Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T12:53:36.612Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Dialectic of Self-Giving

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2024

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The end of all becoming is being, but not, ultimately, of that which becomes considered by itself: of that which becomes considered as participation in another mode of being which is the mode of being of something which already and really is.

Change means that that which changes is not to be considered by itself.

The end (result) of the body’s constant mutations is the successive participation in the potentiality of matter. But this is not the end (finality) of the body’s mutations. The end (finality) of becoming can be nothing imperfect.

I think this means that the end of all becoming is the participation of all creatures in the risen humanity of Christ.

Being is essentially communicable. You don’t have to explain why being communicates itself, as if it were something being as such were not expected to do. Perfection, what we would call by transliteration the formality of being as such and of actuality, is communicable per se, imperfection communicable per accidens. Imperfection to be communicated implies a pre-established communication in potential being. Communication of imperfection is the abandonment on the part of those who communicate in it of specific and diverse actuality for the sake of that communication in what is potential and common. The communication of perfection is the communication of the diverse as diverse in a unity intrinsically proportioned to its participants. We can understand nothing here without the metaphysical principle of analogy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1937 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The concept of finality thus enables the metaphysician to avoid the superficial metaphor for grace as the smile of a face which would still have been a perfectly good face in repose. It is precisely the revelation of grace which has introduced into metaphysics a dynamism and a movement which its own principles left at the Aristotelian level could hardly have discovered. And this revelation sheds light on the problems themselves of the metaphysician: The end of becoming is being, but not ultimately of that which becomes considered by itself. Change means that that which changes is not to be considered by itself. The end (result) of the body's constant mutations is the successive participation in the common potentiality of matter. But this is not the end (finality) of the body's mutations. The end (Finality) of becoming can be nothing imperfect. I think this means that the end of all becoming is the participation of all things in the risen humanity of Christ.