Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/778

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GRACE

grace defended by Baius and Jansen, towarda the system of Hermes impregnated with Kantian criti- cism, towards traditionahsm, which based all moral and religious knowledge on the authority of language and instruction, finally, against the modern Agnosti- cism of the Modernists, which undermines the very foundations of faith, and which was only recently dealt so fatal a blow by Pope Pius X's condemnation. Documentary evidence has thus been produced that the Catholic Church far from being an " institution of obscurantism", has at all times fulfilled a powerful and far-reaching mission of civilization, since she took reason and science vmder her powerful patronage and defended their rights against those very oppressors of reason who are accustomed to bring against her the groundless charge of intellectual inferiority. A sound intellectualism is just as indispensable a condition of her life as the doctrine of a supernatural order raised above all the limits of nature. (Cf . Chastel, " De la valeur de la raison humaine", Paris, 1854.)

Not less reasonable an attitude was assumed by the Church respecting the moral capabilities of fallen man in the domain of natural ethics. Against Baianism, the forerunner of Jansenism, she adhered in her teach- ing to the conviction confirmed by healthy experi- ence, that natural man is capable of performing some naturally good works without actual grace, and par- ticularly without the grace of faith, and that not all the deeds of infidels and pagans are sins. This is evi- denced by the condemnation of two propositions of Baius by Pope Pius V in the year 1567: "Liberum ar- bitrium sine gratise Dei adjutorio nonnisi ad peccan- dum valet" ("Free will without the aid of God's grace avails for nothing but sin." — Prop, xxvii); and again: " Omnia opera infidelium sunt peccata et phil- osophorum virtutes sunt vitia" ("All the acts of in- fidels are sins, and their virtues are vices." — Prop. 25). The history of paganism and everyday experi- ence condemn, moreover, with equal emphasis these extravagant exaggerations of Baius. Among the duties of the natural moral law some — as love for parents or children, abstention from theft and drunkenness — are of such an elementary character that it is impossible to perceive why they could not be fulfilled without grace and faith at least by judicious, cultured, and noble-minded pagans. Did not the Saviour himself recognize as something good natural human love and fraternal greeting, such as they exist also among pub- licans and pagans? He denied to them only a super- natural reward (meTcedem, Matt., v, 46 sq.). And Paul has explicitly stated that "the Gentiles, who have not the [Mosaic] law, do by nature [naturaUler, (piaei] those things that are of the law" (Rom., ii, 14). TThe Fathers of the Church did not judge differently. Baius, it is true, adduced Augustine as his chief wit- ness, and in the latter's writings we find, to be sure, sentences which seem to favour him. Baius, how- ever, overlooked the fact that the former rhetorician and Platonic idealist of Hippo does not always weigh every word as carefully as the wary Schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, but consciously delights (cf. Enarr. in Ps. xcvi, n. 19) in antonomastically applying to the genus the designation which belongs only to the high- est species. As he calls the least good motion of the will caritas, by anticipation, so he brands every un- meritorious work {opus steriliter bonum) as sin (pecca- tum) and false virtue (jalsa virtus). In both cases it is an obvious use of the rhetorical figure called catachre- sis. With a strong perception for the ethically good, wherever it may be found, he eulogizes elsewhere the chastity of his heathen friend Alypius (Confess., VI, x) and of the pagan Polemo (Ep. cxl, 2), admires the civil virtues of the Romans, the masters of the world (Ep. cxxxviii, 3), and gives expression to the truth that even the most wicked man is not found com- pletely wanting in naturally good works (" De Spiritu et litera", c. xxviii. — Cf. Ripalda, " De Ente superna-

turali", torn. Ill: "Adversus Baiumet Baianos", Co- logne, 1648; J. Ernst, " Werke und Tugenden der Un- gliiubigen nach Augustinus", Freiburg, 1871).

The ethical capacity of pure, and especially of fallen, nature has undoubtedly also its determined limits which it cannot overstep. In a general manner, the possibility of the observance of the easier natural pre- cepts without the aid of natural or supernatural grace may be asserted, but not the possibility of the observ- ance of the more difficult commandments and prohi- bitions of the natural law. The difficulty of determin- ing where the easy ends and the difficult begins will naturally lead, in some secondary questions, to great diversity of opinion among theologians. In funda- mental points, however, harmony is easily obtainable and exists in fact. In the first place, all without ex- ception are agreed on the proposition that fallen man cannot of his own strength observe the natural law in its entirety and for a long time without occasional errors and lapses into grievous sin. And how could he? For, according to the council of Trent (Sess. VI, cap. xiii), even the already justified man will be victorious in the "conflict with the flesh, the world, and the devil" only on condition that he co-operate with never-failing grace (cf. Rom., vii, 22 sqq.). Secondly, all theologians admit that the natural will, unaided by Divine assistance, succumbs, especially in the fallen state, with moral (not physical) necessity to the attack of vehement and enduring temptations against the Decalogue. For could it by its own strength decide the conflict in its own favour even at the most critical mo- ments, that power which we have just eliminated would be restored to it, namely the power to observe unaided, through the prompt victory over vehement temptations, the whole natural law in all its extent. The practical significance of this second universally admitted proposition lies in the acknowledgment that, according to revelation, there is no man on earth who does not occasionally meet with this or that grievous temptation to mortal sin, and even the justified are no exception to this law; wherefore, even they are bound to constant vigilance in fear and trembling and to never-ceasing prayer for Divine assistance (cf. Council of Trent, 1. c). Inthe third question, whether natural love of God, even in its highest form (amor Dei natura- lis perfectus), is possible without grace, the opinions of theologians are still very divergent. Bellarmine de- nies this possibility on the ground that, without any grace, a mere natural justification could in such a case be brought into being through the love of God. Sco- tus, on the contrary, spiritedly defends the attainabil- ity of the highest natural love for God. A golden middle course will easily open to the one who accu- rately distinguishes between affective and effective love. The affective element of the highest love is, as natural duty, accessible to the mere natural will with- out grace. Effective love, on the contrary, since it supposes an unchanging, systematic, and active will, would entail the above-discarded possibility of tri- umphing over all temptations and of observing the whole moral law. (For further details on these inter- esting problems, see Pohle, " Lehrbuch der Dogma- tik", 4th ed., II, 364-70, Paderborn, 1909.)

According to Jansenism, the mere absence of the state of grace and love {status gratia et caritatis) branded as sins all the deeds of the sinner, even the ethically good ones (e. g., almsgiving). This was the lowest ebb in its disparagement and depreciation of the moral forces in man; and here, too, Baius had paved the way. The possession of sanctifying grace or theological love thus became the measure and cri- terion of natural morality. Taking as his basis the total corruption of nature through original sin (i. e. concupiscence) as taught by early Protestantism, Que.snel, especially (Prop, xliv in Denzinger, n. 1394), gave the above-expressed thought the alleged Augus- tinian form that there is no medium between love of