Grace: An Introduction

I. Introduction

It is impossible to overstate the wonder of grace and its absolute centrality to Christianity. Matthias Scheeben says well:

If, out of all the millions of men and angels, God had selected a single soul and bestowed upon it this unheard-of dignity [of grace], such a soul would, if visible, darken the beauty of the sun, of all nature and of all heavenly spirits. It would amaze mortal men. The angels themselves would be inclined to adore it as God Himself.{1}

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines grace as “a participation in the life of God” (CCC 1997). This calling toward union with God is at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian, and thus grace is at the core of living the Christian life. Yet, like a fish in water, the Christian life is so immersed in grace that it can be difficult to distinguish it from the rest of the Christian experience.

In this book, we will outline what grace is, its major divisions and distinctions, and its centrality to the Christian life and Catholic theology. Moreover, we will consider important debates and controversies throughout Church history on the nature of grace. The Catechism of the Catholic Church will be a guide, as well as the Doctors of the Church, particularly St. Thomas Aquinas and the Doctor Gratiae, St. Augustine.

II. Grace Defined

In order to better understand just what grace is, we ought first to answer a number of specific questions.

What does grace do? Grace puts us in God’s good favor. Indeed, “good favor” is one of the meanings of the term gratia. But to be in God’s favor is not the result of something arbitrary. Rather, to be in God’s good favor means that we are good; that is, like the things made by God in Genesis 1, we are as we ought to be: in right relation to God, to our neighbors, and to ourselves. Thus, grace makes us good, since it puts us into God’s good favor, and God favors that which is good. To put it another way: “Grace is what makes us pleasing to God as children and heirs.”{2}  And, since God alone is Goodness as such, grace makes us more like God.

To what is grace ordered? As stated above, grace is ordered toward making us good. Yet, grace is not ordered toward just any good, but most properly toward the end of the Christian life: union with God in the Beatific Vision. As such, grace makes us good for the sake of eternal union with God and is the cause of that union in the saints. This union is so total that St. Thomas Aquinas calls it a “partaking of the divine nature.”{3} While grace makes us good in many different kinds of ways, it is this ultimate good of total union with God to which all grace is ordered.{4}

From whom do we receive grace? Because all goodness comes from God, grace comes to us from God Himself. While it is possible for a creature (for example, an angel) to mediate grace or to bring it about in another indirectly through prayer, nevertheless, God alone is capable of causing grace because God alone can cause creatures to participate in what He is by nature.

What is the essence of grace? While this will be clarified further on, we first ought to say several things about the very essence of grace. First, the Church Fathers often speak of grace as a gift freely given by God,{5} denoting that it is not God Himself but something created. This was confirmed at the Council of Trent, which stated that grace is “the justice of God, not that by which he himself is just, but that by which he makes us just.”{6} God is, therefore, the efficient cause of grace—a cause that conforms us to “the shape” of His sanctified being and nature. Of course, when we are conformed to God through grace, our souls do not become substantially identical with God’s own divine being. God and creatures are always and necessarily really distinct beings. Nonetheless, even as creatures, human persons truly participate in the divine nature—being truly conformed to who and what God is, albeit in a creaturely way. Second, grace denotes a certain characteristic given to the soul. St. Cyril of Alexandria refers to it as a “form” (μορφή) or quality (ποιότης).{7} St. Thomas would go on to define grace as a quality (qualitas) and a habitual gift (habituale donum).{8} Third, this form or quality is not substantial; the human being that receives grace does not cease to be human. Yet, this form or quality makes the soul to reflect and share in the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4) in a way that radically transcends what the soul is by nature or on its own. Thus, grace is that form or quality in the soul that establishes the soul in right relation to God and makes deification possible. “God became man so that men might become God.”{9}

III. Grace as Supernatural

God is the source of all being and goodness. We distinguish between two general ways in which God gives being and goodness to creatures. The first is creation itself. In the act of creation, God gives being to the world. He makes a world with all of its attendant kinds of things: rocks, streams, stars, plants, animals, and human beings. Through creation, God gives to each individual thing a nature, that is, a way of being that receives and bears witness to the superabundant being and goodness of its Creator. It is in the nature of a tree to soak in water and sunshine, to spread its roots and branches, to grow leaves, etc. It is in the nature of a man to practice the natural virtues (especially the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude) and to know God as his Creator. A man’s nature specifies what a good human life truly is. It is according to human nature, then, that man lives a good life as a man. In other words, human nature reveals what is good (and what is harmful) for human persons. Related to creation is God’s governance over the existence and acts of creatures. Because God is the universal and primary cause of all effects, all things, even those things which move themselves, are first caused and moved by God.{10} Without taking away the natural activity of created things, and indeed as bringing about that very natural activity, God is said to be the cause of the operation for all things that operate. This causality is from God, and, with grace, can be referred to generically as divine aid or help (auxilium).{11} Yet, this term is often used to distinguish God’s causality of natural movement in a creature from His causality of supernatural movement in a creature, which we refer to as grace. When God moves me, then, to build a chair or toward some naturally virtuous act, if I am not hindered by vice, we would call my action both free and the result of God’s natural auxilium. This “natural help” moves creatures to perform acts that are connatural to them, which do not require healing or elevation to perform, and which, in man, pertain to his natural end.

But, as we have already indicated, grace is ordered toward communion with the divine nature. For this reason, we call grace supernatural both because it comes from God, who is infinitely above human nature, and also because it causes in man goods that are higher than what human nature itself can accomplish. Grace thus elevates man beyond the natural level of goodness that he can have of his own natural powers to a participation in the goodness that belongs properly only to the nature of God. This is, indeed, an infinite elevation, and it makes man capable of knowing God not merely as a Creator or Lord but as a friend. This elevation from servant to friend is a radical gift of divine love. Christ says: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15).

This is the second way in which God gives being and goodness to creatures. In the first, He gives creatures their being, nature, and natural acts as their Creator and Lord. In the second way, He unites Himself personally with souls He has already created. This personal union is often called an indwelling, as God not only holds the creature in being but comes to rest within the very soul of the creature and to commune with it. Creation is a bringing into being while grace is a perfecting of that which exists.

This does not mean that grace replaces or destroys human nature. A famous theological axiom says that “grace builds upon nature.” Man cannot by nature commune with and participate in a divine nature that is infinitely above his own. But man is created such that he can be elevated by grace to communion with a nature that is above his own. In this elevation, man is perfected rather than destroyed. A man who is with God as a friend is said to be in a state radically above his nature, but he nevertheless remains a man. A stone, by contrast, would have to cease being a stone for it to commune with God and thus, for it, grace would destroy rather than build upon its nature because its nature is not elevatable to the Beatific Vision as man’s is.

We should note here that grace can be called supernatural in two ways. As has already been said, grace can be called supernatural in regard to the substance of its effect in us. Sharing in the divine love proper only to God is an example of grace being supernatural in the substance of its effect. Yet, sometimes we call grace supernatural on account of its mode but not the substance of its effect. In this case, the effect of grace may itself be connatural to man but the manner in which we receive it is beyond what nature can accomplish here and now. For example, knowing high-level mathematics is something that man can do by nature, but if I come to know high-level mathematics through God’s infusion of a habit of mathematical knowledge directly into my intellect (rather than acquiring this habit through long study), then this infusion would be supernatural in mode though not in substance. Similarly, in regard to morals, committing an act of natural prudence is not supernatural in substance, but if I am a very imprudent man and God moves me to a prudent act above and beyond my current inclination toward imprudence, this ought to be called a supernatural grace on account of its mode.

IV. The Necessity of Grace

Quite simply, grace is necessary in order for man to avoid sin consistently, to do good consistently, and to journey through the Christian life to its consummation in the Beatific Vision. Given what we have said above, grace is necessary for man in two distinct ways. First, man finds himself in the state of sin, where his intellect is darkened, his will is weakened, and he himself is inclined toward self-destructive behavior and rebellion against God. All men are born into this state of original sin, suffering from these dysfunctions and disorders of human nature. Although human nature is irrevocably inclined to the good, human nature truly needs the healing effects of grace, i.e., God must pick us back up and set us on the right road again through healing our disorder and replacing it with order. Second, even before falling into sin, man was called to an end that infinitely transcends his natural end. Thus, even if we had not sinned, we would require grace to be elevated beyond human nature to a participation in the divine nature. Therefore, man requires grace both to be healed and to be elevated, and these are distinct effects of grace.{12}

V. Trinitarian Dimensions

Having discussed what grace is, we can now turn to its source. Grace bears the imprint of the One God and Three Persons from whom it comes and toward whom it orders us. It only makes sense to begin a consideration of grace and the Trinity by reflecting upon the unique role of the Son, for it is the Son who is known first to us on account of His becoming incarnate and dwelling among us. Grace is ultimately ordered toward and bestows upon us a participation in God’s nature, in and through becoming adopted as sons of the Father. Jesus Christ is the Son of the Father, and it is through becoming a member of Christ’s body that we partake in what the head has in virtue of Himself.

Because of the hypostatic union, Christ’s soul is absolutely full of grace, i.e., on account of “the nearness of Christ’s soul to the cause of grace.”{13} Thus it is Christ’s humanity and His human soul which have “received grace in the highest way.”{14} The grace which was personal to Christ is that very same grace by which we are made justified and saved.{15} That grace which is Christ’s and which He bestows on us is called “capital grace” since Christ is the head of the Church and bestows life from Himself, just as the head does to the body. All grace is mediated through the humanity of Jesus Christ, especially on account of His most efficacious passion and death.{16} Being one with both, He is the true mediator between God and man. As man, He lifts up humanity, redeeming it through His holiness and His most holy and perfect participation in divine grace. As God, He bestows grace upon men, lifting them to Himself.{17} As such, we can truly say that all salvation, all grace, and all holiness comes to us in, through, and with Jesus Christ.{18}

In multiple ways, St. Thomas synthesizes the thought of the Church Fathers with regard to how Christ is the cause of our grace. First, Christ is the exemplary cause insofar as the saints are formed in His image and take Him as the model par excellence for holiness. Second, Christ is the meritorious cause of our salvation insofar as He merits for us all of the rewards of grace and eternal life. Third, Christ is the efficient cause of grace insofar as He is the one who causes grace actually to flow into us.{19} He is the principal cause of grace in His divine nature since all grace comes from God, and His human nature acts as the instrumental efficient cause of our receiving grace. The reality of Christ’s causality in grace illustrates to us the radical intimacy that we share with Jesus Christ. He does not simply bestow some new, mimetic grace. Rather, our habitual grace flows from Christ’s own habitual grace insofar as “His capital and personal grace are not distinct.”{20} While His habitual grace is not numerically the same as our own habitual grace (since we do not share the same habit), nevertheless the habitual grace by which we live as Christians is to Christ’s grace as a stream to its font.

If Christ is the one who unites us with the Father, then what role does the Spirit play? The Church Fathers liken the Father to the mind and the Son to the Word that comes forth from the mind. The Spirit, then, is likened to the breath that carries forth this Word, i.e., the vocal expression of the Word that makes this Word to be spoken. As such, St. John Damascene says, “We conceive of the [Spirit] as associated with the Word and making the operation of the Word manifest.”{21}

It is fitting, then, that the Spirit comes to dwell within the Christian as the manifestation of the Mediator in and to us. While God is immediate to all things, both in their action and their very being, we nevertheless know that God is especially present in those who are united with Him in habitual grace and adoptive sonship. Indeed, even as Christ was set to return to the Father, He gave to the apostles the divine gift of the Spirit. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you” (Jn 14:16–17). Here we see that the Spirit comes to live within the Christian, and this mystery is referred to as the indwelling of the Spirit. As Christ promised, the Spirit came down upon the Apostles at Pentecost, and He comes upon the Christian, especially through the sacraments of initiation. Yet it is difficult to state the parameters of this mystery with precision. What precisely does it mean for the Spirit to dwell within the soul? This is obscure. It would seem that, while the indwelling accompanies habitual grace, it is nevertheless distinct, since habitual grace is something created, but the indwelling is the presence of the uncreated Third Person.{22} And wherever the Spirit is, there also are the Father and the Son. Thus, God is present in the soul by way of causal effect, particularly through those graces that elevate nature and natural powers (viz., sanctifying grace and the theological virtues), disposing the soul for contact with God. In these cases, God is present within the soul by way of effect, since these habits make contact with God possible but not yet actual. But, when the soul is moved from potentially having contact with God to actually knowing and loving Him, God is present in the soul formally and intentionally since the soul is now elevated to a participation in God’s own knowledge and love. While God is present to and in all things by His power and causality, He is present in a truly new way in the graced soul, which is not simply an effect of God’s causality. The graced soul also knows and loves God as He is in Himself. This means that the graced soul is linked to God, as it were, not only as effect to cause but as the known is to the knower and the loved is to the lover. This is the basis for union of the soul with the Three Persons of the Trinity, participation infinitely higher than the participation other created things have in God’s creative and causal power.

In any case, it ought to be clear that the indwelling of the Spirit makes us to be like the Spirit rather than the other way around. In the case of food, we assimilate that which is taken into us. However, by the Spirit’s coming to dwell within us, He makes us like Himself and worthy of Himself. As St. Thomas says, “That a divine person may newly exist in anyone, or be possessed by anyone in time, does not come from a change of the divine person, but from change in the creature.”{23} This does not mean (pace theologians like Meister Eckhart) that the soul who participates in the divine nature is God in the way that we say God is God or that God is pure act. This would be the negation of the doctrine of participation. Rather, theologians distinguish the essential act of God, i.e., what God is and does in Himself (actus purus), from the appropriated acts of God. These are supernatural acts. They actually have God Himself as their real object. Nonetheless, they are also truly our acts—acts of a creature. Therefore, these supernatural acts wondrously touch upon the uncreated God even though they remain the acts of a creature.

Thus, the indwelling cannot be a substantial change because in this case either: 1) human nature would be transformed into the divine nature essentially and numerically, which would mean that the Christian no longer exists and is, in some sense, replaced or annihilated by God; or 2) divine nature and human nature fuse into some third thing, which is impossible since the divine nature is immutable. Neither can the indwelling be taken as a union of natures in a single personhood, for we know that there is only one hypostatic union, that is, Jesus Christ.{24} Nevertheless, the indwelling is a true and new kind of union with God by which the creature becomes one with its Creator by knowing and loving God as He truly is in Himself.{25}

Finally, and perhaps most obscurely, is the Paternal dimension of grace. It may be relatively less difficult to see the Son as the Meritor and Mediator and the Spirit as the one to whom indwelling is often appropriated. But it is less clear in the case of the Father since, as St. Augustine says, “the Father alone is never described as being sent [to men].”{26} Yet, it is by the very missions and sending forth of the Son and the Spirit that man comes to be in intimate contact with the very one Who sent them.{27} Accordingly, just after Christ explains His mission and the mission of the Spirit, He concludes by saying: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you” (Jn 14:20). To be in Christ and to be filled with the Spirit is to be elevated to an immediate contact with the most hidden Father. It is to be with God as God, participating in the dynamic dance of relation that is the very essence of divinity.

VI. The Essence of Grace: Habitual and Actual

Grace, as we have already said, is most properly that which makes us pleasing to God. We can only be made pleasing, i.e., good, by Goodness Itself. Thus, grace is a gift from God whereby we are made good and loveable. Crucially, this means that grace, although coming from without, “implies something in him who receives grace.”{28} Anticipating the Protestant Reformers, St. Thomas teaches that grace makes us to be actually good. It is not merely the removal of a penalty for sin (something extrinsic), but it causes us to cease to be sinful and to be actually good (something intrinsic). Habitual grace and actual grace are the two kinds of sanctifying grace. Referring to what we have said above, both make man pleasing to God and work interiorly to make man to be actually good. This may be the goodness of healing the injuries done to human nature in original sin or the still higher goodness of being elevated toward the supernatural end.

Habitual Grace

Habitual grace, also referred to by the more generic name ‘sanctifying grace,’ acts as the foundation for the Christian life and all accompanying graces. As such, habitual grace is grace spoken of most properly. It is the grace that is most important, the principle of the Christian life in this world, and the root of Heaven which the Christian already begins to taste in this life. The Catechism defines habitual grace as “the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call” (CCC 2000). The word “habit” refers to a disposition, a way of living, or a general characteristic by which a thing is known. Thus, habitual grace gives a new, Christian mode of living in which everything is ordered to faith in and love for God.

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that a habit or virtue is judged to be more or less excellent depending upon how great is the end to which it is ordered. A habit of brushing one’s teeth is good, but the habit of forgiving one’s enemies is even better. Habitual grace is man’s ordering and means toward his highest and most final end: the Beatific Vision. As such, habitual grace is the highest grace.

As the name suggests, habitual grace is a habit within the soul. Unlike actual graces, which are transitory assistance from God, habitual grace persists within the soul as the principle and source of the Christian life as well as the foundation for the ongoing purification and sanctification of the soul. St. Thomas asserts that grace is a quality and acts as a formal cause. This is because it imparts an ongoing, persistent quality to the recipient just as the form of whiteness makes a thing to be white (i.e., to have the quality of justice, when received, makes a thing to be just). Thus, this form is something created in the soul that gives to man the quality of a likeness to God (one higher and nearer in likeness to God than even the imago Dei of human nature). This form is not God Himself but rather a medium through which a likeness to God is given and which acts upon the preexisting nature of man.

We must emphasize that this likeness as a created form is forming the very man himself, including his human nature. In this sense, although grace comes from without, its effects are interior to man and are a true elevation and perfection of his very self, causing him to be and to act in a holy manner. They are neither some alien or possessing power within him nor a mere extrinsic change of status or legal standing.

Receiving the gift of habitual grace is also referred to by the term ‘justification’ because this grace is that which moves one from being unjust to just in reference to God (i.e., from being in rebellion against God to being in right relation to Him). Justification is accompanied by the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), which now take root in the soul.{29}

Scripture speaks about justification and habitual grace through many analogies: becoming a member of the Body of Christ, being grafted onto the vine of Christ, becoming an adopted son of the Father, etc. What is clear through these analogies is that it is the ongoing, graced habit within the soul that turns the Christian toward God and orders him to an increasing sanctification as he approaches the Beatific Vision at the end of this life. It is also clear that habitual grace, like all grace, is from the Father, through the salvific work of the Son, and bestowed by the Spirit. Moreover, habitual grace is not merely some good within the soul but occasions the very indwelling of the Spirit Himself within the soul of the Christian.

It ought not to be surprising, given the above, that habitual grace is bestowed via the sacrament of Baptism, the initiation into the Church and the Christian life. Once received, habitual grace is kept until abandoned by the Christian in apostasy or mortal sin. In this way, we may call habitual grace quasi-permanent. It is not a passing movement within the soul but a form that shapes it in an ongoing manner and is meant to be received once and for all. Being ongoing, it is given to be permanent and, from the viewpoint of God, will always be given. Yet, from the point of view of man, it can be cast out (but also regained through penitence and the forgiveness of sin).

Because the habit imparted by habitual grace does not change human nature essentially, the habit is said to be “accidental.” This does not mean that it is unimportant. Rather, it infinitely elevates and perfects humanity, but it does so without obliterating humanity.{30} If the essential form of humanity were lost, then grace would annihilate human nature rather than perfect and elevate it. Yet, that in which the soul in a state of grace participates is the very life of God, or as St. Thomas has said it, “partaking in the divine nature.” St. Thomas likewise clarifies that “what is substantially in God, becomes accidental in the soul participating the Divine goodness.”{31} In other words, what habitual grace puts into the soul is the very life of God, but the Christian does not become God in receiving this life. He does not cease to be a human being, a Christian, a creature, etc. Rather, he participates in or partakes within himself (as a creature with all of his particularities) the life of God. Whereas God has His life from Himself and indeed is His own life, the Christian possesses the life of God within himself but as from another. What is for God His very being is for His creatures a profound gift. Through grace, however, rational creatures are really able to know the being, truth, and goodness of God himself.

It ought to be noted that some theologians prefer to say that habitual grace imparts a quality rather than a habit (two distinct categories of being, according to Aristotle).{32} The reason for this is that, in brief, the Aristotelian tradition from which the very definitions of “habit” and “quality” are derived does not speak of habits as being purely passive. In other words, for Aristotle, all habits give the one with the habit a disposition or proclivity to act in a certain way (e.g., a prudent man is defined, qua prudent, according to his inclination to act with prudence). Yet, St. Thomas thought that habitual grace was unlike this philosophical definition of habit because it imparted a form, quality, or “certain spiritual existence” that was not itself ordered toward any particular action.{33} This is not to say that the Christian is not given an inclination toward supernatural acts. But those inclinations are precisely what we call the gifts of infused virtue (the theological virtues, the infused natural virtues, etc.) As such, habitual grace names an entitative habit, i.e., a habit of being rather than of acting which itself is the foundation for the corresponding gifts of habits of acting (i.e., graced virtues).

The categories discovered by philosophy do not perfectly correspond to the supernatural reality that is grace. This should not surprise us, for the categories of quality and habit within philosophy speak only to those things that can be acquired and therefore cannot fully comprehend the realities that are given from above the natural order. Still, the term ‘habitual’ is used to refer to this kind of grace because the quality imparted by habitual grace is very much like a habit. Many qualities are transitory (being hungry, being tan, etc.), but this quality is quasi-permanent, as it imparts a kind of life to the soul that terminates in the very essence of the soul. This quality will not be lost unless it is forcibly removed by the Christian through grave sin.

Finally, habitual grace is to be distinguished from the theological and other infused virtues. Because these virtues require habitual grace, some theologians have conflated them. But, by definition, a virtue perfects a preexisting nature or power. In scholastic terminology, we differentiate between first and second act. For example, first one possesses a will, and then one perfects the will through virtuous action. First one acquires the skill of painting (first act), and then one goes about actually painting a particular work (second act). Although will and virtuous action are intimately linked, possessing a will and willing well are clearly distinct realities. So too is it different to be a great painter at rest and a painter actually painting. Just as the acquired virtues perfect preexisting, natural, human life, so too do the infused virtues perfect preexisting supernatural life, and this supernatural life is habitual grace in the soul. As such, St. Thomas argues that habitual grace perfects the very soul of the Christian, whereas infused virtues perfect individual powers of the soul (e.g., charity perfects the will).{34} Thus, habitual grace is distinct from the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, but it is their principle and makes receiving these virtues possible.

Actual Grace

As with habitual grace, actual graces are sanctifying since they perfect the one who receives these graces. Yet, whereas habitual grace is a quasi-permanent quality, forming the soul, actual graces are transitory movements of the soul. The Catechism says that actual graces “refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification” (CCC 2000). St. Thomas defines actual grace as the motion whereby “man’s soul is moved by God to know or to will or to do something.”{35} In other words, actual grace is a divine motion moving the Christian from potentially acting to actually acting. This acting includes movements of the intellect (e.g., correctly judging that an elder ought to be helped in crossing the street), interior movements of the will (e.g., willing to help an elder across the street), and exterior movements of the will (e.g., actually helping the elder cross the street). We see this confirmed by Pope Celestine I: “God thus operates in the hearts of men and in the free will itself, so that a holy thought, a pious plan, and every motion of good will is from God.”{36} In other words, habitual grace gives us the foundation of being oriented toward God while actual graces move us in particular and concrete ways forward, causing us to grow in sanctification step-by-step through individual actions as we approach nearer and nearer to the holiness of God. It is not enough that we have supernatural life within us, providing the potency and disposition toward the supernatural good. We must also be moved by God to do the good, since having a disposition toward a thing and possessing a thing are distinct. Thus, both habitual grace and actual grace are absolutely essential for living the Christian life.

Actual graces are sometimes called “immediate.” This does not mean that they cannot be mediated by other agents between God and man (e.g., the Blessed Mother), nor does it mean that actual graces may not be occasioned by external graces such as hearing the Gospel being proclaimed. Rather, “immediate” in this context means that the motion isn’t mediated by a natural, human mode of acquisition. Fr. John Hardon puts this well:

The grace is called immediate because it does not arise by means of purely natural causation, such as would be inherent in the native powers of the soul or as God supplies by the general concursus He gives to all secondary causes. God enters the faculty in a special and gratuitous manner, so that the mind or will are now able to produce acts that are essentially superior to anything a man could perform naturally and without such divine influx.{37}

While we often speak of actual graces within the context of habitual grace, actual graces may indeed be received by those who are not in a state of grace, something explicitly confirmed at the Council of Trent.{38} Not all good action which surpasses the condition of the human agent here and now requires the antecedent state of habitual grace. For example, one who has lost the state of habitual grace on account of mortal sin is moved by an actual grace when he repents, when he confesses his sins, etc. Similarly, one who has not yet converted and become justified may, nevertheless, begin to move away from sin and toward natural virtue. Although these actions are not meritorious in themselves (because they are not actions animated by the love of God, which can only be possessed in the state of habitual grace), they nevertheless move one away from sin and in greater proximity to God. As we indicated earlier, without God, man will inevitably succumb to disorder. Without God, man is capable only of forfeiting goodness rather than acquiring it. Thus, the acquiring of goodness, especially the movement away from sin when one is in a state of sin, must be attributed first and foremost to God and His gift of actual grace.

Actual graces move us to move ourselves toward some good action. The question of how grace (particularly actual grace) relates to human freedom is one which theologians have debated for centuries. We will look at that question in greater detail below.

VIII. Justification

Actual graces are ordered toward the goods of justification and sanctification. Justification refers to an effect of grace whereby one is made just in his relation to God, moving away from sin and into friendship with Him. Justification is also referred to as being “made righteous.” The Catechism defines justification in this way: “The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us ‘the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ’ and through Baptism” (CCC 1987). Thus, in justification we see two primary effects: the removal of sin and being made holy.{39} St. Augustine, the Doctor Gratiae, says, “For what else does justified mean but made righteous by the one, of course, who justifies sinners (Rom 4:5), so that from sinners they become righteous?”{40} Classically, justice is giving to another his due or the condition of things being in right relation to each other. St. Thomas affirms that “justice, by its nature, implies a certain rectitude of order.”{41} For St. Augustine, sin is principally defined as a loss of proper ordering, both external and internal. Man has a proper place before God as creature to Creator, servant to master, etc. Upon this primary or foundational ordering, all other ordering hangs or falls, such that to be out of order in our relation to God (something brought about by the sin of Adam and Eve) brings all of our other relations crashing down like a house of cards.{42} When we are out of sorts with God, then we are out of sorts with our family and with our fellow citizens. The disorder is felt even within, as the body and soul are in improper relation (the passions vs. reason, etc.). As such, justification is a reordering of man to God and thus a setting to rights of all the other aspects of our life.{43} St. Thomas defines justification in precisely the same way, saying that “the transmutation [transmutatio] whereby anyone is changed by the remission of sins from the state of ungodliness to the state of justice . . . is called ‘justification of the ungodly.’”{44} Justification thus cleanses us from our sin, removing the obstacle to holiness and beginning the process of our interior transformation and growth in holiness. Moreover, justification takes place in one instant and is, therefore, not successive. While the holiness that proceeds from justification is successive, the infusion of habitual grace takes place all at once. It does not admit of degrees as do holiness, perfection, and sanctification.{45}

What is the cause of the remission of sins? For St. Augustine and St. Thomas, it is clear that the cause is the infusion of grace into the soul, specifically habitual grace. By this grace, a man is made pleasing to God on account of his now being properly ordered toward God and thus toward holiness. For sins to be remitted, man must make a movement of the will away from sin. If this were not so, then a man could be counted just and his sins remitted while he remains in sin and rebellion before God. This would be patently absurd. As such, justification brings it about that the created will loves and inclines itself toward God’s justice and hates and averts itself from sin.{46} Pace the Protestant reformers, justification begins a real interior transformation and is not merely an extrinsic denomination or imputation of justice. In other words, justification is not merely a legal status but the root and beginning of the sanctification of the sinner.

While the theological virtues are distinct graces from justification, justification is nevertheless accompanied by these graces. “With justification, faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts” (CCC 1991). However, faith is said to precede the gift of justification because faith is that by which man’s mind is moved to God.{47} St. Thomas says: “Faith and charity imply a special directing of the human mind to God by the intellect and will; whereas justice implies a general rectitude of order. Hence this transmutation is named after justice rather than after charity or faith.”{48} In order for the soul to be turned to God, man’s highest and most directive power of the intellect must see God and must see Him as He truly is in Himself, believing in His existence and goodness. Indeed, it would be strange to think that man’s sins could be forgiven and that he could be turned toward friendship with God if he does not even believe that God exists, that He is Triune, etc. Analogously, I cannot be turned toward friendship with a man about whom I know nothing.{49} While this first bestowal of faith (initium fidei), an operative grace, is distinct from and prevenient to the grace of justification, nevertheless, in the next instant, charity is bestowed to perfect faith, hope to perfect desire, and the habitual grace of justification and righteousness flows into the soul. Thus, while these are distinct graces with distinct effects in the soul, they nevertheless accompany one another, at least until the soul departs from charity and habitual grace through mortal sin.

As we have already mentioned, justification is an operative grace. St. Augustine is clear that “works do not precede justification”{50} but rather are “by God’s gift.”{51} Moreover, “[Justification] is given not because we have done good works but so that we might be able to do them, that is, not because we have fulfilled the law but in order that we might be able to fulfill the law.”{52} As with all operative graces, this does not mean that the will does not consent to the reception of the grace of justification;{53} however, the will is not itself a cause of the effect of the grace. As such, man cannot be said to merit justification (in any proper sense) through, say, naturally virtuous acts.{54} Justification is “merited for us by the Passion of Christ,” which is bestowed upon the Christian in a radically free act of God. It is a gift, not a payment.

Finally, we ought to state what is the relation between justification and the sacraments. As will be addressed below, the sacraments are instrumental causes of grace. Baptism is that sacrament whereby sins are remitted, man is joined to Christ as a member of His Body, and he begins to become a friend of God. As such, Baptism is an instrumental cause of justification and habitual grace, with God working through the sacrament as primary cause.{55} St. Thomas names “inward justification” (interior iustificatio) as the res tantum of the sacrament.{56} Faith, which must precede Baptism (at least in adults), can thus be said to be a certain necessary condition for justification, insofar as justification is bestowed by Baptism (normatively Baptism by water), and Baptism presupposes faith.{57} Moreover, it would seem that justification can be received even before Baptism in the case of adult catechumens.{58} In this case, sacramental Baptism confirms and deepens the justification already received through anticipatory desire. Yet, Confession too is an instrumental cause of justification. “The whole power of the sacrament of Penance consists in restoring us to God’s grace and joining us with him in an intimate friendship” (CCC 1468). Baptism and Confession are then the two sacramenta mortuorum, the sacraments of the spiritually dead, precisely because they bring about the remission of sins, i.e., justification, and the influx (whether for the first time or in return) of the life of habitual grace. As St. Thomas says, “In baptism forgiveness of sins is effected . . . and similarly, the forgiveness of sin is the effect of Penance.”{59}

IX. Merit

Can man earn grace as a reward for good works? This is the question of merit, which arose principally during the Middle Ages. As scholastic theologians contemplated St. Augustine’s claim, contra the Pelagians, that man’s merits are really God’s gifts,{60} it became clear that a strict or legal notion of merit as “earning payment” could not be applied to a theological understanding of grace. This consideration gave rise to varied ways of defining merit, including a significant debate between the disciples of St. Thomas Aquinas and the disciples of William of Ockham regarding whether human action is judged by inherent value or the good pleasure of God. This debate formed the backdrop of the years leading up to the Reformation, which in its own right saw the relation of merit, human works, and salvation as a fundamental concern.{61}

Scripture seems to be full of the language of punishment and reward. If the commandments of God are fulfilled, then blessings shall follow. This is solidified in Christ’s teaching of the Beatitudes. Yet, as we saw with the Church’s corrective to Pelagianism, grace is always a gratuitous gift from God, and we do not earn grace such that we distinguish ourselves. Nor can it be said that grace is caused—in an initiating or ultimate manner—by our good actions. Rather, as we have seen, our good actions are caused by grace. Are the Scriptures promoting Pelagianism?

In order to see how they are not, the Church has proposed important distinctions between differing, analogous senses of the term merit. The first and most proper sense of merit is called condign merit (merit de condigno). Something merited condignly is something merited truly, i.e., in justice. When one is employed, one earns one’s wage. The employer’s payment of that wage to the employee is not a gift. If payment is withheld, there is an injustice committed precisely because payment is due to the worker in justice. While there are many questions and difficulties regarding the value of labor that we do not wish to go into here, it suffices to say that what makes a wage just is not merely determined by contract or consent. Rather, good work (not donated by the worker) brings with it intrinsically a certain payment based upon the work done and because of the dignity of the laborer. Again, the work here demands just the payment bestowed because of its intrinsic value.

Similarly, merit in the strictest sense requires a certain equality between the one meriting and the one obliged to reward. This does not mean that, for example, the employer and worker or the king and the citizen are exactly the same in economic, political, or cultural stature. However, they do exist in a reciprocal relation where duties and obligations are placed on both of them in reference to the other. Although he may be king, he remains under an obligation to his citizens and they to him. Neither transcends those obligations, and both feel the push and pull, as it were, of their mutual relation.

Yet, there is another, less strict way to speak about condign merit, i.e., condign merit secundum quid or condign merit “in a certain sense.” Payment is sometimes received not from strict justice (i.e., neither on account of the intrinsic value of the work done nor because of an equality between the two parties), but rather on account of some contingent promise made by the one rewarding the work. Relatedly, the work done is not equal to the reward but is given only on account of an ordination or promise that there is to be some connection between work and reward. Take, for example, an employer giving out a Christmas bonus. This payment is most properly a gift of the employer which is not owed in justice, although it is meant to be a sign of appreciation and thus has a certain fittingness if the worker is a good one. If one employer pays a just wage to a worker (condign merit simpliciter), and another employer pays less, we would say that the latter fails in justice. Yet, if one employer provides a Christmas bonus (condign merit secundum quid) and another does not, we would not say that the latter is unjust (though we might recognize the greater benevolence of the former employer).

However, if a promise is made, the reward following upon the work will take on a certain sense of justice. Imagine that an employer promises a Christmas bonus to the worker who takes the fewest sick days in the office. The employer is under no obligation to give this gift, and the “work” of taking the fewest sick days is not itself due any payment (over and above the just salary). Yet, if after making the promise to give out this bonus, the employer then decides later to withhold it without good reason, it would be intelligible for the worker to express some frustration. The worker is justified in seeing the bonus as a kind of right, though only suppositionally (i.e., on account of the promise and not on account of the work itself). The “right” of the worker to the bonus is thus different from the right of the worker to his just pay. Although we indeed use the word “right” in relation to both, we do so analogously. The employer who needlessly withholds the bonus is indeed discourteous and unjust in a sense, but the employer who withholds a just wage is a criminal. It should not be surprising, then, that the sense of justice which undergirds condign merit in the strict sense is justice taken in the strict sense (iustitia simpliciter), while the justice which undergirds condign merit secundum quid is iustitia secundum quid.

How do these different senses of justice relate to the question of meriting grace, particularly the most important grace of eternal life? Drawing on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church teaches that man does not and cannot merit grace according to condign merit simpliciter; yet man can be said to merit grace condignly secundum quid, on account of God’s gratuitous promise “to associate man with the work of [God’s] grace.”{62}

Man cannot be said to merit grace in the most proper sense because neither of the criteria necessary for condign merit simpliciter outlined above is met in this case, i.e., equality between the parties and equality in value between the work and the reward. First, God is not an equal with man. He does not exist within a society with men where there is a mutual push and pull between both parties. Rather, God radically transcends men and cannot be bound to owe anything to man as if He were in some sense a debtor to him.{63} Indeed, God is under no obligation even to create mankind in the first place. Thus, St. Thomas says, “Between God and man there is the greatest inequality: they are infinitely apart, and all man’s good is from God. Hence there can be no justice of absolute equality between man and God.”{64} Second, even the meritorious acts of the greatest saint do not equal the value of eternal life, which is God Himself. Though such acts participate in God’s very goodness, they do not equal it.{65} Therefore, the reward given to meritorious acts always retains the fundamental note of gift. St. Augustine says that man’s merit is “grace given on account of grace” and that “when God crowns our merits, he crowns his own gifts.”{66} One might say that it is gifts all the way down, and thus strict recompense does not enter into the picture. To whatever extent God can be said to “owe” a reward to man, this “debt” is not really owed to man but rather God owes it to Himself to keep His already gratuitous promise. Therefore, man does not and cannot merit grace simply. In this way, the condemnations of the Pelagians remain true: if man cannot make God have to give him grace, then all grace that he receives remains fundamentally and truly gratuitous.

The second kind of condign merit, however, does apply to man’s supernatural acts. Because God has promised to reward men for acting in accord with His revealed law, there is a certain sense of justice and correspondence between the acts and the reward, albeit only on the supposition of God’s promise.{67} As Garrigou-Lagrange puts it, our merit “implies a value not equal to the reward, but proportionate to it, according to a divine ordination and promise, without which promise there would be no strict right.”{68}

Yet what does it mean to say that, on the supposition of God’s promise, man’s supernaturally good acts are “proportionate” to the reward? Although there is not strict equality between graced meritorious acts and the reward of the Beatific Vision, their relation is neither totally arbitrary nor extrinsic either. Between these two extremes—total equality in value and absolutely no relation in value—there falls a middle position: man’s good acts fall short of earning the reward of eternal life, but they have a kind of real and intrinsic relation to that reward nonetheless. This point seems to distinguish the majority understanding of condign merit (held by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, William of Auxerre, and many others){69} from that of John Duns Scotus, for whom the ordination or acceptatio of God to “count” meritorious acts toward their reward was totally extrinsic, with the work and the reward being not just unequal but totally unalike.{70} But for St. Thomas, since supernatural acts flow forth from habitual grace, which we have already stated is itself a formal participation in God’s very own life, there is an intrinsic relation between the meritorious act and the reward of eternal life. This intrinsic fittingness allows for the sense of proportionality (even if not equality) between meritorious acts and eternal reward. It is fitting that, for greater acts, i.e., acts more closely conforming to the shape of the reward of eternal life, a greater reward is given. This is the proportion.{71} Journet says:

Can there be any proportion between what we give him—we who have received all we possess from him—and the supreme gifts of his grace and his love? Not, indeed, if we are left to ourselves and our own efforts. But yes, there is, if he sets in us the sap of his grace and love and asks us to make it bear fruit in still further grace and love . . . If I give this assent, uttered here in time and penetrated by the light of divine grace, it leads me toward my final end, entrance into heaven; it makes me fit to enter heaven, and when I do, it bears its normal fruit, it “merits” my entry into heaven. It is my own assent, my own merit . . . . But it is due even more to God than to me.{72}

As in the case of the Christmas bonus given to the employee who has taken the least number of sick days, there is a certain fittingness between the act and the reward. The reward is somehow related to the work done as opposed, for example, to a situation wherein the Christmas bonus is awarded to whichever employee wears the color green most often. In this latter case, there is no real connection between the nature of the act (wearing green) and the reward.

St. Thomas likens the promise to that of adopting a son. Once the adoption has taken place, the adopted is able and truly does take on the acts proper to a son, e.g., caring for the father, having responsibility for the family, etc. Thus the Christian, “being made a partaker of the Divine Nature, is adopted as a son of God, to whom the inheritance is due by right of adoption, according to Rm. 8:17: ‘If sons, heirs also.’”{73} This sonship is not owed but is a gift of adoption; yet, the acts of the adopted, through the gratuity of adoption, take on a certain right to inheritance.

X. Infused Virtues, Theological Virtues, and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Meritorious acts are rooted in the soul’s being justified before God and being disposed by the theological virtues to act in ways that are ordered to eternal life. As we have already indicated, justification and habitual grace are accompanied by virtues that perfect the Christian life and aid man in growing closer to God. Primarily, these habits that accompany habitual grace fall into three categories: the infused virtues, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Virtue and Vice

In general, virtues are habits that incline us to act in some specific—and perfective—way. If we are inclined to act well, we call this habit a virtue. If we are inclined to act poorly (i.e., in a defective or disordered manner), this habit is called a vice. We can distinguish virtues according to the mode by which they are obtained. If some virtue pertains to man’s natural end, and we are not greatly hindered by sin and concupiscence, this virtue is called “acquired” because we can cause ourselves (under the causality of God’s natural auxilium) to acquire it. For example, if I am not always punctual, I might make a resolution to begin showing up to things on time. I might set alarms and keep a better calendar. Over time, with repeated punctual actions, I will have developed a habit of punctuality, which will make being on time something I do easily and often. Just as repetitive motions in sports train the mind and the body to perform well in competition, so do similar good acts train the will to act well. Such virtues that we cause in ourselves through repetition and which pertain to our natural end are called acquired virtues. The chief acquired moral virtues are the cardinal virtues: temperance, prudence, justice, and fortitude.

But those habits that pertain to our supernatural end cannot be acquired merely by naturally good acts. Because these habits transcend our natural power, they must be infused in us by God as a gift of grace.

Theological Virtues

The theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) are also infused in us by God. The Catechism says, “They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life” (CCC 1813). The theological virtues are permanent rather than passing graces, and they remain in the soul while habitual grace remains. The theological virtues are distinct from habitual grace but flow from it as their principle. The theological virtues are not bestowed outside of habitual grace since they orient the soul toward God as friend. Just as habitual grace elevates man (accidentally) in his being, so do the theological virtues elevate man in his actions. The theological virtues have as their end the inner life of God, i.e., God as He is in Himself (rather than, for example, as First Cause).

Faith is a perfection of the mind, ordering it toward God as He knows Himself, i.e., as He truly is in Himself. Natural faith (e.g., that atoms exist or that a movie recommended by a trusted friend will be a good one) has for its object things that are knowable to human reason but are not currently known with certainty. No one says that he has faith that 2 + 2 = 4. Yet there are many things that I do not know with certainty and yet are known with certainty by others, and to hold these things as true requires a natural faith in those who know more. But the theological virtue of faith is a habit by which we believe as true those things that transcend what reason alone can glean from the world. The objects of theological faith are supernatural; in truth, theological faith believes—and knows—something precisely because God has revealed it to us. Most of the time, God reveals supernatural, “hidden truths” about the inner life and being of God Himself—things inaccessible to the natural reach of human reason. Reason is capable of knowing certain things about God, e.g., that He exists and is the cause of all things, etc. But it is only through God’s self-revelation that man can know of the interior mysteries of God (e.g., that He is three Persons in one divine nature or that Jesus Christ is truly a divine Person, etc.). Just as natural faith must rest on some natural authority, so does theological faith rest on the authority of God as the one revealing and revealed. “Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself” (CCC 1814).

Faith can exist apart from habitual grace. We have already indicated that faith can precede the gift of justification and habitual grace. It is also true that when one falls into mortal sin, one does not necessarily cease to believe what God has revealed. Yet, “when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body” (CCC 1815). Because charity is lost in mortal sin and because charity is “the form of faith insofar as the act of faith is perfected and formed by charity,”{74} faith in the state of sin is a lifeless faith. This faith ceases to merit eternal life and is not animated by a love of God. Ultimately, believing in that which is true is of little consequence if the believer does not love the truth. Yet, lifeless faith becomes reanimated by charity the instant that the sinner repents and confesses his sins—as if resuscitated by God’s grace.

We have said that faith perfects the intellect, but it also requires a movement of the will. St. Thomas says faith is “to think with assent.”{75} This general definition applies to both natural and supernatural faith. In many cases, the intellect knows something to be true, as in the case of 2 + 2 = 4. But in many other cases, the intellect does not know whether some claim is true, at least not with certainty. We might have good reason to believe that atoms exist, but without firsthand sense experience or demonstrative knowledge of their existence, we are left, so to speak, hanging in the middle between knowledge of their existence or knowledge of their nonexistence. Belief or faith, then, is to “cleave firmly to one side,” i.e., to hold something as true, almost as if we were to know it with certainty, yet not on account of certain knowledge but rather on account of the authority of another or on the greater probability of a thing’s being true, etc. This is where the will plays its necessary role in faith. When the intellect cannot itself break the tie, as it were, between holding something to be true or holding it to be false, the will moves the intellect to pick a side. In the case of supernatural faith, the will inclines the intellect, under the aid of grace, to cleave to the revealed truths of the Faith as true, on account of the authority of the one revealing, the credibility of the Church, and other motives for belief.

Faith comes before hope and charity, not necessarily in time, but insofar as faith is a kind of necessary foundation for hope and charity. Faith holds as true those things that the will is inclined toward in hope and charity. As such, without belief that what God has revealed is true, there cannot be love for what God has revealed, nor can there be hope in what He has revealed. If I do not believe that a rescue party is being sent to find me, it would simply be nonsensical to say that I have hope in my being rescued by that party.

Hope is “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). The object of hope is eternal life which is the enjoyment of God Himself.{76} Since sin, disease, heartbreak, and death seem sometimes to surround us in this life, it can be easy to be tempted to despair, both in this life and in our attaining true and lasting happiness in the life to come. Even in its natural counterparts, hope pertains to a desire for something that is not easy to attain. Under normal circumstances, we do not say that we hope that we will be able to make a sandwich for lunch because there is no probable reason why we might not be able to do so. But we do say that we hope for things like getting a job offer or publishing a book because these are goods that are difficult to attain. Similarly, the supernatural good of eternal life and friendship with God can often feel difficult to attain, and thus hope is that virtue which fills us with a real expectation, even in the most difficult moments, to see the place where “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain” (Rev 21:4). Once the Christian comes to believe in such a place, he cannot help but to desire it. Just as faith perfects the intellect by ordering it to God, so does hope perfect, elevate, and steady the desire that flows naturally from knowledge of so great a good.

If faith is supernatural knowledge and hope supernatural desire, then charity is supernatural willing and loving. Charity is “the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (CCC 1822). While hope is a desire reaching to God, especially under the aspect of the goods that we shall receive from Him (principally, eternal life), charity is a selfless love, considering and loving God not merely for what He can do for us but just because He is, in Himself, infinitely loveable.{77} This does not mean that charity excludes hope, but it reaches out to God under a different ratio, that is, not insofar as God can take away our tears but insofar as, apart from such personal goods, we wish for God to be. Similarly, we may conceive of the goods that we procure from marriage or friendship for ourselves and yet also distinguish this from our desiring the good of our beloved, irrespective of what I might gain from them.

Love is the will’s reaching out to a thing that the intellect judges to be good. The degree and perfection of love, then, is determined by the goodness of the thing loved. We might say that we love pizza and that we love a spouse, but clearly these are different loves on account of their very different objects. Charity is the love with which God loves Himself. It is the highest and purest form of love possible, for here the will reaches out toward not just some object with goodness but to Goodness itself. Because charity is most properly that virtue which unites us with God, it is the most excellent of all virtues.{78} “So faith, hope, and love remain; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). Not only is it the height of virtue, but it is also the very foundation and form for all true and perfect virtue since by it man is made one with God. Thus, with charity, all other subordinate virtues are ordered to this highest good and happiness and, without it, all virtues fail to attain the highest good and man’s most final end. As St. Thomas says, charity sets the form of man’s supernatural end upon all lower virtues and directs all virtues to it.{79} Thus, if virtue in general is oriented toward happiness and the good, that virtue which most properly gives man the highest good and perfect happiness is the very foundation and apotheosis of virtue itself.

Charity can and ought to increase in this life through the gifts of God’s grace and the meritorious acts of the Christian life. An increase in charity is nothing other than a movement closer and closer to God, being made more and more like the object of our love, just as an object is heated more and more as it approaches nearer to fire.

A sign of the sublimity of charity is that, in the Beatific Vision, even faith and hope are no longer necessary. But charity remains. Faith as a belief in things unseen gives way to knowledge of that which is seen, clearly and distinctly, and without the possibility of doubt. Similarly, hope is replaced with happiness when the thing sought for is finally achieved. But love is not replaced when moving from imperfection (our love of God in this life) to perfection (our love of God in the life to come), just as the love between spouses or friends is not done away with but perfected and consummated in their being together. As habitual grace is often described as the “seed of glory,” charity is the throughline from being a wayfarer to being at rest in the Beatific Vision. Charity is not exchanged for something else when we reach beatitude, as if it were merely instrumental. Rather, it is the principle of beatitude, which is heightened and deepened in heaven. Therefore, the charity in us now is already a real foretaste and current participation in eternal life. If charity is our very union with God, which shall last for all eternity, then charity shall last forever.

Infused Moral Virtues

We have already stated above that, by nature, man can acquire the natural virtues. Yet these natural virtues must be transformed in some way if they are to be elevated (along with the man who has them) to a supernatural end. The Catechism states, “Human virtues acquired by education, by deliberate acts and by a perseverance ever-renewed in repeated efforts are purified and elevated by divine grace.”{80}

The cardinal virtues are necessary for salvation since natural integrity and virtue are a means to supernatural life. You cannot be a saint and yet be an imperfect man (morally speaking), since sainthood requires more than mere natural perfection. Because grace perfects human nature, natural virtue is a necessary (although not sufficient) good for communion with God.

Yet, acquired, natural virtues (such as the cardinal virtues) have as their end man’s natural end. Since man is elevated to a higher, supernatural end, his natural virtue must also be elevated to his supernatural end.{81} The supernatural end reveals and imposes a higher rule or measure regarding what constitutes a truly virtuous act, and this rule renders the virtue capable of bringing forth acts that aid man in attaining the higher end of the divine life. For example, by natural temperance, man eats for the sake of and as measured by the natural good of the health of the body. By this rule, man eats neither beyond his need and hunger nor beneath it. Yet, the infused virtue of temperance orders man to eat in view of beatitude. As such, the infused virtue of temperance does not so much dictate that man eat until he is reasonably full, but it dictates that man should sometimes abstain from food as an act of penance, even when he is reasonably hungry. This is so because infused temperance is, so to speak, a supernaturalized, Christianized form of temperance, which seeks first and foremost the supernatural good of the soul before the natural good of the body. As with the general axiom that grace perfects and does not destroy nature, the infused virtues do not directly contradict the natural good, but they direct man’s actions by a higher and more divine rule. St. Thomas says clearly that “both acquired and infused temperance [for example] moderate desires for pleasures of touch, but for different reasons.”{82} Both the soldier and the martyr share fortitude, but it is clear that the martyr has both the natural fortitude of the soldier and yet also a radically more divine courage.

For some theologians, habitual grace itself elevates the acquired virtues in this way. With the influx of the life of grace, these virtues that had tended toward some merely natural and human good are elevated to pertain to man’s elevated, supernatural end. For others, like St. Thomas, this elevation requires another set of habits or virtues by which the natural ones are able to serve the supernatural end. Especially in this case, these virtues are referred to as the “infused virtues” as distinct from the theological virtues, although both are infused into the soul by God. The theological virtues are not called “infused virtues” on account of their being singled out and referred to by a special name but, rather, because of their centrality in the spiritual life (just as “man” is an animal but is called by a special name because he is of a much higher importance and perfection than all other animals).

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are also permanent habits or dispositions which aid the Christian in holiness and in his pursuit of beatitude. The Catechism defines them as “permanent dispositions which make man docile in following the promptings of the Holy Spirit” and states that “they complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them.”{83} St. Gregory the Great writes that the gifts are given to those who already have the acquired virtues so that “the same mind may be perfectly fashioned to resist every species of assault.”{84} There are seven gifts: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

If these gifts are permanent habits, do they differ from the infused or theological virtues? This has been a theological question of some dispute. Indeed, John Duns Scotus maintained that the gifts were substantially the same as the theological virtues and were merely aspects or parts of said virtues.{85} Yet, St. Thomas Aquinas argued otherwise, and this has been the more common opinion since his time.

How, then, do they differ? As the Catechism mentions, the gifts are dispositions that make the Christian especially fitted to receive special inspirations, impulses, and excitations from the Holy Spirit Himself. The infused virtues elevate natural virtues to be conducive to man’s supernatural end. The theological virtues elevate man’s intellectual and voluntary powers to God Himself. But in these cases, it is still man and his natural power that are being elevated. Yet, the Christian sometimes comes to receive, as if passively, the knowledge and willing of the infinitely higher, divine Person of the Spirit. The intellect given inspiration by the Spirit sees not according to human reason, not even as elevated, but rather according to Divine Wisdom. The will sometimes receives excitations of such tremendous sublimity that, rather than willing according to an elevated human mode, it instead participates in the Divine Will. If man is capable of such graces, then, St. Thomas tells us, we must have corresponding habits that make our reception of these graces both possible and potent. In order to be set in motion, the thing moved must be capable of receiving the qualities which the mover or bestower wishes to give it, and thus, the better the mover or bestower is, and the better the gift that it wishes to bestow upon the moved, the greater openness and magnitude for reception the receiver must have. A student must have a greater degree of maturity, willingness to learn, solemnity, etc., before he can come to be taught philosophy rather than, say, basic arithmetic. “Thus,” says St. Thomas, “we see that a disciple needs a more perfect disposition in order to receive a higher teaching from his master. Now it is manifest that human virtues perfect man according as it is natural for him to be moved by his reason in his interior and exterior actions. Consequently, man needs yet higher perfections whereby to be disposed to be moved by God.”{86} Moreover, St. Thomas says: “By the theological and moral virtues, man is not so perfected in respect of his last end, as not to stand in continual need of being moved by the yet higher promptings of the Holy Spirit.”{87}

While it is true that man’s supernatural virtues are higher (indeed, infinitely so) than natural virtues, man nevertheless has a kind of total possession of his natural virtues since, being connatural to him, they fall entirely under his control. Yet, the theological virtue of faith is a sort of knowledge possessed only imperfectly, insofar as it exceeds the power and certainty of human reason and man’s nature. In other words, while the theological virtues (and the infused virtues) are more perfect than acquired virtues in themselves, their mode of possession is nevertheless imperfect, whereas the mode by which a man possesses acquired virtues is perfect.{88} As such, the promptings and inspirations of the Spirit fill in, so to speak, that which is lacking, the imperfection of faith, hope, or love that is the result of the object of those virtues transcending the powers in which they are situated. “In the ordering to the supernatural end, to which man’s reason moves him, according to how it is imperfectly informed by the theological virtues, the motion of reason does not suffice, unless it receive in addition the prompting or motion of the Holy Spirit.”{89} John of St. Thomas puts this gracefully:

There is a decided difference in the pursuit of the divine ultimate when it is regulated by human zeal and industry, or even by the infused virtues, and when it is formed according to the rule and measure of the Holy Spirit. For example, although the forward progress of a ship may be the same, there is a vast difference in its being moved by the laborious rowing of oarsmen and its being moved by sails filled with a strong breeze.{90}

The gifts, then, aid and bolster the theological virtues, “not by arousing the theological virtues to an essentially more perfect act,”{91} but by perfecting the mode by which those virtues act, making the Christian pursue God through those virtues in a surer, stabler, and more certain way. Since they serve the theological virtues in this way, the gifts individually serve the powers elevated by those virtues, namely the intellect in its knowledge and the will in its desiring and acting.

Again, the gifts of the Spirit are differentiated from the excitations and movements of the Spirit within us. The gifts are what allow us to receive the special knowledge, counsel, etc. of the Spirit. It is not as if the divine mind of the Spirit replaces our mind in these excitations, but rather the created mind is made to see some truth that goes beyond even what our elevated mind could acquire in the theological virtue of faith. It is to see or to judge not so much with human eyes but with the true vision and wisdom of God as revealed to us.

XI. Sacraments and Grace

The Catechism states that the sacraments “give birth and increase, healing and mission to the Christian’s life of faith” (CCC 1210). By now it should be clear that all of these are the effects of grace. But how do the seven sacraments fit into the economy of grace and salvation? Each of the sacraments was instituted by Christ, and they bestow a sharing in His humanity’s hypostatic union with the divine nature. Journet says it well: “The sacraments flow from the side of Christ . . . . Thus, the sacraments are, as it were, the prolongation of Christ’s humanity, like a mist rising from the earth after rain, spreading over it and making it fertile.”{92}

The recipient of a sacrament shares in a special character or perfection of the Christian life. As such, we can say that the sacraments bestow grace, though not generically. Rather, each sacrament bestows a particular graced effect, with each playing a specific role both in the life of the Church and in the spiritual life of the individual receiving the sacrament.{93}

It is the near-unanimous view of the theologians that sacramental grace is intimately related to habitual grace, either by being 1) exactly the same as sanctifying grace; 2) different modes, strengths, or activities of sanctifying grace; or 3) habits that flow from and perfect sanctifying grace (like the infused virtues or gifts of the Spirit).{94} St. Thomas’s view seems to fall into the second category,{95} with the graced effect of each sacrament being described as incorporation into the Body of Christ,{96} spiritual refreshment, the perfection of the spiritual life,{97} and sometimes even explicitly “sanctifying grace.”{98} This is made even clearer when St. Thomas says that the grace conferred by Confirmation “does not differ from that bestowed in Baptism, but increases what was already there.”{99}

How do sacramental graces differ if they are all some specification or particular strength of habitual grace in general? We have already established how grace mirrors and perfects nature. If habitual grace is a supernatural form of life, then the sacraments can be seen to correspond to different aspects of that supernatural life. In short, Baptism is that sacrament whereby life is given, while Confirmation provides strength and growth to maturity and adulthood. The Eucharist, like food for the body, is that sacrament whereby the spiritual life is renewed and deepened. Penance forgives sins, while Anointing of the Sick prepares the soul for death. Finally, man, and accordingly man’s spiritual life, is intrinsically social. Therefore, he serves others in charity either through Holy Orders (a participation in Christ’s priesthood and the office of the Apostles) or through Holy Matrimony (an elevation of the natural institution of marriage to man’s supernatural end). These are graces which are either aspects of sanctifying grace or buoys to it, each having a particular place in the spiritual life and in the economy of salvation.

Finally, we ought to note that sacraments are themselves causes of grace. To put it more clearly, sacraments are instrumental, efficient causes of grace, with God as grace’s primary cause.{100} In other words, God works through the sacraments such that the sacraments actually cause grace in a way similar to a man using a pen to put ink upon a page. The sacraments are not magic; they cause grace only because and insofar as God causes them to cause grace. Nevertheless, they are real causes and not mere ceremonies, words, or matter that occasion or take place alongside the reception of grace. This is the teaching of St. Thomas,{101} affirmed at the Council of Florence,{102} and ratified and expounded at the Council of Trent,{103} which teaches that sacraments cause grace ex opere operato, i.e., “from the work worked,” or, more loosely, “just by the fact that the sacrament is performed.” 

XII. Historical Debates

Since grace is such a fundamental doctrine of Christian teaching, it is perhaps unsurprising that it has occasioned many theological disputes over the centuries. The major debates, some of which are outlined briefly below, all served the Church in helping to further define and clarify the doctrine.

Pelagianism and St. Augustine

The controversy and condemnation of Pelagianism in the fourth and fifth centuries helped the Church to clarify and purify its understanding of grace and its necessity. Pelagianism, as with all heresies, taught by negation. In this case, it taught what is needed from grace, and it illuminated the great degree of our contingency on it. Pelagius taught that mankind did not need to be healed, elevated, or moved interiorly by grace. Rather, human effort and action alone were sufficient both to avoid sin and to be saved. More specifically, Pelagius claimed that God graces us in two chief ways: by creating us with free will and by giving us the exterior grace of the Gospel. In this way, man may save himself by using his free will well. We follow Jesus Christ merely as an example. His role as savior does not extend beyond showing us how to act and asking the Father for our forgiveness when we sin. Similarly, Adam did not hand humanity over to original sin but was merely a bad role model. For Pelagius, doing good is not a matter of grace working within us to move us to the good but is solely a matter of our choosing between Christ and Adam as exemplars of human behavior.

It is true that, in some sense, this means that man depends upon God for grace and salvation, but only in a kind of accidental, superficial, and merely material way. It is like someone providing woodworking tools and a book of blueprints to a carpenter. These may be important, but it is up to the carpenter alone to use these tools well. Those who provided the tools and blueprint are only remotely related to the acts of the carpenter.

At the outset, we might think that this is precisely how grace works, but a comparison with Scripture reveals the significant error of Pelagius’ position. Indeed, it was primarily Scripture which St. Augustine used to overthrow Pelagianism. In 1 Cor 4:7, St. Paul asks rhetorically, “What do you have that you have not received? But if you have received it, then why do you boast as if you had not received it?” The teaching here is clear: all good that we possess comes from God first and foremost. To whatever degree that we possess goodness of thought or will, it is a gift given to us from God. Moreover, this is not due merely to some pious honor to put God first but rather on account of the recognition that God is the Good, i.e., He is Goodness Itself, and He is the singular source of all goodness. Therefore, any goodness possessed by another is possessed because it has come forth from the singular source and been given to another. As Garrigou-Lagrange put it: “If we deduct from ourselves what we have received from God and what He unceasingly preserves in us, in strictness of terminology, without any metaphor, there is nothing left.”{104}

But if God merely provides the power of the will and gives a blueprint for how to use it, as Pelagius thought, then it is ultimately up to us and to the exclusion of God whether we use it well or poorly. Just as in a carpentry competition, the winners and losers are not determined by the ones providing the tools and rules to all the contestants. The tools and blueprints were given equally to all. In this case, it is the skill (or lack thereof) of the contestants themselves which determines winning and losing, and this skill is of and from the contestants themselves. As such, the winner can say that he has his skill but has not received it. He may, indeed, boast over his winning, since he possesses of himself that which distinguishes him from the other contestants who have not won. To say that this is how men make good or bad use of grace is clearly to contradict the words of St. Paul above. But again, they are not erroneous merely because they take away some honor that ought to be given to God. Rather, to claim that our very good use of grace is up to us and not up to God is to negate the principle that God is the singular source of all goodness and is Goodness Itself. It is a form of intellectual idolatry, making God out to be a being with goodness rather than Goodness Itself. Moreover, the most important part of our goodness, the good use of grace, living the Christian life, etc., would come more from ourselves than from God. Not only does this mean that we place God within the same genus of beings (in relation to goodness) as ourselves, i.e., a being with goodness, but we claim that, upon final analysis, we are the most significant cause in our possessing goodness, and thus, if we are saved, we may truly be said to save ourselves. This final consequence of Pelagianism is, of course, not only erroneous but also blasphemous. As St. Augustine stated, this rejects Jesus Christ as Savior and “does away with the Cross of Christ.”{105}

St. Augustine, therefore, teaches that grace is much more than simply bestowing the power of will and the guidebook of the Gospel. Here again St. Augustine begins with Scripture and St. Paul. “For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). Contrary to the Pelagian notion that performing meritorious works and living the Christian life are up to us, albeit with some divine instruction, Scripture is clear that grace not only teaches but also prepares and causes us to be and to do good. This means that all of the goodness that we possess is given to us as a gratuitous gift from God. Our knowledge of the good, our desire to do the good, the opportunity to do the good, willing the good, and actually accomplishing the good are all caused by gratuitous grace. Contra Pelagius, then, St. Augustine says: “For we are commanded to do these actions, and they are shown to be gifts of God in order that we might understand both that we do them (nos ea facimus) and that God makes us do them (Deus facit ut illa faciamus).”{106}

Thus, as we have said, grace is necessary to have natural virtue in a fallen state, to possess supernatural virtue, to know the good, to love the good, and to do the good. Grace causes us both to will the good and to accomplish it, meaning that grace is not merely dispositive for our goodness but is the very efficient cause of our good and meritorious action. Without grace, salvation and communion with God are utterly impossible. Without grace, man will not do the good. Without grace, man is left to himself in sin and despair.

Yet, our hope rests in God and in God’s mercy. We have hope not because we can do good apart from God but precisely because God has promised to shower us with His grace. Though we do not always want what is best for us, nevertheless He always does. And far from being impotent in making us good, there is no sinful habit or inclination within us that God cannot wipe away with His grace! At first Pelagianism might seem comforting since it puts everything in our hands and takes it out of God’s. But we have every reason to doubt ourselves and every reason not to doubt God’s love for us. Rather than worrying that we may be foiling God’s attempts to bring us back to Himself, we can rest in the reality that there is nothing ugly or rebellious in us that God cannot cure.

Protestantism: Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Justification

While reform movements had existed within the Church for some time, the Protestant Reformation is largely held to have begun in 1517 with Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. The theologies of the Reformers are disparate, and so universal statements regarding a so-called Protestant theology are, at best, generic and oversimplified. Still, the question of justification was certainly at the very heart of the theological project of the Reformation. Indeed, Alister McGrath notes that “the articulus iustificationis is the leading feature of the theology of Martin Luther”{107} while John Calvin called justification the “principal hinge by which religion is supported.”{108} As evidenced in Luther’s five Solae, the priority for the Reformers was to emphasize the primacy of God and His grace (Soli Deo Gloria, Sola gratia, etc.) in all things that touch upon the Christian life; thus, it was especially important to safeguard that primacy in the very principle of the life which is justification. Here one may sympathize with the Reformers who, in a time of true excesses and perversions (such as the infamous selling of indulgences), believed that the Church had strayed from the primacy of God that St. Paul had laid out in Sacred Scripture and which St. Augustine had echoed against the Pelagians. Nevertheless, because of deep-seated confusions regarding divine causality and human freedom, the Reformers fell into error regarding how the primacy of God ought to be maintained. Perhaps ironically, it may even be said that they ultimately reduced the very primacy and sovereignty of God in the process.

McGrath lays out three characteristic features of the Protestant theology of justification, two of which we will consider here. First, justification is said to be forensic. In theology, the term “forensic” means something fairly different from how we tend to use the word in contemporary English. It derives from the Latin adjective forensis, meaning something that pertains to the forum or public space. This meant that it had the connotation of something which pertained to law, as civic law tends most to govern and rule public spaces. Thus, forensic justification is also called “legal justification.” For the Reformers, justification was not about an interior transformation of the sinner but rather the legal status of the sinner before God. McGrath says that “justification is defined as a forensic declaration that believers are righteous, rather than a process by which they are made righteous, involving a change in their status rather than in their nature.”{109} Similarly, a criminal might be pardoned from his punishment. This does not mean that the criminal did not commit a criminal act, nor does it necessitate that the criminal is reformed. Rather, a pardon simply means that the criminal is no longer recognized as a criminal by the state.

This brings us to the second chief characteristic of a Protestant theology of justification: its extrinsic nature. It follows that, if justification is merely legal, it is not something that transforms interiorly but is merely imputed from without. We can see this in Luther’s claim above that Christ’s righteousness is outside (extra) and foreign or alien (aliena) to us. These notions were affirmed and strengthened by later Lutheran theologians such as Philipp Melanchthon.{110}

Nor are these positions exclusive to Luther. John Calvin says that “we therefore interpret ‘justification’ simply as the acceptance by which God receives us in grace and treats us as righteous (qua nos Deus in gratiam receptos pro iustis habet).”{111} Moreover, Calvin maintains that the faith which leads to justification, insofar as it is something in us, is not itself the cause of justification, which must always be attributed to Christ rather than to us, and thus attributed only to something exterior.

Underlying all of these claims is the erroneous position that man’s fall was of such magnitude that human nature itself had become ruined, incapable of any good in or from itself. As we shall see with Baius and Jansen below, this conviction followed from the idea that man’s integrity in original justice was the effect of human nature and not, wholly or even in part, a preternatural grace. The result of this position is that one is compelled to maintain that, when man falls wholly away from original justice, he falls wholly away from human nature. Thus, we have the doctrine of total depravity.{112}

The Council of Trent’s sixth session tackled Protestant theology and justification. We have already seen above how the Church’s position on divine causality and human freedom, justification, and merit answer the objections of the Reformers while simultaneously safeguarding both the primacy of God and the authenticity of human cooperation with God in salvation. Accordingly, it will suffice to consider how Trent responded to the particular characteristics of the Protestant position outlined above. First, Trent maintained that human nature, while weakened, was not totally corrupt, and therefore was not incapable of doing the good. Trent maintains that, even though free will is “weakened and distorted,” nevertheless it is “in no way extinct.”{113} Moreover, the Council condemned the notion that, after sin, the capacity to choose the good is lost.{114} Yet, if man is capable of the good (especially under the aid of grace), then his justification ought to include the very interior rectitude of order that makes man to be truly good and to act well. This means that, though justification comes to the sinner from the exterior principle of God (even as one who is alien to the sinner insofar as he is a sinner), nevertheless, the grace of justification is poured into the very soul of man, transforming him and making him alike to God. Trent said, “Hence, in the very act of justification, together with the remission of sins, man receives through Jesus Christ, into whom he is inserted, the gifts of faith, hope, and charity, all infused at the same time.”{115} These gifts begin to habituate the soul to God, both in the acts of the intellect and in the works of the will. In other words, if man is a thinking and acting being, to be called holy he must be holy in his thinking and acting. It is wholly insufficient for justification to be a legal designation which contradicts or even lies about the reality found in the soul. In other words, Trent rejected Luther’s claim that “whoever is justified is still a sinner.” Rather, whoever is justified is indeed just.{116} And this does not detract from God, for even our good works are first and foremost the gifts of God. Trent said, “Neither is our justice considered as coming from us, nor is God’s justice disregarded or denied; for the justice that is said to be ours because we become just by its inheritance in us is that of God himself, since it is infused in us by God through the merit of Christ.”{117} This is perhaps the most pernicious error at the root of the Protestant mistakes regarding justification: that God is not powerful enough to act interiorly on man and upon his will. For the Reformers, it must be said, God is not powerful enough to make the interior good, to incorporate and save even the interior of man, which is man most proper. Rather, God is consigned to legal manipulation, denominating as good that evil which He is powerless to overcome.

What the Church maintained, however, was the absolute power and efficacy of the divine will along with God’s total sovereignty over his own creation. God’s perfection is not limited to himself but is shared through the very acts of creation and the bestowal of grace. The divine perfection is so absolute that it is able easily to communicate itself even to the interior darkness of man. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).

Mode of Causality: Báñezianism vs. Molinism

Shortly after the conclusion of the Council of Trent, an intra-Catholic debate over divine causality and human freedom began. Theologians across various countries and universities disputed the best answer to the following question: How is it that man retains free choice if grace brings about its effect with certainty? If God causes our good actions, and God’s will is omnipotent and incapable of failing, how does that not impose necessity on graced actions? Trent had condemned the notion that grace moves the will in such a way that the free, human mode of cooperation is removed or overridden.{118} About one hundred years later, Pope Innocent X would explicitly condemn the notion that grace imposed necessity on the created will.{119}

What arose from these debates were, broadly speaking, two distinct schools defined by two distinct answers to this question. These two positions came to be associated with the two major figures of the debate, Domingo Báñez, O.P., and Luis de Molina, S.J., with their respective orders rallying behind each theologian.

The Báñezian position, deeply rooted in the texts of St. Thomas Aquinas, is defined principally by the notion of physical premotion. The doctrine of physical premotion maintains that God moves and causes man to do good acts as an efficient cause. Drawing upon Aristotle’s distinction of act and potency, St. Thomas maintained that all creaturely causation involves the creature going from potentially causing x to actually causing x. Because God is the primary and universal cause, all created causes must receive their causality from God. Just as no creature can exist without constantly receiving being from God, so also no creature can act without being moved from potentially acting to actually acting. Man is called “master of his acts” and a self-mover in relation to other created causes, but it is simply impossible that any creature exist or act apart from God’s bestowal of being or act. Thus St. Thomas says that even man “is not so much master of his acts that he does not need to be moved by God.”{120}

This does not mean that God acts instead of man or that man is not the true cause of his action. Thus, it may be confusing to say that “God causes man to do x”; more properly, we should say that God causes man to cause himself to do x. St. Thomas says, “We need to say that God, since he is the first source of the movement of everything, moves certain things in such a way that they also move their very selves, as in the case of those with the power of free choice.”{121} In more technical terms, the Thomists state that God and His grace are the primary and remote cause of our good actions while we are the secondary and proximate cause of our good actions. Moreover, God and man work together as subordinated causes, which is to say that man acts as the real, efficient cause of his actions, and yet God also causes these actions insofar as man’s doing them is itself caused first by God. In this way, the effect is attributed equally to both causes, although in different ways, just as the ink on the page is attributed both to the hand and to the pen. The pen is the true efficient cause of the effect, yet its very causality is reduced from potentially writing to actually writing by the hand.

On account of the simplicity of God and the omnipotence of the divine will, whenever God moves a creature to do x, that creature will infallibly do x. It is not possible for God truly to will some effect and for the divine will to be frustrated such that the divine will fails. Nevertheless, for St. Thomas and Báñez, what grounds human freedom is not contingency in whether a thing will happen but rather contingency in the mode by which a thing happens. Human nature is ordered toward the universal good, which is God Himself. This means that, by nature, man has a certain indifference in regard to any particular good. There is no necessity of nature that a man chooses any particular good over another. Even when we make a choice and determine ourselves to one particular good, we do not say that it is impossible for us to have done anything other than what we chose. Human regret would be unintelligible if we did not know intuitively that we could have done other than what we did. Unlike, say, an apple tree, which moves by natural necessity to produce apples (as opposed to oranges or cherries), a man is naturally indifferent to any particular act, and thus it is deliberation and choice, rather than nature or instinct, which cause him to do what he does. This means that anything done by free choice is done contingently rather than by necessity. To return to divine causality, St. Thomas holds that God moves things according to their form, i.e., that God moves contingent things contingently and necessary things necessarily. When God moves the apple tree to produce apples, He does this in accord with the nature of an apple tree which, by virtue of its nature, possesses one potency in regard to fruit and thus produces its apples in such a way that it could produce or do nothing else. In regard to man, however, who acts contingently, God causes him to make a house or to write a book in such a way that he retains the potency to have done something else. The man is similar to the tree in that both caused their aforementioned effect (the apple and the book), but the tree caused in such a way that it had to cause and the man caused in such a way that he did not have to cause. Thus, when God, by grace, moves a man to perform some meritorious act, the man retains the natural potency to have done otherwise, even if he didn’t actually do otherwise. This is what it means to say that man’s performance of the meritorious act was contingent and thus free rather than necessary and thus lacking in free choice.

Again, it must be reiterated that when St. Thomas and Báñez teach that “God moves contingent things contingently,” the contingency applies to the mode by which the secondary cause brings forth its effect and not to the question of whether the Divine Will shall be fulfilled. It will certainly be true that whatever God wills will happen; there is no risk that it might not happen, but the way in which it comes about could (although will not) be different.

All of this means that, according to the Báñezian picture, divine causality and human freedom are in no way competitive. Báñezianism leaves no room for the notion that grace is fallible or that sin enters the picture on account of man overcoming or defeating the Divine Will.

The upshot of the Báñezian position is that it clearly follows the Church’s condemnations of Pelagianism and retains the primacy of Divine Grace as well as the immutability of the Divine Will. Yet, some argue that the modal grounding for the contingency of free will is insufficient. Still others argue that this position raises difficulties in regard to evil. If all good actions come first from God, then all sinful actions, though not caused by God, nonetheless have to be permitted by God. This means that God could just as easily have maintained the will in grace and safety from sin.

Molinism is principally defined by the notion of a divine scientia media, or a “middle knowledge” in God. Molina agreed with the Dominicans that there are two modes by which God knows things: prevolitional and postvolitional. God’s being and essence do not depend upon His will, as if it were possible that He not exist or that His essence be other than what it is. These are absolutely necessary truths, and thus they are termed “prevolitional” since they are not contingent upon the divine will (except insofar as the Divine Will is the divine essence itself). The knowledge that God has of the world is postvolitional, however, since created things can either exist or not exist. Insofar as they exist, they could exist differently than how they actually do. Thus, these things are known as they really are, not because they are absolutely necessary, but because God has willed them to be as they are. Therefore, knowledge of these things is postvolitional, because the truth of these things is determined by the Divine Will. Yet, departing from the Dominican position, Molina posited a third mode of Divine Knowledge, one that falls between or in the middle of the other two, hence the term “middle knowledge.” Middle knowledge has for its object things that are contingent and yet are not willed or caused by God. Molina maintained that the free acts of human beings are contingent and yet are prevolitional and are therefore known only according to this middle knowledge.

How, then, does God govern human actions? According to Molina, God knows prevolitionally what each one of us would do in a certain circumstance. If He wants to have a world wherein I take out the trash for my wife, He looks out, as it were, to see which set of circumstances are ones in which I would choose to take out the trash and which sets of circumstances are ones in which I would choose not to do so. If He wants me to take out the trash, then He chooses one of the circumstances in which He foresees (but does not directly cause) me to do so.

Molina maintains that grace is part of the circumstances which God foresees as bringing about this or that created effect. Since God cannot, according to Molina, directly cause our free actions, as Báñez had it, grace cannot act as a real (or “physical”) efficient cause of our free action. Therefore, Molina posited, rather, that grace was a moral or enticing cause, where God petitions or appeals to the will without directly or infallibly moving it (e.g., how a friend asking for a favor is an indirect and fallible cause of your performing the favor).{122} God foresees, then, how a creature will act in differing circumstances, taking into account the natural elements of those circumstances as well as the different extrinsic and moral graces that God could give. If God wishes for me to take out the trash at a given time, then He will providentially arrange the universe such that the combination of natural and supernatural circumstances (graces given) is one of those sets of circumstances in which God foresees that I would indeed take out the trash.

This means that, in contrast to the subordinated causality model of Báñezianism, Molina espoused a coordinated causality model between God and man, or what he called a “simultaneous concurrence.” Whereas, for Báñez, God and man work together in the sense that the primary cause gives causality to the secondary cause, with both acting on their own causal plane or order, Molina’s notion of coordinated causality meant that God and man worked together on the same plane or order. In other words, for the Báñezian Thomist, most properly, what God causes is the act of the created agent while the created agent, acting with the act given to him by God, is the cause of the created effect. God gives me the act whereby I take out the trash, and I, by participating in that act, am the cause of the trash’s actually being taken out. The Báñezian example of the hand and the pen gives way, however, to Molina’s own example of two men rowing a boat. In this case, both agents work directly upon a shared effect. The men each do roughly fifty percent of the work in bringing about the shared effect rather than each doing one hundred percent at different levels of order or from varying accounts. God acts as a moral or enticing cause and the created agent acts as a physical efficient cause, both of them working coordinately to bring about the shared effect. Yet, since God is not directly moving the creature to act, His causality of the effect is distinct from the causality of the created agent, which is not contingent upon the act of the other agent as the pen is contingent upon the hand.

Another difference between these two positions follows from the above. For the Báñezians, grace is intrinsically efficacious. This means that grace always does something to the created agent. Grace is never thwarted by a created will such that it does nothing. Rather, grace always brings about a form, habit, or act in the soul. This is not to say that every good act made possible by some grace actually occurs, but there are no goods which God actually intends and wills to give to the created agent which go unreceived. For example, if God wills for me to take out the trash, then I will indeed take out the trash, on account of God’s omnipotence, simplicity, and His ability to work through secondary causes. It would be impossible that God will x and x not take place. This means that grace is not rendered efficacious by another but comes fully loaded, as it were, with the act that it will produce in the recipient. The Báñezian sees himself as affirming what the Catechism teaches when it says that “the divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man” (CCC 2022).{123}

On the other hand, Molina maintained that grace was not intrinsically efficacious but rather requires the cooperation of the created will to render the grace efficacious (or inefficacious, if the will resists and the grace fails to reach its intended effect). Since grace, for Molina, does not cause the will to move itself but merely entices the will, grace cannot be intrinsically efficacious but must await, as it were, the acceptance or refusal of the created will. In this case, God could actually and truly will for me to do x and yet I may, by my refusal of grace, cause the divine will to fail to produce its effect.

Here we should note a development of Molinism which comes to be known by the name of Congruism. St. Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Suárez were early proponents of this theory. Congruism is not so much a distinct theory from Molinism but rather is a version of it, and indeed it maintains the classic doctrines associated with the latter such as the scientia media, coordinated causality, etc. But Congruism put a stronger emphasis on predestination and particularly the notion that God predestines men before the merits that He foresees that they will accomplish. In other words, predestination ante praevisa merita maintains that our good acts are the result of God’s predestining the elect to glory rather than maintaining that our foreseen meritorious acts cause God to predestine the elect. This position is, of course, shared by St. Thomas and the Báñezians. The Congruists agreed with the Báñezians that this position, sometimes referred to as the “principle of predilection” (i.e., no one can be holier than another on his own, but only because God has first given him the grace to be holier) was absolutely essential according to Scripture and the Church’s condemnations of Pelagianism. This is not to say that Molina necessarily explicitly or intentionally rejects predestination ante praevisa merita, but the Congruists aimed to keep Molina’s schema of providence, grace, and free will while also shielding themselves from some of the critiques that it received from the Báñezian side. Congruism maintains, then, that God, before any foreknowledge regarding what Peter would do in any situation, decided to number Peter among the elect and, following upon that predestination, God used the scientia media to place Peter in the circumstances in which He knew that Peter would merit and persevere unto his salvation. In 1613, Claudio Aquaviva, the General of the Society of Jesus, required that all Jesuit theologians teach this stronger form of Molinism.{124}

The upshot of the Molinist/Congruist position is that it clearly differs from Calvinism and Jansenism, both of which are condemned by the Church. Indeed, many Molinists maintain that Báñezianism, even if not explicitly condemned by the Church, ought to be viewed as condemned implicitly, insofar as Báñezianism essentially maintains the same positions as, or ones very similar to, the Calvinists and Jansenists. Moreover, since grace does not itself include the effect of our free cooperation, it appears less deterministic. This would seem to neuter many of the difficult questions about the permission of evil that tend to arise when considering these questions.

Yet, there are certainly downsides to this position too. Is it really safeguarding human freedom and contingency for God to put us in the circumstances where we cannot but do what God foresees? A Báñezian might argue that the Molinist/ Congruist has ironically replaced the contingent motion of contingent things with a determination from circumstances. As Herbert McCabe once said, Molinism “possesses the unique merit of denying simultaneously both the divine omnipotence and human freedom.”{125} In relation to the omnipotence, what does it mean to say that grace, flowing from the divine will itself, is fallible? Are mere creatures able to defeat the will of God? If God gives graces that He foresees will be inefficacious, are the questions regarding the permission of evil any less potent in Molinism/Congruism? Why not give the graces that He foresees will be efficacious? If no such graces are possible, are there just some evils that God can do nothing about?{126} Moreover, if graces are rendered efficacious on account of the creaturely will, how can it remain true that all goodness, even the goodness of cooperating with God, comes first from God? Pace St. Paul, could the saint not say that he distinguished himself from the sinner on account of his making better use of the grace that he received? Molina goes so far as to say that two people may be given the same grace, and one performs a meritorious act while another does not. Yet, the difference in holiness is indifferent to divine causality. Indeed, Molina even goes so far as to say that one man may be given less grace than another and yet end up holier than that other. But “what do you have that you have not received?” (1 Cor 4:7) If grace is, ultimately, merely a moral and fallible enticement, how does this not make the creature himself the most important cause, differentiator, and factor in his salvation?

Conclusion

The above historical debates are only a small sampling of those that have shaped the Church’s understanding and teaching on grace. In their own way, each provided a new angle by which to see that grace incorporates God’s creation into a new and higher creation. Christ is the One who sits upon the throne and who says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5). God’s grace is the splendor of newness that is even now bursting forth like the first flowers of life after a ghostly winter. Grace is the unfathomable freshness that plunges death into life. “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17).