The Controversy
Grace is an unbelievably contentious issue. Historically, arguments surrounding the nature and will of Christ were the most contentious, with grace taking second place. Today, grace reigns supreme. Conservatively, over 96% of Christians agree that Christ has two natures and two wills – divine and human; meanwhile, Catholicism alone hosts three major schools of thought on grace. In this article, I seek to remedy some common confusions. First, I will define what grace is. Then, I will clarify this definition by discussing the major umbrellas of teaching on grace, errors, and the correct teaching.
Though the precise definition of grace is complex and hotly contested, the basic, universal definition is simply this: God’s favor. Remember that God is the Author of creation. God does not respond to the goodness in things like we do; God creates the goodness in things. As St. Paul profoundly says, “what have you that you have not received?” (1 Corinth. 4:7). Why are you better than a rock? Because you have more grace. Why are you better than Satan? Because you have more grace. Why is the Blessed Virgin better than you? Because she is “full of grace” (Luke 1:28). And there are really no means by which anyone could call this arrangement unfair. “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?” (Rom. 9:19).
God bestows graces upon all things. A rock has the grace of existence, but lacks the graces of self-propulsion or thought, and so forth. But in common parlance, grace refers specifically to supernatural grace – the genus of grace that gets one to Heaven. I will use the term “grace” as shorthand for supernatural, salvific grace throughout the rest of this article. With that, let us narrow down what grace is and get to a more clear definition.
Actual Grace
First, we will address “actual grace.” This is operative, transient grace that moves you to do something. For example, actual graces move one to perform an act of prayer. This is distinct from the sort of grace which resides within the soul, which is addressed in the next section. In this section, I will first discuss common ground, then the two major doctrines of actual grace, and then the damning errors of one.
Universal Heresies
We will begin with universal heresies – views of grace condemned by all Christians, regardless of denomination.
The first and most offensive is Pelagianism. Pelagius, a 5th century monk, was concerned about Christian laxity and presumptuousness. To remedy the problem, he taught a strong position on free will – so strong, in fact, that he even suggested a man could – by use of his own free will – remain sinless his entire life. There are multiple issues with this. First, it makes human will the author of salvation and grace an environmental effect, relegating God to a spectator and helper in our salvation. Second, it empties the sacrifice of Christ by implying that the grace of His atonement is not necessary for the salvation of all. Third, it makes the Old Covenant nothing more than a moral guidepost and deprives the New Covenant of any meaningful differentiation from it. Pelagianism was condemned by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431).
St. Augustine was the principal combatant against Pelagianism. He taught divine monergism, the idea man cannot perform salutary acts unless God moves first in the order of causality. This left God’s authorship intact, but raised the opposite questions that Pelagianism did. Does monergism mean God actively damns people by aiding and abetting sin? Could a reprobate justly complain that they were doomed from birth? The Semi-pelagians sought to compromise, teaching that God’s grace is necessary for salvation, but humans have the native ability to make the “first step.” Unfortunately, this runs into the same issue as Pelagianism: God determining, or determined. Who has the gall to claim the latter? The Second Council of Orange condemned Semi-pelagianism on this premise, citing Paul’s question, “what have you that you have not received?”
Common Ground
We have settled one topic: God is the Author of salvation. The next step is to explain how grace interacts with us. Firstly, all agree that free will exists. If it didn’t, then sin could not exist, for sin is definitionally the departure from God’s will. To depart from God’s will, the sinner must have his own will. Secondly, all agree that God desires – truly desires – “[that] all men be saved and come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:3-4). Third, all agree that man is capable of rejecting God’s real invitation to Heaven through a depraved interest in some lesser good. “[God] called [the sinner], and was refused” (Prov. 1:24). Fourth, all agree that salvation is God’s act of overcoming our depraved interest in lesser goods through grace. There are two “general” ideas as to how this works while leaving all the prior assertions intact.
The Molinist Approach
The newer set of doctrines lean more towards the sovereignty of free will and find proponents in Molinism (Catholic, Orthodox) and Arminianism (Protestant). These positions of course teach that God’s grace is necessary for salvation, but that He bestows it based on foreseen cooperation. When God bestows grace upon someone who is not foreseen to cooperate, they reject the grace and frustrate it, leading to sin. Now, I do not mean to say that these ideas are always expressed the same way by each of these groups. Most Orthodox probably have never heard of a Molinist, yet their position on grace is, essentially, Molinism (see here). Further, Protestant Arminianism is completely incompatible with Catholicism and Orthodoxy – but that is because of its soteriology, not because it teaches libertarian free will and foreseen cooperation.
So how does foreseen cooperation look? For a small subset of Arminians, they believe God has “simple” foreknowledge – that is, He sees the future, and because He sees it, He decrees it. This is ridiculous, as it would mean the future is determined by something other than God and makes His actual degree superfluous. The mainstream doctrine posits that God sees all possible realities, and decrees whichever He sees fit to happen. So, God can see that agent A, if placed in circumstance C, would freely choose option X over option Y. Thus, if God wanted to accomplish X, all God would do is, using this “middle knowledge,” actualize the world in which A was placed in C, and A would freely choose X. God retains providence without nullifying A’s choice and God’s purpose (the actualization of X) is fulfilled.
The Augustinian Approach
The elder doctrines – Thomism (Catholic) and Calvinism (Protestant) lean more towards Augustinian divine monergism. They teach that God’s grace is efficacious in itself – that is, it does not depend at all on our cooperation; it causes our cooperation. Does this arrangement nullify free will? To the contrary, God’s action causes the will to make free decisions in the first place. For example: imagine God actualizes my free choice to sit in a chair. My will remains free to stand up, despite the fact that that is incompossible with my willing to sit. It is not as if God’s causal power has made it impossible for me to stand; rather, God’s causal power has made it possible for me to choose at all. Likewise, God has the power to cause a will to freely choose good (efficacious grace) while that will still remains totally free to choose evil.
Free will aside, this leaves these systems with the strange conclusion – God could will the salvation of all, yet not all are saved. Does this mean that God is the cause of sin, or creates some men to damn them? Absolutely not. But Augustinians do claim that God “passes over” some, permitting them to sin and damn themselves while saving others. The sun shines on the earth, illuminating men’s vision; if a man closes his eyes, he causes his own darkness. Likewise, God gives all men enough grace to be saved, but some He permits to freely – and culpably – resist. That is to say, the saved man “plans his way, but God directs his steps” (Prov 16:9), whereas the reprobate man plans his way, and God lets him. This is an immensely complex topic, and I’ve devoted a separate article to it here.
As in the previous example, Thomistic and Calvinistic soteriology are absolutely incompatible beyond these points.
The Errors of Molinism
This said: there are two glaring issues with Molinism. First, Molinism teaches that God responds to human free will. In other words: that our will determines God’s decree. This makes human free will more sovereign than the will of God. The end to which Molinism diminishes God’s sovereign power to “work in us, both to will and to accomplish” (Phil. 2:13) is to provide a less “deterministic” solution than Augustinian monergism. The problem is, it doesn’t even achieve that! The Molinist claims God achieves X by putting agent A in circumstance C based on foreknowledge and moving him with grace; the Thomist cuts out the middleman of rigging the situation and says God achieves X by simply moving A with efficacious grace. One could even claim Molinism is more deterministic, since it relates our salvation more strongly to circumstance than the free will of God!
St. Robert Bellarmine, when he examined the opinion of those who hold that it is within the power of man to make grace efficacious, which would otherwise of itself be only sufficient, writes as follows: “This theory is entirely alien to the opinion of St. Augustine and, in my judgment, even to the meaning of Holy Scripture.” I couldn’t agree more. Who, after reading Romans 9, could remain a Molinist?
What important insights have these controversies taught us about grace? They clarify that grace is NOT an external suggestion contingent on man’s self-saving will, but is a divine impetus freely and indispensably given by God for salvation. Further, they clarify that grace is NOT impotent. God can transform the most hardened sinner into a martyr for the faith in an instant. This should give us unalterable confidence in God’s promises and our own ability to achieve sainthood. It should also encourage great humility – the worst sinner we know could walk out of their next confession exceeding us in holiness. On the other hand, when we do well, we should recall that without the grace of God, we would be worse than the worst sinners.
Deifying Grace
Next, we will treat of the grace which resides within the soul. The primary disagreement is whether the grace in the soul is created or uncreated. Disagreements on this topic generally fall along the East/West fault line. First, I will discuss common ground, then these two different ideas, and then I will reason as to which is “more true.”
The Basic Concept
First, common ground. St. Athanasius wrote that “God became man so that man might become God.” This is the doctrine of divinization, or theosis. This does not mean that grace makes us consubstantial with the Father, part of the Holy Trinity. To dare suggest such a thing is, of course, a damnable blasphemy. What it does mean, however, is nonetheless so great one would blaspheme in daring to suggest it without the instruction of divine revelation: as God has a hypostatic union with man, man may have a hypostatic union with God. We are all potential vessels of the Holy Spirit; vessels in which the Spirit, by His dwelling, makes us deiform – participants in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4); a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). The fine points on how this works are the subject of the East-West debate.
The Essence-Energy Distinction and Uncreated Grace
First, the Eastern doctrine of “uncreated grace.” A 13th century Orthodox monk, Barlaam of Seminara, in criticizing the Latin Church’s position that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, claimed that univocal statements about God’s nature should be entirely abandoned, since His nature is not in any way demonstrable. Barlaam suggested that participation in God can only be through the mediation of created things – particularly study, which he argued was necessary for Christian perfection. He argued that the theophanies (the burning bush, the light of the transfiguration) were mere creaturely effects, not actually God. Gregory Palamas, a monk with a greater focus on inner stillness than learning, argued that Barlaam’s theory made the power of the Holy Spirit, “which transformed fishermen into Apostles,” into nothing. An Eastern synod agreed with Palamas that Barlaam was effectively elevating philosophy over God and condemned his writings.
To explore Palamas’ argument against Barlaam, we must first understand his distinction between essence and energy. Essence is the “what-ness” of a thing, whereas the energies are the expression of that essence. So, for example: you cannot interact directly with my essence, but you can interact with my human energies by shaking my hand. Palamas argues that God is the same way – we can interact with His energies (grace), but not His essence. However, unlike human energies, Palamas argues that God’s energies really are Him, not a medium. I am not my handshake; but God IS wisdom, justice, and so forth. To reconcile our participation in these energies without claiming we become consubstantial with God, Palamas posits a “real distinction” between God’s uncreated energies and uncreated essence, little different than the real distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit.
The Palamites entirely reject the idea that we can see God’s essence in any way. From their perspective, that would require consubstantiality. Palamas refuses to even make apophatic claims about God’s essence – for example, he would not say something like “God’s essence is good.” Rather, he would say “God’s essence is beyond good and evil,” and even that would only be analogical. Palamas responded to the accusation that his teaching contradicted divine simplicity by saying – quite beautifully – that, “God is indivisibly divided and united divisibly, and experiences neither multiplicity nor composition.” This inaccessible transcendence means we cannot see God’s essence in Heaven, but only participate in His uncreated energies more intimately.
Created Grace
Next, the Western doctrine of “created grace.” This was most comprehensively set forth by St. Thomas Aquinas. Although the Catholic Church has not condemned the essence-energy distinction, this is the principal doctrine of the Catholic Church. It is also the foundation of most Protestant theology surrounding sanctification.
St. Thomas teaches that sanctifying grace is an entitative habit within the soul which makes one pleasing to God. An entitative habit is an accident (not an essence) which changes one’s disposition. For example, gender is an entitative habit. We know being male is an accident, since one can be human without being male. However, the entitative habit of manhood modifies every operative expression of the human essence. It does this by giving one an interior desire and ability to know and achieve that which pertains to manhood. Sanctifying grace operates the same way. It gives one the interior desire and ability to know and achieve that which pertains to God. Sanctifying grace is, therefore: God’s own self-knowledge and self-love infused in us so that we may know and love Him.
But surely God’s own self-knowledge and self-love are uncreated? Indeed they are. Why, then, do we call sanctifying grace “created grace?” The reason we call sanctifying grace “created” is because our participation in it is created (Summa 110, A2 R2). The entitative habit of manhood would exist even if this or that particular man didn’t exist; yet, the particular created expression of manhood in that man would not exist without him. Likewise, God’s own self-knowledge and self-love would exist even if this or that saint didn’t exist; yet, grace’s particular expression of God’s self-knowledge and self-love in that saint would not exist without him. Even the indwelling of the (obviously) uncreated Holy Spirit – which greatly strengthens the effects of sanctifying grace – is a created participation in the uncreated Spirit. As whiteness (essence) makes an object white (accident), sanctifying grace makes the soul Godly (Summa 110, A2 R1).
The crucial divergence with the East is on the subject of Heaven. The Latins believe that the passive intellect – the faculty of the mind responsible for thought – becomes its object. That is, when one thinks about a frog, the passive intellect becomes the essence of frog more or less perfectly depending on one’s discursive knowledge of frogs. St. Thomas suggests that Heaven is God replacing our discursive concept of Him with His actual essence. That is, instead of thinking about a concept of God, His actual essence becomes our mind (Summa, Q12). We see Him “face to face,” “as He is,” and “know [Him] fully, even as [we] are fully known [by Him]” (1 Cor 13:12, 1 John 3:2). This is unthinkable for a Palamite; it is only by drawing distinction between grace and created participation that Latins can suggest seeing God’s essence would not make one consubstantial.
Although all the blessed in Heaven see God face-to-face, they remain distinct in three ways. First, the degree of comprehension. The more grace one has, the more clearly they will see God. Since God is grace, and His mind is infinite, He can see Himself with perfect clarity. But the blessed are all finite, so they can never fully comprehend God (Summa, Q92, A1-R2). Thus, they are distinct from God in their finitude, and distinct from each other in the precise degree to which they understand God’s essence. Second, nature. Angels are distinct from each other in their unique angelic natures, and obviously distinct from humans. Third, accidents. We know, for example, that we will be men and women in Heaven, for the resurrected Christ was yet a man. Further, He had other unique accidents, such as the wounds of His hands, feet, and side.
The Errors of Uncreated Grace
The Eastern doctrine of uncreated grace has several critical issues. First, it unnecessarily puts God at a distance from His creation by making creation a patient upon which His energies act. Creation is not a patient; creation exists ex nihilo. God did not create the universe out of some pre-existing matter; creation only exists by partaking in He who is Being Itself. “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God cannot possibly draw any closer to creation than He already is. Deification is not God becoming more present to us; rather, it is us becoming more present to Him. The only way this makes sense is a created (that is, accidental) participation on our part. The Palamite dodges this conclusion by calling God’s uncreated energies “neither substance nor accident,” inventing a magical third mode of being foreign to scripture and the observable world.
Second, it provides no explanation for the theophanies that the Thomist cannot provide, and actually raises more questions. For example, the Palamite would say God was really present in the burning bush by His uncreated energies. How? If He was present in the physical sense, then we are positing “uncreated photons” which Moses would nevertheless only receive through the medium of his eyes. If God was present in the mystical sense, then He was infusing the experience directly into Moses’ mind – exactly the sort of thing the Thomist would suggest. And either way, would this experience of God’s energies not be a finite, created participation on Moses’ side? Again, the Palamite must hastily dodge this conclusion by claiming God’s energies are neither substance nor accident.
Third, it contradicts the plain words of scripture by putting us at a distance from God’s essence in Heaven. “We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). “We shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). “Show Thy face and we shall be saved” (Psalm 79:20). “Lord, show us the Father and we shall be satisfied” (John 14:8). “[The saints] will see His face” (Rev 22:4). “I shall behold your face in righteousness” (Psalm 17:15). “Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, do I seek” (Psalm 27:8).
Conclusion
With all this said, we have a much clearer definition of what grace is and how grace works. I will briefly reiterate the previous discussions.
All goodness flows from God; this being the case, actual grace is necessary for even the least salutary act. We cannot entice God to give us grace when grace is the means by which we do anything worthwhile in the first place. God’s gift of grace is, thus, totally free and unmerited. Further, God’s grace is efficacious; it works in us “both to will and to accomplish.” Grace is not something due to us for our cooperation; grace is the cause of our cooperation. This should give us enormous confidence in God’s ability to transform us into saints. It should also give us great humility by exposing our poverty. To delve deeper into the fine points of actual grace and predestination, see here.
There is, aside from operative grace, grace which dwells in the soul and makes us deiform. That is, the grace in the soul makes us into “little gods.” This grace is an entitative habit, a quality which disposes the soul towards God and makes it pleasing to Him. It is God’s own self-knowledge and self-love given to us so that we can know and love Him. Of course, God’s own self-knowledge and self-love are uncreated, but our participation in them is created. This participation culminates in Heaven, where the saint’s mind becomes God, allowing him to see God as He is, though without the infinite, complete comprehension by which God understands Himself.