a reality essentially closed in on itself
For Henri de Lubac, who in Surnaturel (1946) was trying to provide a historical account of what he saw the emergence of a mistaken reading of the relationship between the natural and supernatural in Thomas Aquinas, it was Cajetan who made the misinterpretation which had affected all subsequent interpretation of Thomas Aquinas. Cajetan, de Lubac argued, assumed that Thomas was an Aristotelian, working with a definition of nature from Aristotle's Physics, which effectively turned human nature into a reality essentially closed in on itself, with its own intrinsic powers, desires and goals. This move, argued de Lubac, led subsequent Catholic thought to produce mistaken readings of Thomas Aquinas's account of the relationship between nature and grace.