I must take issue with your phraseology here, but allow me to explain why:
Now, you are probably wondering how I can cite the very text you are using to try and show me I am wrong to prove my point. After all, the text very clearly states that such people are only potentially a part of the church, not actually a part of the Church. However, thats actually my whole point. The objector, with whom St. Thomas disagrees, claims that such people are *in no way *a part of the church. St. Thomas corrects them by showing that they are actually potentially a part of the Church,
I am only learning scholasticism, so I cannot claim to be an expert. However, one of the things I keep reading is about the extreme importance (in scholasticism) of the absolute difference between potentiality and actuality. The scholastics warn repeatedly that to confuse the two nullifies a real distinction that positively exists in reality. Something is either one or the other. Therefore, whatever is in
potentiality is not and cannot be in
actuality, and
vice versa.
To borrow the classic example. Take, for example, some marble. Now a sculptor possesses this marble and has his plans drawn and also possesses the skill and all the tools he needs to make it into a statue of Our Lady. The marble, therefore, is potentially a statue of Our Lady, but not actually. This is certainly a better state than if there were no (Catholic) sculptors around to make a statue of Our Lady. However, until the statue is formed by the sculptor, the marble is not and never
actually a statue of Our Lady, as common speech and sense realise.
at least while still alive. This is the crux of the matter. It is very easy to downplay potentiality. After all, it isn’t actual. But in the thinking of Aristotle and St, Thomas the difference between non-being and potency is quite breathtaking actually. The pre-socratics spent a long time trying to understand being and non-being, and how change was possible at all. Aristotle is very careful to make the distinction between non-being and potency. This is how he is able to solve the aparant contradiction faced by his predecessors. The whole point is that potency is, albeit only in some qualified way, obviously it is not actual, because that would be a contradiction, but it is not non-existent entirely, therefore it must exist *in some way. *This applies to St. Thomas’ distinction in the 1st objection because St. Thomas is specifically denying that all those who are not actually in the Church, are in no way in the Church. In other words, they are in the Church, in some qualified way.
However, we go too far when we say they “are in the Church, in some qualified way” because at this junction we are saying they are actually in the Church, eliminating the potency or the potentiality. Admittedly - and I agree with you, and as I hope my example above helped illustrate - some are potentially in the Church and will be actually in the Church as, for
ex., the predestinated (the elect). These may not even exist yet but, in a sense, they are members of the Church.
Consider also someone’s sincere desire to Confess their (mortal) sins. We know there exists perfect contrition for sins. But let us say on the way to Confession some wicked or careless person causes the sorrowful penitent to die by some crime or accident, whether directly or indirectly. We know that, notwithstanding, the penitent is going to Heaven though, perhaps, he may have to spend some time in Purgatory. Consider that, if the penitent - even in a moment before his death - repented of his repentence, and (may God forbid) cursed God or some such horrible thing, we would suspect that the original grace of contrition for his sins would be lost.
Now, in the instance that the penitent rather held fast, we can therefore conclude that the actuality of his membership in the Church, as a living member of the Church, ceased all potentiality and became perfect actuality at the moment of death or the last moment he possessed his free-will whilst still in the flesh (souls always retain the will, the intellect (or understanding) and the memory, for these powers are proper to it); though, admittedly, perferct memership for Saint Thomas seems to be when a soul possesses the Beatific Vision itself.
The difficulty is that so long as we retain free-will and are in the flesh, then even those in the state of grace are also “potentially”
not members of the Church and, therefore, it works (as it were) both ways. However, no one has ever taught that those **not **predestinated, but yet members of the Church Militant, are not actually members of the Church Militant. That is, even if a man who’s living a saintly life but, for some bizzare reason, gets infatuated with the world (for example) and sells his soul to the devil for riches (again, for example) - though God knew He would do this - nonetheless, his actual membership of the Church was real while he was in the state of grace, but he always had the potentialy to be a non-member and, again, since even in non-membership he has free-will, then he is also potentially a member of the Church! So a man is potentially not a member but also potentially a member of the Church throughout his whole life here on earth; therefore, what we become concerned with is actuality.
So our desire to include as many souls as possible in the Church, while pious, also exposes as many actual members of the Church to non-membership. Do you see the paradox?
Therefore, you can say that all men, whilst living, have some potentiality that in some way connects them to membership in the Church; however, the more this is exagerated, then all those men actually in the Church (Militant) becomes exagerated into a potential non-membership.
