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 GRACE

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GRACE

and admonition help somewhat externally, bnt he who reaches the heart has a place in heaven" — (Tract. Ill, 13, in I Joh.). The more speculative question may now be asked: Whether the mediate and immediate grace of the mind affects the idea, the judgment, or the reasoning. There can be no doubt that it primarily influences the judgment {judicium), be the latter tlieoretical (e. g. on the credibility of revelation) or practical (e. g. regarding the hideous character of sin). But the reasoning pro- cess and the idea (apprehensio) may also become a grace of the mind, firstly, because they both belong to the essence of human knowledge, and grace always operates in a manner conformable to nature ; secondly, because ideas are in final analysis but the result and fruit of condensed judgments and reasonings.

Besides the grace of the mind, the strengthening grace of the will (generally called gratia inspirationis) plays not only the most important, but an indispen- sable, part, for no works of salvation are even think- able without operations of the will. It may also be either mediate or immediate, according as the pious affections and wholesome resolutions are awakened in the soul by the immediately preceding illumination of the mind or by God Himself (by appropriation the Holy Ghost). Owing to the psychological interpene- tration of cognition and volition, every (mediate or immediate) grace of the mind is in itself also a grace afTecting the will. This twofold action — on intellect and will — has therefore the significance of two dif- ferent acts of the soul, but of only one grace. Con- sequently, immediate elevation and motion of the will by the Holy Spirit can alone be considered a new grace. The Pelagians logically denied the existence especially of this grace, even if, according to the improb- able opinion of some historians of dogma, they were forced by Augustine in the course of the debate to admit at least the immediate grace of the mind. Augustine threw in the whole weight of his personality in favour of the existence and necessity of the grace of the will, to which he applied the names, deledatio coelestis, inspiratio dilectionis, cupiditas honi, and the like. The celebrated Provincial Council of Carthage (a. d. 418) confirmed his teaching when it declared that grace does not simply consist in the manifestation of the Divine precepts whereby we may know our positive and negative duties, but it also confers upon us the power to love and accomplish whatever we have recognized as righteous in things pertaining to salvation (cf. Denzinger, "Enchiridion", 10th ed., n. 104, Freiburg, 1908). The Church has never shared the ethical optimism of Socrates, which made virtue consist in mere knowledge, and held that mere teach- ing was sufficient to inculcate it. If even natural virtue must be fought for, and is acquired only through energetic work and constant practice, how much more does not a supernatural life of virtue require the Divine help of grace with which the Christian must freely co-operate, and thus advance by slow degrees in perfection. The strengthening grace of the will, like the grace of the mind, assumes the form of vital acts of the soul and manifests itself chiefly in what are called affections of the will. Scholastic psychology enumerates eleven such affections, namely: love and hatred, delight and sadness, desire and aversion, hope and despair, daring and fear, finally, anger. This whole list of feelings has, with the sole exception of despair, which imperils the work of salvation, a prac- tical significance in relation to good and evil; these affections may therefore develop into real graces of the will. But, inasmuch as all motions of the will may be ultimately reduced to love as fundamental feeling (cf. St. Thomas, "Summa", I-II, Q. xxv, a. 2), llu! functions of the grace of the will may be sys- tematically focussed in love; hence the concise decla- ration of the above-mentioned Synod of Carthage (1. c): "('um sit utrumiiue donum Dei, et scire quid

facere debeamus et diligere ut faciamus" (Since both are gifts of God — the knowing what we ought to do, and the desire to do it). But care must be taken not to understand immediately, by this "love", perfect love of (_io<l, which comes only at the end of the pro- cess of j ustification as the crowning-stone of the edifice, even though Augustine (DeTrinit., VIII, 10, and fre- quently) honours with the name caritas the mere love for good and any good motion of the will whatsoever. Berti (De theol. discipl., XIV, 7), therefore, is wrong when he asserts that, according to Augustine, the only grace properly so called is the theological virtue of charity. Are faith, hope, contrition, fear, only graces improperly so called, or do they become graces in the true sense only in connexion with charity?

It cannot be determined with certainty of faith whether to the graces of mind and will so far spoken of should be added special actual graces affecting the sensitive faculties of the soul. But their existence may be asserted with great probability. For if, ac- cording to an appropriate remark of Aristotle (De anima, I, viii), it is true that thinking is impossible without imagination, supernatural thought also must find its originator and point of support in a corre- sponding phantasm to which, like the ivy on the wall, it clings and thus creeps upward. At any rate, the harmonious agreement of the grace of the intellect with the accompanying phantasm can but be of fav- ourable influence on the soul visited by grace. It is likewise clear that in the rebellious motions of concu- piscence, which reside in the sensitive faculties, the grace of the will has a dangerous enemy which must be overcome by the infusion of contrary dispositions, as aversion from sin, before the will is aroused to make firm resolutions. Paul, consequently, thrice be- sought the Lord that the sting of the flesh might de- part from him, but was answered: "Sufficit tibi gratia mea" (II Cor., xii, 9).

(3) Graces regarding Free Will. — If we take the attitude of free will as the dividing principle of actual grace, we must first have a grace which precedes the free determination of the will and another which fol- lows this determination and co-operates with the will. This is the first pair of graces, preventing and co- operating grace {gratia praweniens el cooperans) . Pre- venting grace must, according to its physical nature, consist in unfree, indeliberate vital acts of the soul; co-operating grace, on the contrary, solely in free, deliberate actions of the will. The latter assume the character of actual graces, not only because they are immediately suggested by God, but also because they may become, after the achievement of success, the principle of new salutary acts. In this manner an in- tense act of perfect love of God may sinuiUaneously effect and, as it were, assure by itself the observance of the Divine commandments. The existence of pre- venting grace, officially determined by the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, cap. v), must be admitted with the same certainty as the facts that the illuminating grace of the intellect belongs to a faculty not free in itself and that the grace of the will must first and foremost exhibit itself in spontaneous, indeliberate, unfree emo- tions. This is proved by the Biblical metaphors of the reluctant hearing of the voice of God (Jer., xvii, 23; Ps. -xciv, 8), of the drawing by the Father (John, vi, 44), of the knocking at the gate (.\poc., iii, 20). The Fathers of the Church bear witness to the reality of preventing grace in their very appropriate formula: " Gratia est in nobis, sed sine nobis", that is, grace as a vital act is in the soul, but as an unfree, salutary act it does not proceec'. from the soul, but immediately from God. Thus Augustine (De i^rat. et lib. arhitr., xvii, 33), Gregory the Great (Moral.. X\'I, x), Hernanl of Clairvaux (De grat. et lib. arbitr., xiv), and others. As the unfree emotions of the will are by their very nature destined to elicit free salutary acts, it is clear that preventing grace must develop into helping or