47. Redemption and Grace
1. Introduction
Our salvation is a grace from God.1 Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we share in the Passion of Christ, dying to sin. Through the same power, we share in Christ’s Resurrection and are born to a new life: the life of grace. We become members of Christ’s body, the Church (cf. 1 Cor 12), living branches united to the vine, which is Christ (cf. Jn 15:1–4).
The first effect of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, which justifies us. As Jesus announced, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 4:17). Moved by grace, a person turns to God, departs from sin, and places himself under God’s justice and mercy. “Thus, justification entails the forgiveness of sin, sanctification, and renewal of the inner man.”2
Grace is a favor, the free help that God gives us so that we can respond to his calling. It makes us children of God (cf. Jn 1:12–18), adopted children (cf. Rom 8:14–17), sharers of the divine nature (cf. 2 Pt 1:3–4), and sharers of eternal life (cf. Jn 17:3). Grace is a participation in God’s life. It introduces us to the intimacy of the Blessed Trinity.
The grace of God’s children is a consequence of the Redemption that was accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ. Before examining the nature of grace and its place in the study of theology, let us recall a number of basic truths that are intimately connected with the lessons contained in this work.
The word grace appears in every page of this treatise. More often than not, it is qualified by some adjective. Thus, we will speak of actual grace, habitual grace, and special graces. In the language of faith, the term grace refers to a mysterious reality that lies beyond what human intelligence or the senses alone can apprehend. It refers to a supernatural reality in the strictest sense, something that involves the Divinity itself, the intimate life of the Trinity, and the action of the Trinity on humanity. Whatever we know about grace comes from divine revelation. Divine revelation in itself is a form of grace; as the Apostle says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God [the Father] and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14).
To designate this living and supernatural reality, Sacred Scripture uses different words, especially the Greek word kharis. From kharis come words like charisma and Eucharist. The Greek khara (“cheerfulness”) is also related to it.
The Greek terms employed in Sacred Scripture expressed the contents of our faith, and were constantly used by the apostolic Fathers. When they were translated into Latin, the word gratia was used. Gratia means “gift,” “present,” or “spiritual beauty.” Words like gratuitous and gracious are derived from it.
St. Thomas says that the word grace is commonly used to mean one of the following:
· The benevolent affection of a superior for his subordinate. For example, we say that a person enjoys the good graces (or favor) of the king.
· A gift given to someone without any merit on the part of the receiver, something gratuitously given. We say, therefore, that kings give the grace of the nobility to their subjects (or that they graciously confer on them the rank of the nobility).
· The gratitude of someone who has received a benefit without meriting it in any way, a benefit conferred out of the graciousness of the donor. In this sense, we say, “Thank you, God!”--“Gratias tibi, Deus, gratias tibi!”
As St. Thomas himself points out, the second usage of the word grace depends on the first, and the third depends on the second.3 In this work, we will use the word grace principally in the second sense, meaning an unmerited gift, a gift given through love, and a calling for gratitude to the Father of all graces on our part.
The Christian meaning of the word grace is much richer, however, and it must be further qualified if the reader is to understand its usage in the pages that follow.
Everything that creatures receive from God is unmerited. Who can rightfully demand from God the gift of life or the gift of intelligence? Therefore, we can properly call natural gifts all the benefits that God has bestowed on us, as well as our human nature. These include all that God gives us to preserve our nature and bring it to perfection in the natural order. In this sense, life, health, and all that perfect a person in the order of nature (i.e., beauty, personal charm, talent) are natural gifts.
In addition to those mentioned above, there are other gifts from God that, although not necessary for the integrity of human nature, nevertheless perfect man within the created order. One example is the gift of immortality, which Adam and Eve enjoyed before committing original sin. These gifts are called preternatural gifts.
Strictly speaking, however, the term grace refers to all those divine gifts given to humans (and angels) that elevate them to the supernatural or divine order. They transcend the demands of human nature and cannot be either acquired or merited by natural efforts alone. We call these gifts supernatural graces. Grace, therefore, is any supernatural gift that God gratuitously bestows on us for our eternal salvation.
Every supernatural grace is a divine gift to people in which God himself is the gift. It is bestowed on us so that we may have a share in the intimate life of the Godhead.
2. Humanity’s Elevation to the Supernatural Order
Humanity was elevated by God to the supernatural order (de fide).
The natural order is that whereby all creatures—taken individually and as a whole—operating according to their own nature, rendering to God the glory that is due him. In the natural order, man is ordained to God as his natural final end through natural knowledge and love (i.e., the knowledge and love of which he is capable, using all the faculties of his intellect and will).
The direct contemplation of God completely surpasses the natural order: “No one knows the Father except the Son” (Mt 11:27).
The elevation to the supernatural order means that God has gratuitously elevated mankind to a knowledge and love of the Godhead that transcends the capacity of ordinary human nature and, therefore, entails a new divine operation emerging from the depths of his soul. When one is raised to this order, he does not cease to be human, but is enabled to perform operations that surpass human nature.
In the Magisterium of the Church, this dogma appears as early as in the Sixteenth Provincial Council of Carthage (a.d. 418)4 and the Second Council of Orange.5 The fifth session of the Council of Trent6 presents a more elaborated treatment of this dogma. In the documents of the Second Vatican Council, there is hardly a page that fails to mention the supernatural order, grace, or heavenly glory. In this respect, too, there is perfect continuity between this and the previous ecumenical councils. “The eternal Father, in accordance with the utterly gratuitous and mysterious design of his wisdom and goodness, created the whole universe, and chose to raise up men to share in his own divine life.”7
In Sacred Scripture, this supernatural reality is revealed in the first chapters of Genesis (cf. Gn 5:1–2). The relationship of Adam and Eve with God is described simply, yet profoundly, as that of children to their father. Humanity has been elevated to relate intimately with God. The Creator does not leave Adam to simply develop according to nature (the word nature comes from the Latin nascor, nascere, “to be born”—nature is what is acquired by birth), but deals with him with paternal affection; he gives him a companion. To both Adam and Eve, he entrusts the propagation of the human race, gives them dominion over the earth, and places them in the garden of paradise. God gives man the names (and knowledge) of each plant and animal. The nakedness of Adam and Eve signifies the transparency of their souls as well as the absence of malice in the use of their body, the dominion of their souls over their bodies, and their close union with God. These gifts, along with the promise of immortality if they obeyed God, show that our first parents were in a state that was totally different from the one in which we are born.
In the New Testament, certain texts from St. Paul show how the entire redemptive work of Christ—the new Adam—is, in fact, a restoration of the sanctity and justice that Adam lost. If Christ came to make up for a loss, there must have been a loss to atone for in the first place (cf. Rom 5:10ff; 8:14ff; 1 Cor 6:11; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; Eph 1:7; 4:23ff).
The Fathers of the Church bear witness to this belief of the Church. St. Augustine comments that our renewal (cf. Eph 4:23) consists in “receiving the justice that man had lost through sin.”8 St. John Damascene affirms, “The Creator gave man his divine grace, and through it made him share in his own life.”9
Condemning the errors of Baius and Jansenius, the Magisterium of the Church affirmed the supernatural character of the gifts that man received from God before original sin.10
More recently, Pius XII, discussing several modern erroneous theological views said, “Others destroy the gratuitous character of the supernatural order by suggesting that it would be impossible for God to create rational beings without equipping them for the beatific vision and calling them to it.”11
If one does not properly distinguish the natural and supernatural orders, one necessarily falls into one of the following extreme heretical positions:
· Only the natural order exists (naturalism); or,
· Only the order of grace exists (supernaturalism).
The error of supernaturalism is the most dangerous one, for it is usually expressed in emotionally charged religious language (like that of some Protestant groups) and espouses superficially logical theological views (logical, that is, to anyone who accepts its erroneous principles). An example of this is Rahner’s teaching about the so-called anonymous Christians: Every person, by the mere fact of being human, would be within the mainstream of salvation, even if he is unaware of it, or is a professed atheist due to the bad example of some Christians, or even if he chooses to ignore God.
In such confusion between nature and grace, the true significance of the Redemption, the Church, and the apostolate is lost. If everyone is good, then why speak to people about God? Why “complicate” their lives? The end result of such flawed reasoning will be utter religious indifference under the guise of theology.
3. Consequences of Original Sin
Through original sin, our first parents lost grace for themselves and for their descendants (de fide).
The Pelagians directly denied the dogma of original sin and its transmission to all humanity, together with all its effects. They claimed that the fall of our first parents only acted as a bad example. It had no ill effects on our nature, which we inherit from them unimpaired and, according to Pelagius, endowed with the ability to merit heavenly glory without the help of grace.
Against these heretical views, the Councils of Carthage and Orange defined the dogma of original sin. Later on, the Council of Trent was to articulate this dogma in its most complete form in its Decree on Original Sin.12 This was in response to the errors of Luther, seen as the extreme opposite of Pelagius with respect to the consequences of original sin. Some Lutherans see man as essentially corrupted by original sin, and, thus, rendered incapable of good works even with the help of grace. For them, grace cannot transform the very essence of human nature.
In the long run, Lutheranism often leads to skepticism regarding the natural capacity of reason to know God (agnosticism) and the denial of personal freedom. For the greater part of modern philosophy, the person is a state of consciousness, the product of a historical process (Hegel), of social conditioning (Marx), or of cultural conditioning.
Catholic doctrine teaches that Adam and Eve were elevated to the supernatural order not only in their personal capacities, but also in their specific capacity, i.e., as the first man and woman, from whom the entire human race was to proceed, and from whom mankind was to inherit grace.13
This grace (also called original grace) was not the beatific vision of glory because otherwise, Adam and Eve could not have sinned. What God gave them was supernatural grace (gratia elevans) that did not do away with nature, but elevated it so that people might be rendered capable of knowing and loving their supernatural end, tending toward it, and obtaining it. God wanted mankind to merit what he had promised to give as a reward.14
Adam and Eve were put to a test. If they obeyed God, they would be confirmed in grace and would merit eternal life; if not, they would be punished. Through faith, we know that our first parents sinned by transgressing the divine command. Their sin is called original because it was committed at the origin of the human race and brought the following consequences in its wake for Adam and Eve and their descendants:
· The loss of supernatural grace and, as a consequence, the enmity of the soul with God
· The loss of the preternatural gifts (infused knowledge, freedom from concupiscence, impassibility and immortality)
· The wounding—not corruption—of human nature: “It was the whole Adam, both body and soul, who was changed for the worse.”15
Because of original sin, the divine plan to make human beings share in the intimate life of God was upset by man himself, and from that time onward, people are born “unclean” (Is 64:6–7), “by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:3), “slaves of sin” (Rom 6:20), and are destined to die. As the Apostle says, “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (Rom 5:12).
4. The Divine Plan of Redemption
The Son of God became man to redeem all mankind (de fide).
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (the one used at Mass) affirms this article of faith as regards Jesus Christ: “Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven … and became man.”16
Moved by mercy, God decided to give man an efficacious means to recover the possibility of attaining glory. He was in no way obliged to do so; it was mankind as a whole who had confronted God in the person of Adam and had offended him. The offense was an infinite one when we consider the infinite dignity of God who was offended. Hence, it was out of mercy that God decreed the remittance of the infinite debt incurred by mankind. A Savior would come to pay the price of our redemption (cf. Gn 3:15).17
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish” (Jn 3:16). The payment of the infinite debt that mankind owed to God was made by way of the Incarnation, Passion, and death of Christ.
“In Christ and through Christ, God is made specially visible in his mercy.”18 In other words, in the mystery of Christ, the divine attribute of mercy is highlighted in a special way. God could have left the world in its state of perpetual estrangement from its supernatural end, but instead chose to save it by making the God-Man pay the redeeming price of his blood on behalf of mankind.
Christ came to save the entire human race because God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tm 2:4–6). These words of St. Paul show that no one is excluded from the salvific will of God, and that salvation is possible only to the extent that people work to accept the merits that Christ has earned for us. Only through Christ is salvation possible.
The death of Christ—the God-Man—has more than sufficiently paid the debt that mankind owed its Creator. Christ’s Passion and death are an expression of “absolute justice, because Christ suffers the passion and death on the cross on account of the sins of humanity. It is even a superabundance of justice, since the sins of man are compensated for by the sacrifice of the Man-God.”19
The Person of Christ is divine. Because of his infinite dignity, the merits that he gained for us through his human nature (which suffered for our sake) are also infinite. The plenitude of grace that Christ merited on our behalf gives us all the necessary means for our salvation. Only Christ is capable of “re-establishing justice, understood as the order of salvation desired by God since the beginning for man and, through man, in the world.”20
5. Redemption is Objectively Complete
Christ has redeemed us and reconciled us with God by means of the sacrifice of the cross (de fide).
The Magisterium of the Church has defined this truth as follows: “He, then, our Lord and our God, was once and for all to offer himself by his death on the altar of the Cross to God the Father, to accomplish for them [there] an everlasting redemption.”21 The Council of Trent proclaimed that Jesus Christ is the only mediator: he alone “reconciled us to God in his blood, having become for us justice, and sanctification, and redemption” (cf. 1 Cor 1:30).22
The Resurrection of Christ and his Ascension into heaven form part of the Redemption taken as a whole (de fide eccl.).
Although the Resurrection of the Lord and his Ascension into heaven are not directly the meritorious cause of our Redemption (it is Jesus’ death on the cross), they do form part of the Redemption as a whole.
The Ordinary Magisterium of the Church, particularly since the Second Vatican Council, has been teaching this truth even though no dogmatic definition on it has been issued. Through her ordinary teaching, the Church has, thus, sanctioned a doctrine that many Fathers and Doctors of the Church, including St. Thomas Aquinas, have taught as based on Sacred Scripture. Vatican II says: “The wonderful works of God among the people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of Christ, our Lord, in redeeming mankind and giving perfect glory to God. He achieved his task principally by the paschal mystery of his blessed passion, resurrection from the dead, and glorious ascension, whereby dying, he destroyed our death, and rising, restored our life (Easter Preface of the Roman Missal).”23
In Scripture, the glorious mysteries of the Lord appear intimately connected to his death on the cross. They comprise the fitting recompense of Christ’s humiliation and obedience. St. Paul says that Christ “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name” (Phil 2:7–9).
The role in our Redemption played by Jesus’ Resurrection is described in other Pauline texts as being the figure of our spiritual resurrection from sin (cf. Rom 6:3–5) and the guarantee and pattern of our bodily resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 15:20ff; Phil 3:21). Jesus, as St. Paul says, “was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25).
The Ascension and glorification of Christ in heaven is the crown of the entire work of Redemption. In heaven, Jesus prepares a place for his disciples (cf. Jn 14:2–3) and intercedes on our behalf (cf. Heb 7:25; 9:24; Rom 8:34; 1 Jn 2:1). Our Lord’s Ascension is also a figure and guarantee of our own future glorification.
The fullness of the new order decreed by God has been embodied in the sacred humanity of Christ and in his Blessed Mother (sent. certa).
As St. Paul says, “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4–6).
6. Redemption Takes Place in Time
Everything that has been fulfilled through Christ and his mother will be fulfilled in the elect—not to the same degree, of course, nor all at once, but in the manner decreed by God in the course of the centuries. The work of the Redemption is still taking place. The following points should be borne in mind:
i) The salvific will of God is universal. Membership in the supernatural family of the children of God, however, is not automatic after the Redemption wrought by Christ. Each person has to be reborn in grace through Baptism.
Sacred Scripture teaches that God wants to save all people (cf. 1 Tm 2:4). We can be completely sure that God wants every human being to be saved because Christ died for all24 and because everyone is given the means necessary to be saved.25
We also know through revelation, however, that hell exists and that souls that die in mortal sin go there. Regarding the souls of the damned, we can no longer speak of God’s will of salvation for them, but instead of his decree to manifest divine justice through their eternal punishment.
ii) Concerning human nature, we know through faith that one of the consequences of original sin was that “the whole man—both body and soul—was changed for the worse.”26 Certainly, one of the effects of grace is that it heals the wounds of original sin in human nature, but it does not completely restore it to health until the end of the world.
Our intelligence, though still capable of knowing God as he is reflected in creatures,27 is somewhat obscured. It very easily falls into error and manages to free itself from ignorance only with effort. As regards the will, it still retains its freedom but finds it difficult to use this freedom to choose what is good. Although capable of overcoming its difficulties and disordered tendencies, the will remains weak and prone to evil. In short, even after Baptism, all of us retain disorder in the intelligence, the will, and the passions. This disorder, though not a sin in itself, “derives from sin and inclines to sin.”28
Experience of sin, then, should not make us doubt our mission. True, our sins can make it difficult to recognize Christ. That is why we must face up to our personal miseries and seek to purify ourselves. But in doing this, we must realize that God has not promised us a complete victory over evil in this life. Instead he asks us to fight. “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9), our Lord replied to St. Paul, when he wanted to be freed of the “thorn in his flesh” which humiliated him.
The power of God is made manifest in our weakness and it spurs us on to fight, to battle against our defects, although we know that we will never achieve total victory during our pilgrimage on earth. The Christian life is a continuous beginning again each day. It renews itself over and over.29
iii) With respect to our bodily conditions, although the supernatural reality of grace does affect our bodies in some mysterious way, death comes inexorably to each person redeemed by Christ. The immortal soul may well be saved, but the body will undergo corruption and will have to wait until the end of the world before becoming a glorified body.
The Church, taught by divine revelation, declares that God has created man in view of a blessed destiny that lies beyond the limits of his sad state on earth. Moreover, the Christian faith teaches that bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned, will be overcome when that wholeness that he lost through his own fault will be given once again to him by the almighty and merciful Savior. For God has called man and still calls him to cleave with all his being to him in sharing forever a life that is divine and free from all decay. Christ won this victory when he rose to life, for by his death, he freed man from death.30
Conformed to the image of the Son who is the first-born of many brothers, the Christian man receives the “first fruits of the Spirit” (Rom 8:23) by which he is able to fulfill the new law of love. By this Spirit, who is the “pledge of our inheritance” (Eph 1:14), the whole man is inwardly renewed, right up to the “redemption of the body” (Rom 8:23). As one who has been made a partner in the paschal mystery, and as one who has been configured to the death of Christ, he will go forward, strengthened by hope, to the resurrection.31
iv) With regard to human society and the fruit of human activity, it is God’s desire to definitively establish the heavenly family composed of his children, all conformed to the image of the glorified Christ. The divine work of re-creation also extends to material creatures and the historical and terrestrial realities of humanity, but, here, too, the fulfillment of this aspect of the universal reign of God through Christ will take place only at the end of time.
We know neither the moment of the consummation of the earth and of man, nor the way the universe will be transformed. The form of this world, distorted by sin, is passing away, and we are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, whose happiness will fill and surpass all the desires of peace arising in human hearts. Then, with death conquered, the sons of God will be raised in Christ, and what was sown in weakness and dishonor will put on the imperishable: charity and its works will remain and all of creation, which God made for man, will be set free from its bondage to decay.32
7. Habitual Grace and Actual Grace
A distinction must be made between habitual and actual grace.33
Grace, in general, is any supernatural gift that God gratuitously bestows on us out of pure benevolence, with a view to our eternal salvation (de fide as regards the existence of grace).
We are not going to expound this proposition, just recall the definition of the term grace given in the introduction.
Actual grace is an interior enlightenment of the intellect along with an inner prompting of the will (de fide).
It is distinct from God and from both human faculties of mind and will; it is supernatural in nature (sent. prob.).
The Second Council of Orange (a.d. 529) rejected as heretical the teaching that man, using his own resources without the special help of the Holy Spirit, can think or will something that is profitable for eternal salvation, choose a supernatural good, or accept the Holy Gospel.34 The First Vatican Council reiterated this need for an “illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives all men the facility to accept and believe in the truth.”35
Sacred Scripture is replete with prayers addressed to God asking him for help to live according to his will: “Restore us to thyself, O Lord, that we may be restored” (Lam 5:21); “Lighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Ps 13:3).
In the Gospels, Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (Jn 6:44). St. Paul affirms, “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13).
This is the theological explanation of this mystery: If God must move the intellect and will in the natural order before these faculties can achieve their end (for God is the cause of the being and operation of creatures), he must, likewise, move the soul in a special (supernatural) way before it can carry out salutary acts directed to its supernatural end.
Habitual grace is a supernatural reality infused by God in the soul (de fide) that inheres in the soul in a stable manner (sent. fidei prox.).
In contrast to actual grace, which is a transient reality and is ordained to eliciting a good supernatural action in the will or intellect, habitual grace is a state. Hence, we say that one is or is not in the state of grace. Habitual grace is also called sanctifying grace.
In the Council of Trent, the Magisterium of the Church employs terms like poured forth, infused, or inheres to express how this grace is given to the soul.36 The Roman Catechism, which was written in compliance with a decree of the same council, describes habitual grace as “a divine quality that inheres in the soul.”37
This grace is what transforms one into a new creature. It is something really in us, and, by its virtue, we shed the old sinful person. It is a reality that can and ought to grow with the help of ever-new actual graces to which one freely corresponds. With this grace, a person begins to advance toward sanctity in spite of the many defects that he may still possess and must uproot in order to strengthen this initial degree of sanctity within himself.
Luther separated himself from the Catholic faith, above all, by denying that grace was something real in us, a reality created by God and infused into our souls. According to Protestants in general, grace consists merely of a benevolent attitude on the part of God, who turns his eyes away from our sins and regards us as already justified because he sees us in Jesus Christ, whose merits are like a mantle covering the misery of our corrupted human nature, which undergoes no change. This is why it makes no sense in Protestantism to speak of the sanctity of the saints. Hence, they reject the veneration of saints, and they are unable to judge the sanctity of a deceased Christian.
Protestants usually have difficulty grasping the importance of the ascetical struggle, or the effort to achieve sanctity with the help of God, who calls us to be saints. In its place, there is a sentimental pietism and an ethics of good works, focusing merely on man’s temporal welfare: civil honesty, decency, or puritanism. Alternatively, Catholics who strive to live in accordance with the faith exert effort to do good, which also means obeying the just and legitimate laws of civil society.
Sacred Scripture is full of passages about grace. “No one born of God commits sin; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God” (1 Jn 3:9). Grace is also described as an anointing, a seal, and a pledge of the Holy Spirit (cf. 2 Cor 1:21ff); a participation in the divine nature (cf. 2 Pt 1:4); eternal life (cf. Jn 3:15–16); a new creation (cf. 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15); and a regeneration (cf. Jn 3:5; Ti 3:5). This grace, which is a stable reality, should not be confused with the lights and extra helps (actual graces) that God gives to pagans for their conversion, to sinners for them to repent, or to those already in the state of grace that they may respond to the new demands he makes of them.
St. Thomas classifies sanctifying grace among the entitative habits, which belong to the accidental category of quality.38
8. Grace Heals and Elevates Fallen Nature
Habitual or sanctifying grace heals and elevates fallen nature (de fide eccl.).
The above means that the nature we have inherited from Adam has been wounded by original sin. Grace, which is infused into the soul for the first time by Baptism, heals this wounded nature. It does not completely remove the effects of original sin, however, because an inclination to sin still remains (fomes peccati), which God, through his mercy, permits. He does so both to forestall our falling into presumption and because it is his will that we reach heaven after winning in the ascetical struggle. Grace also elevates human nature (this is the principal effect) since it raises our being and our soul to a new, supernatural order.39
9. Absolute Need for Grace
Grace is absolutely necessary to carry out every supernatural action (de fide).
This has been the constant teaching of the Magisterium of the Church. The Second Council of Orange says, “When we do something good, God acts in us and with us that we may perform this good;”40 and “man cannot perform any good work unless God first help him to perform it.”41 The Church made these declarations against the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies. They clearly refer, therefore, to good actions in the supernatural order, not to God’s presence in the being and operation of creatures in the natural order. The Council of Trent confirms this doctrine in its Decree on Justification.42
This dogma was opposed by Pelagius, who denied the need for grace in order to attain heaven, and the semi-Pelagians, who said that man could take the first step toward conversion without the help of grace.
Some Protestants hold that human nature has been totally corrupted by original sin. Thus, man is incapable of performing any good supernatural action. For this reason, they are also led to deny the existence of an internal and supernatural grace that enables man to act supernaturally.
Baius did not distinguish between the natural and the supernatural orders. Hence, he denied that grace is not proper to human nature. For him, supernaturally good and meritorious acts belong intrinsically to human nature.
Jansenius was more imbued with Lutheranism thought. He thought that all the good acts that a person performs in the supernatural order are the exclusive work of grace, which, he said, is irresistible. Consequently, the least attempt to perform a supernaturally good act was, for him, a sin of pride. Because of the influence of Jansenism, from the seventeenth century until the extraordinary pastoral work carried out by St. Pius X in the beginning of the twentieth century, popular piety in some quarters of Christian society was characterized by a mood of pessimism and sadness.
Sacred Scripture is explicit about this revealed truth: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5, author’s emphasis). Using other analogies, like that of the body and the head, St. Paul teaches the same doctrine (cf. Eph 4:15ff; Col 2:19). He says, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor 3:5). We would not be able to say a single aspiration without the help of grace: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).
Among the Church Fathers (who are witnesses to Tradition), St. Augustine stands out as the defender of the truth against the heresy of Pelagius: “The Lord did not say, ‘Without me you can do little,’ so as to lead one to think the branch could of itself bring forth some fruit. Rather, he categorically stated, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’ Regardless of whether the task is big or small, therefore, nothing can be accomplished without him whose help is necessary if anything at all is to be accomplished.”43
Footnotes:
1. Cf. CCC, 355–421.
2. DS 1528; cf. CCC, 1989.
3. Cf. ST, I-II, q. 110, a. 1.
4. Cf. DS 222.
5. Cf. DS 371ff.
6. Cf. DS 1510ff.
7. LG, 2; cf. CCC, 375.
8. St. Augustine, De Gen. ad Litt., 6.24.35.
9. St. John Damascene, De Fide Orth., 2.30.
10. Cf. DS 1921–1926, 2616.
11. Pius XII, Enc. Humani Generis: DS 3891.
12. Cf. DS 1512, 1513, 1523; CCC, 400.
13. Cf. CCC, 402–404.
14. Cf. ST, I, q. 94, a. 1, ad 2.
15. DS 1511.
16. DS 150; cf. CCC, 422, 456–460.
17. Cf. DS 3514.
18. John Paul II, Enc. Dives in Misericordia, 2.
19. Ibid., 7.
20. Ibid.
21. DS 1740.
22. DS 1513; cf. CCC, 618.
23. SC, 5.
24. Cf. Innocent X, Const. Cum Occasione (condemnation of Jansenist errors): DS 2005.
25. Cf. DS 1567.
26. Cf. DS 371, 1511.
27. Cf. DS 3004, 3026.
28. DS 1515; cf. CCC, 405.
29. St. Josemaría Escrivá, Christ is Passing By, 114.
30. GS, 18.
31. Ibid., 22.
32. GS, 39.
33. Cf. CCC, 2000.
34. Cf. DS 376, 1525.
35. DS 3010.
36. Cf. DS 1530, 1561; CCC, 1996–2005.
37. Roman Catechism, 2.2.49.
38. Cf. ST, I-II, q. 110, aa. 3–4.
39. Cf. DS 1515.
40. DS 379.
41. DS 390; cf. DS 377.
42. Cf. DS 1551–1553.
43. St. Augustine, In Ioh. Tr., 81.3.
Our salvation is a grace from God.1 Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we share in the Passion of Christ, dying to sin. Through the same power, we share in Christ’s Resurrection and are born to a new life: the life of grace. We become members of Christ’s body, the Church (cf. 1 Cor 12), living branches united to the vine, which is Christ (cf. Jn 15:1–4).
The first effect of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, which justifies us. As Jesus announced, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 4:17). Moved by grace, a person turns to God, departs from sin, and places himself under God’s justice and mercy. “Thus, justification entails the forgiveness of sin, sanctification, and renewal of the inner man.”2
Grace is a favor, the free help that God gives us so that we can respond to his calling. It makes us children of God (cf. Jn 1:12–18), adopted children (cf. Rom 8:14–17), sharers of the divine nature (cf. 2 Pt 1:3–4), and sharers of eternal life (cf. Jn 17:3). Grace is a participation in God’s life. It introduces us to the intimacy of the Blessed Trinity.
The grace of God’s children is a consequence of the Redemption that was accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ. Before examining the nature of grace and its place in the study of theology, let us recall a number of basic truths that are intimately connected with the lessons contained in this work.
The word grace appears in every page of this treatise. More often than not, it is qualified by some adjective. Thus, we will speak of actual grace, habitual grace, and special graces. In the language of faith, the term grace refers to a mysterious reality that lies beyond what human intelligence or the senses alone can apprehend. It refers to a supernatural reality in the strictest sense, something that involves the Divinity itself, the intimate life of the Trinity, and the action of the Trinity on humanity. Whatever we know about grace comes from divine revelation. Divine revelation in itself is a form of grace; as the Apostle says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God [the Father] and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14).
To designate this living and supernatural reality, Sacred Scripture uses different words, especially the Greek word kharis. From kharis come words like charisma and Eucharist. The Greek khara (“cheerfulness”) is also related to it.
The Greek terms employed in Sacred Scripture expressed the contents of our faith, and were constantly used by the apostolic Fathers. When they were translated into Latin, the word gratia was used. Gratia means “gift,” “present,” or “spiritual beauty.” Words like gratuitous and gracious are derived from it.
St. Thomas says that the word grace is commonly used to mean one of the following:
· The benevolent affection of a superior for his subordinate. For example, we say that a person enjoys the good graces (or favor) of the king.
· A gift given to someone without any merit on the part of the receiver, something gratuitously given. We say, therefore, that kings give the grace of the nobility to their subjects (or that they graciously confer on them the rank of the nobility).
· The gratitude of someone who has received a benefit without meriting it in any way, a benefit conferred out of the graciousness of the donor. In this sense, we say, “Thank you, God!”--“Gratias tibi, Deus, gratias tibi!”
As St. Thomas himself points out, the second usage of the word grace depends on the first, and the third depends on the second.3 In this work, we will use the word grace principally in the second sense, meaning an unmerited gift, a gift given through love, and a calling for gratitude to the Father of all graces on our part.
The Christian meaning of the word grace is much richer, however, and it must be further qualified if the reader is to understand its usage in the pages that follow.
Everything that creatures receive from God is unmerited. Who can rightfully demand from God the gift of life or the gift of intelligence? Therefore, we can properly call natural gifts all the benefits that God has bestowed on us, as well as our human nature. These include all that God gives us to preserve our nature and bring it to perfection in the natural order. In this sense, life, health, and all that perfect a person in the order of nature (i.e., beauty, personal charm, talent) are natural gifts.
In addition to those mentioned above, there are other gifts from God that, although not necessary for the integrity of human nature, nevertheless perfect man within the created order. One example is the gift of immortality, which Adam and Eve enjoyed before committing original sin. These gifts are called preternatural gifts.
Strictly speaking, however, the term grace refers to all those divine gifts given to humans (and angels) that elevate them to the supernatural or divine order. They transcend the demands of human nature and cannot be either acquired or merited by natural efforts alone. We call these gifts supernatural graces. Grace, therefore, is any supernatural gift that God gratuitously bestows on us for our eternal salvation.
Every supernatural grace is a divine gift to people in which God himself is the gift. It is bestowed on us so that we may have a share in the intimate life of the Godhead.
2. Humanity’s Elevation to the Supernatural Order
Humanity was elevated by God to the supernatural order (de fide).
The natural order is that whereby all creatures—taken individually and as a whole—operating according to their own nature, rendering to God the glory that is due him. In the natural order, man is ordained to God as his natural final end through natural knowledge and love (i.e., the knowledge and love of which he is capable, using all the faculties of his intellect and will).
The direct contemplation of God completely surpasses the natural order: “No one knows the Father except the Son” (Mt 11:27).
The elevation to the supernatural order means that God has gratuitously elevated mankind to a knowledge and love of the Godhead that transcends the capacity of ordinary human nature and, therefore, entails a new divine operation emerging from the depths of his soul. When one is raised to this order, he does not cease to be human, but is enabled to perform operations that surpass human nature.
In the Magisterium of the Church, this dogma appears as early as in the Sixteenth Provincial Council of Carthage (a.d. 418)4 and the Second Council of Orange.5 The fifth session of the Council of Trent6 presents a more elaborated treatment of this dogma. In the documents of the Second Vatican Council, there is hardly a page that fails to mention the supernatural order, grace, or heavenly glory. In this respect, too, there is perfect continuity between this and the previous ecumenical councils. “The eternal Father, in accordance with the utterly gratuitous and mysterious design of his wisdom and goodness, created the whole universe, and chose to raise up men to share in his own divine life.”7
In Sacred Scripture, this supernatural reality is revealed in the first chapters of Genesis (cf. Gn 5:1–2). The relationship of Adam and Eve with God is described simply, yet profoundly, as that of children to their father. Humanity has been elevated to relate intimately with God. The Creator does not leave Adam to simply develop according to nature (the word nature comes from the Latin nascor, nascere, “to be born”—nature is what is acquired by birth), but deals with him with paternal affection; he gives him a companion. To both Adam and Eve, he entrusts the propagation of the human race, gives them dominion over the earth, and places them in the garden of paradise. God gives man the names (and knowledge) of each plant and animal. The nakedness of Adam and Eve signifies the transparency of their souls as well as the absence of malice in the use of their body, the dominion of their souls over their bodies, and their close union with God. These gifts, along with the promise of immortality if they obeyed God, show that our first parents were in a state that was totally different from the one in which we are born.
In the New Testament, certain texts from St. Paul show how the entire redemptive work of Christ—the new Adam—is, in fact, a restoration of the sanctity and justice that Adam lost. If Christ came to make up for a loss, there must have been a loss to atone for in the first place (cf. Rom 5:10ff; 8:14ff; 1 Cor 6:11; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; Eph 1:7; 4:23ff).
The Fathers of the Church bear witness to this belief of the Church. St. Augustine comments that our renewal (cf. Eph 4:23) consists in “receiving the justice that man had lost through sin.”8 St. John Damascene affirms, “The Creator gave man his divine grace, and through it made him share in his own life.”9
Condemning the errors of Baius and Jansenius, the Magisterium of the Church affirmed the supernatural character of the gifts that man received from God before original sin.10
More recently, Pius XII, discussing several modern erroneous theological views said, “Others destroy the gratuitous character of the supernatural order by suggesting that it would be impossible for God to create rational beings without equipping them for the beatific vision and calling them to it.”11
If one does not properly distinguish the natural and supernatural orders, one necessarily falls into one of the following extreme heretical positions:
· Only the natural order exists (naturalism); or,
· Only the order of grace exists (supernaturalism).
The error of supernaturalism is the most dangerous one, for it is usually expressed in emotionally charged religious language (like that of some Protestant groups) and espouses superficially logical theological views (logical, that is, to anyone who accepts its erroneous principles). An example of this is Rahner’s teaching about the so-called anonymous Christians: Every person, by the mere fact of being human, would be within the mainstream of salvation, even if he is unaware of it, or is a professed atheist due to the bad example of some Christians, or even if he chooses to ignore God.
In such confusion between nature and grace, the true significance of the Redemption, the Church, and the apostolate is lost. If everyone is good, then why speak to people about God? Why “complicate” their lives? The end result of such flawed reasoning will be utter religious indifference under the guise of theology.
3. Consequences of Original Sin
Through original sin, our first parents lost grace for themselves and for their descendants (de fide).
The Pelagians directly denied the dogma of original sin and its transmission to all humanity, together with all its effects. They claimed that the fall of our first parents only acted as a bad example. It had no ill effects on our nature, which we inherit from them unimpaired and, according to Pelagius, endowed with the ability to merit heavenly glory without the help of grace.
Against these heretical views, the Councils of Carthage and Orange defined the dogma of original sin. Later on, the Council of Trent was to articulate this dogma in its most complete form in its Decree on Original Sin.12 This was in response to the errors of Luther, seen as the extreme opposite of Pelagius with respect to the consequences of original sin. Some Lutherans see man as essentially corrupted by original sin, and, thus, rendered incapable of good works even with the help of grace. For them, grace cannot transform the very essence of human nature.
In the long run, Lutheranism often leads to skepticism regarding the natural capacity of reason to know God (agnosticism) and the denial of personal freedom. For the greater part of modern philosophy, the person is a state of consciousness, the product of a historical process (Hegel), of social conditioning (Marx), or of cultural conditioning.
Catholic doctrine teaches that Adam and Eve were elevated to the supernatural order not only in their personal capacities, but also in their specific capacity, i.e., as the first man and woman, from whom the entire human race was to proceed, and from whom mankind was to inherit grace.13
This grace (also called original grace) was not the beatific vision of glory because otherwise, Adam and Eve could not have sinned. What God gave them was supernatural grace (gratia elevans) that did not do away with nature, but elevated it so that people might be rendered capable of knowing and loving their supernatural end, tending toward it, and obtaining it. God wanted mankind to merit what he had promised to give as a reward.14
Adam and Eve were put to a test. If they obeyed God, they would be confirmed in grace and would merit eternal life; if not, they would be punished. Through faith, we know that our first parents sinned by transgressing the divine command. Their sin is called original because it was committed at the origin of the human race and brought the following consequences in its wake for Adam and Eve and their descendants:
· The loss of supernatural grace and, as a consequence, the enmity of the soul with God
· The loss of the preternatural gifts (infused knowledge, freedom from concupiscence, impassibility and immortality)
· The wounding—not corruption—of human nature: “It was the whole Adam, both body and soul, who was changed for the worse.”15
Because of original sin, the divine plan to make human beings share in the intimate life of God was upset by man himself, and from that time onward, people are born “unclean” (Is 64:6–7), “by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:3), “slaves of sin” (Rom 6:20), and are destined to die. As the Apostle says, “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (Rom 5:12).
4. The Divine Plan of Redemption
The Son of God became man to redeem all mankind (de fide).
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (the one used at Mass) affirms this article of faith as regards Jesus Christ: “Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven … and became man.”16
Moved by mercy, God decided to give man an efficacious means to recover the possibility of attaining glory. He was in no way obliged to do so; it was mankind as a whole who had confronted God in the person of Adam and had offended him. The offense was an infinite one when we consider the infinite dignity of God who was offended. Hence, it was out of mercy that God decreed the remittance of the infinite debt incurred by mankind. A Savior would come to pay the price of our redemption (cf. Gn 3:15).17
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish” (Jn 3:16). The payment of the infinite debt that mankind owed to God was made by way of the Incarnation, Passion, and death of Christ.
“In Christ and through Christ, God is made specially visible in his mercy.”18 In other words, in the mystery of Christ, the divine attribute of mercy is highlighted in a special way. God could have left the world in its state of perpetual estrangement from its supernatural end, but instead chose to save it by making the God-Man pay the redeeming price of his blood on behalf of mankind.
Christ came to save the entire human race because God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tm 2:4–6). These words of St. Paul show that no one is excluded from the salvific will of God, and that salvation is possible only to the extent that people work to accept the merits that Christ has earned for us. Only through Christ is salvation possible.
The death of Christ—the God-Man—has more than sufficiently paid the debt that mankind owed its Creator. Christ’s Passion and death are an expression of “absolute justice, because Christ suffers the passion and death on the cross on account of the sins of humanity. It is even a superabundance of justice, since the sins of man are compensated for by the sacrifice of the Man-God.”19
The Person of Christ is divine. Because of his infinite dignity, the merits that he gained for us through his human nature (which suffered for our sake) are also infinite. The plenitude of grace that Christ merited on our behalf gives us all the necessary means for our salvation. Only Christ is capable of “re-establishing justice, understood as the order of salvation desired by God since the beginning for man and, through man, in the world.”20
5. Redemption is Objectively Complete
Christ has redeemed us and reconciled us with God by means of the sacrifice of the cross (de fide).
The Magisterium of the Church has defined this truth as follows: “He, then, our Lord and our God, was once and for all to offer himself by his death on the altar of the Cross to God the Father, to accomplish for them [there] an everlasting redemption.”21 The Council of Trent proclaimed that Jesus Christ is the only mediator: he alone “reconciled us to God in his blood, having become for us justice, and sanctification, and redemption” (cf. 1 Cor 1:30).22
The Resurrection of Christ and his Ascension into heaven form part of the Redemption taken as a whole (de fide eccl.).
Although the Resurrection of the Lord and his Ascension into heaven are not directly the meritorious cause of our Redemption (it is Jesus’ death on the cross), they do form part of the Redemption as a whole.
The Ordinary Magisterium of the Church, particularly since the Second Vatican Council, has been teaching this truth even though no dogmatic definition on it has been issued. Through her ordinary teaching, the Church has, thus, sanctioned a doctrine that many Fathers and Doctors of the Church, including St. Thomas Aquinas, have taught as based on Sacred Scripture. Vatican II says: “The wonderful works of God among the people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of Christ, our Lord, in redeeming mankind and giving perfect glory to God. He achieved his task principally by the paschal mystery of his blessed passion, resurrection from the dead, and glorious ascension, whereby dying, he destroyed our death, and rising, restored our life (Easter Preface of the Roman Missal).”23
In Scripture, the glorious mysteries of the Lord appear intimately connected to his death on the cross. They comprise the fitting recompense of Christ’s humiliation and obedience. St. Paul says that Christ “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name” (Phil 2:7–9).
The role in our Redemption played by Jesus’ Resurrection is described in other Pauline texts as being the figure of our spiritual resurrection from sin (cf. Rom 6:3–5) and the guarantee and pattern of our bodily resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 15:20ff; Phil 3:21). Jesus, as St. Paul says, “was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25).
The Ascension and glorification of Christ in heaven is the crown of the entire work of Redemption. In heaven, Jesus prepares a place for his disciples (cf. Jn 14:2–3) and intercedes on our behalf (cf. Heb 7:25; 9:24; Rom 8:34; 1 Jn 2:1). Our Lord’s Ascension is also a figure and guarantee of our own future glorification.
The fullness of the new order decreed by God has been embodied in the sacred humanity of Christ and in his Blessed Mother (sent. certa).
As St. Paul says, “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4–6).
6. Redemption Takes Place in Time
Everything that has been fulfilled through Christ and his mother will be fulfilled in the elect—not to the same degree, of course, nor all at once, but in the manner decreed by God in the course of the centuries. The work of the Redemption is still taking place. The following points should be borne in mind:
i) The salvific will of God is universal. Membership in the supernatural family of the children of God, however, is not automatic after the Redemption wrought by Christ. Each person has to be reborn in grace through Baptism.
Sacred Scripture teaches that God wants to save all people (cf. 1 Tm 2:4). We can be completely sure that God wants every human being to be saved because Christ died for all24 and because everyone is given the means necessary to be saved.25
We also know through revelation, however, that hell exists and that souls that die in mortal sin go there. Regarding the souls of the damned, we can no longer speak of God’s will of salvation for them, but instead of his decree to manifest divine justice through their eternal punishment.
ii) Concerning human nature, we know through faith that one of the consequences of original sin was that “the whole man—both body and soul—was changed for the worse.”26 Certainly, one of the effects of grace is that it heals the wounds of original sin in human nature, but it does not completely restore it to health until the end of the world.
Our intelligence, though still capable of knowing God as he is reflected in creatures,27 is somewhat obscured. It very easily falls into error and manages to free itself from ignorance only with effort. As regards the will, it still retains its freedom but finds it difficult to use this freedom to choose what is good. Although capable of overcoming its difficulties and disordered tendencies, the will remains weak and prone to evil. In short, even after Baptism, all of us retain disorder in the intelligence, the will, and the passions. This disorder, though not a sin in itself, “derives from sin and inclines to sin.”28
Experience of sin, then, should not make us doubt our mission. True, our sins can make it difficult to recognize Christ. That is why we must face up to our personal miseries and seek to purify ourselves. But in doing this, we must realize that God has not promised us a complete victory over evil in this life. Instead he asks us to fight. “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9), our Lord replied to St. Paul, when he wanted to be freed of the “thorn in his flesh” which humiliated him.
The power of God is made manifest in our weakness and it spurs us on to fight, to battle against our defects, although we know that we will never achieve total victory during our pilgrimage on earth. The Christian life is a continuous beginning again each day. It renews itself over and over.29
iii) With respect to our bodily conditions, although the supernatural reality of grace does affect our bodies in some mysterious way, death comes inexorably to each person redeemed by Christ. The immortal soul may well be saved, but the body will undergo corruption and will have to wait until the end of the world before becoming a glorified body.
The Church, taught by divine revelation, declares that God has created man in view of a blessed destiny that lies beyond the limits of his sad state on earth. Moreover, the Christian faith teaches that bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned, will be overcome when that wholeness that he lost through his own fault will be given once again to him by the almighty and merciful Savior. For God has called man and still calls him to cleave with all his being to him in sharing forever a life that is divine and free from all decay. Christ won this victory when he rose to life, for by his death, he freed man from death.30
Conformed to the image of the Son who is the first-born of many brothers, the Christian man receives the “first fruits of the Spirit” (Rom 8:23) by which he is able to fulfill the new law of love. By this Spirit, who is the “pledge of our inheritance” (Eph 1:14), the whole man is inwardly renewed, right up to the “redemption of the body” (Rom 8:23). As one who has been made a partner in the paschal mystery, and as one who has been configured to the death of Christ, he will go forward, strengthened by hope, to the resurrection.31
iv) With regard to human society and the fruit of human activity, it is God’s desire to definitively establish the heavenly family composed of his children, all conformed to the image of the glorified Christ. The divine work of re-creation also extends to material creatures and the historical and terrestrial realities of humanity, but, here, too, the fulfillment of this aspect of the universal reign of God through Christ will take place only at the end of time.
We know neither the moment of the consummation of the earth and of man, nor the way the universe will be transformed. The form of this world, distorted by sin, is passing away, and we are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, whose happiness will fill and surpass all the desires of peace arising in human hearts. Then, with death conquered, the sons of God will be raised in Christ, and what was sown in weakness and dishonor will put on the imperishable: charity and its works will remain and all of creation, which God made for man, will be set free from its bondage to decay.32
7. Habitual Grace and Actual Grace
A distinction must be made between habitual and actual grace.33
Grace, in general, is any supernatural gift that God gratuitously bestows on us out of pure benevolence, with a view to our eternal salvation (de fide as regards the existence of grace).
We are not going to expound this proposition, just recall the definition of the term grace given in the introduction.
Actual grace is an interior enlightenment of the intellect along with an inner prompting of the will (de fide).
It is distinct from God and from both human faculties of mind and will; it is supernatural in nature (sent. prob.).
The Second Council of Orange (a.d. 529) rejected as heretical the teaching that man, using his own resources without the special help of the Holy Spirit, can think or will something that is profitable for eternal salvation, choose a supernatural good, or accept the Holy Gospel.34 The First Vatican Council reiterated this need for an “illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives all men the facility to accept and believe in the truth.”35
Sacred Scripture is replete with prayers addressed to God asking him for help to live according to his will: “Restore us to thyself, O Lord, that we may be restored” (Lam 5:21); “Lighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Ps 13:3).
In the Gospels, Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (Jn 6:44). St. Paul affirms, “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13).
This is the theological explanation of this mystery: If God must move the intellect and will in the natural order before these faculties can achieve their end (for God is the cause of the being and operation of creatures), he must, likewise, move the soul in a special (supernatural) way before it can carry out salutary acts directed to its supernatural end.
Habitual grace is a supernatural reality infused by God in the soul (de fide) that inheres in the soul in a stable manner (sent. fidei prox.).
In contrast to actual grace, which is a transient reality and is ordained to eliciting a good supernatural action in the will or intellect, habitual grace is a state. Hence, we say that one is or is not in the state of grace. Habitual grace is also called sanctifying grace.
In the Council of Trent, the Magisterium of the Church employs terms like poured forth, infused, or inheres to express how this grace is given to the soul.36 The Roman Catechism, which was written in compliance with a decree of the same council, describes habitual grace as “a divine quality that inheres in the soul.”37
This grace is what transforms one into a new creature. It is something really in us, and, by its virtue, we shed the old sinful person. It is a reality that can and ought to grow with the help of ever-new actual graces to which one freely corresponds. With this grace, a person begins to advance toward sanctity in spite of the many defects that he may still possess and must uproot in order to strengthen this initial degree of sanctity within himself.
Luther separated himself from the Catholic faith, above all, by denying that grace was something real in us, a reality created by God and infused into our souls. According to Protestants in general, grace consists merely of a benevolent attitude on the part of God, who turns his eyes away from our sins and regards us as already justified because he sees us in Jesus Christ, whose merits are like a mantle covering the misery of our corrupted human nature, which undergoes no change. This is why it makes no sense in Protestantism to speak of the sanctity of the saints. Hence, they reject the veneration of saints, and they are unable to judge the sanctity of a deceased Christian.
Protestants usually have difficulty grasping the importance of the ascetical struggle, or the effort to achieve sanctity with the help of God, who calls us to be saints. In its place, there is a sentimental pietism and an ethics of good works, focusing merely on man’s temporal welfare: civil honesty, decency, or puritanism. Alternatively, Catholics who strive to live in accordance with the faith exert effort to do good, which also means obeying the just and legitimate laws of civil society.
Sacred Scripture is full of passages about grace. “No one born of God commits sin; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God” (1 Jn 3:9). Grace is also described as an anointing, a seal, and a pledge of the Holy Spirit (cf. 2 Cor 1:21ff); a participation in the divine nature (cf. 2 Pt 1:4); eternal life (cf. Jn 3:15–16); a new creation (cf. 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15); and a regeneration (cf. Jn 3:5; Ti 3:5). This grace, which is a stable reality, should not be confused with the lights and extra helps (actual graces) that God gives to pagans for their conversion, to sinners for them to repent, or to those already in the state of grace that they may respond to the new demands he makes of them.
St. Thomas classifies sanctifying grace among the entitative habits, which belong to the accidental category of quality.38
8. Grace Heals and Elevates Fallen Nature
Habitual or sanctifying grace heals and elevates fallen nature (de fide eccl.).
The above means that the nature we have inherited from Adam has been wounded by original sin. Grace, which is infused into the soul for the first time by Baptism, heals this wounded nature. It does not completely remove the effects of original sin, however, because an inclination to sin still remains (fomes peccati), which God, through his mercy, permits. He does so both to forestall our falling into presumption and because it is his will that we reach heaven after winning in the ascetical struggle. Grace also elevates human nature (this is the principal effect) since it raises our being and our soul to a new, supernatural order.39
9. Absolute Need for Grace
Grace is absolutely necessary to carry out every supernatural action (de fide).
This has been the constant teaching of the Magisterium of the Church. The Second Council of Orange says, “When we do something good, God acts in us and with us that we may perform this good;”40 and “man cannot perform any good work unless God first help him to perform it.”41 The Church made these declarations against the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies. They clearly refer, therefore, to good actions in the supernatural order, not to God’s presence in the being and operation of creatures in the natural order. The Council of Trent confirms this doctrine in its Decree on Justification.42
This dogma was opposed by Pelagius, who denied the need for grace in order to attain heaven, and the semi-Pelagians, who said that man could take the first step toward conversion without the help of grace.
Some Protestants hold that human nature has been totally corrupted by original sin. Thus, man is incapable of performing any good supernatural action. For this reason, they are also led to deny the existence of an internal and supernatural grace that enables man to act supernaturally.
Baius did not distinguish between the natural and the supernatural orders. Hence, he denied that grace is not proper to human nature. For him, supernaturally good and meritorious acts belong intrinsically to human nature.
Jansenius was more imbued with Lutheranism thought. He thought that all the good acts that a person performs in the supernatural order are the exclusive work of grace, which, he said, is irresistible. Consequently, the least attempt to perform a supernaturally good act was, for him, a sin of pride. Because of the influence of Jansenism, from the seventeenth century until the extraordinary pastoral work carried out by St. Pius X in the beginning of the twentieth century, popular piety in some quarters of Christian society was characterized by a mood of pessimism and sadness.
Sacred Scripture is explicit about this revealed truth: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5, author’s emphasis). Using other analogies, like that of the body and the head, St. Paul teaches the same doctrine (cf. Eph 4:15ff; Col 2:19). He says, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor 3:5). We would not be able to say a single aspiration without the help of grace: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).
Among the Church Fathers (who are witnesses to Tradition), St. Augustine stands out as the defender of the truth against the heresy of Pelagius: “The Lord did not say, ‘Without me you can do little,’ so as to lead one to think the branch could of itself bring forth some fruit. Rather, he categorically stated, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’ Regardless of whether the task is big or small, therefore, nothing can be accomplished without him whose help is necessary if anything at all is to be accomplished.”43
Footnotes:
1. Cf. CCC, 355–421.
2. DS 1528; cf. CCC, 1989.
3. Cf. ST, I-II, q. 110, a. 1.
4. Cf. DS 222.
5. Cf. DS 371ff.
6. Cf. DS 1510ff.
7. LG, 2; cf. CCC, 375.
8. St. Augustine, De Gen. ad Litt., 6.24.35.
9. St. John Damascene, De Fide Orth., 2.30.
10. Cf. DS 1921–1926, 2616.
11. Pius XII, Enc. Humani Generis: DS 3891.
12. Cf. DS 1512, 1513, 1523; CCC, 400.
13. Cf. CCC, 402–404.
14. Cf. ST, I, q. 94, a. 1, ad 2.
15. DS 1511.
16. DS 150; cf. CCC, 422, 456–460.
17. Cf. DS 3514.
18. John Paul II, Enc. Dives in Misericordia, 2.
19. Ibid., 7.
20. Ibid.
21. DS 1740.
22. DS 1513; cf. CCC, 618.
23. SC, 5.
24. Cf. Innocent X, Const. Cum Occasione (condemnation of Jansenist errors): DS 2005.
25. Cf. DS 1567.
26. Cf. DS 371, 1511.
27. Cf. DS 3004, 3026.
28. DS 1515; cf. CCC, 405.
29. St. Josemaría Escrivá, Christ is Passing By, 114.
30. GS, 18.
31. Ibid., 22.
32. GS, 39.
33. Cf. CCC, 2000.
34. Cf. DS 376, 1525.
35. DS 3010.
36. Cf. DS 1530, 1561; CCC, 1996–2005.
37. Roman Catechism, 2.2.49.
38. Cf. ST, I-II, q. 110, aa. 3–4.
39. Cf. DS 1515.
40. DS 379.
41. DS 390; cf. DS 377.
42. Cf. DS 1551–1553.
43. St. Augustine, In Ioh. Tr., 81.3.