Human Ends and Divine Revelation

In Question 1, First Part of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas offers the following argument:

“It was necessary for human salvation that there should be instruction by divine revelation in addition to the philosophical sciences pursued by human reasoning — chiefly because we are ordered to God as an end beyond the grasp of reason…we have to know about an end before we can direct our intentions and actions towards it. So, it was necessary for the salvation of human beings that truths surpassing reason should be made known to us through divine revelation.

We also stood in need of being instructed by divine revelation even in matters to do with God which human reason is able to investigate. For the truth about God that reason investigates would have occurred only to few, and only after a long time, and only with many mistakes mixed in.”

Aquinas frames the need for divine revelation within the context of man’s supernatural end, i.e. that for which human beings have been created. This end — namely, Beatitude — requires divine revelation, precisely because the means by which to achieve it are not accessible by the light of pure reason. Even in the case of truths concerning God’s nature, which reason can penetrate to some extent, here too is divine revelation needed, since philosophical inquiry into the nature of God is an arduous journey, which can only be carried out by a select few — most people are neither capable of deep, philosophical thinking, nor do they have the time such a pursuit demands, committed as they are to their work, the well-being of their family, and so on.

But there is an argument to be made that divine revelation is needed even with respect to man’s natural ends, that is, with respect to the pursuit of truth and moral excellence, and the ways in which such pursuits are instantiated or enacted in the social and political realm. This argument trades on the existence of a central purpose or function to man ¹, which Aristotle defines as the pursuit of happiness or flourishing.

1) B is the creation of A
2) For B to act as it was intended to act, it must know its particular purpose.
3) If B does not know its particular purpose, then it cannot act as it was intended to act.
4) But if B cannot act as it was intended to act, then its actions toward any particular end will always be underdetermined.
5) B can come to know certain things about itself on the basis of its nature, but not its particular purpose.
6) Hence, if B is to act as it was intended to act, A must reveal B’s particular purpose.

Let B stand for human beings, and A for God. In defense of 5 and 6, James Chastek offers the following analogy:

“[I]f a smith makes a sword we can know some things about it just by considering its nature: what temperature it would melt at, that it was made to be held and to cut, that rust is bad for it and polish is good, etc. But we can’t know what the smith made it for in particular: whose army was it made for? was it made to be used in war or to be carried in a solemn procession as a symbol? Was it designed for a particular use or for a general use? The nature alone can’t tell us, as it is underdetermined to any one of these. So even if created persons were created to live purely according to their nature, they would still need a divine revelation from their creator to know that this was the particular purpose they were created to serve.”

Suppose that Aristotle is right to propose a telos to human beings, and suppose that this telos is the pursuit of happiness or a life of flourishing. Knowing that this type of end is proper to us as human beings necessarily entails living a certain kind of life, motivated by certain intellectual and practical pursuits, such as the contemplation of the highest causes, and the nurturing of the conditions under which human beings can flourish, both as individuals and as members of their immediate social context. But given that human action is underdetermined with respect to these ends, inasmuch as there are many ways by which to pursue them (some conducive to the end in sight, some inimical to it,) then guidance by way of divine revelation is needed here also. This entails both an argument for the plausibility of divine revelation, as well as an argument for a kind of integralism, according to which revealed faith ought to inform how human beings orient their lives, not only at the individual level, but also at the socio-political level.

[¹]: I do not intend here to draw a sharp distinction or separation between man’s natural and supernatural end. I take this argument to be compatible with a number of views concerning the relationship between nature and grace.