Illumination and Unconscious Thoughts

Abstract

Nicole conceives of his general grace as a universal divine illumination, finding authority for the doctrine in St Augustine and other Fathers of the Church, and ultimately in the first chapter of the gospel according to St John, who speaks of ‘the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world’. But it was a matter for dispute whether the illumination which Nicole describes is in fact natural or supernatural, and here we touch on a fundamental element in Jansenist doctrine. Jansen had attacked the scholastic thesis that man could in principle have been created in a state of pure nature, devoid of any gift of supernatural grace. In defining this state the scholastics claimed to elucidate the concepts of nature and supernature. Nicole was not convinced. In a letter to Quesnel he writes of the term ‘supernatural’, ‘C’est un mot qui cause une confusion terrible parmi les scolastiques, et ils se chamaillent souvent sans savoir ce qu’ils disent’.¹