Chapter — Slater, Foundation
Chapter VI: Grace
POOR human nature is in a permanent state of moral bankruptcy. It is incapable of meeting its obligations. It sees the good but it cannot perform it, it constantly does what its conscience condemns. Experience and revelation alike compel us to acknowledge this. But while the Catholic humbly acknowledges his own weakness and sinfulness, yet he knows that through the grace of Christ he can overcome sin. Luther, on the contrary, not only glories in his infirmity, like St. Paul, but boasts of his sinfulness.¹ He holds that human nature is so thoroughly corrupted by the Fall that it is incapable of doing anything good. Sin
¹ J. Verres, "Luther: An Historical Portrait," p. 128.
has become part of its very essence. This natural corruption remains even in the just; it is only by faith that they lay hold of the merits of Christ, and thereby the justice of Christ covers all their sinfulness as with a cloak. Because of their faith, God imputes to them the merits of Christ and turns His eyes away from the innate sinfulness of their hearts. The just accept the freely offered love of God in Christ Jesus, and this is what is called His grace. Luther rejected the Catholic doctrine about grace, and taught that it was nothing more than the freely offered favor of God. Non-Catholics have commonly followed this teaching. The Council of Trent solemnly anathematized it.
"If any one shall say that men are justified either by the mere imputation of the righteousness of Christ, or by the mere forgiveness of sins to the exclusion of grace and charity, which is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, and inheres in them; or even that grace by which we are justified is only the favor of God; let him be anathema."¹ Christ He has restored human nature to more than its pristine glory. Let us in merest outline and in non-technical language try to summarize the Catholic doctrine on grace.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent explains this canon in the following terms:
"But grace, as the Council of Trent has decreed, is not only that whereby sins are forgiven, but is also a divine quality inherent in the soul, and, as it were, a certain splendor and light that effaces all the stains of our souls and renders the souls themselves brighter and more beautiful. This is clearly inferred from the sacred Scriptures."²
The Catholic Church is quite conscious of the frailty of poor human nature. She knows that if left to itself it cannot hope to escape moral ruin, but she teaches that God never intended to leave human nature to itself. In its first creation He remedied its natural weakness by the gift of His grace, and after the Fall through the grace of
¹ Sess. vi. c. 11.
² Loc. cit. pt. ii. c. 2, n. 49.
While instructing the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob, Our Lord gives her the first notions about the doctrine of grace.
"If thou didst know the gift of God," He said, "and who He is that saith to thee: Give Me to drink: thou perhaps wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.... He that shall drink of the water that I will give him shall not thirst forever. But the water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting."¹
Grace, then, is preeminently the gift of God, freely bestowed upon us with a view to our sanctification and the obtaining of life everlasting. This gift of God is no other
¹ John iv. 10 ff.
than the gift of Himself appropriated to the Holy Spirit inasmuch as it pertains to the work of our sanctification, and by appropriation the Holy Ghost is the sanctifier. We are taught this by numerous passages in Holy Scripture. "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us," says St. Paul.¹ The Holy Spirit is so given to us that He dwells within us as in His temple. "Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"² "Or know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?"³ "What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; as God saith: I will dwell in them and walk among them. And I will be their God, and they shall be
my people."¹ God thus dwelling within us, vivifies us, helps us to subdue our fleshly appetites, testifies to us that we are the sons of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.²
God is everywhere, and as He creates all things, so He sustains all things and physically concurs with the natural activity of all things. "In Him we live, move, and have our being." By grace in Him we begin to live a new and higher life, we begin to move and have our being in a higher and supernatural order.
So, then, while God dwells within the human soul He is by no means inactive there. He always respects the liberty of His creature, but nevertheless He is always striving to draw the soul into ever closer union with Himself in preparation for that final union which Holy Scripture calls life everlasting. That eternal life consists in
² Rom. viii. 11 ff.
the knowledge and love of God.¹ We can know God in this life by the natural light of reason, we can know Him still better in this life by the light of His grace, but in life everlasting we shall know Him in a far more perfect way by the light of glory. "We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known."² "We are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is."³
That final destiny of the human soul is something far above its natural desires, capacities or needs. It is a supernatural destiny, a living on familiar, intimate, and the closest possible terms of a loving son with a most affectionate Father. It has pleased
God to raise man to that lofty estate, to place man by His side in the divine order of being, permanently raising him above the merely created order. Man must be gradually educated so that when the time comes he may take his place becomingly in the great family of God.
While dwelling in the human soul, God Himself undertakes the education of His child. He does this in the first place by what theologians call actual graces. Those actual graces consist especially of illuminations of the mind and movements of the will. The mind has to be enlightened by God so that it may see and understand and realize divine truths, appreciate their beauty, and realize their desirableness. The will has to be moved by God so that it may actually desire them. Herein man can do nothing of himself; helped by divine grace all that he can do is to give his consent and cooperate with the action of God. "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God."¹ "For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish according to His good will."² be just unless the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated to him, that, however, is done in this justification of the wicked, while by the merit of the same most holy Passion, through the Holy Ghost, the charity of God is poured forth in the hearts of those who are justified, and inheres in them, so that in justification, together with the forgiveness of sins, a man at the same time receives all these infused virtues, faith, hope, and charity, through Jesus Christ in whom he is engrafted."¹ All these Scriptural expressions indicate that grace is something more than the mere extrinsic favor of God. In adopting man for His child by grace and assuring him of a father's love, God works wonderful changes in the human soul. What was before stained by sin becomes clean and pure, what was before darkness becomes light. What was by nature a little less than the angels, is raised by grace in some sort to the level of the deity, it becomes "a partaker of the divine nature," says St. Peter.¹ washes the soul from the stains of sin, it does not merely cover sin, it destroys all traces of it. Of its nature too it does not merely adorn the soul with a heavenly beauty, it makes it fruitful in good works. "Whosoever is born of God committeth not sin; for His seed abideth in him."¹
By such illuminations of the mind and strength-giving movements of the will God enables the loving soul to do what otherwise it could not do, to keep God's commandments and to avoid grievous sin.
Besides these actual graces the Catholic Church teaches that God gives sanctifying or habitual grace to men.
"Justification," says the Council of Trent, "is not merely the forgiveness of sins, but the sanctification and renovation of the inner man, by the voluntary acceptance of grace and gifts; by which a man instead of being unjust becomes just, and instead of being an enemy becomes a friend, so that he may be an heir according to hope of life everlasting.... For although no one can
In the same chapter the Council teaches that baptism is the instrumental cause used by God in the justification of the wicked.
By sanctifying grace infused into the soul by baptism we are "born again"; "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." We become a "new creature in Christ Jesus." By this new birth we are made "partakers of the divine nature."²
¹ Sess. vi. c. 7.
This is the beginning of that spiritual life which one day is to leap forth into life everlasting. Not alone by actual graces does God preserve the soul of His child from sin and gradually educate it for heaven. There is a radical opposition between sanctifying grace and sin, as radical as that between light and darkness. Mortal sin drives sanctifying grace from the soul, it is the death of the spiritual life. The infusion of grace
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