Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No.

3 (2010): 627–46 627

The Natural Desire to See God 1

S ERVAIS P INCKAERS, O.P.

The Merit of the Question

I S THERE any merit in once again raising the question of the natural
desire to see God? Is there really anything more that can be said on the
subject? Have not theologians already rehearsed all the imaginable argu-
ments, raised them from every conceivable angle, and still failed to reach
any agreement until, finally, the fighting has ceased, not because it has
yielded to the force of any particular argument, but simply has exhausted
itself by weariness? Some say that the question is too bound up with
scholasticism, and so has therefore been superseded by more progressive
developments in theology, centered on man, his liberty, and human
nature already touched by grace and the supernatural.
The underlying reality of the question, however, is that of the relation
of God and man, and so it lies unavoidably at the heart of Christian life
and does not yield to the vagaries and intricacies of opinions and theo-
logical fashions.The problem of the relation of God and man lies beyond
books and ideas, and so demands the attention of the theologian who
wishes to follow the thread of truth rather than the current of fashion.
But the new theology that takes man, nature, or science as its principle
axis, will it not in the end result in the practical elimination of the super-
natural under the guise of a general reinterpretation? When this new
theology declares that the question of natural desire has been superceded,
does it not at this point betray a secret fear of the resurgence of the prob-
lem of the supernatural? Is it not at this point subject to the reproach of
having rejected an essential aspect of the Christian mystery, and so of
revising the ground upon which the Christian mystery is founded? If
there exists in the heart of man a desire for God rooted in his very
1 Originally “Le désir natural de voir Dieu,” Nova et Vetera 4 (1976): 255–73. Here
translated by Aaron Riches.
628 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

nature—a distant desire, different from all other desires and needs, capable
of getting the upper hand over them—then are not both the theologian
and the philosopher compelled to take account of this desire and to
accord it special attention, even if the existence of this desire might
disrupt the anthropologist of the day?
The question of the natural desire for God in man is born with the
creation of man according to the image of God and receives new vigor
in light of the Christian revelation of the call of all men to the vision of
God.This desire for God is not subject to either the silence or variations
of theological opinion, rather it is present and active in the heart of every
man and every Christian. It falls therefore to the theologian to express
this desire in his own manner, to elucidate it with clarity, candor, and
humility, and even courage.
In order to treat the problem of the natural desire to see God, we must
begin with the terms in which it was classically elaborated.Thus, insofar
as the limits of a brief article allow, we will retrace the contours of the
classical elaboration of the natural desire to see God in order to propose
a fresh response to this great difficulty, which involves the topic of natu-
ral desire as it is related to the supernatural and gratuitous character of
the vision of God.After the great Augustinian intuition, the famous inqui-
etum est cor nostrum donec requiescat te, St.Thomas Aquinas is the principle
theologian of the natural desire of man to see God, and he expressed this
theme with the rigor of the language of scholasticism. It is St. Thomas
who forged with precision the apparatus that came to provide later
theologians with the essential terms of discussing the natural desire to see
God. It is thus to St.Thomas that this exposition is dedicated.

Part One: The Question of Natural Desire According

to St. Thomas and His Posterity
The Importance of the Natural Desire to See God
according to St. Thomas
When we read the texts of St.Thomas that treat the natural desire to see
God and which demonstrate the possibility of the vision of God (which
is the only true beatitude of man), when we follow his reasoning with-
out prejudice or fear for the difficulties that may follow from his reason-
ing, it becomes clear that the natural desire to see God constitutes an
essential aspect of Thomistic theology and its dogmatic orientation to the
vision of God. More, theological knowledge of this natural desire to see
God is an integral preparation and moral orientation, which disposes man
toward the bliss of the loving vision of God that is his ultimate end.
 The Natural Desire to See God 629

At the beginning of the prima pars, q. 12, a. 1, answering the arguments

of Arab and Jewish philosophers who, anxious to safeguard divine tran-
scendence, deny that any creature could ever attain the vision of God, St.
Thomas proposes the natural desire that animates the spiritual faculties of
man (intellect and will) to demonstrate (according to reason itself, he
says) the radical possibility of man seeing God in his very essence.
“Therefore some who considered this, held that no created intellect can
see the essence of God. . . . But this opinion is against reason [as well as
faith]. For there resides in every man a natural desire to know the cause
of any effect which he sees; and thence arises wonder in men. But if the
intellect of the rational creature could not reach so far as to the first cause
of things, the natural desire would remain void. Hence it must be
absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God” [Summa
theologiae I, q. 12, a. 1].
Here we should note two things. First, the natural desire in question is
that which draws the mind toward the truth and the will toward the good
by love.This is not a desire superadded. It is a desire constitutive of our spir-
itual faculties, natural to them in the strongest sense of the word. Secondly,
the argument proposes the radical possibility of vision of God by man—
vision of God is not impossible, as it was for the Arab philosophers. If the
natural desire which drives man toward the true and the good ran up
against the impossibility of seeing God, nature would do something in vain
and we would have to admit a contradiction in the work of God, who
would thus have ordered human nature to an impossibility. This radical
possibility can be called a passive capacity to see God: a capacity to receive
a vision unique to spiritual beings. This is not to claim that the vision of
God is an active possibility, a power man possesses in himself by which he
could attain this end of himself.The vision depends on God. Nevertheless,
the argument takes on a special force in light of divine revelation, by which
man is called to vision and given the promise of grace. No argument of
reason can set aside the possibility of this vision of God; on the contrary,
the movement of intellect and will yearning by the force of natural desire
suggests the positive ordinance of man to the vision of God.
The natural desire of man forms the basis of the argument found in the
treatise on beatitude at the beginning of the secunda pars, where an investi-
gation into the true happiness of man entails a transition from man to God,
proving that the full happiness of man cannot reside in anything whatever
save God alone. In question 2, which inquires about the multiple objects
which correspond to the desires of man (riches, honors, glory, power, bodily
goods, pleasures, spiritual goods), proving that St.Thomas applies himself to
the universal dimension of the desire of the will in order to demonstrate
630 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

that none of these goods can fully satisfy man, that only the universal
good—that is, God—can constitute the perfect beatitude of man.
In question 3, responding to the question from the point of view of
the human subject and the nature of happiness that is formed in him,
after having shown that beatitude consists in an activity of our spiritual
faculties—intellect and will, with priority given to intellect—St.Thomas
distinguishes every knowledge of the creature between that of science
and that of angelic knowledge, and this in order to support natural desire,
the fact that man cannot be fully happy apart from the vision of the
essence of God.“If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of
some created effect, knows no more of God than ‘that He is,’ the perfec-
tion of that intellect does not yet reach simply the First Cause, but there
remains in it the natural desire to seek the cause.Wherefore it is not yet
perfectly happy” (ST I, q. 3, a. 8).
The whole investigation of the treatise on beatitude converges on the
natural desire to see God inscribed in our spiritual faculties, in our incli-
nation to the true and the good, and to love.
The importance, therefore, of the natural desire to see God for St.
Thomas cannot be overstated, especially since, at least on my reading, the
treatise on beatitude lays the groundwork for his moral theology and is,
in fact, the backbone of the structure of his thought on the matter. For
St.Thomas, as for all of antiquity, the question of morality is preeminently
the question of what is the true happiness of man.The moral life is noth-
ing but a response to this question.The natural desire to see God is thus
brought to bear by St. Thomas on the final answer to this question of
happiness, which underpins the desire for happiness, and so the whole
realm of moral action. Later, in the seventeenth century, the question of
morality became first and centrally that of moral obligation dissociated
from the treatise on beatitude, severing consideration of man’s natural
desire for God from his fundamental morality. Thus was the advent of a
new conception of morality.

The Originality of the Thomist Argument Concerning Natural Desire

We should also note how the conceptualization of natural desire accord-
ing to St. Thomas was an original contribution he made, a formulation
proper to him. In his first work, the commentary on the Sentences, in
book IV, distinction 49, at the place where Peter Lombard offers his own
theological exposition of final beatitude, here St. Thomas does not yet
raise the issue of natural desire. This is noteworthy especially because at
this juncture it would have served St.Thomas well, since he is forced here
to address the argument of the impossibility of seeing God, as held by
 The Natural Desire to See God 631

certain Arab philosophers among others (IV Sent., d. 49, q. 2, a. 1: Utrum

intellectus humanus possit prevenire ad videndum Deum per essentiam). Never-
theless, at this early stage, St.Thomas had not yet formulated his concep-
tion of natural desire.
St.Thomas’s argument concerning natural desire does not in fact appear
until the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles, where, even in this first
formulation, it comes already to occupy a central position in the long and
extensive discourse on human happiness, which is a first draft of the trea-
tise on beatitude and occupies chapters 1 to 63, and principally chapters
48 to 50. In chapter 48 we read:“[I]t is impossible for natural desire to be
unfulfilled, since ‘nature does nothing in vain.’ Now, natural desire would
be in vain if it could never be fulfilled. Therefore, man’s natural desire is
capable of fulfillment, but not in this life, as we have shown. So, it must be
fulfilled after this life. Therefore, man’s ultimate felicity comes after this
life.” And, recurring like a refrain after each argument in chapter 50 is the
phrase “ex hac cognitione non quiescit desiderium naturale,”2 or similar
such expressions.
The argument concerning the desire natural to see God, along with
the role it plays in the question of the happiness of man, is a discovery of
the genius of St. Thomas. Moreover, it plays an essential role within his
overall theological system.

The Personal Character of the Desire for God

according to St. Thomas
A long and deep familiarity with the work of St. Thomas is needed to
pierce beneath the shell of the technical tone of his language and thereby
apprehend the sensibility underpinning the logical rigor of the author.
Thus we come to see how the desire to know God in himself is in fact
a very precise expression of the soul St.Thomas himself, of his own love
of the truth joined with the desire for happiness that animated his life and
directed his theological trajectory. Have we not heard it said of him that
he began earlier than others to seek after God? St.Thomas expresses this
theme with incomparable discretion, as a personal experience at once
theological and mystical, which for him is one. The soul of St. Thomas
himself and all of his theology is related to the natural desire to see God,
which is the cornerstone of his system.
The question of the vision of God has for St.Thomas a double aspect:
(1) There exists in man, in his spiritual faculties, a natural desire which
cannot be fulfilled except in the vision of God’s essence.There is thus a

2 Our natural desire is not satisfied by this knowledge.

632 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

passive capacity to see God inscribed in man, which differentiates him

from creatures that lack reason.3 (2) On the other hand, it is impossible
for man, as for any creature, to attain to the vision of God by his own
natural power; he requires a special divine assistance, the “light of glory,”
which is entirely gratuitous and supernatural, as is the grace by which he
proceeds toward that vision (cf. ST I–II, q. 5, a. 5).
The vision of God is thus supernatural because no creature can attain
it by his own natural power, nor does any creature possess an active
capacity for it.This desire is nevertheless natural to spiritual beings inso-
far as it is inscribed in them as a passive capacity to receive from God this
vision. Such is the clear and explicit position of St.Thomas. He does not
appear to be the least bit anxious about the coordination of this natural
desire with the gratuity and transcendence of the vision of God, which
is grace.

The Problem of Natural Desire in the Sixteenth Century

Changes in Thinking Between the Thirteenth
and the Sixteenth Centuries
The problem of natural desire as we now understand it was not explic-
itly raised until the sixteenth century. By this time, intellectual inquiry
and the context of theological reflection had changed from what it had
been in the thirteenth century.Thus, even while they adopted the Summa
of St. Thomas as the basis of their theological instruction, nevertheless
they interpreted him through the ideas and problems of their own age.
In particular, the thirteenth century, and St. Thomas primarily,
constructed a theology characterized by a harmony established between
God and man, faith and reason, grace and freedom, supernatural gifts and
human nature. This theology originated first of all in the divine truth
communicated by faith and derived from reason.As a result of the advent of
nominalism, however, a new vision of man and his relation to God, to wider
society, and to other created natures was elaborated. Characteristic of this
new vision was the imposition of a radical tension between these elements
(God, society, and nature) on the one hand, and human freedom on the
other. The new perspective is particularly manifest in the question of the
relation between grace and nature, which lies at the root of the Lutheran
crisis and the cause, later on, of the fissures between the different schools of

3 This passive capacity needs to be distinguished from the simple obediential

potency we find in every creature, cf. ST I–II, q. 114, a. 10; II–II, q. 2, a. 3; III, q.
4, a. 1; q. 9, a. 2, ad 3. See also L. Charlier, “Puissance passive et désir naturel,” in
Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 7 (1930): 5–28, 639–62.
 The Natural Desire to See God 633

theology—Jesuits, Jansenists, Dominicans, etc. If we begin from a notion of

human freedom as absolutely self-determining in its choice between good
and evil, between yes and no with regard to grace, a freedom of indifference,
then we are led to conceive of human nature as radically self-sufficing.Thus
the problem of the relation of nature with the supernatural becomes criti-
cal. And the problem of the relation is raised in a particular way by the
notion of the natural desire for the vision of God as it was articulated by St.
Thomas, who became the dominant theological authority. If human nature
is self-sufficing—at least according to the principle of a freedom to act—
then how do we conceive a desire for God that is really natural but yet
concerns the vision of God, which is evidently supernatural?
This problem is rendered more acute by the separation that has devel-
oped between speculative theology, with its technical precision taught in
universities, on the one hand, and mysticism and spirituality, which tend
to be expressed in the more common language of the experience of the
relation of God and man in the life of faith, on the other.Thus the desire
for God, bound up with the experience of humanity and of Christianity,
is reduced in theology to a “concept” and is treated in terms abstracted
from the contours of experience.
If we wish to remain faithful to St.Thomas—who evidently maintains
in man a natural desire to see God—we must interpret and discover
explications of this desire which correspond to the problems of his age.

The Status of the Problem of Natural Desire

Reflecting on natural desire, theologians of a certain period tended to
make the hypothesis of a state of pure nature their starting point—
whether they admitted that the first man was placed by God in a state
preceding the gift of grace or refused this interpretation of the book of
Genesis, they nevertheless made pure human nature a starting point from
which to reason about human nature.This hypothesis, we should note, is
not unrelated to the philosophical penchant among modern philosophers
to posit a state of nature for man anterior to the formation of society.
Thus the problematic of natural desire was taken according to this
dilemma:

• Either we allow that there exists in human nature a real desire for the
vision of God, prior to the intervention of grace.The beatific vision
thus becomes the sole ultimate end of man, and the link between the
order of nature and that of the supernatural is strongly established.
But in this case, we are forced to presume a certain requirement of
human nature toward the beatific vision according to the principle of
634 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

St. Thomas that a natural desire cannot be in vain. God would be

unjust to human nature, it seems, if he did not respond to this natu-
ral desire, leaving it unaccomplished. In this way we compromise the
purely gratuitous character of the vision of God, of grace and of the
supernatural order, and thus it becomes difficult to safeguard the
transcendence of supernatural and divine action.
• Or we affirm before all else the supernatural character, gratuitous and
transcendent, of the beatific vision and the order of grace, such that
we are led to reduce to the extreme—if not to cancel all together—
the natural desire in man to see God, forced to posit for him an ulti-
mate end and natural beatitude that is different from this vision.Thus,
if we do not wish to abandon the doctrine of St.Thomas concern-
ing natural desire, we must reinterpret it.The risk in this case is that
we will begin to see the natural and supernatural orders as inde-
pendent from one another, as two parallel worlds without any need
of being reciprocally related.This position inevitably becomes detri-
mental to the supernatural order, while, on the other hand, man can
now do anything without any detriment to his nature.

In conclusion we restate our question: Can there be a natural desire

for the supernatural? It seems one is forced to choose between either the
transcendence of the grace of the vision of God on the one hand, or the
existence in man of a natural desire to see God on the other.

The Principle Answers Given to the Problem of Natural Desire

The principal answers given to the modern problem of natural desire are
as follows. We shall reduce them to their essential points. We seek here,
not to rehearse the history of opinions on the subject, but rather to
outline their most characteristic aspects. The authors themselves interest
us less than the elements of thought they occasion.
As we have already suggested, these theologians all generally presup-
pose a hypothesis, at least theoretical, concerning the existence of man in
a state of pure nature.

1. Cajetan (1469–1534), the great commentator on St. Thomas,

construes the difficulty of natural desire in the work of St.Thomas in
a rather simple manner: the Angelic Doctor, he thinks, speaks of
natural desire in the context of human nature as it exists historically,
which is now effectively called to grace and the beatific vision. The
natural desire for this vision is thus already a work of grace in man
and consists therefore in the order of the supernatural. According to
 The Natural Desire to See God 635

this hypothesis, which is not posited by St.Thomas, the state of pure

nature would have been merely an obediential potency toward the
supernatural, the disposition in every creature to be a recipient of the
effect of any divine action, as for example in the case of miracles.
2. Suarez (1548–1617) rigorously expressed the spirit of his epoch. He
begins from an idea of man as a creature who possesses a nature that
entails a normative end that can be completed within the limits of
that nature, according to the Aristotelian principle that all natural
beings have an end proportionate to their nature. By virtue of his
creation, man is therefore made for a beatitude, the essence of which
conforms to his nature and so is natural. Supposing man finds himself
called to a higher end, this higher end will necessarily involve a
superaddition to his nature, a superaddition that cannot enter into
our definition of man.With regards to the natural desire for a super-
natural beatitude, Suarez rejects categorically this possibility, in
conformity with the principle of Aristotle according to which natu-
ral appetites follow the power of nature.
3. The Salamancans of the seventeenth century sought to undermine
the reality of natural desire, which they supposed St. Thomas never
to have spoken of as ‘real’ desire. On their view, St.Thomas was not
concerned with a substantial or innate desire, but rather with an
elicited desire, optional and freely given, a desire ineffective and
conditional on God’s call to vision, mere velleity of nature insofar as
it conforms to nature.
4. Other theologians, for example Père Descoqs, S.J., have more recently
tried to discern a purely natural end that orientates the natural desire
to see God. On this view, the vision of the divine essence is to be
distinguished from the supernatural vision of the persons of the Trin-
ity—knowledge of God is part of God’s work.
5. Père Henri de Lubac, S.J., in his work Surnaturel (1946), reignited the
debate concerning natural desire that had raged between the two
world wars. De Lubac sought to retrieve the patristic tradition, Greek
and particularly Augustinian, which conceived man as the image of
God and thus as essentially directed to God by his spiritual nature as
to its model and archetype. Père de Lubac vigorously attacked the
system of pure nature, with its self-sufficient and natural end inde-
pendent of the supernatural. He argued that there was not—nor
could there ever be—any but one end of human nature, of the
human spirit: the supernatural end. For Père de Lubac, the vision of
636 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

God is the object of natural desire, the real desire of man, concrete
and absolute and not conditional.
To the objection that this scheme places in man a necessarily enti-
tlement to the vision of God, Père de Lubac responds:

What we desire necessarily, what we desire with an absolute desire,

in general we can say we desire this with exigency. Provisionally
this can even be said of our desire for God. But we must immedi-
ately add: we do not have this exigency because it pleases us to
have it, rather this exigency is the reality that we cannot not desire
God. Far from being dominated by this exigency, the object of our
desire rather imposes itself upon us, even when our conscience
ignores it, even when our freedom turns away from it. The
exigency of our desire is such that we cannot be without it.There-
fore if we have an exigency for God, it is that he first demands this
exigency of us; and by the same means, he transforms our nature.
The necessity of desire is a harsh law: it is received by the spirit, not
dictated by it. . . .This exigency is therefore an essential exigency,
an exigency in nature, which—though it is natural—is in reality
no more natural in its source of desire than in its object of desire.4

Further, Père de Lubac considered St.Thomas a transitional author

in whose system there is both a patristic notion of man ordained to
the vision of God coupled with the Aristotelian conception of
human nature as closed in on itself. On Père de Lubac’s view, these
two conceptions were not fully harmonized in St.Thomas.

As we perceive the discourse of these different opinions and interpreta-

tions, the problem of natural desire is concentrated on the exigency of this
desire regarding the vision of God, which appears to compromise the char-
acter of the supernatural. It is on this critical point that we make our specific
reflection. Here lies the nettle of our problem.

Part Two: A Response to the Problem of Natural Desire

The Spiritual Nature of the Desire to See God
We have already noted above how theology during the Renaissance
suffered from a separation from spirituality and mysticism, from the
expression of the Christian experience of the relation of God and man.
Separated thus, theology became overly speculative, abstract, and rational.
The consequence of this orientation was an excessive diminishing of
4 Henri de Lubac, S.J., Surnaturel: Études historiques, Théologie 8 (Paris: Aubier,
1946), 490.
 The Natural Desire to See God 637

theological matters to the plane of concepts, ideas, and rational proposi-

tions. Under this condition, the natural desire for God becomes a merely
theoretical notion, the more abstract, the more it is associated with a state
of pure nature in which, in any case, man no longer actually exists, and
of which there can be no question he no longer has any experience of.
Theologians who reason from this natural desire will do so without any
sense of how it confronts actual experience. They will not think to
analyze the desire, but rather will accept it as a primary datum, a primi-
tive tendency of the appetite found in all beings, even unreasonable
beings.This natural desire of which we speak will thus be the blind desire
of all beings toward the good. In this way, we will imagine this desire in
the same manner as any other natural desire we find in man, like hunger,
thirst, or sexual appetite, the kind of desire that is exercised before the
intervention of reason and will. In this case, it will be clear that if this
natural desire remains in vain, with no opportunity to attain its object,
leaving man in a state of hunger, we could then justly reproach to the
creator for the defectiveness of his work. For this kind of desire bears
within it an exigency directed toward its satisfaction, or at least the possi-
bility of its accomplishment. Every appetite is ordered from within
toward its satisfaction as to its own natural end, and therefore involves a
natural exigency to be able to achieve this end.
This manner of approach is defective in that it is grounded in a very
particular kind of desire, one that proceeds from the sensitive nature of man,
to which a universal dimension is conferred, thanks to its natural character-
istic.What is neglected by this approach is that which is proper and unique
to the spiritual nature of man, the desire that arises spontaneously from the
will of man in the light of his intellect brought before God. It is essential
here to bring an analogical conceptuality to bear, a conceptuality of both
likeness and difference—this analogical conceptuality must be allowed to
affect the nature and property of desire, where we pass from the sensitive to
the spiritual plane, when we study man in comparison with irrational beings
or with irrational aspects of his own being.

Building on the Spiritual Experience of the Desire for God

In order to discern the movements and properties of the spiritual nature
of man, it is necessary to refer to the spiritual experience of the desire for
God as it is expressed by the best authors, the Fathers of the Church and
the mystics—the experience of a theologian as much as any Christian can
be an experience of his life of faith. This desire, like every reality of the
order of the will or the affective dimension of man—love, hope, etc.—is
best understood when it is grasped from the inside, thanks to some
638 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

concrete experience. One of the merits of the work of Père de Lubac was
precisely to have reintroduced into the discourse of theology the testi-
mony of the Fathers of the Church concerning the desire for God in man.
Doubtless an objection along the lines of Cajetan will here be raised
against us; it will be argued that there cannot be a purely natural experience
of desire for God because the Christian is a man who works by grace, the
subject of theological virtues and of the action of the Holy Spirit. But what
prevents us from taking the Christian experience of the desire for God as
that desire flourishes under the action of the Holy Spirit, in order to ask
ourselves whether and to what extent this desire corresponds to the nature
of man himself, especially his higher faculties? Hereby the essential problem
is raised: how can there be a correspondence between the vision of God,
the action of grace, the desire and striving it excites in us on the one hand,
and human nature on the other.And yet to approach this problem of natu-
ral desire we have no need of the hypothesis of a state of pure nature, which
in fact escapes our grasp and takes us away from real experience.The prob-
lem here is the problem that concerns the whole of theology: the link
between vision, grace, God, revelation, and human nature.The question of
natural desire is therefore an expression of this difficult point of theology.
But to truly study this natural desire do we not need a notion of this desire
as it has reached maturity and thereby become sensible, as opposed to imag-
ining the seeds of this desire as it may exist in an inaccessible state?
In this way, St. Thomas treats the natural desire to see God as part of
the experience of Christian faith conjoined to reason. But the superior
light of faith is not an obstacle to our perception of what is merely natu-
ral—to the contrary. For St.Thomas, as for St. Augustine, the more man
submits to the light of faith and to the action of grace, the more he comes
to know his own true nature.We do not find any trace in St.Thomas of
the common modern presupposition according to which the interven-
tion of faith and grace disrupts necessarily, as a foreign element, the activ-
ity of reason, liberty, and human nature.
Here however it is important to note how St.Thomas’s conception of
human nature is not quite the same as the one presented by Père de
Lubac. St.Thomas’s use of Aristotle does not entail a self-sufficient human
nature, as it does with Suarez and others of his time. Rather human
nature for St. Thomas is open to God and his grace. This openness of
human nature to God works precisely within St.Thomas’s theory of the
natural desire to see God in man, ordering him to the beatific vision as
to his final and true end. St. Thomas is thus not at all the transitional
figure Père de Lubac discerns, one who couples positions that neverthe-
less poorly harmonize. On the contrary, St. Thomas seems rather, to us,
 The Natural Desire to See God 639

to be more the summit of the equilibrium of theology, even while the

equilibrium he achieved was unfortunately all too quickly lost.

The Connection of Desire with Love and Hope

We can directly approach the major problem of the thesis of natural desire
by indicating the apparent exigency this desire brings to bear upon God,
vision, and grace. Our response to this problem of exigency begins with
an analysis of desire in its relation with other movements of the will, given
that the will—for us as for St.Thomas—is not only a power of a conscious
pressure of the self for the self, as it was defined by Mounier, but is above all
the source of the spontaneous movements of love, desire, and hope, etc.
In his treatise on the passions, a study which extends into the realm of
spiritual theology, St. Thomas conceives desire in such a way that it is
clearly not an act or feeling of man, neither does it exist alone. Its origin
and cause, in effect, is love, from which it is normatively deployed in the
hope of achieving joy. In the movement of the will, therefore, love, desire,
joy, and hope form a concrete continuum. Thus, treating the movement
of free will in the work of justice, St.Thomas writes in De veritate (q. 28, a.
4): “Primus autem motus affectus in aliquid est motus amoris . . . ; qui
quidem motus in desiderio includitur sicut causa in effectu; desideratur
enim aliquid quasi amatum. Ipsa vero spes desiderium quoddam importat
cum quadam animi erectione, quasi in quoddam arduum tendens.”5
The desire for God in us must therefore be understood in terms
tightly bound to its relation, principally, to love, which is the cause, along
with hope, in which the desire for God is developed.

Love of Friendship as the Root of the Natural Desire for God

The decisive point for our question lies in the causal connection that links
love and desire.The first movement of the “appetite,” which is at the origin
of all other movements and remains constantly present in them, is love,
which we can define as a direct and simple delight in the object perceived
and known as good (this object and its good can obviously be a person, as
when one says: this or this person gives me joy, intrigues me, touches me,
etc). Different species of love correspond with different species of desire.
The two species of love are: (1) love of friendship and (2) concupis-
cent love (ST I–II, q. 26, a. 4). Love of friendship consists in loving some-
one for himself—this is love in the proper and full sense of the term, such
5 “The first motion of the affections toward anything is the motion of love . . . ;
this motion is included in desire as a cause in an effect; for something is desired
as loved. Hope, moreover, implies desire accompanied by the rousing of one’s
spirit as tending to something arduous.”
640 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

love desires the good of the other. This is how we love a friend. The
intention and the desire that directs it are both related to the friend and
remain with him. Concupiscent love, on the other hand, is related to a
good that appears and affects us, but it is related to someone, ourselves or
another, to whom the object is pleasant or useful.Thus we love wine, an
animal, a car, or a collaborator, or a pleasant companion. In the case of
concupiscent love, the intention that animates love and drives desire
supersedes its object and is thus ordained to an end other than the object.
The object of desire is not loved for itself, but rather in view of some-
thing else, profit or pleasure usually.
Here is an example of this distinction.With money we can buy all the
goods we want or need, including companions who will share our interest
and joy. But we cannot attach a price tag on friendship, on the true love
according to which we are a friend both in poverty and in abundance. Such
love, that of friendship, is of another kind and of another order.
Desire born of concupiscence is fixedly interested in utility and satis-
faction; while the desire that proceeds from friendship is disinterested to
the extent, not that it will exclude utility and satisfaction altogether, but
to the extent that utility and satisfaction will be subordinated to the prin-
ciple intention determined by the relation of friendship between persons.

Why Natural Desire Does Not Impose any Demand on God

The decisive point of our inquiry is to understand and show how the
love of friendship confers on desire a quality that engenders it such that
we will be able to remove the bind of exigency that imposes a demand
on what it loves and desires. Our thesis is as follows: when man loves God
with friendship—that is, with true love—the desire which proceeds and
drives man toward God (as toward beatitude) contains in itself, in its
source from man’s side, a decisive refusal to impose any exigency on God
under the pretext of a demand for the satisfaction of this desire. Such an
exigency would evidently contradict both the love of friendship, which
is the source of this desire, and God who is its object.
To clarify this point, we take as an example the relation of friends who
open themselves in love of friendship to one another in maturity.This is
a profound desire and one that is natural in man, who desires to have
friends, to love and to be loved. Aristotle justly esteemed that we cannot
be happy without friends.This desire nourishes us and fortifies us in our
exchanges with friends, who love nothing more than to be together, to
speak, live, and work together.This desire, however, bears on all the desires
that are interested in the other’s wellbeing; thus friends voluntarily consent
to sacrifice for each other and to put in common what they possess.
 The Natural Desire to See God 641

The experience of friendship quickly shows that the greatest danger

to friendship is that one would impose a demand of service or affection
on the other, thus using the auspices of friendship to impose a selfish
claim. Such a exigency of desire is directly opposed to the heart of
friendship and in fact signals its destruction. The true law of friendship
lies in liberality and gratuity, in respect and in the love of the freedom of
the other as one’s own freedom.A true friend would refuse, following the
spontaneous movement of his sentiments, to make a demand a pretext of
his friendship. Indeed a true friend would be prepared to deprive himself
of his friend’s presence, even for a long time, if that was what was needed
for the good of the friendship.The most important thing for a true friend
is to know of his friend’s happiness, from which he draws his highest joy.
We have here an example drawn from the common experience of
natural desire which, in powerfully and profoundly human terms, displays
an internal refusal to exert any exigency upon the object of desire in the
name of liberality and gratuity.This constitutes what we can call a natural
law of friendship from which this desire proceeds.This is the paradox of
friendship as true love: the cause of the most powerful and natural human
desire is wholly opposed to the imposition of any exigency on its object.
Such is the love that serves for St.Thomas as the basis of his definition of
charity and establishes the connection of charity with the natural desire
for the good, which forms the foundation of St.Thomas’s moral theology.
If we proceed now to the relation between God and man, we discover
an intensification of this natural paradox of love.To the extent that man
discovers God as the source of all truth and goodness, he comes sponta-
neously to love him as the most desirous object of his love. From this love
of friendship toward God proceeds a natural desire to know God in
himself and to attain him as the cause of goodness and truth. Such is the
natural desire to know the truth of God which St.Thomas places in the
law of nature and as the ground of theological and philosophical explo-
ration (cf. ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2).
However, and at the same time, such a love, because it seeks to love
God for himself, refrains from every demand of desire that would seek to
grasp God, which would attempt to place a restriction on God’s liberal-
ity, on the gratuity of his giving, and especially on God’s revelation of his
intimate life. Is not the most significant betrayal of friendship to demand
that one’s friend reveal his personal secrets? The most serious sin of the
spiritual life will likewise be to demand of God that he reveal and give
himself—such would be an inconsiderate desire that would betray the
friendship of God.
642 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

The Natural Love for God More than Self

In the case of desire for God, the refusal of exigency is stronger than in
the case of normal friendship since, following St. Thomas, man naturally
loves God more than himself (at least when his will is not corrupted by
sin). St. Thomas writes: “Ideo etiam amore amicitiae naturaliter Deus ab
homine plus seipso diligitur. Et quia caritas naturam perficit, ideo etiam
secundum caritatem Deum supra seipsum homo diligit, et super omnia
alia particularia bona.”6 When man knows God as the source of all truth
and goodness, and when he recognizes this as something received from
God through the creation of his being and the faculties of understanding
and love, where he experiences himself before God as a part before the
whole—as a being drawn from him, taken hold of by him, and ordered by
him—then he is spontaneously inclined to love this divine whole more
than himself (cf. ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3). Charity contributes to this natural
love a direct participation in the love and beatitude of God himself, with-
out changing the relation implied by this natural love. Hereby, natural love
is renewed in the sinful heart of man, where it is fortified and developed
by its proper virtue, that of hope. The imposition of demands and the
hoarding of divine gifts will thus be counted among the most sever trans-
gressions contrary to the right intention and spontaneity of charity.
In conclusion, the natural desire to see God—which is rooted in the
natural love of friendship for God and is fulfilled in the beatific vision of
God in supernatural terms—is proper to the nature of spiritual beings.
Because this desire proceeds from the intellect (which seeks to know God
in himself, in all truth) and from the will (which tends already to love God
in himself in all purity) this desire naturally contains within itself a refusal
to assert an exigency by which it could itself reach God.Within the natu-
ral desire to see God, therefore, there is inscribed a refusal to breach the
liberality, gratuity, and supernatural character of the gifts of God.

The Hypothesis of Pure Nature

Now if we insist on considering man in a hypothetical state in which he
is placed in the world by God in a state of pure nature, where he is not
accorded the promise of vision, then we must say that whatever happi-
ness man could find would be imperfect yet real. In this state man’s
knowledge and love of God would be developed according to his natu-
ral powers. Happiness for man in this state would have been composed
of the orientation of man’s being and his faculties toward God, as he is
6 III Sent., d. 29, q. 1, a. 3:“By love of friendship man also naturally loves God more
than himself. And since charity perfects nature, therefore by charity also man
loves God more than himself and all other particular goods.”
 The Natural Desire to See God 643

known through creation as the source of perfection, truth, goodness, and

happiness beyond all things. In this state God would be loved with a love
that reverently respected his divine superiority, balancing the desire to
know with an indiscretion that would avoid the imposition of any claim
or demand.Thus man would love God as a friend who finds his true joy
in beholding the superiority of this friend without any jealousy.
Is not this desire, which is full of a reverent respect, precisely what
theology calls filial fear?—that which subsists at the heart of charity?
We can add that his reverent respect is rooted in love of friendship, and
so is also the surest way of evoking the freedom of the divine initiative.
In any case, this is the appropriate disposition of man as he stands before
the grace of God.This is, in fact, the nub of the ongoing debate concern-
ing natural desire: the attitude of man must be conformed to his true
nature before the divine initiative.

Natural Desire and Hope

When desire forms the basis of love it tends to be transformed into hope.
This passage from desire to hope raises a particular question. St.Thomas
expresses the difference between desire and hope in terms of their object.
Desire has for its object bonum futurum, a future good that attracts us
simply because it appears as a good and brings pleasure. Hope has for its
object bonum arduum, an arduous good that is difficult to attain. The
object of hope is one from which we are separated by a great distance, a
distance which makes us simultaneously afraid that we will not be able to
achieve it, while at the same time spurring us on with the effort required
to achieve it. In other words, hope adds to desire a judgment on the
possibility of attaining a good desired, according to the means and
strength that we have at our disposal to attain to it. Desire is broader than
hope, for we can desire many things that we do not hope to achieve;
desires are often thwarted because we do not recognize any possibility of
achieving a particular object. For a long time men desired to voyage to
the moon, for example, but they did not hope to go there until man
discovered the means of rocketing into space, opening up the possibility
of realizing this ancient dream.Then the desire, molded by hope, became
active, directing the research and efforts of scientists and technicians.
At the same time, between natural desire and the hope of seeing God
there arises the issue of the active possibility of man’s attainment.This is
the question: Utrum homo per sua naturalia possit acquirere beatitudinem perfec-
tam? Can man by his natural powers attain perfect happiness? (cf. ST I–II,
q. 5, a. 5). St.Thomas responds in conformity with all of Christian theol-
ogy that neither can man nor any creature attain, by his own natural
644 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

power, the fullness of the blessedness that resides in the vision of God.
Only a special help, of a unique kind—the grace we call the “light of
glory” in the hereafter—permits the beatific vision.This is why the vision
and the whole order of grace, with the virtues and gifts that accompany
them, can be properly called supernatural.
The natural desire for God does not therefore become a hope until
man has received a positive response to the question of attaining that
vision, a response that can come from God alone: the promises revealed
in the divine initiative of the call of man to this vision and the means of
achieving this by the access granted through faith.This is why, each time
God speaks to man, from Abraham to Jesus, he begins with a promise that
awakens hope. More precisely, the promises of God are promises of
happiness that correspond to the desires of man: the desire to have a son,
to be the father of many nations, etc. Wherever these promises are
revealed, they are revealed by a certain infinite and eternal dimension
(descendents more numerous than the stars of the sky, a blessing to all
nations, forever . . . ), indicating that they exceed man and all that he can
accomplish, and thus they can only be accomplished by the power of
God through the faith and hope that is in man.
When a desire is for something impossible, it withdraws into itself and
becomes merely latent (unless, perhaps, it is redirected to another object).
Apart from the promises of God, the desire to see God in man would
become atrophied by awareness of the abyss that separates the creature from
the creator, an abyss man cannot cross by his own power. But if God has
made himself manifest in his works and is thus understood by man, then
we must say that he has manifested himself at once as the most “arduous”
of all things to attain, the most distant and beyond the reach of man and all
of his faculties; while at the same time, God’s manifestation of himself
entails the revelation that this great obstacle to man’s desire is not to be
experienced by man as a misfortune or injustice (at least not in the state of
primitive righteousness).Within man this desire for God refrains itself from
exigency, retaining a spontaneous and reverent respect for God rooted in
the natural love with which we are made to love God as the God who is
beyond us, who is an inaccessible mystery. At this point of demurring
before God we experience a very pure joy that could, in principle, consti-
tute a real bliss, though imperfect compared to the vision of God.
What we have said here applies just as much to the present economy
of man as it does to the apparent state of pure nature (which of course
never existed). Every Christian can discover such a movement and feel-
ing in himself: there, where charity gives us impetus and power, the abil-
ity to both desire and hope.
 The Natural Desire to See God 645

Conclusion
This then is the answer I propose to the question as to whether there is
in man a natural desire to see God. How does this desire in man not entail
the imposition of a demand upon God? How does it not compromise the
supernatural gratuity of the vision of God? On our view, this desire, which
proceeds from the spiritual nature of man, must be studied in terms of
what is proper to it, and thus in terms different from those of other natu-
ral desires such as hunger, thirst, etc. Primarily this desire is related to the
love that causes it and to the hope that is born of it. The decisive point,
therefore, is to show how love of friendship—which is proper to the spir-
itual nature of man and is itself deepened in friendship and in love—
occurs within a desire of reverent respect for God, which tends toward
God as toward a higher good, but also as toward a friend.Thus this desire
for God entails a spontaneous self-denial and refusal to place any claim on
God in the form of a demand that would diminish God’s freedom in the
gift of vision—just as a friend loves and respects the freedom and intimate
life of his friend. Such is the natural desire for God which serves as the
basis of the action of grace and which is perfected through the arousal of
hope by means of the promises of God who calls the faithful to vision and
guarantees the spiritual help necessary to attain that vision. This natural
desire does not disappear when the theological virtues are formed in us;
on the contrary, it unfolds, is strengthened, and is enlivened to the extent
that the supernatural virtues come to invade the conscience and dominate
the other desires of nature—though the manner of this dominion is gentle
and discreet, and respectful of the freedom granted to us.
A certain sensitivity to experiences both Christian and human seems
therefore necessary to arrive at the association and complementarity inte-
gral to the natural desire for God, which is at once born of the love of
friendship we have for God and born of the charity into which we are
caught up by God. There is therefore a double movement of comple-
mentarity within natural desire—a complementarity that will of course
seem contradictory to the logic of abstract reason: the more vigorous the
desire for happiness, the more it refuses to impose itself in the form of an
exigency on God, who is the object of this desire. In this way, man’s natu-
ral desire to see God is more natural in its origin (in the sense that “natu-
ral” signifies above all for St.Thomas spontaneity and harmony), while at
the same time it is more supernatural in its object. The gratuity of the
divine gift is guaranteed not only from the side of God by his transcen-
dence, but also from the side of man, by his “friendly” nature, his capac-
ity to love God in and for himself.
646 Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

Response to a Last Objection

We will perhaps be reproached for having made as the basis of our
response a domain that could be described as “psychological,” or that
yields to the order of affectivity and feelings, or again, for rooting our
response in terms that are moral.Theologians, it is supposed, ought rather
to seek to ground their observations in the order of metaphysics (or
whatever takes the place of metaphysics in the thought of their time).
This criticism is, however, in our view, too much influenced by a
rationalism that would separate metaphysics (the order of reason), from
affectivity, morality, etc. If, following the scholastic adage, agere sequitur
esse, then the being of man reveals itself in his acts as the tree is known
by its fruit. But the principle of action is constituted in us by the interior
acts of love, desire, hope, knowledge, etc., which are not feelings, but
rather manifestations of the commitments of our innermost being. So it
is in moral action, jointly governed by knowledge and affectivity, that we
see at work and discern what might be called the metaphysics of man,
the spiritual nature proper to him.
In particular, it is advisable to take into account the new sense of
friendship that is operative as a key theme of philosophy and theology
from the time of the Greeks to St.Thomas.This new sense of friendship
was unfortunately neglected by subsequent modern theologians. Friend-
ship, taken as a superior form of love, reveals the proper nature of man:
his capacity to know and love the other as himself and for himself, and
so to establish between himself and the other an equilibrium, a union of
mutual reciprocity of desire and sentiment, which cannot be found else-
where.This leads us to define man as a being capable of friendship (which
equally makes him capable of enmity and hatred). This is also, beneath
and beyond desire, the primordial sentiment that unites man with God
and makes him a being capable of entering into friendship with God,
thus giving charity its natural foundation. N&V
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