The same conclusion follows from the fact that regeneration only fulfils generation. "I am not come," said our Lord, "to destroy, but to fulfil." The creative act, completed, as to the order of procession of existences from God, in the Incarnation or hypostatic union, which closes the initial order and institutes the teleological, includes both the procession of existences from God and their return to him. It is completed, fulfilled, and consummated only in regeneration and glorification. If the nature that proceeds from God is changed or superseded by grace, the creative act is not fulfilled, for that which proceeds from God does not return to him. The initial man must himself return, or with regard to him the creative act remains initial and incomplete. In the first order, man is only initial or inchoate, and is a complete, a perfect man only when he has returned to God as his final cause. To maintain that it is not this initial man that returns, but, if the supposition be possible, another than he, or something substituted for him, and that has not by way of creation proceeded from God, would deny the very purpose and end of the Incarnation, and the very idea of redemption, regeneration, and glorification, the grace of Christ, and leave man without any means of redemption or deliverance from sin, or of fulfilling his destiny—the doom of the damned in hell. The destruction or change of man's nature is the destruction of man himself, the destruction of his identity, his human personality; yet St. Paul teaches, Rom. viii. 30, that the persons called are they who are redeemed and glorified: "Whom he predestinated, them also he called; and whom he called, them also he justified; and whom he justified, them also he glorified."
We can, indeed, do nothing in relation to our end without the grace of Christ; but, with that grace freely given and strengthening us, it is equally certain that we can work, and work even meritoriously, or else how could heaven be promised us as a reward? Yet it is so promised: "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and is the rewarder of them that seek him." (Heb. xi. 6.) Moses "looked to the reward;" David had respect to the divine "retributions;" and all Christians, as nearly all heathen, believe in a future state of rewards and punishments. We are exhorted to flee to Christ and obey him that we may escape hell and gain heaven. The grace by which we are born again and are enabled to merit is unquestionably gratuitous, for grace is always gratuitous, omnino gratis, as say the theologians, and we can do nothing to merit it, no more than we could do something to merit our creation from nothing; but though gratuitous, a free gift of God, grace is bestowed on or infused into a subject already existing in the order of generation or natural order, and we can act by it, and can and do, if faithful to it, merit heaven or eternal life. Hence says the apostle, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, or to accomplish." (Philip, ii. 12.) But this no more implies that the willing and doing in the order of regeneration are not ours than that our acting in the order of nature is not ours because we can even in that order act, whether for good or for evil, only by the divine concurrence.
The heterodox confound the gift of grace by which we are able to merit the reward with the reward itself; hence they maintain, because we can merit nothing without grace, that we can merit nothing even with it, and that we are justified by faith alone, which is the free gift of God, conferred on whom he wills, and that grace is irresistible, and once in grace we are always in grace. But St. James tells us that we are "justified by our works, and not by faith only, for faith without works is dead." (St. James ii. 14-25.) Are we who work by grace and merit the reward the same we that prior to regeneration sinned and were under wrath? Is it we who by the aid of grace merit the reward, or is it the grace in us? If the grace itself, how can it be said that we are rewarded? If the reward is given not to us who sinned, but to the new person or new nature into which grace is said to change us, how can it be said that we either merit or are rewarded? Man has his specific nature, and if you destroy or change that specific nature, you annihilate him as man, instead of aiding his return to God as his final cause. The theologians treat grace not as a new nature or a new faculty bestowed on nature, but as a habitus, or habit, an infused habit indeed, not an acquired habit, but none the less a habit on that account, which changes not, transforms not nature, but gives it, as do all habits, a power or facility of doing what without it would exceed its strength. The subject of the habit is the human soul, and that which acts by, under, or with the habit is also the human soul, not the habit. The soul, as before receiving it, is the actor, but it acts with an increased strength, and does what before it could not; yet its nature is simply strengthened, not changed. The general idea of habit must be preserved throughout. The personality is not in the habit, but in the rational nature of him into whom the habit is infused by the Holy Ghost. In our Lord there are the two natures; but in him the divine personality assumes the human nature, and is always the subject acting, whether acting in the human nature or in the divine. In the regenerated there are also the human and the divine; but the human, if I may so speak, assumes the divine, and retains from first to last its own personality, as is implied in the return to God without absorption in him or loss of personal individuality, and in the fact that, though without grace, we cannot concur with grace, yet by the aid of grace we can and must concur with it the moment we come to the use of reason, or it is not effectual. The sacraments are, indeed, efficacious ex opere operato, not by the faith or virtue of the recipient, but only in case the will, as in infants, opposes no obstacle to the grace they signify. Yet even in infants the concurrence of the will is required when they come to the use of reason, and the refusal to elicit the act loses the habit infused by baptism. The baptized infant must concur with grace as soon as capable of a rational act.
The heterodox who are exclusive supernaturalists, because we cannot without grace concur with grace, deny that the concurrence is needed, and assert that grace is irresistible and overcomes all resistance, and, as gratia victrix, subjects the will. Hence they hold that, in faith, regeneration, justification, sanctification, nature does nothing, and all that is done is done by sovereign grace even in spite of nature; but the fact on which they rely is not sufficient to sustain their theory. The schoolmen, for the convenience of teaching, divide and subdivide grace till we are in danger of losing sight of its essential unity. They tell us of prevenient grace, or the grace that goes before and excites the will of assisting grace, the grace that aids the will when excited to elect to concur with grace; and efficacious grace, the grace that renders the act of concurrence effectual. But these three graces are really one and the same grace, and the gratia praeveniens, when not resisted, becomes immediately gratia adjuvans, and aids the will to concur with grace, and, if concurred with, it becomes, ipso facto and immediately, gratia efficax. It needs no grace to resist grace, and none, it would seem to follow from the freedom of the will, not to resist it. Freedom of the will, according to the decision of the church in the case of the gratia victrix of the Jansenists, implies the power to will the contrary, and, if free to resist it, why not free not to resist? There is, it seems to us, a real distinction between not willing to resist and willing to concur. Nothing in nature compels or forces the will to resist, for its natural operation is to the good, as that of the intellect is to the true. The grace excites it to action, and, if it do not will to resist, the grace is present to assist it to elect to comply. If this be tenable, and we see not why it is not, both the aid of grace and the freedom and activity of the will are asserted, are saved, are harmonized, and the soul is elevated into the order of regeneration without any derogation either from nature or from grace, or lesion to either.
We are well aware of the old question debated in Catholic schools, whether grace is to be regarded as auxilium quod or as auxilium quo; but it is not necessary either to inquire what was the precise sense of the question debated, or to enter into any discussion of its merits, for both schools held the Catholic faith, which asserts the freedom of the will, and both held that grace is auxilium, and therefore an aid given to nature, not its destruction, nor its change into something else. The word auxilium, or aid, says of itself all that we are contending for. St. Paul says, indeed, when reluctantly comparing his labors with those of the other apostles, that he had labored more abundantly than they all, but adds, "Yet not I, but the grace of God with me." But he recognizes himself, for he says, "grace with me;" and his sense is easily explained by what he says in a passage already quoted, namely, "Work out your own salvation; for it is God that worketh in you to will and to do," or to accomplish, and also by what he says in the text itself, (1 Cor. xv. 1,) "By the grace of God, I am what I am;" which has primary reference to his calling to be an apostle. God by his grace works in us to will and to do, and we can will or do nothing in relation to our final end, as has been explained, without his grace; but, nevertheless, it is we who will and do. Hence St. Paul could say to St. Timothy, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. For the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me at that day: and not to me only, but to them also who love his coming." (2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.) Here St. Paul speaks of himself as the actor and as the recipient of the crown. St. Augustine says that God, in crowning the saints, "crowns his own gifts," but evidently means that he crowns them for what they have become by his gifts; and, as it is only by virtue of his gifts that they have become worthy of crowns, their glory redounds primarily to him, and only in a subordinate sense to themselves. There is, in exclusive supernaturalists and exaggerated ascetics, an unsuspected pantheism, no less sophistical and uncatholic than the pantheism of our pseudo-ontologists. The characteristic mark of pantheism is not simply the denial of creation, but the denial of the creation of substances capable of acting as second causes. In the order of regeneration as in the order of generation we are not indeed primary, but are really secondary causes; and the denial of this fact, and the assertion of God as the direct and immediate actor from first to last, is pure pantheism. This is as true in the order of regeneration as in the order of generation, though in the order of grace it is thought to be a proof of piety, when, in fact, it denies the very subject that can be pious. Count de Maistre somewhere says, "The worst error against grace is that of asserting too much grace." We must exist, and exist as second causes, to be the recipients of grace, or to be able even with grace to be pious toward God, or the subject of any other virtue. In the regeneration we do by the aid of grace, but we are, nevertheless, the doers, whence it follows that regeneration no more than generation is wholly supernatural. Regeneration supposes generation, takes it up to itself and completes it, otherwise the first Adam would have no relation to the second Adam, and man would find no place in the order of regeneration, which would be the more surprising since the order itself originates in the Incarnation, in the God-Man, who is its Alpha and Omega, its beginning and end.
Many people are, perhaps, misled on this subject by the habit of restricting the word natural exclusively to the procession of existences from God and what pertains to the initial order of creation, and the word supernatural to the return of existences to God as their last end, and the means by which they return or attain that end and complete the cycle of existence or the creative act. The procession is initial, the return is teleological. The initial is called natural, because it is developed and carried on by natural generation; the teleological is called supernatural, because it is developed and carried on by grace, and the election by grace takes the place of hereditary descent. This is well enough, except when we have to deal with persons who insist on separating—not simply distinguishing, but separating, the natural and the supernatural, and on denying either the one or the other. But, in reality, what we ordinarily call the natural is not wholly natural, nor what we call the supernatural is wholly supernatural. Strictly speaking, the supernatural is God himself and what he does with no other medium than his own eternal Word, that is, without any created medium, or agency of second causes; the natural is that which is created and what God does through the medium of second causes or created agencies, called by physicists natural laws. Thus, creation is a supernatural fact, because effected immediately by God himself; generation is a natural fact, because effected by God mediately by natural laws or second causes; the hypostatic union, or the assumption of flesh by the Word, which completes the creative act in the initial order and institutes the teleological or final order, is supernatural; all the operations of grace are supernatural, though operations in and with nature; the sacraments are supernatural, for they are effective ex opere operato, and the natural parts are only signs of the grace, not its natural medium. The water used in baptism is not a natural medium of the grace of regeneration; it is made by the divine will the sign, though an appropriate sign, of it; the grace itself is communicated by the direct action of the Holy Ghost, which is supernatural. Regeneration, as well as its complement, glorification, is supernatural, for it cannot be naturally developed from generation, and regeneration does not necessarily carry with it glorification; for it does not of itself, as St. Augustine teaches, insure the grace of perseverance, since grace is omnino gratis, and only he that perseveres to the end will be glorified. Hence, even in the teleological order, the natural, that is, the human, reason and will have their share, and without their activity the end would not and could not be gained. Revelation demands the active reception of reason, or else it might as well be made to an ox or a horse as to a man; and the will that perseveres to the end is the human will, though the human will be regenerated by grace. Wherever you see the action of the creature as second cause you see the natural, and wherever you see the direct action of God, whether as sustaining the creature or immediately producing the effect, you see the supernatural.
The fact that God works in us to will and to do, or that we can do nothing in the order of regeneration without grace moving and assisting us, no more denies the presence and activity of nature than does the analogous fact that we can do nothing even in the order of generation without the supernatural presence and concurrence of the Creator. We are as apt to forget that God has any hand in the action of nature as we are to deny that where God acts nature can ever coöperate; we are apt to conclude that the action of the one excludes that of the other, and to run either into Pelagianism on the one hand, or into Calvinism or Jansenism on the other; and we find a difficulty in harmonizing in our minds the divine sovereignty of God and human liberty. We cannot, on this occasion, enter fully into the question of their conciliation. Catholic faith requires us to assert both, whether we can or cannot see how they can coexist. We think, however, that we can see a distinction between the divine government of a free active subject and of an inanimate and passive subject. God governs each subject according to the nature he has given it; and, if he has given man a free nature, his government, although absolute, must leave human freedom intact, and to man the capacity of exercising his own free activity, without running athwart the divine sovereignty. How this can be done, we do not undertake to say.
But be this as it may, there is no act even in the natural order that is or can be performed without the assistance of the supernatural; for we are absolutely dependent on the creative act of God in everything, in those very acts in which we act most freely. The grace of God is as necessary as the grace of Christ. God has not created a universe, and made it, when once created, capable of going alone as a self-moving machine. He creates substances, indeed, capable of acting as second causes; but these substances can do nothing, are nothing as separated from the creative act of God that produces them, upholds them, is present in them, and active in all their acts, even in the most free determinations of the will. Without this divine presence, always an efficient presence, and this divine activity in all created activities, there is and can be no natural activity or action, any more than, in relation to our last end, there can be the first motion toward grace without grace. The principle of action in both orders is strictly analogous, and our acting with grace or by the assistance of grace in the order of regeneration is as natural as is our acting by the divine presence and concurrence in the order of generation. The human activity in either order is equally natural, and in neither is it possible or explicable without the constant presence and activity of the supernatural. The two orders, the initial and the teleological, then, are not antagonistical to each other, are not based on two mutually destructive principles, but are really two distinct parts, as we so often say, of one dialectic whole.
The Holy Scriptures, since God is causa eminens, the cause of causes, the first cause operative in all second causes, speak of God as doing this or that, without always taking special note of the fact that, though he really does it, he does it through the agency of second causes or the activity of creatures. This is frequently the case in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and sometimes, though less frequently, in the New Testament, though never in either without something to indicate whether it is the direct and immediate or the indirect and mediate action of God that is meant. Paying no attention to this, many overlook the distinction altogether, and fall into a sort of pantheistic fatalism, and practically deny the freedom and activity of second causes, as is the case with Calvin when he declares God to be the author of sin, which on his own principles is absurd, for he makes the will of God the criterion of right, and therefore whatever God does must be right, and nothing that is right can be sin. On the other hand, men, fixing their attention on the agency of second causes, overlook the constant presence and activity of the first cause, treat second causes as independent causes, or as if they were themselves first cause, and fall into pure naturalism, which is only another name for atheism. The universe is not a clock or a watch, but even a clock or a watch generates not its own motive power; the maker in either has only so constructed it as to utilize for his purpose a motive power that exists and operates independently both of him and of his mechanism.