b) The majority of Catholic theologians[1011] hold with St. Thomas[1012] and his school that grace and charity, while inseparable, are really distinct, sanctifying grace as a habitus entitativus imparting [pg 339] to the soul a supernatural being, whereas charity, being purely a habitus operativus, confers a supernatural power.
Let us put the matter somewhat differently. Grace inheres in the substance of the soul, while charity has its seat in one of its several faculties. Inhering in the very substance of the soul, grace, by a physical or moral power, produces the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and love. “As the soul's powers, which are the wellsprings of its acts, flow from its essence,” says the Angelic Doctor, “so the theological virtues flow from grace into the faculties of the soul and move them to act.”[1013] And St. Augustine: “Grace precedes charity.”[1014]
This is a more plausible view than the one we have examined a little farther up, and it can claim the authority of Scripture, which, though it occasionally identifies the effects of grace and charity, always clearly distinguishes the underlying habits. Cfr. 2 Cor. XIII, 13: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the charity of God.”[1015] 1 Tim. I 14: “The grace of our Lord hath abounded exceedingly with faith and love.”[1016] Furthermore, “regeneration” and “new-creation” in Biblical usage affect not only the faculties of the soul, but its [pg 340] substance. Finally, many councils consistently distinguish between gratia and caritas (dona, virtutes)—a distinction which has almost the force of a proof that grace and charity are not the same thing.[1017] These councils cannot have had in mind a purely virtual distinction, because theological love presupposes sanctifying grace in exactly the same manner as a faculty presupposes a substance or nature in which it exists. The Roman Catechism expressly designates the theological virtues as “concomitants of grace.”[1018]
The question nevertheless remains an open one, as neither party can fully establish its claim, and the Church has never rendered an official decision either one way or the other.[1019]
4. Sanctifying Grace a Participation of the Soul in the Divine Nature.—The highest and at the same time the most profound conception of sanctifying grace is that it is a real, though of course only accidental and analogical, participation of the soul in the nature of God. That sanctifying grace makes us “partakers of [pg 341] the divine nature” is of faith, but the manner in which it effects this participation admits of different explanations.
a) The fact itself can be proved from Sacred Scripture. Cfr. 2 Pet. I, 4: “By whom [Christ] He [the Father] hath given us great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature.”[1020] To this text may be added all those which affirm the regeneration of the soul in God, because regeneration, being a new birth, must needs impart to the regenerate the nature of his spiritual progenitor. Cfr. John I, 13: “Who are born, not of blood, ... but of God.”[1021] John III, 5: “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.”[1022] St. James I, 18: “For of his own will hath he begotten us by the word of truth.”[1023] 1 John III, 9: “Whosoever is born of God, committeth no sin.”[1024]
The Fathers of the Church again and again extol the deification (deificatio, θείωσις) of man effected by sanctifying grace and compare the union of the soul with God to the commingling of water with wine, the penetration of iron by fire, etc. St. Athanasius[1025] begins his [pg 342] Christological teaching with the declaration: “He was not, therefore, first man and then God, but first God and then man, in order that He might rather deify us.”[1026] St. Augustine describes the process of deification as follows: “He justifies who is just of Himself, not from another; and He deifies who is God of Himself, not by participation in another. But He who justifies also deifies, because He makes [men] sons of God through justification.... We have been made sons of God and gods; but this is a grace of the adopting [God], not the nature of the progenitor. The Son of God alone is God; ... the others who are made gods are made gods by His grace; they are not born of His substance, so as to become that which He is, but in order that they may come to Him by favor and become co-heirs with Christ.”[1027] The idea underlying this passage has found its way into the liturgy of the Mass,[1028] and Ripalda is justified in declaring that it cannot be denied without rashness.[1029]
b) In trying to explain in what manner grace enables us to partake of the divine nature, it [pg 343] is well to keep in view the absolutely supernatural character of sanctifying grace and the impossibility of any deification of the creature in the strict sense of the term. The truth lies between these two extremes.
A few medieval mystics[1030] and modern Quietists[1031] were guilty of exaggeration when they taught that grace transforms the human soul into the substance of the Godhead, thus completely merging the creature in its Creator. This contention[1032] leads to Pantheism. How can the soul be merged in the Creator, since it continues to be subject to concupiscence? “We have therefore,” says St. Augustine, “even now begun to be like Him, as we have the first-fruits of the Spirit; but yet even now we are unlike Him, by reason of the old nature which leaves its remains in us. In as far, then, as we are like Him, in so far are we, by the regenerating Spirit, sons of God; but in as far as we are unlike Him, in so far are we the children of the flesh and of this world.”[1033]
On the other hand it would be underestimating the power of grace to say that it effects a merely external and moral participation of the soul in the divine nature, similar to that by which those who embraced the faith of [pg 344] Abraham were called “children of Abraham,” and those who commit heinous crimes are called “sons of the devil.” According to the Fathers[1034] and theologians, to “partake of the divine nature” means to become internally and physically like God and to receive from Him truly divine gifts, i.e. such as are proper to God alone and absolutely transcend the order of nature.[1035] Being self-existing, absolutely independent, and infinite, God cannot, of course, be regarded as the formal cause of created sanctity; yet the strictly supernatural gifts which He confers on His creatures, especially the beatific vision and sanctifying grace, can be conceived only per modum causae formalis (not informantis), because through them God gives Himself to the creature in such an intimate way that the creature is raised up to and transfigured by Him.[1036] Consequently, the so-called deificatio of the soul by grace is not a real deification, but an assimilation of the creature to God.[1037]