Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/781

 GRACE

C97

GRACE

be amiss to follow an adult through all the stages on the way to salvation, from the state of unbelief and mortal sin to the state of grace and a happy deatli. With regard, first, to the period of unbelief, the Second Synod of Orange (can. v) decreed that prevenient grace is absolutely necessary to the infidel not only for faith itself, but also for the very beginning of faith. By the " beginning of faith", it intended to designate all the good aspirations and motions to believe which precede faith properly so called, as early dawn pre- cedes sunrise. Consequently, the whole preparation for the faith is made under the influence of grace, e. g. the instruction of persons to be converted. The ac- curacy of this view is confirmed by the Bible. Ac- cording to the assurance of the Saviour, external preaching is useless if the invisible influence of grace (the being drawn by the Father) does not set in to effect the gradual "coming" to Christ (John, vi, 44). Were faith rooted in mere nature, were it based on mere natural inclination to believe or on natural merit, nature could legitimately glory in its own achievement of the work of salvation in its entirety, from faith to justification — nay, to beatific vision it- self. And still Paul (I Cor., iv, 7; Eph., ii, 8 sq.) abominates nothing so much as the "glorying" of nature. Although Augustine could substantiate his doctrine by references to the anterior Fathers of the Church, as Cyprian, Ambrose, and Gregory of Nazian- zus, he seems to have been embarrassed by the Semi- pelagian appeal to the Greeks, chiefly Chrysostom. He pleaded tlie circumstances of the time (De pra;d. sanctor., c. xiv). In fact, difference of doctrine be- tween the East and the West cannot be denied. With delight could the Semipelagians quote from Chrysostom passages like the following: "We must first select good and then God adds what apper- tains to his office; he does not act antecedently to our will so as not to destroy our liberty" (Hom. xii in Hebr., n. 3). How must this attitude of the Eastern Church be explained? — To gain a cor- rect notion of the then existing circumstances, it must be remembered that the Greeks had to defend not only grace, but almost more so the freedom of the will. For the anti-Christian systems of Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and neo-Platonism — all products of the East — stood completely under the spell of the liberty- destroying philosophy of fatalism. In such an environ- ment it was important to preserve intact the freedom of the will even under the influence of grace, to arouse slothful nature from the fatalistic sleep, and to rec- ommend the a.seetical maxim: " Help yourself, and Heaven will help you." It may have been imprudent to leave the necessity of prevenient grace altogether in the background because of false considerations of timeliness, and to insist almost exclusively on co- operating grace while silently presupposing the ex- istence of prevenient grace. But was Chrysostom opposing a Pelagius or a Cassian? In fact he also knew and admitted prevenient grace, as when he writes: "You do not hold of 5'ourself, but you have received from God. Hence you have received what you possess, and not only this or that, but everything you have. For these are not your own merits, but the grace of God. Although you cite faith, you owe it nevertheless to call" (Hom. xii in I Cor.). Chrysos- tom was always orthodox in the doctrine on grace.

After the triumph over unbelief, the process of justification begins with faith and concludes only with the infusion of sanctifying grace and theological love. The question is whether, on this arduous road, grace must prec de and co-operate with every salutary step of the be'ieving sinner. The negative attitude of the Semipelf.gians, who ascribed the dispositions for justi- fication to the natural efforts of free will, was pro- scribed as heretical at Orange (can. vii) and again at Trent (Sess. VI, can. iii). Rightly so. For the thor- oughly supernatural sonship of God (filiatio adoptiva),

which ultimately terminates the process of justifica- tion, can be attained only through absolutely super- natural acts, for the performance of which nature without grace is physically incapable. Hence the Bible, besides faith, also refers other dispositions, as "hoi)e" (Rom., xv, 13) and "love" (I John, iv, 7) explicitly to God as their author: and tradition has unswervingly adhered to the priority of grace (cf. St. Augustine, "Enchir.", x.xxii). Once the adult has finally reached the state of grace after a happy ter- mination of the process of justification, the obligation devolves upon him of complj'ing with many negative and positive duties in order to preserve sanctifying grace, persevere in virtue until the end, and gain heaven after a happy death. Will he be capable of accomplishing all this without a constant stream of actual graces? It might appear so. For the justified person is, through the possession of sanctifying grace and supernatural virtues, permanently maintained in the supernatural order. It is not unnatural, there- fore, to admit, prescinding from final perseverance, that he is enabled by his supernatural habit to per- form salutary actions. This is in reality the teaching of Molina, Bellarmine, Billot, and others. But to this view Perrone (De gratiii, n. 203) rightly objects that Holy Writ makes no distinction between the dif- ferent degrees of the work of salvation, that Augus- tine (De nat. et grat., xxiv) proclaims the constant need of grace also for the "healthy" and "justified", and finally that the Church requires an uninterrupted influence of grace even for the good works of the just, and puts in the mouths of all Christians without exception the prayer: "Actiones nostras, quaesumus Domine, aspirando praeveni et adjuvando prose- quere", etc. And does not concupiscence, which re- mains also in the justified, stand in need of at least healing grace? Moreover, no passive habit puts itself in motion, but, like a well-tuned harp, must be, as it were, brought into play by some external agency. It might be added that nature, raised to a permanent supernatural state, still retains its natural activity and consequently requires a supernatural impulse for supernatural actions.

The most important concern, however, which the just man must take to heart is final perseverance, be- cause it is a decided characteristic of the predestined and assures entrance into heaven with infallible cer- tainty. The Seraipelagian delusion that this great grace may be due to the initiative and power of the just was refuted, after the Second Synod of Orange (can. x), chiefly by the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, can. xxii) in the following proposition of faith: "Si quis dixerit, justificatum . . . sine speciali auxilio Dei in accepta justitia perseverare posse . . ., ana- thema sit." Here, also, the explanation of some diffi- culties will facilitate the correct interpretation of the canon. P'inal perseverance, in its most perfect sense, consists in the untarnished preservation of baptismal innocence until death. In a less strict sense it is the preservation of the state of grace from the last conver- sion until death. In both senses we have what is called perfect perseverance (perseverantia perfecta). By imperfect perseverance (perseverantia imperjecla) must be understood the temporary continuance in grace, e. g., for a month or a year, until the commis- sion of the next mortal sin. We must distinguish also between passive and active perseverance, accord- ing as the justified dies in the state of grace, independ- ently of his will, as baptized children and the insane, or actively co-operates with grace whenever the state of grace is imperilled by grievous temptations. The Council of Trent had, "above all, this latter case in view, since it speaks of the necessity of a special as- sistance (aurilium speciale), which can designate nothing else but an actual grace or rather a whole series of these. This "special grace" is, consequently, not conferred with the possession of sanctifying grace,