Preternatural gifts

"Preternatural gifts

 Where are preternatural gifts called “Preternatural”?  from Taylor Marshall here  http://cantuar.blogspot.com/2007/10/where-are-preternatural-gifts-called.html 

“Preter refers to something prior, as in the Latin sense of the preposition praeter, meaning “prior” or “beyond”.

The three “preternatural gifts” (the three I’s: infused knowledge, immortality, and integrity) are preternatural in the sense they do not belong to bare human nature, while at the same time they are not supernatural. In other words, the preternatural gifts strengthen human nature, but are not habits of grace. They bring out the best of what human nature could be.

This is an important feature of Catholic anthropology. A) It resists the Calvinist doctrine of “total depravity” because Original Sin causes man to fall to bare human nature. The Fall is the removal of a set of gifts, strictly speaking. B) It also allows us to understand how redemption is accomplished through Christ - that we are reconstituted in sanctifying grace through Christ. C) It may be helpful with understanding an evolutionary origin of mankind, in that human beings were not created as “naturally” immortal, but that this immortality was something “preternatural”. Immortality was a gift that was forfeited.”

Next quote from Fr. Hardon

By sanctifying grace we understand that permanent gift, which is now given through Christ and by which a man becomes formally justified, a partaker of the divine nature, an adopted son of God and heir of eternal life. In the present order, sanctifying grace is associated with the uncreated gift of the Holy Spirit and such created gifts as the infused virtues of faith, hope and supernatural charity.

The three gifts of bodily immortality, integrity and infused knowledge are calledpreternatural because they are not strictly due to human nature but do not, of themselves, surpass the capacities and exigencies of created nature as such. In other words, they are not entitatively supernatural.

Bodily immortality is the converse of mortality, i.e., the possibility of separation of soul from body. Adam was therefore capable of not dying. Yet the gift wasconditional, provided he did not sin; it was gratuitous, since Adam’s nature by itself did not postulate this prerogative but came from the divine bounty; and it was participated, since only God enjoys essential immortality.

The gift of integrity is equivalent to exemption from concupiscence. It is called “integrity” because it effected a harmonious relation between flesh and spirit by completely subordinating man’s lower passions to his reason.

This integrity, it should be noted, did not consist in lacking the natural power to desire for sensible or spiritual bona, nor was it a lack of activity of this power, since all of these belong to the perfection of human nature. Rather it was the absence of certain kinds of acts of the appetitive faculty, namely those which anticipate or go before (praevertunt) the operations of reason and will and tend to continue in opposition to the same.

Stated positively, integrity consisted in the perfect subjection of the concupiscible and irascible appetitive powers to the dictates of reason and free will. As a consequence the will had not only indirect (diplomatic) but also direct (despotic) dominion over the appetite.

Two kinds of concupiscence should be distinguished, the one dogmatic and the other moral. In a dogmatic sense, concupiscence is the appetite - primarily sensitive and actual, and secondarily spiritual and habitual - in so far as its movement precedes the deliberation and dictate of reason and tends to endure in spite of the command of the will. In a moral sense, concupiscence is the appetite - again primarily sensitive and actual, and secondarily spiritual and habitual - in so far as 1) its acts not only precede reason and perdure in spite of the will, but 2) they tend to moral evil. Another name for the latter is inordinate or pravaconcupiscence.

Our concern in the thesis is with concupiscence in the dogmatic sense, and integrity as immunity from this kind of appetitive drive.

In order, further to clarify Adam’s gift of integrity, we may say that he was perfectly sound, entire and integral, in the sense that hedid not experience within himself that division which mankind now understands so well. Our own indeliberate tendencies, we know, often oppose themselves to what we decide or want to do. The life of a man who wants to do well and avoid evil is literally a conflict, more or less violent, between reason which sees and approves the good and wants fewer tendencies. This conflict is variously described as a tension between spirit and flesh, between the interior and exterior man, or simply between soul and body. But in our first parents there was no such internal discord. Their integrity was “the absence of any resistance from their spontaneous tendencies, notably the sense appetite, in the performance of good or avoidance of evil.” In a word it was a perfect dominion of animal and spiritual passion.

Adam’s infused knowledge was not acquired, in the sense of natural cognition derived from experience and the reasoning process; nor was it intrinsically supernatural as giving a knowledge of the mysteries, such as the souls enjoy in the beatific vision. It was infused because not naturally acquired, but yet entitatively not beyond the capacity of man’s faculties in his statu viae. Theologians commonly refer to three areas of special knowledge possessed by Adam: regarding God and His attributes, the moral law or man’s relations to God, and the physical universe both material and spiritual.

http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/God/God_013.htm