Spiritual substance

According to Scheeben, created spirit is inhibited not only by matter but by other matter-like obstacles, particularly by potentiality and the composite (form/matter, act/potency) character of created things. Created spirit is “material” in comparison with the free and unihibited simplicity of divine spirit.

Elsewhere he says that “immaterial substances” are spirits because they are “free from encumbering matter and are simple and subtle, as well as supersensible.” He admits that these things are true of God alone, since all created things are less than completely “simple.” Yet, when he turns to discussing the “higher spirituality” that saints receive by supernatural grace, he describes it as excluding all the obstacles of matter and quasi-material created spirit.

By supernatural grace the soul will receive “the simplicity and the immortality of eternal life,” and thus “the spirit will become truly spiritual, that is, simple and immortal, intelligent and free, when it is raised above its quasi-materiality and is given a share in God’s spirituality, which alone is spirituality in the truest and fullest sense of the term.”

This is hard to fathom. To say that the created spirit becomes simple by participation in divine spirituality seems to imply that created spirit transcends the composite character of created things. Even if we say that created spirit becomes fully spiritual by participation in God’s spirituality, is Scheeben saying that supernatural grace enables human nature to transcend the duality of act and potency? Surely they don’t transcend the difference of essence and existence; they don’t come to be able to say “I am that I am” in the Thomist sense.

So, the simplicity that Scheeben talks about must be a quasi-simplicity. If this is the case, then the talk about sharing in “divine spirituality” has to be qualified in pretty significant ways.