Actual Grace
Grace (gratia, Charis), in general, is a supernatural gift of God to intellectual
creatures (men, angels) for their eternal salvation, whether the latter be furthered
and attained through salutary acts or a state of holiness.
Before the Council of Trent, the Schoolmen seldom distinguished actual grace
from sanctifying grace. But, in consequence of modern controversies regarding
grace, it has become usual and necessary in theology to draw a sharper
distinction between the transient help to act (actual grace) and the permanent
state of grace (sanctifying grace). For this reason we adopt this distinction as our
principle of division in our exposition of the Catholic doctrine. In this article we
shall treat only of actual grace. (See also SANCTIFYING GRACE.)
Actual grace derives its name, actual, from the Latin actualis (ad actum), for it is
granted by God for the performance of salutary acts and is present and
disappears with the action itself. Its opposite, therefore, is not possible grace,
which is without usefulness or importance, but habitual grace, which causes a
state of holiness, so that the mutual relations between these two kinds of grace
are the relation between action and state, not those between actuality and
potentiality. Later, we shall discuss habitual grace more fully under the name of
sanctifying or justifying grace. As to actual grace, we have to examine: (1) its
Nature; (2) its Properties. The third, and difficult, question of the relationship
between grace and liberty shall be reserved for discussion in the article
CONTROVERSIES ON GRACE.
I. NATURE OF ACTUAL GRACE
To know the nature of actual grace, we must consider both the comprehension
and the extension of the term. Its comprehension is exhibited to us by (a) its
definition; its extension, by the complete enumeration of all Divine helps of grace;
in other words, by (b) the logical division of the idea, inasmuch as the sum of all
the particulars represents, in every science, the logical extent of an idea or term.
A. The Definition of Actual Grace
The definition of actual grace is based on the idea of grace in general, which, in
Biblical, classical, and modern language, admits of a fourfold meaning. In the first
place, subjectively, grace signifies good will, benevolence; then, objectively, it
designates every favour which proceeds from this benevolence and,
consequently, every gratuitous gift (donum gratuitum, beneficium). In the former
(subjective) sense, the king's grace grants life to the criminal condemned to
death; in the latter (objective) sense the king distributes graces to his lieges. In
this connection grace also stands for charm, attractiveness; as when we speak
of the three Graces in mythology, or of the grace poured forth on the lips of the
bridegroom (Ps. xliv, 3), because charm calls forth benevolent love in the giver
and prompts him to the bestowal of benefactions. As the recipient of graces
experiences, on his part, sentiments of gratefulness, and expresses these
sentiments in thanks, the word gratiae (plural of gratia) also stands for
thanksgiving in the expressions gratias agere and Deo gratias, which have their
counterpart in the English, to say grace after meals.
A comparison of these four senses of the word grace reveals a clear relationship
of analogy among them, since grace, in its objective signification of "gratuitous
gift" or "favour", occupies a central position around which the other meanings
may be logically grouped. For the attractiveness of the recipient as well as the
benevolence of the giver is the cause, whereas the expression of thanks which
proceeds from the grateful disposition is the effect, of the gratuitous gift of grace.
This last-mentioned meaning is, consequently the fundamental one in grace. The
characteristic idea of a free gift must be taken in the strict sense and exclude
merit in every form, be it in the range of commutative justice as, e.g., in sale and
purchase, or in that of distributive justice, as is the case in the so-called
remunerations and gratuities. Hence St. Paul says: "If by grace, it is not now by
works: otherwise grace is no more grace" (Rom., xi, 6).
True, even gratuitous Divine gifts may still fall within the range of mere nature.
Thus we petition God, under the guidance of the Church, for mere natural graces,
as health, favourable weather, deliverance from plague, famine, and war. Now
such natural graces, which appear simultaneously as due and gratuitous, are by
no means a contradiction in themselves. For, first, the whole creation is for
mankind a gratuitous gift of the love of God, whom neither justice nor equity
compelled to create the world. And secondly the individual man can, in virtue of
his title of creation, lay a rightful claim only to the essential endowments of his
nature. Goods granted over and above this class, though belonging to the just
demands of human nature in general, have for him the significance of an actual
grace, or favour, as, for example, eminent talents, robust health, perfect limbs,
fortitude. We would have omitted mentioning this so-called "grace of creation",
had not Pelagius, by emphasizing the gratuitous character of such natural
graces, succeeded, at the Synod of Diospolis or Lydda (A.D. 415) in deluding the
unsuspecting bishops in regard to the dangers of his heresy. The five African
bishops, Augustine among them, in their report to Pope Innocent I, rightly called
attention to the fact that Pelagius admitted only the grace through which we are
men, but denied grace properly so called, through which we are Christians and
children of God. Whenever Scripture and tradition speak simply of grace,
reference is made to a supernatural grace which is opposed to natural grace as
to its contrary and lies so far beyond all rightful claim and strenuous effort of the
creature that it remains positively undue to the already existing nature, because
it includes goods of a Divine order, as, e.g., Divine sonship, indwelling of the
Spirit, vision of God. Actual grace is of this kind, because as a means, it stands
in intrinsic and essential relation to these Divine goods which are the end. As a
consequence, the most important element characteristic of its nature must be
the supernatural.
As a further determining factor must be added its necessary derivation from the
merits of Christ's redemption; for there is the question of Christian grace. In the
Thomist theory of redemption, which considers not Christ, but the Trinity, as the
cause of grace in the angels and in our first parents in Paradise, the addition of
this new characteristic appears self-explanatory. As to the Scotists, they derive
each and every supernatural grace in heaven and on earth solely from the merits
of Christ, inasmuch as the God-Man would have appeared on earth even had
Adam not sinned. But they, too, are compelled to introduce, in the present
dispensation, a distinction between the "grace of Christ" and the "grace of the
Redeemer" for the reason that, in their ideal theory, neither the angels nor the
inhabitants of Paradise owe their holiness to the Redeemer. The addition, ex
meritis Christi, must therefore be included in the notion of actual grace. But there
are also merely external graces, which owe their existence to the merits of
Christ's redemption -- as the Bible, preaching, the crucifix, the example of Christ.
One of these, the hypostatic union, marks even the highest point of all possible
graces. The Pelagians themselves sought to outdo one another in their
encomiums on the excellency of Christ's example and its effectiveness in
suggesting pious thoughts and salutary resolutions. They thus endeavoured to
avoid the admission of interior graces inherent in the soul; for these alone were
opposed to Pelagius' proudly virtuous supremacy of the free will (liberum
arbitrium), the whole strength of which resided within itself. For this reason the
Church all the more emphatically proclaimed, and still proclaims, the necessity
of interior grace for which exterior graces are merely a preparation. Yet there are
also interior graces which do not procure the individual sanctification of the
recipient, but the sanctification of others through the recipient. These, by the
extension of the generic term to specifically designate a new subdivision, are, by
antonomasia, called gratuitously given graces (gratia gratis datae). To this class
belong the extraordinary charismata of the miracle-worker, the prophet, the
speaker of tongues, etc. (see I Cor., xii, 4 sqq.), as well as the ordinary powers
of the priest and confessor. As the object of these graces is, according to their
nature, the spread of the kingdom of God on earth and the sanctification of men,
their possession in itself does not exclude personal unholiness. The will of God,
however, is that personal righteousness and holiness should also distinguish the
possessor. With regard to the personal holiness of man, only that interior grace
is of importance which is interiorly inherent in the soul and renders it holy and
pleasing to God. Hence its name, ingratiating grace (gratia gratum faciens). To
this category belongs not only sanctifying, but also actual grace.
Taking into account, then, all the elements so far considered, we may define
actual grace as a supernatural help of God for salutary acts granted in
consideration of the merits of Christ.
It is called a "help of God for salutary acts", because, on the one hand, it differs
from permanent sanctifying grace, in that it consists only in a passing influence
of God on the soul, and, on the other, it is destined only for actions which have a
necessary relation to man's eternal salvation. It is further called a "supernatural
help" so as to exclude from its definition not only all merely natural graces, but
also, in a special manner, ordinary Divine conservation and concurrence
(concursus generalis divinus). Finally, the "merits of Christ" are named as its
meritorious cause because all graces granted to fallen man are derived from this
one source. It is for this reason that the prayers of the Church either invoke
Christ directly or conclude with the words: Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.
We have laid down above, as the most important characteristic of the nature of
actual (and of every Christian) grace, its supernatural character. This was done
partly because a deeper insight into its nature may be gained from the analysis
of this element. As pure nature is in itself completely incapable of performing
salutary acts through its own strength, actual grace must come to the rescue of
its incapacity and supply the deficient powers, without which no supernatural
activity is possible. Actual grace thus becomes a special causal principle which
communicates to impotent nature moral, and especially physical, powers.
Grace, as a moral cause, presupposes the existence of obstacles which render
the work of salvation so difficult that their removal is morally impossible without
special Divine help. Grace must be brought into operation as healing grace
(gratia sanans, medicinalis); free will, bent towards the earth and weakened by
concupiscence, is yet filled with love of good and horror of evil. The
consciousness of the necessity of this moral influence may become so perfect
that we beg of God the grace of a violent victory over our evil nature; witness the
celebrated prayer of the Church: "Ad te nostras, etiam rebelles, compelle
propitius voluntates" (Vouchsafe to compel our wills to Thee albeit they resist). In
the ordinary course of things the Divine inspiration of joy in virtue and aversion
from sin will, no doubt, methodically lead to the free performance of salutary
acts; but the moral influence of grace can effect the temporary control of freedom
in the sinner. The sudden conversion of the Apostle Paul is an illustration of this.
It will be readily understood that the above-mentioned triumph over the obstacles
to salvation demands in itself a grace which is natural only in substance, but
supernatural in mode. Hence many theologians require even for the so-called
state of pure nature (which never existed) such natural graces as are mere
remedies against the fomes peccati of natural concupiscence. The end of
supernatural bliss and the consequently necessary endowment with supernatural
means of grace would not have existed in this state (status natura purae), but the
disastrous results of an evil tendency unbridled would have been experienced to
the same extent as after the fall.
More important than the moral causality of grace is its physical causality, for
man must also receive from God the physical power to perform salutary works.
Without it, activity in the order of salvation is not only more difficult and laborious,
it is altogether impossible. The feet of a child, to draw a comparison from actual
life, may be so weak that a mere moral influence, such as the holding out of a
beautiful toy, will not suffice to enable it to walk without the physical support of
the mother -- the use of the leading-strings. The latter situation is the one in
which man is placed with regard to supernatural activity.
From the question which is to be discussed later, and which regards the
metaphysical necessity of grace for all salutary acts, whether of an easy or
difficult nature, it follows, with irresistible logic, that the incapacity of nature
cannot be ascribed solely to a mere weakened condition and moral difficulties
resulting from sin, but that it must be attributed also, and principally, to physical
inability. The communication of the physical power to the soul admits,
theologically, of only one interpretation, namely, that grace raises the faculties of
the soul (intellect and will) above their natural constitution into a supernatural
sphere of being, and thus renders them capable of substantially supernatural
operations. The reason why, through our inner consciousness, we can gain no
psychological knowledge of this higher activity of the soul lies in the fact that our
self-consciousness extends solely to the acts, and in no wise to the substance,
of the soul. From this same fact arises the philosophical necessity of proving the
spirituality, the immortality, and the very existence of the human soul from the
characteristic nature of its activity. Inexorable theological logic postulates the
supernatural nature of the acts tending towards our salvation, because
theological faith, for example, "the beginning, foundation, and source of all
justification", must certainly be of the same supernatural order as the intuitive
vision of God to which it ultimately leads. The necessity of the physical causality
of grace, as is readily seen, is nowise dependent on the existence of
concupiscence, but remains just as imperative for our first parents in their state
of innocence and for the angels subject to no evil tendency. Actual grace,
therefore, considered under this aspect, bears the name of "elevating grace"
(gratia elevans), though not in a sense which would exclude from it the possibility
of simultaneously fulfilling the moral function of healing grace in the present state
of man. It is only after these considerations that the comprehension of the nature
of actual grace in all its relations becomes possible, that we may say, with
Perrone: Actual grace is that unmerited interior assistance which God, in virtue of
the merits of Christ, confers upon fallen man in order to strengthen, on the one
hand, his infirmity resulting from sin and, on the other, to render him capable, by
elevation to the supernatural order, of supernatural acts of the soul, so that he
may attain justification, persevere in it to the end, and thus enter into everlasting
life.
B. The Logical Division of Actual Grace
The logical division of actual grace should enumerate all the kinds to which the
definition is universally applicable. If we adopt the different faculties of the soul as
our principle of division, we shall have three kinds: graces of the intellect, of the
will, and of the sensitive faculties. With regard to the consent of the will we
distinguish two pairs of graces: first, preventing and co-operating; then efficacious
and merely sufficient grace. It must be immediately shown that all these graces
are no arbitrarily invented entities, but actually existing realities.
1. Graces of the Different Faculties of the Soul
The illuminating grace of the intellect (gratia illuminationis, illustrationis) first
presents itself for consideration. It is that grace which in the work of salvation
suggests good thoughts to the intellect. This may happen in a twofold manner,
either mediately or immediately. The existence of mediate graces of the mind is
not only vouched for a priori by the presence of merely external graces, as when
a stirring sermon or the sight of the crucifix forces the sinner to earnest
reflection; it is also explicitly attested by Holy Writ where the "commandment of
the Lord" is represented as "enlightening the eyes" (Ps. xviii 9), and the external
example of Christ as a model for our imitation (I Pet., ii, 21). But, as this mediate
grace need neither interrupt the psychological course of the law governing the
association of ideas nor be of a strictly supernatural nature, its sole object will be
to prepare unostentatiously the way for a grace of greater importance and
necessity, immediate illuminating grace. In the latter, the Holy Ghost Himself
through immediate elevation and penetration of the powers of the mind prompts
the soul and manifests to it in a supernatural light the eternal truths of salvation.
Though our sacred discourses be perfect masterpieces of eloquence, though our
picture of the wounds of the crucified Saviour be ever so vivid and realistic, they
alone can never be the first step towards the conversion of a sinner, except when
God by a vigorous impulse stirs the heart and, according to an expression of St.
Fulgentius (Ep. xvii, De incarn. et grat., n. 67), "opens the ear of the interior
man". St. Paul acknowledges, also, that the faith which his own preaching and
that of his disciple Apollo had sown in Corinth, and which, under their "planting
and watering" (mediate grace of preaching), had taken root, would have miserably
perished, had not God himself given "the increase". (See I Cor., iii, 6: "Ego
plantavi, Apollo rigavit, sed Deus incrementum dedit.") Among the Fathers of the
Church none has more strongly emphasized the fruitlessness of preaching
without interior illumination than the Doctor of Grace, Augustine, who says
among other things: "Magisteria forinsecus adjutoria quaedam sunt et
admonitiones; cathedram in caelo habet qui corda tenet" ("Instruction and
admonition help somewhat externally, but he who reaches the heart has a place
in heaven" -- Tract. III, 13, in I Joh.). The more speculative question may now be
asked: Whether the mediate and immediate grace of the mind affects the idea,
the judgment, or the reasoning. There can be no doubt that it primarily influences
the judgment (judicium), be the latter theoretical (e.g. on the credibility of
revelation) or practical (e.g. regarding the hideous character of sin). But the
reasoning process and the idea (apprehensio) may also become a grace of the
mind, firstly, because they both belong to the essence of human knowledge, and
grace always operates in a manner conformable to nature; secondly because
ideas are in final analysis but the result and fruit of condensed judgments and
reasonings.
Besides the grace of the mind, the strengthening grace of the will (generally
called gratia inspirationis) plays not only the most important, but an
indispensable, part, for no works of salvation are even thinkable without
operations of the will. It may also be either mediate or immediate, according as
the pious affections and wholesome resolutions are awakened in the soul by the
immediately preceding illumination of the mind or by God Himself (by
appropriation the Holy Ghost). Owing to the psychological interpenetration of
cognition and volition, every (mediate or immediate) grace of the mind is in itself
also a grace affecting the will. This twofold action -- on intellect and will -- has
therefore the significance of two different acts of the soul, but of only one grace.
Consequently, immediate elevation and motion of the will by the Holy Spirit can
alone be considered a new grace. The Pelagians logically denied the existence
especially of this grace, even if, according to the improbable opinion of some
historians of dogma, they were forced by Augustine in the course of the debate
to admit at least the immediate grace of the mind. Augustine threw in the whole
weight of his personality in favour of the existence and necessity of the grace of
the will, to which he applied the names, delectatio caelestis, inspiratio
dilectionis, cupiditas boni, and the like. The celebrated Provincial Council of
Carthage (A.D. 418) confirmed his teaching when it declared that grace does not
simply consist in the manifestation of the Divine precepts whereby we may know
our positive and negative duties, but it also confers upon us the power to love and
accomplish whatever we have recognized as righteous in things pertaining to
salvation (cf. Denzinger, "Enchiridion", 10th ed., n. 104, Freiburg, 1908). The
Church has never shared the ethical optimism of Socrates, which made virtue
consist in mere knowledge, and held that mere teaching was sufficient to
inculcate it. If even natural virtue must be fought for, and is acquired only through
energetic work an constant practice, how much more does not a supernatural life
of virtue require the Divine help of grace with which the Christian must freely
co-operate, and thus advance by slow degrees in perfection. The strengthening
grace of the will, like the grace of the mind, assumes the form of vital acts of the
soul and manifests itself chiefly in what are called affections of the will.
Scholastic psychology enumerates eleven such affections, namely: love and
hatred, delight and sadness, desire and aversion, hope and despair, daring and
fear, finally, anger. This whole list of feelings has, with the sole exception of
despair, which imperils the work of salvation, a practical significance in relation to
good and evil; these affections may therefore develop into real graces of the will.
But, inasmuch as all motions of the will may be ultimately reduced to love as
fundamental feeling (cf. St. Thomas, Summa I-II:25:2), the functions of the grace
of the will may be systematically focussed in love; hence the concise declaration
of the above-mentioned Synod of Carthage (1. c.): "Cum sit utrumque donum Dei,
et scire Quid facere debeamus et diligere ut faciamus" (Since both are gifts of
God -- the knowing what we ought to do, and the desire to do it). But care must
be taken not to understand immediately, by this "love", perfect love of God, which
comes only at the end of the process of justification as the crowning-stone of the
edifice, even though Augustine (De Trinit., VIII, 10, and frequently) honours with
the name caritas the mere love for good and any good motion of the will
whatsoever. Berti (De theol. discipl., XIV, 7), therefore, is wrong when he asserts
that, according to Augustine, the only grace properly so called is the theological
virtue of charity. Are faith, hope, contrition, fear, only graces improperly so called,
or do they become graces in the true sense only in connection with charity?
It cannot be determined with certainty of faith whether to the graces of mind and
will so far spoken of should be added special actual graces affecting the sensitive
faculties of the soul. But their existence may be asserted with great probability.
For if, according to an appropriate remark of Aristotle (De anima, I, viii), it is true
that thinking is impossible without imagination, supernatural thought also must
find its originator and point of support in a corresponding phantasm to which, like
the ivy on the wall, it clings and thus creeps upward. At any rate, the harmonious
agreement of the grace of the intellect with the accompanying phantasm can but
be of favourable influence on the soul visited by grace. It is likewise clear that in
the rebellious motions of concupiscence, which reside in the sensitive faculties,
the grace of the will has a dangerous enemy which must be overcome by the
infusion of contrary dispositions, as aversion from sin, before the will is aroused
to make firm resolutions. Paul, consequently, thrice be sought the Lord that the
sting of the flesh might depart from him, but was answered: "Sufficit tibi gratia
mea" (II Cor. xii, 9).
2. Graces regarding Free Will
If we take the attitude of free will as the dividing principle of actual grace, we
must first have a grace which precedes the free determination of the will and
another which follows this determination and co-operates with the will. This is the
first pair of graces, preventing and co-operating grace (gratia praeveniens et
cooperans). Preventing grace must, according to its physical nature consist in
unfree, indeliberate vital acts of the soul; co-operating grace, on the contrary,
solely in free, deliberate actions of the will. The latter assume the character of
actual graces, not only because they are immediately suggested by God, but
also because they may become, after the achievement of success, the principle
of new salutary acts. In this manner an intense act of perfect love of God may
simultaneously effect and, as it were, assure by itself the observance of the
Divine commandments. The existence of preventing grace, officially determined
by the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, cap. v), must be admitted with the same
certainty as the facts that the illuminating grace of the intellect belongs to a
faculty not free in itself and that the grace of the will must first and foremost
exhibit itself in spontaneous, indeliberate, unfree emotions. This is proved by the
Biblical metaphors of the reluctant hearing of the voice of God (Jer., xvii, 23; Ps.
xciv, 8), of the drawing by the Father (John, vi, 44), of the knocking at the gate
(Apoc., iii, 20). The Fathers of the Church bear witness to the reality of preventing
grace in their very appropriate formula: "Gratia est in nobis, sed sine nobis", that
is, grace as a vital act is in the soul, but as an unfree, salutary act it does not
proceed from the soul, but immediately from God. Thus Augustine (De grat. et
lib. arbitr., xvii 33), Gregory the Great (Moral., XVI, x), Bernard of Clairvaux (De
grat. et lib. arbitr., xiv), and others. As the unfree emotion of the will are by their
very nature destined to elicit free salutary acts, it is clear that preventing grace
must develop into helping or co-operating grace as soon as free will gives its
consent. These free salutary acts are, according to the Council of Trent (Sess.
VI, cap. xvi), not only actual graces, but also meritorious actions (actus
meritorii). There is just as little doubt possible regarding their existence as
concerning the fact that many men freely follow the call of grace, work out their
eternal salvation, and attain the beatific vision, so that the dogma of the Christian
heaven proves simultaneously the reality of co-operating graces. Their principal
advocate is Augustine (De grat. et lib. arbitr., xvi, 32). If the more philosophical
question of the co-operation of grace and liberty be raised, it will be easily
perceived that the supernatural element of the free salutary act can be only from
God, its vitality only from the will. The postulated unity of the action of the will
could evidently not be safeguarded, if God and the will Performed either two
separate acts or mere halves of an act. It can exist only when the supernatural
power of grace transforms itself into the vital strength of the will, constitutes the
latter as a free faculty in actu primo by elevation to the supernatural order, and
simultaneously co-operates as supernatural Divine concurrence in the
performance of the real salutary act or actus secundus. This co-operation is not
unlike that of God with the creature in the natural order, in which both perform
together one and the same act, God as first cause (causa prima), the creature
as secondary cause (causa secunda). For further particulars see St. Thomas,
"Contra Gent.", III, lxx.
A second pair of graces important for the understanding of the controversies on
grace is that of efficacious and merely sufficient grace (gratia efficax et mere
sufficiens). By efficacious grace is understood that Divine assistance which,
considered even in actu primo, includes with infallible certainty, and
consequently in its definition, the free salutary act; for did it remain inefficacious,
it would cease to be efficacious and would therefore be self-contradictory. As to
whether the infallibility of its success is the result of the physical nature of this
grace or of the infallible foreknowledge of God (scientia media) is a much debated
question between Thomists and Molinists which need not be further treated here.
Its existence, however, is admitted as an article of faith by both sides and is
established with the same firmness as the predestination of the elect or the
existence of a heaven peopled with innumerable saints. As to "merely sufficient
grace", Calvinists and Jansenists have, as is well known, eliminated it from their
doctrinal system. They admitted only efficacious graces whose action
overpowers the will and leaves no room for freedom. If Jansen (d. 1638) nominally
admitted "sufficient grace", calling it "little grace" (gratia parva), he understood by
it, in reality, only "insufficient grace", i.e. "one from which no action can result,
except its insufficiency be removed by another grace" (De grat. Christ., IV, x). He
did not shrink from reviling sufficient grace, understood in the Catholic sense, as
a monstrous conception and a means of filling hell with reprobates, while later
Jansenists discovered in it such a pernicious character as to infer the
appropriateness of the prayer: "a gratia sufficiente, libera nos Domine" ("From
sufficient grace, O Lord deliver us". -- Cf. prop. 6 damn. ab Alex. VIII, a. 1690 in
Denzinger, n. 1296). The Catholic idea of sufficient grace is obtained by the
distinction of a twofold element in every actual grace, its intrinsic energy
(potestas agendi, vis) and its extrinsic efficiency (efficientia). Under the former
aspect there exists between sufficient and efficacious grace, both considered in
actu primo, no real, but only a logical, distinction; for sufficient grace also confers
full power for action, but is condemned to unfruitfulness owing to the free
resistance of the will. If, on the contrary, extrinsic efficiency be considered, it is
evident that the will either co-operates freely or not . If it refuses its co-operation,
even the strongest grace remains a merely sufficient one (gratia mere sufficiens)
although by nature it would have been completely sufficient (gratia vere
sufficiens) and with good will could have been efficacious. This ecclesiastical
conception of the nature of sufficient grace, to which the Catholic systems of
grace must invariably conform themselves, is nothing else but a reproduction of
the teaching of the Bible. To cite only one text (Prov., i 24), the calling and the
stretching-out of the hand of God certainly signifies the complete sufficiency of
grace, just as the obstinate refusal of the sinner "to regard", is tantamount to the
free rejection of the proffered hand. Augustine is in complete agreement with the
constant tradition on this point, and Jansenists have vainly claimed him as one of
their own. We have an example of his teaching in the following text: "Gratia Dei
est quae hominum adjuvat voluntates; qua ut non adjuventur, in ipsis itidem
causa est, non in Deo" ("It is the grace of God that helps the wills of men; and
when they are not helped by it, the reason is in themselves, not in God." -- "De
pecc. mer. et rem." II, xvii). On the Greek Fathers see Isaac Habert, Theologia
Graecor. Patrum, II, 6 sq. (Paris, 1646).
II. PROPERTIES OF ACTUAL GRACE
After the treatment of the nature of actual grace, we come logically to the
discussion of its properties. These are three in number: necessity, gratuity, and
universality.
A. The Necessity of Actual Grace
With the early Protestants and Jansenists, the necessity of actual grace may be
so exaggerated as to lead to the assertion of the absolute and complete
incapacity of mere nature to do good; or, with the Pelagians and Semipelagians,
it may be so understood as to extend the capacity of nature to each and every
thing, even to supernatural activity, or at least to its essential elements. The
three heresies of early Protestantism and Jansenism, Pelagianism, and
Semipelagianism furnish us with the practical division which we adopt for the
systematic exposition of the Catholic doctrine.
1. Early Protestantism and Jansenism
We maintain against Early Protestantism and Jansenism the capacity of mere
nature in regard to both religious knowledge and moral action. Fundamental for
natural religion and ethics is the article of faith which asserts the power of mere
reason to derive a certain natural knowledge of God from creation (Vatican.,
Sess. III, de revelat., can. i). This is a central truth which is most clearly attested
by Scripture (Wisdom, xiii, 1 sqq.; Rom., I, 20 sq.; ii, 14 sq.) and tradition (see
God). Unswervingly adhering to this position, the Church has ever exhibited
herself as a mighty defender of reason and its inherent powers against the
ravages of scepticism so subversive of all truth. Through the whole course of
centuries she has steadfastly clung to the unalterable conviction that a faculty of
perception constituted for vision, like human reason, cannot possibly be
condemned to blindness, and that its natural powers enable it to know, even in
the fallen state, whatever is within its legitimate sphere. On the other hand, the
Church also erected against presumptuous Rationalism and Theosophism a
bulwark for the defence of knowledge by faith, a knowledge superior to, and
different in principle from rational knowledge. With Clement of Alexandria she
drew a sharp distinction between gnosis and pistis -- knowledge and faith,
philosophy and revelation, assigning to reason the double role of indispensable
forerunner and docile handmaid (cf. Vatican., Sess. III, cap. iv). This noble
struggle of the Church for the rights of reason and it true relation to faith explains
historically her decidedly hostile attitude towards the scepticism of Nicholas de
Ultricuria (A.D. 1348), towards the Renaissance philosophy of Pomponatius
(1513) defending a "twofold truth", towards the so-called "log-stick-and-stone"
theory (Klotz-Stock-und-Steintheorie) of Martin Luther and his followers, so
inimical to reason, towards the doctrine of the complete powerlessness of nature
without grace defended by Baius and Jansen, towards the system of Hermes
impregnated with Kantian criticism, towards traditionalism, which based all moral
and religious knowledge on the authority of language and instruction, finally,
against the modern Agnosticism of the Modernists, which undermines the very
foundations of faith and which was only recently dealt so fatal a blow by Pope
Pius X's condemnation. Documentary evidence has thus been produced that the
Catholic Church far from being an "institution of obscurantism", has at all times
fulfilled a powerful and far-reaching mission of civilization, since she took reason
and science under her powerful patronage and defended their rights against those
very oppressors of reason who are accustomed to bring against her the
groundless charge of intellectual inferiority. A sound intellectualism is just as
indispensable a condition of her life as the doctrine of a supernatural order raised
above all the limits of nature. (cf. Chastel, "De la valeur de la raison humaine",
Paris, 1854.)
Not less reasonable an attitude was assumed by the Church respecting the
moral capabilities of fallen man in the domain of natural ethics. Against
Baianism, the forerunner of Jansenism, she adhered in her teaching to the
conviction confirmed by healthy experience, that natural man is capable of
performing some naturally good works without actual grace, and particularly
without the grace of faith, and that not all the deeds of infidels and pagans are
sins. This is evidenced by the condemnation of two propositions of Baius by
Pope Pius V in the year 1567: "Liberum arbitrium sine gratiae Dei adjutorio
nonnisi ad peccandum valet" ("Free will without the aid of God's grace avails for
nothing but sin." -- Prop. xxvii), and again: "Omnia opera infidelium sunt peccata
et philosophorum virtutes sunt vitia " ("All the acts of infidels are sins, and their
virtues are vices." -- Prop. 25). The history of paganism and everyday experience
condemn, moreover, with equal emphasis these extravagant exaggerations of
Baius. Among the duties of the natural moral law some -- as love for parents or
children, abstention from theft and drunkenness -- are of such an elementary
character that it is impossible to perceive why they could not be fulfilled without
grace and faith at least by judicious, cultured, and noble-minded pagans. Did not
the Saviour himself recognize as something good natural human love and
fraternal greeting, such as they exist also among publicans and pagans? He
denied to them only a supernatural reward (mercedem, Matt., v, 46 sq.). And
Paul has explicitly stated that "the Gentiles, who have not the [Mosaic] law, do
by nature [naturaliter, physei] those things that are of the law" (Rom., ii, 14). The
Fathers of the Church did not judge differently. Baius, it is true, adduced
Augustine as his chief witness, and in the latter's writings we find, to be sure,
sentences which seem to favour him. Baius, however, overlooked the fact that
the former rhetorician and Platonic idealist of Hippo does not always weigh every
word as carefully as the wary Schoolman Thomas Aquinas, but consciously
delights (cf. Enarr. in Ps. xcvi, n. 19) in antonomastically applying to the genus
the designation which belongs only to the highest species. As he calls the least
good motion of the will caritas, by anticipation, so he brands every unmeritorious
work (opus steriliter bonum) as sin (peccatum) and false virtue (falsa virtus). In
both cases it is an obvious use of the rhetorical figure called catachresis. With a
strong perception for the ethically good, wherever it may be found, he eulogizes
elsewhere the chastity of his heathen friend Alypius (Confess., VI, x) and of the
pagan Polemo (Ep. cxl, 2), admires the civil virtues of the Romans, the masters
of the world (Ep. cxxxviii, 3), and gives expression to the truth that even the most
wicked man is not found completely wanting in naturally good works ("De Spiritu
et litera", c. xxviii. -- Cf. Ripalda, "De Ente supernaturali", tom. III: "Adversus
Baium et Baianos", Cologne, 1648; J. Ernst, "Werke und Tugenden der
Unglaubigen nach Augustinus", Freiburg, 1871).
The ethical capacity of pure, and especially of fallen, nature has undoubtedly
also its determined limits which it cannot overstep. In a general manner, the
possibility of the observance of the easier natural precepts without the aid of
natural or supernatural grace may be asserted, but not the possibility of the
observance of the more difficult commandments and prohibitions of the natural
law. The difficulty of determining where the easy ends and the difficult begins will
naturally lead, in some secondary questions, to great diversity of opinion among
theologians. In fundamental points, however, harmony is easily obtainable and
exists in fact. In the first place, all without exception are agreed on the
proposition that fallen man cannot of his own strength observe the natural law in
its entirety and for a long time without occasional errors and lapses into grievous
sin. And how could he? For, according to the council of Trent (Sess. VI, Cap.
xiii), even the already justified man will be victorious in the "conflict with the flesh,
the world, and the devil" only on condition that he co-operate with never-failing
grace (cf. Rom., vii, 22 sqq.). Secondly, all theologians admit that the natural
will, unaided by Divine assistance, succumbs, especially in the fallen state, with
moral (not physical) necessity to the attack of vehement and enduring
temptations against the Decalogue. For could it by its own strength decide the
conflict in its own favour even at the most critical moments, that power which we
have just eliminated would be restored to it, namely the power to observe
unaided, through the prompt victory over vehement temptations, the whole natural
law in all its extent. The practical significance of this second universally admitted
proposition lies in the acknowledgment that, according to revelation, there is no
man on earth who does not occasionally meet with this or that grievous
temptation to mortal sin, and even the justified are no exception to this law;
wherefore, even they are bound to constant vigilance in fear and trembling and to
never-ceasing prayer for Divine assistance (cf. Council of Trent, 1. c.). In the third
question, whether natural love of God, even in its highest form (amor Dei naturalis
perfectus), is possible without grace, the opinions of theologians are still very
divergent. Bellarmine denies this possibility on the ground that, without any
grace, a mere natural justification could in such a case be brought into being
through the love of God. Scotus, on the contrary, spiritedly defends the
attainability of the highest natural love for God. A golden middle course will easily
open to the one who accurately distinguishes between affective and effective love.
The affective element of the highest love is, as natural duty, accessible to the
mere natural will with out grace. Effective love, on the contrary, since it supposes
an unchanging, systematic, and active will, would entail the above-discarded
possibility of triumphing over all temptations and of observing the whole moral
law. (For further details on these interesting problems, see Pohle, "Lehrbuch der
Dogmatik", 4th ed., II, 364-70, Paderborn, 1909.)
According to Jansenism, the mere absence of the state of grace and love (status
gratiae et caritatis) branded as sins all the deeds of the sinner, even the ethically
good ones (e.g., almsgiving). This was the lowest ebb in its disparagement and
depreciation of the moral forces in man; and here, too, Baius had paved the way.
The possession of sanctifying grace or theological love thus became the
measure and criterion of natural morality. Taking as his basis the total corruption
of nature through original sin (i.e. concupiscence) as taught by early
Protestantism, Quesnel, especially (Prop. xliv in Denzinger, n. 1394), gave the
above-expressed thought the alleged Augustinian form that there is no medium
between love of God and love of the world, charity and concupiscence, so that
even the prayers of the impious are nothing else but sins. (Cfr. Prop. xlix: "Oratio
impiorum est novum peccatum et quod Deus illis concedit, est novum in eos
judicium"). The answer of the Church to such severe exaggerations was the
dogmatic Bull, "Unigenitus" (1713), of Pope Clement XI. The Council of Trent
(Sess. VI, can. vii) had however already decreed against Martin Luther: "Si quis
dixerit, opera omnia quae ante justificationem fiunt . . . vere esse peccata . . .
anathema sit" (If anyone shall say that all the works done before justification are
indeed sins, let him be anathema). Moreover, what reasonable man would
concede that the process of justification with its so-called dispositions consists
in a long series of sins? And if the Bible, in order to effect the conversion of the
sinner, frequently summons him to contrition and penance, to prayer and
almsdeeds, shall we admit the blasphemy that the Most Holy summons him to
the commission of so many sins?
The Catholic doctrine on this point obstinately adhered to through all the
centuries, is so clear that even an Augustine could not have departed from it
without becoming a public heretic. True, Baius and Quesnel succeeded in
cleverly concealing their heresy in a phraseology similar to the Augustinian, but
without penetrating the meaning of Augustine. The latter, it must be conceded, in
the course of the struggle with self-confident Pelagianism, ultimately so strongly
emphasized the opposition between grace and sin, love of God and love of the
world, that the intermediary domain of naturally good works almost completely
disappeared. But Scholasticism had long since applied the necessary correction
to this exaggeration. That the sinner, in consequence of his habitual state of sin,
must sin in everything, is not the doctrine of Augustine. The universality of sin in
the world which he contemplated, is not for him the result of a fundamental
necessity, but merely the manifestation of a general historical phenomenon
which admits of exceptions (De spir. et lit., c. xxvii, n. 48). He specifically
declares marital love, love of children and friends to be something lawful in all
men, something commendable, natural and dutiful, even though Divine love alone
leads to heaven. He admits the possibility of these natural virtues also in the
impious: "Sed videtis, istam caritatem esse posse et impiorum, i.e. paganorum,
Judaeorum, haereticorum" (Serm. cccxlix de temp. in Migne, P.L., XXXIX, 1529).
2. Pelagianism
Pelagianism, which still survives under new forms, fell into the extreme directly
opposed to the theories rejected above. It exaggerated the capacity of human
nature to an incredible degree, and hardly left any room for Christian grace. It
amounted to nothing less than the divinization of the moral forces of free will.
Even when it was question of acts tending to supernatural salvation, natural will
was declared able to rise by its own strength from justification to eternal life.
Rank naturalism in its essence, Pelagianism contained, as a logical
consequence, the suppression of original sin and the negation of grace. It laid
down the proud assertion that the sovereign will may ultimately raise itself to
complete holiness and impeccability (impeccantia, anamartesia) through the
persevering observance of all the precepts, even the most difficult, and through
the infallible triumph over every temptation, even the most vehement. This was an
unmistakable reproduction of the ancient Stoic ideal of virtue. For the
self-confident Pelagian, the petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into
temptation", served, properly speaking, no purpose: it was at most a proof of his
humility, not a profession of the truth. In no other part of the system is the vanity
of the Christian Diogenes so glaringly perceptible through the lacerated cloak of
the philosopher. Hence the Provincial Synod of Carthage (418) insisted on the
true doctrine on this very point (see Denzinger, nn. 106-8) and emphasized the
absolute necessity of grace for all salutary acts. True, Pelagius (d. 405) and his
disciple Caelestius, who found an active associate in the skilful and learned
Bishop Julian of Eclanum, admitted from the beginning the improper creative
grace, later also a merely external supernatural grace, such as the Bible and the
example of Christ. But the heresiarch rejected with all the more obstinacy the
inner grace of the Holy Ghost, especially for the will. The object of grace was, at
the most, to facilitate the work of salvation, in no wise to make it fundamentally
possible. Never before had a heretic dared to lay the axe so unsparingly to the
deepest roots of Christianity. And never again did it occur in ecclesiastical
history that one man alone, with the weapons of the mind and ecclesiastical
science overthrew and annihilated in one generation an equally dangerous
heresy. This man was Augustine. In the short period between A.D. 411 and A.D.
413 no fewer than twenty-four synods were held which considered the heresy of
Pelagius. But the death-blow was dealt as early as 416 at Mileve, where fifty-nine
bishops, under the leadership of St. Augustine, laid down the fundamental
canons which were subsequently (418) repeated at Carthage and received, after
the celebrated "Tractoria" of Pope Zosimus (418), the value of definitions of faith.
It was there that the absolute necessity of grace for salvation triumphed over the
Pelagian idea of its mere utility, and the absolute incapacity of nature over
supreme self-sufficiency. When Augustine died, in 430, Pelagianism was dead.
The decisions of faith issued at Mileve and Carthage were frequently renewed by
ecumenical councils, as in 529 at Orange, lastly at Trent (Sess. VI, can. ii).
The beautiful parable of the vine and its branches (John xv, 1 sqq.) should have
been sufficient to reveal to Pelagianism what a striking contrast there was
between it and antecedent Christianity. Augustine and the synods time and
again used it in the controversy as a very decisive proof out of the mouth of the
Saviour Himself. Only when the supernatural vital union of the Apostles with the
vine (Christ) planted by the Father is established, does it become possible to
bring forth supernatural fruit; for "without me you can do nothing" (John, xv, 5).
The categorical assertion of the necessity of grace for the holy Apostles
themselves brings home to us still more forcibly the absolute incapacity of mere
fallen nature in the performance of salutary acts. All supernatural activity may be
concretely summed up in the three following elements: salutary thoughts, holy
resolves, good actions. Now the Apostle Paul teaches that right thinking is from
God (II Cor., iii, 5), that the righteous will must be based on Divine mercy (Rom.
ix, 16), finally that it is God who works in us, "both to will and to accomplish"
(Phil., ii, 13). The victorious struggle of St. Augustine, which earned for him the
honourable title of "Doctor of Grace", was merely a struggle for the ancient
Catholic truth. Pelagianism was immediately felt in the Christian community as a
thorn in the flesh and as the poison of novelty. Before all the world Augustine
could attest: "Talis est haeresis pelagiana, non antiqua, sed ante non multum
tempus exorta" ("Such is the Pelagian heresy, not ancient, but having sprung up
a short time ago." -- De grat., et lib. arbitr., c. iv). In fact, the teaching of the most
ancient Fathers of the Church, e.g. Irenaeus (Adv. haer., III, xvii, 2), did not differ
from that of Augustine, although it was less vigorous and explicit. The constant
practice of prayer in the ancient Church pointed significantly to her lively faith in
the necessity of grace, for prayer and grace are correlative ideas, which cannot
be separated. Hence the celebrated axiom of Pope Celestine I (d. 432): "Ut
legem credendi statuat lex supplicandi" ("That the law of prayer may determine
the law of belief" -- See Denzinger, n. 139). It is clearly evident that the Fathers of
the Church wished the universally expressed necessity of grace to be undertood
not merely a moral necessity for the strengthening of human weakness, but as a
metaphysical one for the communication of physical powers. For in their
comparisons they state that grace is not less necessary than are wings for
flying, the eyes for seeing, the rain for the growth of plants, etc. In accorance
with this, they also declare that, in as far as supernatural activity is concerned,
grace is just as indispensable for the angels not subect to concupiscence, and
was for man before the fall, as it is for man after the sin of Adam.
There is need of special refutation of Pelagius's presumptuous contention that
man is capable of avoiding unaided during his whole lifetime all sins; nay, that he
can even rise to impeccability. The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, can. xxiii), with
much more precision than the Synod of Mileve (416), answered this monstrosity
with the definition of faith: "Si quis hominem semel justificatum dixerit . . posse
in tota vita peccata omnia etiam venialia vitare, nisi ex speciali Dei privilegio,
quemadmodum de beata Virgine tenet ecclesia, anathema sit" (If anyone shall
say that a man once justified . . . can, throughout his life, avoid all sins, even
venial, unless by a special privilege of God, as the Church believes of the Bl.
Virgin Mary, let him be anathema).
This celebrated canon presents some difficulties of thought which must be briefly
discussed. In its gist it is an affirmation that not even the justified, much less the
sinner and infidel, can avoid all sins, especially venial ones, through his whole life
except by special privilege such as was granted to the Mother of God. The canon
does not assert that besides Mary other saints, as St. Joseph or St. John the
Baptist, possessed this privilege. Almost all theologians rightly consider this to
be the sole exception, justified only by the dignity of the Divine maternity. Justice
is done to the wording of the canon, if by tota vita we understand a long period,
about a generation, and by peccata venialia chiefly the semi-deliberate venial
sins due to surprise or precipitancy. It is in no way declared that a great saint is
unable to keep free from all sin during a short interval, as the interval of a day; nor
that he is incapable of avoiding for a long time with ordinary grace and without
special privilege all venial sins committed with full deliberation or complete
liberty. The same must be said with still greater reason of mortal sins, although
the preservation of baptismal innocence may be of rare occurrence. The
expression, omnia peccata, must be understood collectively, as applying to the
sum, and not distributively, as meaning each individual sin, which would no
longer be a sin if it could not be avoided in every instance For the same reason
the words, non posse, designate not a physical, but a moral impossibility of
avoiding sin, i.e. a difficulty based on insuperable obstacles which only a special
privilege could suppress. The meaning is, therefore: The observer of a long series
of temptations in the life of a just man will find that at some time or other, today
or tomorrow, the will held captive by concupiscence will succumb with moral
necessity. This may be due to negligence, surprise, weariness, or moral
weakness -- all of which are factors that do not completely destroy the freedom
of the will and thus admit at least of a venial sin. This hard truth must naturally
grieve a proud heart. But it is precisely to curb pride, that most dangrous enemy
of our salvation, and to nourish in us the precious virtue of humility, that God
permits these falls into sin. Nothing incites us more powerfully to vigilance and
perseverance in prayer than the consciousness of our sinfulness and infirmity.
Even the greatest saint must, therefore, pray daily not out of hypocrisy or
self-deception, but out of an intimate knowledge of his heart: "Forgive us our
debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matt., vi, 12). A holy Apostle had to
acknowledge of himself and his intimate friends: "In many things we all offend"
(James, iii, 2). Boldly, could the hagiographer in the Old Testament raise the
question not difficult of answer: "Who can say: My heart is clean, I am pure from
sin?" (Proverbs, xx, 9). This view, defended by the Bible, was also the constant
sentiment of the Fathers of the Church, to whom the proud language of the
Pelagians was unknown. To the latter's consideration Augustine (De nat. et grat.,
xxxvi) presents the impressive thoughts: "Could we bring together here in living
form all the saints of both sexes and question them whether they were without
sin, would they not exclaim unanimously: 'If we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us'?" (I John, i, 8.)
3. Semipelagianism
Semipelagianism is an unsuccessful attempt to effect a compromise between
Pelagianism and Augustinism, attributing to mere nature and its capabilities a
somewhat greater importance in matters pertaining to salvation than Augustine
was willing to concede. Several pious monks of Marseilles (hence also the name
of "Massilians"), John Cassian (d. 432) at their head, held (about A.D. 428) the
following opinion of the relationship between nature and grace:
A distinction must be established between "the beginning of faith" (initium
fidei) and "increase in the faith" (augmentum fidei); the former may be
referred to the natural power of free will, while increase in the faith and
faith itself can only be the work of Christian grace.
Nature can merit grace through its own efforts, but this natural merit
(meritum naturae) is only founded in equity, it does not confer, as
Pelagius contended, a right in strict justice.
"Final perseverance" (donum perseverantiae) specifically can be secured
by the justified with their own strength, and is therefore not a special
grace.
The bestowal or denial of baptismal grace in children is dependent on their
conditional future merits or demerits, which the Omniscience of God
foresaw not historically, but hypothetically from eternity.
Although this last proposition is philosophically false, the Church has never
condemned it as heretical; the first three theses, on the contrary, have been
rejected as opposed to Catholic teaching.
Informed by his disciples, Prosper and Hilary, of events at Marseilles, Augustine
energetically set to work, in spite of his advanced age, and wrote his two books
against the Semipelagians: "De Praedestinatione sanctorum" and "De dono
perseverantiae". Simultaneously he humbly acknowledged that he had the
misfortune of having professed similar errors previously to his episcopal
consecration (A.D. 394). He attacked resolutely, though with mildness and
moderation, all the positions of his adversaries, rightly looking upon their attitude
as a relapse into the already defeated Pelagianism. After Augustine's death, his
disciples resumed the struggle. They succeeded in interesting in their cause
Pope Celestine I, who, in his dogmatic writing to the bishops of Gaul (431), laid
down as a rule of faith the fundamental teaching of St. Augustine on original sin
and grace. But as this so-called "Indiculus" was issued more as a papal
instruction than as an ex cathedra definition, the controversy still continued for
almost a century, until St. Caesarius of Arles convoked the Second Synod of
Orange (A.D. 529). This synod received the solemn confirmation of Pope
Boniface II (530) and was thus vested with aecumenical authority. (According to
the opinion of Scheeben and Gutberlet this confirmation extended only to the first
eight canons and the epilogue.) From now on Semipelagianism, also, was
proscribed as heresy, and Augustinism was completely victorious.
In the refutation of Semipelagianism, in so far as the necessity of actual grace is
concerned, it will not be amiss to follow an adult through all the stage on the way
to salvation, from the state of unbelief and mortal sin to the state of grace and a
happy death. With regard, first, to the period of unbelief, the Second Synod of
Orange (can. v) decreed that prevenient grace is absolutely necessary to the
infidel not only for faith itself, but also for the very beginning of faith. By the
"beginning of faith", it intended to designate all the good aspirations and motions
to believe which precede faith properly so called, as early dawn precedes
sunrise. Consequently, the whole preparation for the faith is made under the
influence of grace, e.g. the instruction of persons to be converted. The accuracy
of this view is confirmed by the Bible. According to the assurance of the Saviour,
external preaching is useless if the invisible influence of grace (the being drawn
by the Father) does not set in to effect the gradual "coming" to Christ (John, vi,
44). Were faith rooted in mere nature, were it based on mere natural inclination to
believe or on natural merit, nature could legitimately glory in its own achievement
of the work of salvation in its entirety, from faith to justification--nay, to beatific
vision itself. And still Paul (I Cor., iv, 7; Eph., ii 8 sq.) abominates nothing so
much as the "glorying" of nature. Although Augustine could substantiate his
doctrine by references to the anterior Fathers of the Church, as Cyprian,
Ambrose, and Gregory of Nazianzus, he seems to have been embarrassed by
the Semipelagian appeal to the Greeks, chiefly Chrysostom. He pleaded the
circumstances of the time (De praed. sanctor., c. xiv). In fact, difference of
doctrine between the East and the West cannot be denied. With delight could
the Semipel agians quote from Chrysostom passages like the following: "We
must first select good and then God adds what appertains to his offlce; he does
not act antecedently to our will so as not to destroy our liberty" (Hom. xii in
Hebr., n. 3). How must this attitude of the Eastern Church be explained?
To gain a correct notion of the then existing circumstances, it must be
remembered that the Greeks had to defend not only grace, but almost more so
the freedom of the will. For the antichristian systems of Gnosticism,
Manichaeism, and neo-Platonism--all products of the East--stood completely
under the spell of the liberty-destroying philosophy of fatalism. lnsuch an
environment it was important to preserve intact the freedom of the will even under
the influence of grace, to arouse slothful nature from the fatalistic sleep, and to
recommend the ascetical maxim: "Help yourself, and Heaven will help you." It
may have been imprudent to leave the necessity of prevenient grace altogether in
the background because of false considerations of timeliness, and to insist
almost exclussively on co-operating grace while silently presupposing the
existence of prevenient grace. But was Chrysostom opposing a Pelagius or a
Cassian? In fact he also knew and admitted prevenient grace, as when he writes:
"You do not hold of yourself, but you have received from God. Hence you have
received what you possess and not only this or that, but everything you have. For
these are not your own merits, but the grace of God. Although you cite faith, you
owe it nevertheless to call" (Hom. xii in I Cor.). Chrysostom was always orthodox
in the doctrine on grace.
After the triumph over unbelief, the process of justification begins with faith and
concludes only with the infusion of sanctifying grace and theological love. The
question is whether, on this arduous road, grace must precede and co-operate
with every salutary step of the believing sinner. The negative attitude of the
semipelagians, who ascribed the dispositions for justification to the natural efforts
of free will, was proscribed as heretical at Orange (can. vii) and again at Trent
(Sess. VI, can. iii). Rightly so. For the thoroughly supernatural sonship of God
(filiatio adoptiva), which ultimately terminates the process of justification, can be
attained only through absolutely supernatural acts, for the performance of which
nature without grace is physically incapable. Hence the Bible, besides faith, also
refers other dispositions, as "hope" (Rom., xv, 13) and "love" (I John, iv, 7)
explicitly to God as their author; and tradition has unswervingly adhered to the
priority of grace (cf. St. Augustine, "Enchir.", xxxii). Once the adult has finally
reached the state of grace after a happy termination of the process of
justification, the obligation devolves upon him of complying with many negative
and positive duties in order to preserve sanctifying grace, persevere in virtue until
the end, and gain heaven after a happy death. Will he be capable of
accomplishing all this without a constant stream of actual graces? It might
appear so. For the justified person is, through the possession of sanctifying
grace and supernatural virtues, permanently maintained in the supernatural order.
It is not unnatural, therefore, to admit, prescinding from final perseverance, that
he is enabled by his supernatural habit to perform salutary actions. This is in
reality the teaching of Molina, Bellarmine, Billot, and others. But to this view
Perrone (De gratia, n. 203) rightly objects that Holy Writ makes no distinction
between the different degrees of the work of salvation, that Augustine (De nat. et
grat., xxiv) proclaims the constant need of grace also for the "healthy" and
"justified", and finally that the Church requires an uninterrupted influence of grace
even for the good works of the just and puts in the mouths of all Christians
without exception the prayer: "Actiones nostras, quaesumus Domine, aspirando
praeveni et adjuvando prosequere", etc. And does not concupiscence, which
remains also in the justified, stand in need of at least healing grace? Moreover,
no passive habit puts itself in motion, but, like a well-tuned harp, must be, as it
were, brought into play by some external agency. It might be added that nature,
raised to a permanent supernatural state, still retains its natural activity and
consequently requires a supernatural impulse for supernatural actions.
The most important concern, however, which the just man must take to heart is
final perseverance, because it is a decided characteristic of the predestined and
assures entrance into heaven with infallible certainty. The Semipelagian delusion
that this great grace may be due to the initiative and power of the just was
refuted, after the Second Synod of Orange (can. x), chiefly by the Council of
Trent (Sess. VI can. xxii) in the following proposition of faith: "Si quis dixerit,
justificatum . . . sine speciali auxilio Dei in accepta justitia perseverare posse . .
., anathema sit." Here, also, the explanation of some difficulties will facilitate the
correct interpretation of the canon. Final perseverance, in its most perfect sense,
consists in the untarnished preservation of baptismal innocence until death. In a
less strict sense it is the preservation of the state of grace from the last
conversion until death. In both senses we have what is called perfect
perseverance (perseverantia perfecta). By imperfect perseverance (perseverantia
imperfecta) must be understood the temporary continuance in grace, e.g., for a
month or a year, until the commission of the next mortal sin. We must
distinguish also between passive and active perseverance, according as the
justified dies in the state of grace, independently of his will, as baptized children
and the insane, or actively co-operates with grace whenever the state of grace is
imperilled by grievous temptations. The Council of Trent had, above all, this latter
case in view, since it speaks of the necessity of a special assistance (auxilium
speciale), which can designate nothing else but an actual grace or rather a whole
series of these. This "special grace" is, consequently, not conferred with the
possesion of sanctifying grace, nor is it to be confounded with ordinary graces,
nor finally to be looked upon as a result of the mere power of perseverance
(posse perseverare). Hence, as a new and special grace, it ultimately is but a
continuous series of efficacious (not merely sufficient) graces combined with a
particular external protection of God against fall into sin and with the final
experience of a happy death. The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, can. xvi) is therefore
justified in speaking of it as a great gift --"magnum donum". The Bible extols final
perseverance, now as a special grace not included in the bare notion of
justification (Phil., i, 6; I Pet., i, 5), now as the precious fruit of special prayer
(Matt., xxvi 41; John, xvii, 11; Col., iv, 12). Augustine (De dono persev., c. iii)
used the necessity of such prayer as a basis of argumentation, but added, for
the consolation of the faithful, that, while this great grace could not be merited by
good works, it could by persevering genuine prayer be obtained with infallible
certainty. Hence the practice of pious Christians to pray daily for a good death
can never be too earnestly commended.
B. The Gratuity of Actual Grace
Beside the necessity of actual grace, its absolute gratuity stands out as the
second fundamental question in the Christian doctrine on this subject. The very
name of grace excludes the notion of merit. But the gratuity of specifically
Christian grace is so great and of such a superior character that even mere
natural petition for grace or positive natural dispositions cannot determine God to
the bestowal of his supernatural assistance. A mere negative preparation or mere
negative dispositions, on the contrary, which consist only in the natural removal
of obstacles, are in all probability not essentially opposed to gratuity. Owing to
its gratuitous character, grace cannot be earned by strictly natural merit either in
strict justice (meritum de condigno) or as a matter of fitness (meritum de
congruo). But is not this assertion in conflict with the dogma that the just man
can, through supernatural works, merit de condigno an increase in the state of
grace and eternal glory, just as the sinner can, through salutary acts, earn de
congruo justification and all graces leading up to it? That it is not, will be clearly
evident if it be remembered that the merits springing from supernatural grace are
no longer natural, but supernatural (cf. Council of Trent, Sess. VI, cap. xvi). The
absolute gratuity of grace is, therefore, safeguarded if it is referred to the initial
grace (prima gratia vocans), with which the work of salvation begins, and which is
preceded by pure and mere nature. For it then follows that the whole subsequent
series of graces, up to justification, is not and cannot be merited any more than
the initial grace. We shall now briefly examine the gratuity of grace in its several
degrees as indicated above.
1. The gratuitous character of grace categorically excludes real and strict natural
merit with a rightful claim to just compensation as well as merit improperly so
called implying a claim to reward as a matter of fitness. The meritorious
character of our actions in the former sense was defended by the Pelagians,
while the Semipelagians advocated it in the latter meaning. To this twofold error
the infallible teaching authority of the Church opposed the dogmatic declaration
that the initial grace preparatory to justification is in no wise due to natural merit
as a determining factor (cf. Second Synod of Orange, epilogue; Council of Trent,
Sess. VI, cap. v). The categorical synodal expression, nullis praecedentibus
meritis, wards off from grace, as a poisonous breath, not only the Pelagian
condign merit, but also the Semipelagian congruous merit. The presupposition
that grace can be merited by natural deeds involves a latent contradiction. For it
would be attributing to nature the power to bridge over with its own strength the
chasm lying between the natural and the supernatural order. In powerfully
eloquent words does Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, declare that the
vocation to the Faith was not granted to the Jews in consequence of the works of
the Mosaic Law, nor to the pagans because of the observance of the natural
moral law, but that the concession was entirely gratuitous. He inserts the harsh
statement: "Therefore he hath mercy on whom he will; and whom he will, he
hardeneth" (Rom., ix, 18). The Doctor of Grace, Augustine (De peccato orig.,
xxiv, 28), like a second Paul, advocates the absolute gratuity of grace, when he
writes: "Non enim gratia Dei erit ullo modo nisi gratuita fuerit omni modo" (For it
will not be the grace of God in any way unless it has been gratuitous in every
way). He lays stress on the fundamental principle: "Grace does not find the
merits in existence, but causes them", and substantiates it decisively thus: "Non
gratia ex merito, sed meritum ex gratia. Nam si gratia ex merito, emisti, non
gratis accepisti" (Not grace by merit, but merit by grace. For if grace by merit,
thou hast bought, not received gratis.--Serm. 169, c. II). Not even Chrysostom
could be suspected of Semipelagianism, as he thought in this matter precisely
like Paul and Augustine.
2. While natural merit suppresses the idea of gratuity in grace, the same cannot
be affirmed of natural prayer (preces naturae, oratio naturalis), as long as we do
not ascribe to it any intrinsic right to be heard and to God a duty to answer it--a
right and duty which are undoubtedly implied in supernatural petitions (cf. John,
xvi, 23 sq.). Prayer does not, like merit, appeal to the justice or equity of God,
but to his liberality and mercy. The sphere of influence of prayer is consequently
much more extensive than the power of merit. The gratuity of Christian grace is,
nevertheless, to be understood so strictly that pure nature cannot obtain even the
smallest grace by the most fervent prayer. Such is the doctrine asserted by the
Second Synod of Orange (can. iii) against the Semipelagians. It is based on a
positive Divine decree and can no longer be deduced from the intrinsic
impossibility of the contrary. It is therefore permissible, without prejudice to the
Faith, to adopt Ripalda's opinion (De ente supernat., disp. xix, sect. 3), which
holds that, in an economy of salvation different from the present, natural prayer
for grace would be entitled to be heard. How little this is the case in the present
dispensation is best learned from the language of the Bible. We are told that in
our infirmity "we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit
himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings" (Rom. viii, 26; cf. I Cor., xii,
3). The supernatural union with Christ is, moreover, represented as the
indispensable condition of every successful petition (John, xv, 7). Every
wholesome prayer being in itself a salutary act, it must, according to antecedent
statements, spring from prevenient grace. Augustine (De dono persev. xxiii, 64)
in vivid descriptions brings home to the Semipelagians their delusion in thinking
that true prayer comes from us and not from God who inspires it.
On an almost identical level with natural prayer stand the positive preparation and
dispositions to grace (capacitas, sive praeparatio positiva). It often occurs in
human life that the positive disposition to a natural good includes in itself a
certain claim to satisfaction, as, e.g. thirst of itself calls for quenching. This is
still more the case when the disposition has been acquired by a positive
preparation for the good in question. Thus the student has acquired by his
preparation for the examination a certain claim to be sooner or later admitted to
it. But how about grace? Does there exist in man a positive disposition and a
claim to grace in the sense that the withholding of this expected blessing would
sensibly injure and bitterly disappoint the soul? Or can man, unaided, positively
dispose himself for the reception of grace, confident that God will reward his
natural efforts with the bestowal of supernatural grace? Both suppositions are
untenable. For, according to the express teaching of the Apostle Paul and of the
Fathers of the Church, the gratuity of grace is rooted solely in the supreme
freedom of the Divine will, and the nature of man possesses not even the
slightest claim to grace. As a consequence, the relapse into Semipelagianism is
unavoidable as soon as we seek in the positive disposition or preparation a
cause for the bestowal of grace. It should be remembered, moreover, that nature
is never found in its pure form, but that, from the beginning, mankind is defiled by
original sin. This consideration still more forcibly puts before us the necessity of
denying to sinful nature the power to draw down upon itself, like an arid region,
the effusion of Divine grace, either by its natural constitution or its own
endeavours.
3. Negative disposition or preparation (capacitas sive praeparatio negativa)
designates, in general, the absence or removal of obstacles which are an
impediment to the introduction of a new form, as green wood is dried up to
become fit for burning. The question arises, whether the requirement of such
merely negative natural preparation is reconcilable with the absolute gratuity of
grace. Some of the earlier Schoolmen cited in answer the celebrated
much-debated axiom: Facienti quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam (To the
one who does what in him lies, God does not deny grace). If among the proposed
interpretations of this proposition we adopt the one asserting that, in
consequence of the commendable endeavours of the natural will, God does not
withhold fom anyone the first grace of vocation, we necessarily fall into the
Semipelagian heresy refuted above. In order systematically to exclude this
contingency, many Schoolmen thus interpreted the axiom with St. Thomas
(Summa I-II:109:6): "To the one who accomplishes what he can with the help of
supernatural grace God grants further and more powerful graces up to
justification." But, interpreted in this manner the axiom offers nothing new and
has nothing to do with the above-proposed question. There remains, therefore, a
third interpretation: God, out of mere liberality, does not withhold His grace from
the one who accomplishes what he can with his natural moral strength, i.e. from
the one who, by deliberate abstention from offences, seeks to dispose God
favourably towards him and thus prepares himself negatively for grace. Some
theologians (e.g. Vasquez, Glossner) declared even this most mitigated and
mildest interpretation to be Semipelagian. Most modern theological authorities,
however, with Molina, Suarez, and Lessius, see in it nothing else but the
expression of the truth: To the one who prepares himself negatively and places
no obstacle to the ever-ready influence of grace, God in general is more inclined
to offer his grace than to another who wallows in the mire of sin and thus
neglects to accomplish what lies in his power. In this manner the cause of the
distribution of grace is located not in the dignity of nature, but, conformably to
orthodoxy, in the universal will of God to save mankind
The Universality of Actual Grace
The universality of grace does not conflict with its gratuity, if God, in virtue of his
will to save all men, distributes with sovereign liberty his graces to all adults
without exception. But if the universality of grace is only a result of the Divine will
to save all mankind, we must first turn our attention to the latter as the basis of
the former.
1. God's Will to Save All Men
By the "will to save" (voluntas Dei salvifica) theologians understand the earnest
and sincere will of God to free all men from sin and lead them to supernatural
happiness. As this will refers to human nature as such, it is a merciful will, also
called "first" or "antecedent will" (voluntas prima sive antecedens). It is not
absolute, but conditional, inasmuch as no one is saved if he does not will it or
does not comply with the conditions laid down by God for salvation. The
"second" or "consequent will" (voluntas secunda sive consequens), on the
contrary, can only be absolute, i.e. a will of justice, as God must simply reward
or punish according as one has deserved by his works heaven or hell. We
consider here solely the "antecedent will" to save; regarding the will of justice
see PREDESTINATlON.
Against the error of the Calvinists and Jansenists the ecclesiastical teaching
authority (cf. Council of Trent, Sess. VI, can. xvii; Prop. v Jansenii damn., in
Denzinger, n. 827, 1096) proclaimed in the first place the doctrine that God
seriously wills the salvation not of the predestined only, but also of other men. As
the Church obliged all her faithful to the recital of the passage of the creed, "Qui
propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis", it is also
established with certainty of faith that at least all the faithful are included in the
universality of salvation willed by God. Not to mention the touching scene in
which Jesus weeps over the impenitent Jerusalem (cf. Matt., xxiii, 37), the
following is the declaration of the Saviour himself respecting believers: "For God
so loved the world, as to give his only-begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in
him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting" (John, iii, 16). Far from
limiting the will to save to these two classes of men, the predestined and
believers, theologians adhere to the theological conclusion that God, without
regard to original sin, wills the eternal salvation of all the posterity of Adam. The
range of this will certainly extends further than the circle of believers, the eternal
reprobation of many of whom is a notorious fact. For Pope Alexander VIII (1690)
condemned the proposition that Christ died "for all the faithful and only for them"
(pro omnibus et solis fidelibus.--See Denzinger, n. 1294). The foreknowledge of
original sin is no reason for God to except some men from his will of redemption,
as the Calvinist sect called Infralapsarians or Postlapsarians (from infra, or post,
lapsum) asserted in Holland against the strictly Calvinist opinion of those called
Supralapsarians or Antelapsarians (from supra, or ante, lapsum.--See
ARMINIANISM). In proof of the Catholic contention, the Council of Trent (Sess.
VI, cap. ii) rested on the Biblical text which exhibits the propitiatory sacrifice of
Christ as offered not only for our sins, "but also for those of the whole world" (I
John, ii, 2). We possess, besides, two classical Scriptural passages which
exclude all doubt. The Book of Wisdom (xi, 24 sqq.) eulogizes in stirring
language the all-exceeding mercy of God and bases its universality on the
omnipotence of God (quia omnia potes), on his universal domination (quoniam
tua sunt; diligis omnia, quae fecisti), and on his love for souls (qui amas animas).
Wherever, therefore, Divine omnipotence and domination extend, wherever
immortal souls are to be found, thither also the will to grant salvation extends, so
that it cannot be exclusive of any human being. After St. Paul (I Tim., ii, 1 sqq.)
has ordained prayers for all men and proclaimed them "acceptable in the sight of
God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved" (omnes homines vult salvos
fieri), he adds a threefold motivation: "For there is one God, and one mediator of
God and men, the man Christ Jesus: who gave himself a redemption for all" (1.
c.). Hence it is just as true that the will to grant salvation extends to all men as it
is that God is the God of all men, and that Christ as mediator assumed the
nature of all men and redeemed them on the Cross. In regard to tradition,
Passaglia, as early as 1851, brilliantly demonstrated the universality of this
Divine intention from two hundred Fathers of the Church and ecclesiastical
writers. Augustine alone presents some difficulty. It may, however, be considered
as certain to-day that the great Bishop of Hippo interpreted in the year 412 the
Pauline text with all the other Fathers of the Church in the sense of a universal
will to save all men without exception and that subsequently he never explicitly
retracted this view (De spir. et lit., xxiii, 58). But it is equally certain that from 421
onwards (cf. Enchir., xxvii, 103; Contr. Julian., IV, viii, 42; De corr. et grat., xv,
47) he attempted such tortuous and violent interpretations of the clear,
unmistakable text that the Divine will regarding human salvation was no longer
universal, but particular. The mystery can only be solved by the admission that
Augustine still believed in a plurality of literal senses in the Bible (cf. Confes. XII,
xvii sqq.). To avoid the necessity of imputing to the Holy Ghost the inspiration of
contradictions in the same text, he conceived in his three divergent
interpretations the Divine will concerning salvation as the "second" or
"consequent will", which, as absolute will destining men to eternal happiness,
must naturally be particular, no less than the consequent will affecting the
reprobate (of. J.B. Faure, "Notae in Enchir. s. Augustini", c. 103, p. 195 sqq.,
Naples, 1847). The most difficult problem concerning this Divine will to save all
men, a real crux theologorum lies in the mysterious attitude of God towards
children dying without baptism. Did God sincerely and earnestly will the salvation
also of the little ones who, without fault of their own, fail to receive the baptism of
water or blood and are thus forever deprived of the beatific vision? Only a few
theologians (e.g. Bellarmine, Vasquez) are bold enough to answer this question
in the negative. Either invincible ignorance, as among the pagans, or the physical
order of nature, as in still-births, precludes the possibility of the administration of
baptism without the least culpability on the part of the children. The difficulty lies,
therefore, in the fact that God, the author of the natural order, eventually declines
to remove the existing obstacles by means of a miracle. The well-meant opinion
of some theologians (Arrubal, Kilber, Mannens) that the whole and full guilt falls
in all instances not on God, but on men (for example, on the imprudence of the
mothers), is evidently too airy an hypothesis to be entitled to consideration. The
subterfuge of Klee, the writer on dogma, that self-consciousness is awakened for
a short time in dying children, to render baptism of desire possible to them, is
just as unsatisfactory and objectionable as Cardinal Cajetan's admission,
disapproved of by Pius X, that the prayer of Christian parents, acting like a
baptism of desire, saves their children for heaven. We are thus confronted with an
unsolved mystery. Our ignorance of the manner does not destroy, however, the
theological certainty of the fact. For the above-cited Biblical texts are of such
unquestionable universality that it is impossible to exclude a priori millions of
children from the Divine will to save humankind.--Cf. Bolgeni, "Stato dei bambini
morti senza battesimo" (Rome, 1787); Didiot, "Ungetauft verstorbene Kinder,
Dogmatische Trostbriefe" (Kempen, 1898); a. Seitz, Die Heilsnotwendigkeit der
Kirche" (Freiburg, 1903), pp. 301 sqq.
2. The Universality of Grace
The universality of grace is a necessary consequence of the will to save all men.
For adults this will transforms itself into the concrete Divine will to distribute
"sufficient" graces; it evidently involves no obligation on God to bestow only
"efficacious" graces. If it can be established, therefore, that God grants to the
three classes of the just, sinners, and infidels truly sufficient graces for their
eternal salvation, the proof of the universality of grace will have been furnished.
Without prejudice to this universality, God may either await the moment of its
actual necessity before bestowing grace, or He may, even in time of need (e.g. in
vehement temptation), grant immediately only the grace of prayer (gratia orationis
sive remote sufficiens). But in the latter case he must be ever ready to confer
immediate grace for action (gr. operationis s. proxime sufficiens), if the adult has
made a faithful use of the grace of prayer.
So far as the category of the just is concerned, the heretical proposition of
Jansen, that "the observance of some commandments of God is impossible to
the just for want of grace" (see Denzinger, n. 1092), had already been exploded
by the anathema of the Council of Trent (see Council of Trent, Sess. VI, can.
xviii). In fact Holy Writ teaches concerning the just, that the yoke of Jesus is
sweet, and His burden light (Matt., xi, 30), that the commandments of God are
not heavy (I John, v, 3), that "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted
above that which you are able: but will make also with temptation issue, that you
may be able to bear it" (I Cor., x, 13). These statements warrant not only the full
possibility of the observance of the Divine commandments and the triumph over
vehement temptation;, they virtually express simultaneously the concession of
the necessary grace without which all these salutary acts are known to be
absolutely impossible. It is true that in the polemical writings of some Fathers of
the Church against the Pelagians and Semipelagians we read the proposition:
"The grace of God is not granted to all." But a closer examination of the
passages immediately reveals the fact that they speak of efficacious, not of
sufficient, grace. This distinction is expressly stated by the anonymous writer of
the fifth century whom Pope Gelasius commends as an "experienced
ecclesiastical teacher" (probatus ecclesiae magister). In his excellent work "De
vocatione gentium", he differentiates the "general" (benignitas Dei generalis) and
the "particular" economy of grace (specialis misericordia), referring the former to
the distribution of sufficient, the latter to that of efficacious, graces. We come to
the second class, that of Christian sinners, among whom we reckon apostates
and formal heretics, as these can hardly be placed on a par with the heathen. In
their valuation of the distribution of grace, theologians distinguish somewhat
sharply between ordinary sinners (among whom they include habitual and
relapsing sinners) and those sinners whose intellect is blinded, and whose heart
is hardened, the so-called obdurate sinners (obcaecati et indurati,
impaenitentes). The bestowal of grace on the former group is, they say, of a
higher degree of certainty than its concession to the latter, although for both the
universality of sufficient grace is beyond any doubt. Not only is it said of sinners
in general: "I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his
way, and live" (Ezech., xxxiii, 11), and again: "The Lord . . . . dealeth patiently for
your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to
penance" (II Peter, iii, 9), but even the obdurate and impenitent sinners are
energetically summoned by the Bible to dutiful penance or at least are most
vehemently are reprimanded because of their wickedness (Is. lxv 2; Rom., ii, 4;
Acts, vii, 51). Now where a duty of conversion exists, the necessary grace must
be at hand without which no conversion is possible. For, as Augustine (De nat. et
grat., xliii, n. 50) affirms: "Deus impossibilia non jubet" (God does not give
impossible orders). Obduracy, however, forms such a powerful obstacle to
conversion that some ancient theologians embraced the untenable opinion that
God finally completely withdraws from these sinners, a withdrawal due to His
mercy, which desires to save them from a more severe punishment in hell. But
St. Thomas Aquinas (De verit., Q. xxiv, a. 11) stated that "complete obduracy"
(obstinatio perfecta), or absolute impossibility of conversion, begins only in hell
itself "incomplete obduracy", on the contrary, ever presents on earth in the
enfeebled moral affections of the heart a point of contact through which the
appeal of grace may obtain entrance. Were the rigorist opinion of God's complete
abandonment of the obdurate correct, despair of God's mercy would be perfectly
justified in such souls. The Catholic catechism, however, presents this as a new
grievous sin.
The third and last question arises: Is the grace of God also conceded to the
heathen? The Divine readiness to grant assistance also to the heathen (see
Denzinger, n. 1295, 1379) is a certain truth confirmed by the Church against the
Jansenists Arnauld and Quesnel. To question it is to deny the
above-demonstrated intention of God to save all men; for the overwhelming
majority of mankind would fall outside its range. The Apostle of the Gentiles,
Paul (Rom., ii, 6 sqq.), lays stress on God's impartiality towards Jews and
Greeks, without "respect of persons", on the Day of Judgment, when he will
reward also the Greek "that worketh good" with eternal life. The Fathers of the
Church, as Clement of Rome (I ep. ad Cor. vii), Clement of Alexandria (Cohort. ad
gent., 9), and Chrysostom (Hom. viii in John, n. 1), do not doubt the dispensation
of sufficient graces to the nations "that sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death". Orosius (De arbitr. libert., n. 19), a disciple of St. Augustine, proceeds so
far in his optimism as to believe in this distribution of grace "quotidie per
tempora, per dies, per momenta, per atoma et cunctis et singulis" (daily through
the seasons, through the days, through the moments, through the smallest
possible divisions of time, and to all men and every man). But the clearer the
fact, the more obscure the manner. In what way, one instinctively asks, did God
provide for the salvation of the heathen? Theologians to-day generally give the
following presentation of the process: It is presupposed that, according to Hebr.,
xi, 6, the two dogmas of the existence of God and of future retribution must be, in
all instances, believed not only, by necessity of means (necessitate medii), but
also with explicit faith (fide explicita) before the process of justification can be
initiated. As a consequence, God will not refrain in extraordinary cases from
miraculous intervention in order to save a noble-minded heathen who
conscientiously observes the natural moral law. He may either, in a miraculous
manner, depute a missionary to him (Acts, i, 1 sqq.), or teach him the revealed
truth through an angel (Cardinal Toletus), or he may come to his assistance by
an interior private revelation. It is clear, nevertheless, that these different ways
cannot be considered as everyday ordinary means. For the multitude of heathen
this assistance must be found in a universal means of salvation equally
independent of wonderful events and of the preaching of Christian missionaries.
Some modern theologians discover it in the circumstance that the two dogmas
mentioned above were already contained in the primitive supernatural revelation
made in Paradise for all mankind. These truths were subsequently spread over
the whole world, survive, as a meagre remnant, in the traditions of the pagan
nations, and are orally transmitted from generation to generation as supernatural
truths of salvation. The knowableness of these dogmas by unaided reason does
not constitute an objection, for they are simultaneously natural and revealed
truths. Once the condition of external preaching (cf. Rom., x, 17: "fides ex
auditu") has thus been fulfilled, it only remains for God to hasten to mans
assistance with his supernatural illuminating and strengthening grace and to
initiate with the faith in God and retribution (which implicitly includes all else
necessary for salvation) the process of justification. In this manner the attainment
of the state of grace and of eternal glory becomes possible for the heathen who
faithfully co-operates with the grace of vocation. However all this may be, one
thing is certain: every heathen who incurs eternal damnation will be forced on the
last day to the honest confession: "It is not for want of grace, but through my
own fault that I am lost."
(For the relation between grace and liberty, see CONTROVERSIES ON GRACE.)
J. Pohle
Transcribed by Scott Anthony Hibbs & Wendy Lorraine Hoffman
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI
Copyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor
Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org