Folia Theologica et Canonica 2. 24/16 (2013)
SACRA THEOLOGIA - Sebastian Walsh, O.Praem., “Fidelissimus Discipulus Eius”: Charles De Köninck’s Exposition of Aquinas’ Doctrine on the Common Good
“FIDELISSIMUS DISCIPULUS EIUS” 143 beatitude. De Koninck makes clear that, for St. Thomas, the object of this beatitude is formally attained as a common good in the line of final causality.28 This explains why the theological virtue of charity necessarily has a social dimension: we are to love God precisely as He is communicable to others. This doctrine on the common good also is crucial for formulating a correct understanding of the Church in relation to her members. The Church has as its principle of unity that very same good which is the beatitude of all her members. Unlike temporal societies, the end to which membership in the Church is ordained is our ultimate end. For this reason membership in the Church touches us even the level of our conscience: the Church has from Christ an authority even in those areas most intimate to our persons. For this reason also, membership in the Church can never be coerced: all the children of the Church must be free. The doctrine of the common good is so universal in its application that failure to understand the nature of the primacy of the common good in relation to private goods in the same order can result in the obfuscation of even the clearest doctrines of the Church. When the private good of individual souls is held up as the ultimate good and end for which God acts, traditional doctrines like the existence of hell, the necessity for baptism or membership in the Church for salvation, and the doctrine of predestination become all but impossible to understand. According to this mistaken view, there is nothing better than the salvation of an individual soul so that a loving God could never have a reason for permitting a soul to be lost. Hence, salvation is automatically assured no matter whether one keeps the commandments or not, or is baptized or not, or is a member of the Church or not. But if there is a common good of the elect which is a greater good than any individual’s private salvation, and if this surpassing good is what God primarily loves and acts to bring about, all of these traditional doctrines of the Church make sense. 28 This is something that Fr. Eschmann failed to understand, and it resulted in serious errors. Fr. Eschmann, as De Koninck points out, has understood bonum universale in causando to refer only to causes in the line of efficient and exemplary causality, the causality by which God causes goodness in others. He failed to recognize or understand the many texts where St. Thomas shows that, most properly, bonum universale in causando refers to a common good in the line of final cause. As a consequence, Fr. Eschmann concludes that our participation in the divine goodness is not by way of final causality. Moreover, God is not formally a common good for beatified souls, but a private, personal good. But if this is so, the goodness of the beatified soul will be formally the same as God’s goodness so that the divine goodness is wholly communicated to the beatified soul. That is to say, the beatified creature becomes as good as God Himself! And hence, it would be false to say that God should be loved more than the saints, or that we ought to love ourselves or the saints for God’s sake. It is not difficult to see the harm which comes from such an error. Germain Grisez carries the consequences of this error further, arguing at one point that “strictly speaking, God is not the ultimate end toward which we should direct our lives.” From The Restless Heart- Blunder, 2005 Aquinas Lecture, Center for Thomistic Studies, University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas.
