
orders. An order is defined by
its end. If there is no such
thing as a natural end for
man, then the natural order
loses its coherence. The
logical result would be a loss
of the distinction between the
two orders, with the natural
order being swallowed up in

52

the supernatural. The result

would
actually
create
a
monistic system: the naturalsupernatural order. 52 Feingold
recognizes in this danger of
monism
a
return
to
Monophysitism in Christology,
as well the development of a
monistic Hegelian system.
Naturalism has not come
because of the affirmation of

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 393.

reasons capacity to reach its

connatural end, which is the
contemplation of God, but
because of a denigration of
natures just prerogatives and
capacities.
This
lack
of
confidence in human reason
began
with
nominalism,
increased with the Protestant
Reformation, and has been
carried further by Kant and all

the philosophers that depend

on his critique of reason.
3. A Summary of Feingolds Arguments against Mans Desire for God as an
Innate Appetite
Dr. Feingold states that a thorough interpreter of St. Thomas texts
will recognize mans desire to see God as an imperfect and elicited natural
desire, and not as an innate and unconditional appetite. Desiring to follow
St. Thomas footsteps, Dr. Feingold strives to offer a synthesis of all of the
preceding authors who have written on the desire for the vision of God 53. His
fundamental motivation that serves as a driving force behind the
formulation of his synthesis seems to be the sustainment of a consensus,
which apparently lasted over three hundred years, well into the twentieth
century, uniting the Dominican, Jesuit, and Carmelite schools 54. The main
points that constitute this apparently unifying consensus are Cajetans
affirmation of proportionality between the nature of the creature and the
object of its inclination55, and the affirmation of a specific obediential
potency for supernatural perfections, Sylvester of Ferraras affirmation of
the desire as an elicited natural one caused by knowledge of the existence
of the first cause, as well as his connection between this desire and the
natural necessitation of the will, Medina, Baez and Surezs classification of
the desire as a conditional or imperfect elicited one, and finally, Surezs
rejection of an innate desire in order to defend the gratuitousness of grace
and his defense of the possibility of a pure nature 56. Feingolds developed
reasons, which back up this general vision, are the following.
The first section of his conclusion summarizes the reasons why the
natural desire to see God is an elicited one, and not an innate one, based on
St. Thomas theory of knowledge.
First, he claims that St. Thomas only admits a desire to know the first
cause which is aroused by prior knowledge of Gods effects. That is to say,
once man comes to know something, an elicited natural desire arises within
him, and consequently, so does the desire to know God metaphysically. This,
according to Feingold, is apparently why the desire to see God could never
53

Cf. L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 440 441: Leaving particular
questions aside, I think that a global vilification of an entire period of over four
centuries in the history of Catholic theology cannot fail to be seriously detrimental
to the cause of theology and the life of the Church, because it introduces a violent
rupture rather than organic growth. Catholic theology must be like the householder
of the Gospel who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old (Mt
13:50). Jansenism sought to go back directly to St. Augustine, erasing the Scholastic
development, and thus was not a true development, but a breeding ground of
heresy and error. The same could be said of Descartes, on the philosophical plane.
Contemporary theology risks a similar fate through excessive denigration and
ignorance of its recent patrimony, from Cajetan to the Thomistic revival of the first
half of the twentieth century. We should learn from St. Thomas, who, with
intellectual humility and charity, sought a benevolent interpretation and
harmonization of the whole tradition.
54
Ibid., 429.
55
Ibid., 429.
56
Cf. Ibid., 429.

be an innate one, which would be blind and unconscious, as a rocks

tendency to fall.
Furthermore, only an elicited natural desire to know the essence of
God could be the direct object of human experience, and consciousness,
thus serving a purpose in St. Thomas apologetic efforts. According to
Feingold, St. Thomas seeks to offer an argument that could persuade
heretics and unbelievers on the basis of reason alone, and therefore must
appeal to common human experience. An unconscious innate appetite
would be of no use57.
Third, innate appetites are common to all beings, while only an
elicited natural desire of the will is proper to man as a personal knowing and
developing subject. Thus, because man is the only intelligent being in this
world, his desire to see God could not be reduced to that which is common
to all beings, but must be reduced to something that is specifically his.
It should be noted well that Dr. Feingold admits the fact that different
texts in St. Thomas writings could be indicating the natural desire to God as
an innate one. That is to say, he recognizes the fact that some of St.
Thomas texts point to the fact that the elicited natural desire directly
corresponds to an innate one. Scotus, De Soto, De Lubac, and according to
many, St. Thomas himself, would claim that there is an innate desire
formally directed to the vision of God, rooted in the nature of the will and
the intellect. In other words, they claim that man is naturally inclined in an
unconditional way to an end which cannot be naturally obtained 58.The
other school of interpreters, which includes Sylvester of Ferrara, Surez and
Cajetan, would admit that the natural elicited desire to see God corresponds
to an innate desire to know essences and causes. This second interpretation
claims that the innate appetite does not have the same extension or formal
object as the elicited natural desire 59. Feingold follows the second
interpretation, because the first line of thought implies that man is
naturally ordered by the nature of his intellect itself to the vision of God,
which is proper to the divine intellect alone!60 Without undermining Dr.
Feingolds meritorious investigation in any way, one does wonder if he is
confusing the term vision with comprehension. Again, the great difficulty

57

Ibid., 398. On page 63, Feingold writes: This comparison of Scotus and St.
Thomas reveals a fundamental error in the argument of those interpreters (such as
Domingo de Soto, Henri de Lubac, and J. Laporta) who maintain that St. Thomas
considers the natural desire to see God as an innate desire in the manner of Scotus.
They are mixing two incompatible systems and theological intentions. If the natural
desire to see God is considered to be an innate desire that is independent of
knowledge (as a pure relation of finality or ontological appetite, or desire of the
nature) in the Scotist manner, then it cannot be considered to have any value in
demonstrating the possibility of the vision of God, or our actual destination to it.
Such an innate natural desire can never be used in an apologetic context to show
the possibility of its object, and so to persuade philosophers and unbelievers to
accept Christian teachings, because the existence of such an inclination is
inaccessible to our experience.
58
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 400.
59
Ibid., 401.
60
Ibid., 400 401.

here comes in recognizing mans natural desire for that which can only be
obtained supernaturally.
Dr. Feingolds second main objection to the natural desire being an
innate one is based upon the claim that self-transcendence is possible for
elicited natural desire, but not for innate inclination.
Mans innate appetites derive from the natural form possessed, and
are always directed to an object proportionate to the nature of the creature.
The innate appetite of mans faculties has two basic characteristics: it is
directed to something general (formal object of the faculty), and limited to a
range proportionate to natural powers 61. In this sense, it could be said that
a bat does not have a natural desire to see the sun, because it is an object
which goes beyond the range proportionate to its natural powers. According
to Feingold, in an analogous sense, mans spiritual faculties are
proportionate to a formal object and limited to a certain range.
Consequently,
the human intellect has a natural appetite for causes and
essences in general, but limited by the reach of [mans] active
intellectual power the agent intellects power of abstraction.
Thus, the human intellect naturally tends to all truth that can be
known on the basis of abstraction from sense knowledge and our
natural knowledge of first principles62.
This, according to Feingold, is why an innate appetite cannot transcend
nature, and leads him to write that
elicited natural desire, proper to the spiritual creature, is not
limited in the same way! This is because elicited natural desire is
based on knowledge. Knowing our limitations, we can desire to
transcend them. This desire for self-transcendence is only
possible for the rational creature, and can only manifest itself as
an elicited desire based on knowledge of our limits 63.
It is important to note that according to Feingold, grace is not necessary for
the formation of this natural desire. He also claims that it is only through
grace that an innate desire could transcend its own nature, and thus,
limiting the natural desire to see God to the elicited level allows for its
defense as a truly natural desire that can be aroused before divine
intervention.
Lawrence Feingolds third point is a continuation of the second. He
claims that an innate appetite is based on proportionality and similarity.
Natural inclination is based on the possession of a certain
proportionality with the desired perfection, and because an innate
appetite is based on the intrinsic proportionality of the nature with
the end desired, no nature can have an innate appetite for the
vision of God, because the vision of God is something intrinsically
61
62
63

Ibid., 401 402.

Ibid., 402.
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 402

supernatural which cannot be proportionate to any created

nature64.
Following Cajetans vocabulary and line of thought, identifying mans
desire for the vision of God as something innate is equivalent to turning God
into a connatural object, turning man into God by giving his being an
inexistent and almighty capacity to raise himself to the vision of the divine
essence, and thus compromising the infinite and analogical distance
between created being and Subsistent Being. Furthermore, Feingold writes
that those to whom He has given sanctifying grace do have an ontological
inclination for the vision of God, but this is not properly a natural
inclination, but super-added or supernatural 65. He states this in order to
reject a natural inclination that is rooted in a certain seminal presence or
inchoation of the vision of God in mans soul prior to his reception of
sanctifying grace, which would be equivalent to divinizing the nature of the
human soul66.
The fourth point is the fact that the human will lacks sufficient
inclination to our supernatural end. If mans desire for the beatific vision
were innate, absolute and unconditional, then it would have to sufficiently
incline the will toward that end, just as our unconditional natural desire for
happiness in general inclines and orders the will sufficiently to that end,
within the proportionality of nature67. But this doesnt seem to agree with
St. Thomas affirmation of mans ultimate end exceeding his natural
inclination. Thus, in order to explain the phenomenon of atheism and to
defend the gratuity of grace, it seems logical to conclude that the desire to
see God is elicited and imperfect, and not innate and absolute.
With regard to this last point, it should be noted that Feingold claims
that natural sufficient inclination in St. Thomas terminology is generally
equivalent to innate appetite as used by Surez and later theologians,
indicating a natural tendency of a potency toward its proportionate
perfection.
Related to the point regarding sufficient inclination, Dr. Feingold refers
to two Biblical passages frequently used by St. Thomas: 1 Corinthians 2:9
and Isaiah 64:4. He mentions the fact that St. Thomas uses the quotes in
order to emphasize the fact that eternal life completely transcends the
power of human nature, thus surpassing mans intellect and desire. This
leads Dr. Feingold to conclude that St. Thomas is denying the existence of

64

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 404 405.

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 405. On the following page, Feingold
goes on to write that the natural similarity with God that we possess in virtue of
being made in Gods image is insufficient in itself to provide the basis for a natural
inclination for the vision of God, but only orders us to God insofar as He can be
naturally known and loved. Grace a participation in the divine nature is
necessary for us to have a proportionality with Gods inner life. On the basis of this
new supernatural proportionality we are inclined in an abiding way to the vision of
God.
66
This could also be similar to falling into the same error that Karl Rahner fell into.
67
Ibid., 409.
65

an innate appetite for the vision of God, which does not contradict the
existence of an elicited and imperfect natural desire 68.
In the fifth point, Dr. Feingold highlights the fact that St. Thomas
teaches that we are ordered to the vision of God by grace, and not by
nature. That is to say, the soul and its faculties of intellect and will are
ordered to the vision of God not by nature but by grace and the theological
virtues69. According to Feingold, mans intellect and will are naturally
ordered toward their connatural end in virtue of their proportionality with
that end that connatural end always being happiness in general. Hope
and charity are necessary for the will to be ordered to a supernatural
beatitude.70 Later on the conclusion, Dr. Feingold goes on to write of St.
Thomas supposed acceptance of mans twofold happiness which is
translated into two distinct final ends: the natural (or connatural) and the
supernatural. The first corresponds to mans unconditional and innate
appetite, while the second to his elicited, conditional one.
The sixth point emphasizes the fact that a specific obediential
potency does not generate an innate appetite. Man has an innate appetite
for and natural inclination toward his connatural end, which is happiness in
general. Analogous to his faculties, it is a potency that implies an order and
which he can achieve through and by his own natural powers. However, it
has been discovered through Revelation that man can be raised to the
beatific vision after death: something that completely exceeds his natural
powers, and according to Feingold, his natural inclination. Just as a tree is
converted into a number of chairs because of an external agent, so is man
raised to the beatific vision because of divine grace. But
a faculty is not said to be imperfect, properly speaking, simply
because its obediential potencies are never realized, because
these exceed its natural reach and proportion. Since each thing
desires its proper perfection by innate appetite, there will be an
innate appetite only for the realization of natural potencies. An
obediential potency, on the other hand, does not form the basis of
a specific innate tendency or inclination because it is open to an
undetermined range of disproportionate realizations above its
nature71.
Thus, in brief, man has a certain potency to be raised to the beatific vision,
but until the intervention of grace, he does not desire the vision of God in a
sustained way. As seen earlier, posterior to the knowledge of Gods effects,
a natural desire to know Gods essence inasmuch as first cause may be
elicited. And this may happen before grace is received. Once grace is
received, the natural elicited desire is strengthened through the gift and
exercise of the theological virtues: The presence of grace changes this
situation, because it transforms the elicited and imperfect natural desire for
the vision of God into a supernatural inclination resulting from the superadded form of grace72.
68
69
70
71
72

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 412.

Ibid., 410.
Ibid., 411.
Ibid., 413.
L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 423.

Dr. Feingold concludes by saying that the specific obediential potency

cannot correspond to an innate appetite, since innate appetites are proper
to passive potencies which correspond to natural agents which can actualize
those same potencies. Therefore, there is no innate appetite in the rational
creature for the vision of God.73
The seventh point is a defense of the gratuitousness of grace, and
ultimately, of Gods freedom. According to Dr. Feingold, if God were to
create man with an innate appetite for the beatific vision, He would be tying
up His own hands by obliging Himself to give to man what is supposed to be
intrinsically gratuitous: grace. Furthermore, Dr. Feingold sees it fit to deny
the desire to see God as an innate appetite in order to defend the logical
possibility of a pure nature. For a man to exist and not be able to content
himself with imperfect beatitude would be, according to Feingold, something
absurd, because it ultimately returns to the problem of the gratuity of grace.
The eighth point is a further explanation as to why the desire to see
God is conditional. According to Feingold, an innate appetite is automatically
absolute and unconditional, thus immediately transforming the desire into
the virtue of hope, without any need of further perfection. As is evident, this
also comes back to mans need for grace, because it would turn the
theological virtues into something superfluous. Furthermore, we man were
to innately desire the beatific vision, that would imply a perfect appetite,
which would imply desiring the means, as well. This, however, also
presupposes grace. Thus, because the desire is in itself imperfect and
inefficacious, it cannot be absolute. Therefore, it logically follows that it
could not be innate. And finally, if the desire were truly innate and absolute,
man would be able to naturally discover his supernatural end, something
which is impossible.
Dr. Feingold concludes his chapter thus:
All these arguments together demonstrate that according to the
principles of St. Thomas, the existence of an innate natural
appetite for the vision of God in the intellectual creature is
impossible. An elicited natural desire, on the other hand, is
affirmed by all of St. Thomas texts concerning the natural desire
to see God. It can be inferred, furthermore, that this elicited
natural desire is a conditional desire, prior to the presence of
grace. It does not demonstrate that God will actually offer us the
beatific vision, but shows instead the great fittingness of that offer
and is a sign that it is not impossible74.
According to Feingold, there are four states of the desire for God 75:
An innate desire for our connatural end to know and love God through the
mirror of creation follows from the very nature of our spiritual faculties.
This is not an act, but simply the relation of the spiritual faculties to their
proportionate end.
In all his texts on the natural desire to see God, St. Thomas demonstrates
73
74
75

Ibid., 413.
Ibid., 428.
The texts in the chart are taken directly from Ibid., 433.

the existence of a naturally elicited desire for the vision of Gods essence. It
can be inferred that this desire is conditional without the aid of Revelation
and actual grace.
An elicited and unconditional desire for the vision of God is made possible by
knowledge of Gods promise in Revelation, together with the aid of actual
grace. Such a desire is an act of theological hope, which presupposes faith.
There is a supernatural habitual inclination for the vision of God resulting
from sanctifying grace, and consisting in the theological virtues of hope and
charity. This inclination is present whenever a soul is in a state of grace; it is
independent of knowledge and thus unconditional, and is based on the
proportionality between grace and glory (for grace is the seed of glory).
Feingold writes that the principle error here has been a tendency to
merge the first and second of these desires with the fourth, by maintaining
that there is an innate appetite directly for the vision of God, inscribed on
our nature prior to the reception of grace 76.
Thus, in conclusion, it is clear that Dr. Feingold defends a conditional,
natural elicit desire for the vision of God, while attempting to synthesize and
summarize the main arguments concerning this issue that have been
developed throughout the history of theology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
FEINGOLD, L., The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas
Aquinas and His Interpreters, Ave Maria, FL, Sapientia Press of Ave Maria
University 2010.
76

L. FEINGOLD, The Natural Desire to See God, 434.

__________, Account of My Conversion, in Association of Hebrew Catholics,

[http://hebrewcatholic.org/accountofmyconve.html, 2008]
__________, Curriculum Vitae, in St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology,
[http://www.salvationhistory.com/personnel/Dr.+Lawrence+Feingold, 2010]