(Continued)
- Sanctifying grace cannot be termed a habit (habitus) with the same precision as it is called a quality. Metaphysicians enumerate four kinds of quality:
• habit and disposition;
• power and want of power;
• passion and passible quality, for example, to blush, pale with wrath;
• form and figure (cf. Aristotle, Categ. VI).
Manifestly sanctifying grace must be placed in the first of these four classes, namely habit or disposition; but as dispositions are fleeting things, and habit has a permanency theologians agree that sanctifying grace is undoubtedly a habit, hence the name: Habitual Grace (gratia habitualis). Habitus is subdivided into habitus entitativus and habitus operativus. A habitus entitativus is a quality or condition added to a substance by which condition or quality the substance is found permanently good or bad, for instance: sickness or health, beauty, deformity, etc. Habitus operativus is a disposition to produce certain operations or acts, for instance, moderation or extravagance; this habitus is called either virtue or vice just as the soul is inclined thereby to a moral good or to a moral evil. Now, since sanctifying grace does not of itself impart any such readiness, celerity, or facility in action, we must consider it primarily as a habitus entitativus, not as a habitus operativus. Therefore, since the popular concept of habitus, which usually designates a readiness, does not accurately express the idea of sanctifying grace, another term is employed, i.e. a quality after the manner of a habit (qualitas per modum habitus), and this term is applied with Bellarmine (De grat. et lib. arbit., I, iii). Grace, however, preserves an inner relation to a supernatural activity, because it does not impart to the soul the act but rather the disposition to perform supernatural and meritorious acts therefore grace is remotely and mediately a disposition to act (habitus remote operativus). On account of this and other metaphysical subtleties the Council of Trent has refrained from applying the term habitus to sanctifying grace.
In the order of nature a distinction is made between natural and acquired habits (habitus innatus, and habitus acquisitus), to distinguish between natural instincts, such, for instance, as are common to the brute creation, and acquired habits such as we develop by practice, for instance skill in playing a musical instrument etc. But grace is supernatural, and cannot, therefore, be classed either as a natural or an acquired habit; it can only be received, accordingly, by infusion from above, therefore it is a supernatural infused habit (habitus infusus).
newadvent.org/cathen/06701a.htm
It might be worth your time to read the article in its entirety.
It is true that the Greek Fathers used terms from Greek philosophy. However, they did not believe it necessary or good to try to reconcile Christian theology with Aristotle. Instead Orthodox theology emphasizes the mystery of God. St. Gregory of Nyssa used the example of Moses who went into the darkness of the cloud and smoke of Mt. Sinai to converse with God. We call this apophatic theology, which means the theology of not knowing or doing theology on the basis of what God is not. It exists in the Western tradition, but tends to be somewhat marginalized as mystical whereas it is central to Eastern theology and considered superior to cataphatic theology, which is more central in the West.
Historians tell us that scholasticism was born in an effort to reconcile Christian theology with Aristotle. To me scholasticism tries to understand too much through human reason and logic. For example the distinction between substance and accidents, terms borrowed from Aristotle, used to describe the change that takes place in the bread and wine during the Eucharist. We simply teach that the bread and wine are changed into the sacred Body and Blood of Christ and make no effort to use the categories of Aristotle or anyone else to try to define the nature of the change. Instead, we treat it as a mystery beyond human comprehension.
St. Thomas agrees with the principle of apophatic theology and certainly does not disparage it. He states toward the beginning of his
Summa, “We cannot know what God is, but only what He is not. So to study Him, we study what He has not.”
The concept of deification or divinization is present in the
Summa Theologica (you can see some examples in the quotations I posted), and other Western fathers such as Augustine, who is quoted by St. Thomas. “Factus est Deus homo, ut homo fieret Deus” (
Sermo XIII de Tempore), that is, “God was made man so that man might be made God.”
I am puzzled that there are Eastern Orthodox who reject the definition of transubstantiation as too philosophical. Eastern Orthodox do not object to the idea of substance. If the Eucharist is Christ, then the Eucharist is Christ in substance, which precludes it being bread and wine in substance. However, the Eucharist still has the sensible properties of bread and wine and, as far as we can see, behaves as bread and wine. These accidental properties remain present even though the substance is Christ. The notion of accident is not rejected by the Eastern Orthodox. St. John Damascene, for example, uses it in his
Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, as a quick search will show. Transubstantiation seems like a very good clear and uncontroversial way of stating the orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist. It is hardly an explanation of how God changes the bread and wine (as if that could be understood), but an explanation of what happens, which is exactly what you say, that the bread and wine are really changed into Christ’s body and blood despite the sensible appearance that the bread and wine remain.
