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 GRACE

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GRACE

co-operating grace as soon as free will gives its consent. These free salutary acts are, according to the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, cap. xvi), not only actual graces, but also meritorious actions (actus mcrilnrii). There is just as little doubt possible rcganling their existence as concerning the fact that many men freely follow the call of grace, work out their eternal salvation, and attain the beatific vision, so that the dogma of the Christian heaven proves simultaneously the reality of co-operating graces. Their principal advocate is Augustine (De grat. et lib. arbitr., xvi, 32). If the more philosophical question of the co-operation of grace and liberty be raised, it will be easily perceived that the supernatural element of the free salutary act can be only from God, its vitality only from the will. The postulated unity of the action of the will eouki evidently not be safeguarded, if God and the will per- formed either two separate acts or mere halves of an act. It can exist only when the supernatural power of grace transforms itself into the vital strength of the will, constitutes the latter as a free faculty in actu prima by elevation to the supernatural order, and simultaneously co-operates as supernatural Divine con- currence in the performance of the real salutary act or actus secundum. This co-operation is not unlike that of God with the creature in the natural order, in which both perform together one and the same act, God as first cause (causa prima), the creature as secondary cause (causa secunda). For further particulars see St. Thomas, "Contra Gent.", Ill, Ixx.

A second pair of graces important for the under- standing of tlie controversies on grace is that of effica- cious and merely sufficient grace (gratia efficax et mere sujjiciens). By efficacious grace is understood that Divine assistance which, considered even in actu prima, inclutles with infallible certainty, and conse- quently in its definition, the free salutary act; for did it remain inefficacious, it would cease to be efficacious and would therefore be self-contradictory. As to whether the infallibility of its success is the result of the physical nature of this grace or of the infallible foreknowledge of God (scierdia media) is a much de- bated question between Thomists and Molinists which need not be further treated here. Its existence, how- ever, is admitted as an article of faith by both sides and is established with the same firmness as the pre- destination of the elect or the existence of a heaven peopled with innumerable saints. As to '' merely suffi- cient grace", Calvinists and Jansenists have, as is well known, eliminated it from their doctrinal system. They admitted only efficacious graces whose action overpowers the will and leaves no room for freedom. If Jansen (d. 163S) nominally admitted "sufficient grace", calling it " little grace" (gratia parva), he un- derstood by it, in reality, only "insufficient grace", i. e. "one from which no action can result, except its insufficiency be removed by another grace " (De grat. Christ., IV, x). He did not .shrink from reviling suffi- cient grace, understood in the Catholic sense, as a monstrous conception and a means of filling hell with reprobates, while later Jansenists discovered in it such a pernicious character as to infer the appropriateness of the prayer: "A gratia sufficiente, libera nos Dom- ine" ("From sufficient grace, O Lord deliver us". — Cf. prop. G damn, ab Wex. VIII, a. 1690 in Denzinger, n. 1296). The Catholic idea of sufficient grace is ob- tained by the distinction of a twofold element in every actual grace, its intrinsic energy (potestas agendi, vis) and its extrinsic efficiency (efficientia) . Under the former aspect there exists between sufficient and effi- cacious grace, both considered in actu prima, no real, but only a logical, distinction; for sufficient grace also confers full power for action, but is condemned to un- fruitfulness owing to the free resistance of the will. If, on the contrary, extrinsic efficiency be considered, it is evident that the will either co-operates freely or not. If it refuses its co-operation, even the strongest grace re-

mains a merely sufficient one (gratia mere sufficiens), although by nature it would have been completely sufficient (gratia vcre sufficiens) and with goo<l will could have been efficacious. This ecclesiastical con- ception of the nature of sufficient grace, to which the Catholic systems of grace must invariably conform themselves, is nothing else but a reproduction of the teaching of the Bible. To cite only one text (Prov., i, 24), the calling and the stretching-out of the hand of Gotl certainly signifies the complete sufficiency of grace, just as the obstinate refusal of the sinner "to regard" is tantamount to the free rejection of the proffered hand. Augustine is in complete agreement with the constant tradition on this point, and Jansen- ists have vainly claimed him as one of their own. We have an example of his teaching in the following text: "Gratia Dei est qua; hominum adjiivat voluntates; qua ut non adjuventur, in ipsis itidem causa est, non in Deo " (" It is the grace of God that helps the wills of men ; and when they are not helped by it, the reason is in themselves, not in God." — " De pecc. mer. et rem.", II, xvii). On the Greek Fathers see Isaac Habert, Theologia Graecor. Patrum, II, 6 sq. (Paris, 1646).

(2) Properties oj Actual Grace. — After the treatment • of the nature of actual grace, we come logically to the discussion of its properties. These are three in num- ber: necessity, gratuity, and universality.

(a) Necessity. — With the early Protestants and Jansenists, the necessity of actual grace may be so exaggerated as to lead to the assertion of the absolute and complete incapacity of mere nature to do good; or, with the Pelagians and Semipelagians, it may be so understood as to extend the capacity of nature to each and every thing, even to supernatural activity, or at least to its essential elements. The three heresies of early Protestantism and Jansenism, Pelagianism, and Semipelagianisni furnish us with the practical division which we adopt for the systematic exposition of the Catholic doctrine.

(a) We maintain against Early Protestantism and Jansenism the capacity of mere nature in regard to both religious knowledge and moral action. Funda- mental for natural religion and ethics is the article of faith which asserts the power of mere reason to derive a certain natural knowledge of God from creation (Vatican., Sess. Ill, de revelat., can. i). This is a cen- tral truth which is most clearly attested by Scripture (Wisdom, xiii, 1 sqq.; Rom., i, 20 sq.; ii, 14 sq.) and tradition (see God). Unswervingly adhering to this position, the Church has ever exhibited herself as a mighty defender of reason and its inherent powers against the ravages of scepticism so subversive of all truth. Through the whole course of centuries she has steadfastly clung to the unalterable conviction that a faculty of perception constituted for vision, like human reason, cannot possibly be condemned to blindness, and that its natural powers enable it to know, even in the fallen state, whatever is within its legitimate sphere. On the other hand, the Church also erected against presumptuous Rationalism and Theo- sophism a bulwark for the defence of knowledge by faith, a knowledge superior to, and different in princi- ple from, rational knowledge. V.'ith Clement of Alex- andria she drew a sharp distinction between ypua-is and nlari! — knowledge and faith, philosophy and revelation, assigning to reason the double role of indis- pensable forerunner and docile handmaid (cf. Vati- can., Sess. Ill, cap. iv). This noble struggle of the Church for the rights of reason and its true relation to faith explains historically her decidedly hostile atti- tude towards the scepticism of Nicholas de Ultricuria (a. d. 1348), towards the Renaissance philosophy of Pomponatius (1513) defending a "twofold truth", towards the so-called " log-stiek-and-stone " theory (Klolz-Stock-und-Steintheorie) of Ilartin Luther and his followers, so inimical to reason, towards the doc- trine of the complete powerlessness of nature without