Grace, Actual and Habitual: A Dogmatic Treatise

Section 1. Definition Of Actual Grace

1. GENERAL NOTION OF GRACE.—The best way to arrive at a correct definition of actual grace is by the synthetic method. We therefore begin with the general notion of grace.

Like “nature,”(3) grace (gratia, χάρις) is a word of wide reach, used in a great variety of senses. Habert(4) enumerates no less than fourteen; which, however, may be reduced to four.

a) Subjectively, grace signifies good will or benevolence shown by a superior to an inferior, as when a criminal is pardoned by the king’s grace.

b) Objectively, it designates a favor inspired by good will or benevolence. In this sense the term may be applied to any free and gratuitous gift (donum gratis datum), as when a king bestows graces on his lieges.

c) Grace may also mean personal charm or attractiveness. In this sense the term frequently occurs in Latin and Greek literature (the Three Graces). Charm elicits love and prompts a person to the bestowal of favors.

d) The recipient of gifts or favors usually feels gratitude towards the giver, which he expresses in the form of thanks. Hence the word gratiae (plural) frequently stands for thanksgiving (“_gratias agere_,” “_Deo gratias_,” “to say grace after meals”).(5)

The first and fundamental of these meanings is “a free gift or favor.” The benevolence of the giver and the attractiveness of the recipient are merely the reasons for which the gift is imparted, whereas the expression of thanks is an effect following its bestowal.

Dogmatic theology is concerned exclusively with grace in the fundamental sense of the term.

e) Grace is called a gift (donum, δωρεά), because it is owing to free benevolence, not required by justice. It is called gratuitous (gratis datum), because it is bestowed without any corresponding merit on the part of the creature. A gift may be due to the recipient as a matter of distributive or commutative justice, and in that case it would not be absolutely gratuitous (gratis). Grace, on the contrary, is bestowed out of pure benevolence, from no other motive than sheer love. This is manifestly St. Paul’s idea when he writes: “And if by grace, it is not now by works: otherwise grace is no more grace.”(6) It is likewise the meaning of St. Augustine when he says, in his Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, that grace is “something gratuitously given ... as a present, not in return for something else.”(7)

2. NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL GRACE.—Grace is not necessarily supernatural. Sacred Scripture and the Fathers sometimes apply the word to purely natural gifts. We petition God for our daily bread, for good health, fair weather and other temporal favors, and we thank Him for preserving us from pestilence, famine, and war, although these are blessings which do not transcend the order of nature.(8)

a) Our petitions for purely natural favors are inspired by the conviction that creation itself, and everything connected therewith, is a gratuitous gift of God. This conviction is well founded. God was under no necessity of creating anything: creation was an act of His free-will. Again, many of the favors to which human nature, as such, has a claim, are free gifts when conferred upon the individual. Good health, fortitude, talent, etc., are natural graces, for which we are allowed, nay obliged, to petition God. The Pelagians employed this truth to conceal a pernicious error when they unctuously descanted on the magnitude and necessity of grace as manifested in creation. It was by such trickery that their leader succeeded in persuading the bishops assembled at the Council of Diospolis or Lydda (A. D. 415) that his teaching was quite orthodox. St. Augustine and four other African bishops later reported to Pope Innocent I, that if these prelates had perceived that Pelagius meant to deny that grace by which we are Christians and sons of God, they would not have listened to him so patiently, and that, consequently, no blame attached to these judges because they simply took the term “grace” in its ecclesiastical sense.(9)

b) Generally speaking, however, the term “grace” is reserved for what are commonly called the supernatural gifts of God, the merely preternatural as well as the strictly supernatural.(10) In this sense "grace" is as sharply opposed to purely natural favors as nature is opposed to the supernatural.

The importance of the distinction between supernatural and purely natural grace will appear from an analysis of the concept itself. Considered as gifts of God, the strictly supernatural graces (e.g., justification, divine sonship, the beatific vision) ontologically exceed the bounds of nature. Considered as purely gratuitous favors, they are negatively and positively undeserved. The grace involved in creation, for instance, is not conferred on some existing beneficiary, but actually produces its recipient. The creation itself, therefore, being entirely gratis data, all that succeeds it, supernatural grace included, must be negatively undeserved, in as far as it was not necessary for the recipient to exist at all. But the supernatural graces are indebitae also positively, i.e. positing the creation, because they transcend every creatural claim and power. Both elements are contained in the above-quoted letter of the African bishops to Pope Innocent I: “Though it may be said in a certain legitimate sense, that we were created by the grace of God, ... that is a different grace by which we are called predestined, by which we are justified, and by which we receive eternal beatitude.”(11) Of this last-mentioned grace (i.e. grace in the strictly supernatural sense), St. Augustine says: “This, the grace which Catholic bishops are wont to read in the books of God and preach to their people, and the grace which the Apostle commends, is not that by which we are created as men, but that by which as sinful men we are justified.”(12) In other words, natural is opposed to supernatural grace in the same way that nature is opposed to the supernatural. “[To believe] is the work of grace, not of nature. It is, I say, the work of grace, which the second Adam brought us, not of nature, which Adam wholly lost in himself.”(13) Adding the new note obtained by this analysis we arrive at the following definition: Grace is a gratuitous super-natural gift.(14)

3. THE GRACE OF GOD AND THE GRACE OF CHRIST.—Though all supernatural graces are from God, a distinction is made between the “grace of God” and the “grace of Christ.” The difference between them is purely accidental, based on the fact that the “grace of Christ” flows exclusively from the merits of the atonement.

a) The following points may serve as criteria to distinguish the two notions:

A) The gratia Dei springs from divine benevolence and presupposes a recipient who is unworthy merely in a negative sense (=not worthy, non dignus), whereas the gratia Christi flows from mercy and benevolence and is conferred on a recipient who is positively unworthy (indignus).

B) The gratia Dei elevates the soul to the supernatural order (gratia elevans), while the gratia Christi heals the wounds inflicted by sin, especially concupiscence (gratia elevans simul et sanans).

C) The gratia Dei is a gratuitous gift conferred by the Blessed Trinity without regard to the theandric merits of Jesus Christ, whereas the gratia Christi is based entirely on those merits.

b) The Scotists hold that the distinction between gratia Dei and gratia Christi is purely logical. They regard the God-man as the predestined centre of the universe and the source of all graces.(15) The Thomists, on the other hand, regard the grace of the angels, and that wherewith our first parents were endowed in Paradise, purely as gratia Dei; they hold that the merits of Christ did not become operative until after the Fall, and that, consequently, there is a real distinction between the grace of the angels and that of our first parents on the one hand, and the grace of Christ on the other.

As it cannot reasonably be supposed that the angels are endowed with specifically the same graces by which mankind was redeemed from sin, the Scotists are forced to admit a distinction between the grace of Christ as God-man (gratia Christi Dei-hominis) and the grace of Christ as Redeemer (gratia Christi Redemptoris), so that even according to them, the dogmatic treatise on Grace is concerned solely with the grace of Christ qua Redeemer.

Hence, grace must be more particularly defined as a gratuitous supernatural gift derived from the merits of Jesus Christ.(16)

4. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL GRACE.—External grace (gratia externa) comprises all those strictly supernatural institutions which stimulate pious thoughts and salutary resolutions in the human soul. Such are, for example, Holy Scripture, the Church, the Sacraments, the example of Jesus Christ, etc. Internal grace (gratia interna) inheres or operates invisibly in the soul, and places it in relation with God as its supernatural end. Internal graces are, e.g., the theological virtues, the power of forgiving sins, etc. The Pelagians admitted external, but obstinately denied internal grace.(17)