More grace more easy?

[thinkandmull]

Hello,

What do we say to those (like my brother) who says that when God gives more grace to someone it is easier for that person not to sin and so… “where is the glory?”, as if it is better for someone not to be given much grace so they can overcome the sin with greater courage. Of course some actual grace is necessary in order to do anything of merit, but when God pours grace on someone, isn’t he taking away some of that person’s opportunity to be brave? If you put the glory on God, then why do saints who have grace poured on them gain greater merit?

 

[dshix]

Hello,

What do we say to those (like my brother) who says that when God gives more grace to someone it is easier for that person not to sin and so… “where is the glory?”, as if it is better for someone not to be given much grace so they can overcome the sin with greater courage. Of course some actual grace is necessary in order to do anything of merit, but when God pours grace on someone, isn’t he taking away some of that person’s opportunity to be brave? If you put the glory on God, then why do saints who have grace poured on them gain greater merit?

None of our good actions can ultimately be attributed to us; we are completely reliant on God’s grace to be able to be good.

Let’s make a distinction between the two kinds of grace: sanctifying grace and actual grace.

Sanctifying grace is the grace that we all have when we are baptised and have not committed any mortal sins (or have had our mortal sins forgiven in confession). One must be in a state of sanctifying grace to be saved, and it is the thing which makes us holy.

Actual grace is grace given by God at a particular time, to a particular person, to help them do a particular thing. It basically gives one the strength/fortitude to do what is right when challenged by a vice. And we receive these graces ALL THE TIME. We need it, or else we would fall into nearly every temptation Satan threw at us.

So your brother has a mistaken idea of how merit works. We always need a grace in order to do good. By doing good, we shouldn’t be trying to get “glory” for ourselves, but we should intend to do the will of God for His sake. It is prideful to imagine that we could possibly function with less of God’s grace, or that we would get more “glory” if He withheld it from us. On the contrary: if God completely removed His grace from an individual, that individual would be completely unable to avoid committing every sin, and given time, he would, in fact, commit every sin.

All the more reason to be humble before God; we are helpless without His constant intervention.

 

[fhansen]

Hello,

What do we say to those (like my brother) who says that when God gives more grace to someone it is easier for that person not to sin and so… “where is the glory?”, as if it is better for someone not to be given much grace so they can overcome the sin with greater courage. Of course some actual grace is necessary in order to do anything of merit, but when God pours grace on someone, isn’t he taking away some of that person’s opportunity to be brave? If you put the glory on God, then why do saints who have grace poured on them gain greater merit?

It’s a matter of the will. God seeks to draw us, by grace which we all need to one degree or another, into greater justice, but doesn’t force us. It must be done with equanimity IMO, with, perhaps, a person of weaker character requiring more help. But He’s desiring, He’s patiently demanding, that we participate, that we own our justice to the greatest extent we can. The Parable of the Talents sheds light on the role of this participation. And Luke 12:48: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."

And from the CCC:
**1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."26

Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.27
I. FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.**

 

[thinkandmull]

From what I am surmising here, grace acts in a way we humans can’t understand. Augustine tried to say it was a push towards good. But then those who do good without the extra push-grace are the greater people, not those with the grace. So I think we have to say tat we don’t know HOW grace operates. The Catechism says that Mary “was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life.” If this was because the grace she got was so powerful and/or sweet, what would make her so great? So again, I don’t think we can understand the “mechanism” of actual grace in anyway whatsoever in this life

 

[thinkandmull]

None of our good actions can ultimately be attributed to us; we are completely reliant on God’s grace to be able to be good.

Let’s make a distinction between the two kinds of grace: sanctifying grace and actual grace.

Sanctifying grace is the grace that we all have when we are baptised and have not committed any mortal sins (or have had our mortal sins forgiven in confession). One must be in a state of sanctifying grace to be saved, and it is the thing which makes us holy.

Actual grace is grace given by God at a particular time, to a particular person, to help them do a particular thing. It basically gives one the strength/fortitude to do what is right when challenged by a vice. And we receive these graces ALL THE TIME. We need it, or else we would fall into nearly every temptation Satan threw at us.

So your brother has a mistaken idea of how merit works. We always need a grace in order to do good. By doing good, we shouldn’t be trying to get “glory” for ourselves, but we should intend to do the will of God for His sake. It is prideful to imagine that we could possibly function with less of God’s grace, or that we would get more “glory” if He withheld it from us. On the contrary: if God completely removed His grace from an individual, that individual would be completely unable to avoid committing every sin, and given time, he would, in fact, commit every sin.

All the more reason to be humble before God; we are helpless without His constant intervention.

When you say “if God completely removed His grace from an individual, that individual would be completely unable to avoid committing every sin, and given time, he would, in fact, commit every sin.” This actually denies free will. A person can’t be forced to sin by not having grace. Its possible for him to resist

 

[thinkandmull]

Ironically, I think I am kinda Augustinian in that I don’t believe any works of even human merit can be done without actual grace. I think we are basically animals unless some actual grace is working in us. I don’t think that position is heretical

 

[yppop]

My view of Grace:

In my contemplation of the subject, I found that grace has been described in many ways, for example, you might run across grace described as: sanctifying, habitual, actual, efficacious, efficient, sanating, sufficient, justifying, gratuitous, sacramental, and probably a couple of others of which I am not aware. Apparently the definition of each is fair game for any theologian that cares to address the subject and consequently there is much overlapping of meanings.

However, to make sense of the subject I found it worthwhile to group and categorize, keeping in mind the general definition that grace is a gift from God freely given that can be used or rejected. As a result I arrived at three main categories: sanctifying, actual, and sacramental. One distinction between sanctifying grace and actual is that the former is permanently given and the latter is temporarily given to address certain situations that confront us. Sacramental grace can be either permanent as is baptism or temporary as is penance. Here is what I arrived at:

Sanctifying Grace, the spiritual state of being infused by God, which permanently inheres in the soul and induces justification (our path from original sin to Godliness) by orientating one’s life toward God. The most prominent form is Habitual Grace, which is manifested in us as a gift of the mental state called ‘wonder’. We accept this gift through our actions when we study, contemplate, and discover, God’s gifts of life, beauty, and truth and are rewarded with a feeling of “awe”.

Sacramental Grace, the spiritual state infused by God through reception of the sacraments, is manifested in us as a mental state called “piety”. We accept this gift through our actions such as worship and prayer, which when accomplished sincerely is rewarded with a feeling of “peace”. Justifying Grace is Sacramental Grace that restores a person to God’s friendship such as the grace received for the first time as in baptism or after baptism as penance. Gratuitous Grace is Sacramental Grace that is given to particular persons for the salvation of others such as the sacrament of Holy Orders that confers the priest with power of consecration and absolution or the Sacrament of Matrimony, which in my case conferred: my wife with the grace to influence my salvation and me with the grace to accept that influence.

Actual Grace, the spiritual state temporarily infused by God to enlighten the mind or strengthen the will to perform actions that increase one’s justification, is manifested in us as a mental state called “love”. Love induces a wide variety of actions, which can be generalized as the action of “sacrifice”. True sacrifice always is rewarded with a feeling of “joy”. Sufficient Grace is Actual Grace that may or may not be accepted . *Efficient or Efficacious Grace *is Actual Grace that has been accepted and acted upon through sacrifice and is rewarded with a feeling of joy. Sanating Grace is the Divine grace that functions to heal the ravages of sin, original and personal, in human nature.

Keep in mind that this was my personal “philosophical” approach to making some meaning of the concept of Grace and I will back off gladly anything I have written that may conflict with a defined dogma of the Catholic Church. However I will not depart from the practice of wonder, piety (I’m a devout Catholic), and love that has given me a lifetime of awe, peace, and joy.

Yppop

 

[dshix]

When you say “if God completely removed His grace from an individual, that individual would be completely unable to avoid committing every sin, and given time, he would, in fact, commit every sin.” This actually denies free will. A person can’t be forced to sin by not having grace. Its possible for him to resist

No, it does not deny free will. It is a statement of fact that since the human nature is fallen, we would fall into every kind of sin if we did not have any grace from God to keep us strong against sin.

That is: we would choose, of our own free will, to commit every kind of sin. The only thing that enables us to consistently avoid sin is God’s grace.

See St. Thomas’s Summa on this topic: biblehub.com/library/aquinas/summa_theologica/whether_man_without_grace_can.htm

 

[fhansen]

Ironically, I think I am kinda Augustinian in that I don’t believe any works of even human merit can be done without actual grace. I think we are basically animals unless some actual grace is working in us. I don’t think that position is heretical

And yet Augustine famously said, “The God who created you without your consent won’t save you without your consent.” There’s still a spark of the divine image, and a not totally extinguished or compromised will, within us that God appeals to and seeks to draw into greater and greater fullness and rectitude. We’re capable of the worst behavior of any created being, but also the best.

 

[thinkandmull]

No, it does not deny free will. It is a statement of fact that since the human nature is fallen, we would fall into every kind of sin if we did not have any grace from God to keep us strong against sin.

That is: we would choose, of our own free will, to commit every kind of sin. The only thing that enables us to consistently avoid sin is God’s grace.

See St. Thomas’s Summa on this topic: biblehub.com/library/aquinas/summa_theologica/whether_man_without_grace_can.htm

That article by Aquinas dragged on and on while I read it. But it is based on his theory of predestination, which in turn in a denial of free will. If I am free not to sin, it is POSSIBLE for me to go throughout life without sinning. That’s the most basic concept about free will that we all knew when we got the capacity around 7 years old

 

[dshix]

That article by Aquinas dragged on and on while I read it. But it is based on his theory of predestination, which in turn in a denial of free will. If I am free not to sin, it is POSSIBLE for me to go throughout life without sinning. That’s the most basic concept about free will that we all knew when we got the capacity around 7 years old

Well, I’m sorry to say that that’s a flawed understanding of free will, or at least an incomplete one.

Let’s break down how an act of free will occurs:

First, an image of something, such as a desire for some pleasure, is presented by the imagination to the intellect. The intellect, which is ordered toward the truth, looks at the image and considers the aspects of that thing, including the good or evil that is in it.

A properly formed and undarkened intellect is immediately capable of seeing if that image is evil.

Then, the intellect presents the image along with this additional information to the will, to make a choice about the image: to accept or reject it. The will is properly ordered toward the good, and so, properly speaking, it cannot choose evil. Therefore, if the image which the intellect presents is evil, the will cannot choose that evil directly, BUT (big but) the will can choose to focus only on the good aspects of the image, ignoring the evil.

When the will does this, it does violence to the intellect, darkening it, and over the course of time, if the will habitually chooses evil by looking at it as good, the intellect no longer can see it properly; that is, the intellect is damaged in its function of seeing the truth. And as this happens, it becomes easier and easier for the will to continue sinning.

OK, now back to free will. Because of the Fall of Adam, we are all born with our intellects already darkened. Because of concupiscence, our appetites constantly present images, temping us with many “good” things which actually contain evil. We choose evil willingly.

The fact that we have free will is not compromised by the fact that our intellect is darkened, though it can be said that our freedom is limited, because in a sense we lack “all the information”.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: because of the Fall, the darkening of the intellect, and concupiscence, we are completely incapable of avoiding sin entirely for an extended period of time. We need the help of God’s grace to avoid sin and grow in holiness.

 

[thinkandmull]

Its very basic to the whole system of philosophy that free will ensures that a person never has to do anything in his life accept what he chooses. Sin as well.

 

[dshix]

Its very basic to the whole system of philosophy that free will ensures that a person never has to do anything in his life accept what he chooses. Sin as well.

Which part of my post failed to communicate the fact that yes, our wills are free, and yes, we WILL CHOOSE sin if we don’t have the help of God’s grace to avoid it?

 

[thinkandmull]

We will for sure sin? Your post is a classic case of contradiction of ideas. Smacks of Calvinism. To be free in life means you will never do anything ‘for sure’.

 

[dshix]

We will for sure sin? Your post is a classic case of contradiction of ideas. Smacks of Calvinism. To be free in life means you will never do anything ‘for sure’.

Ah, I see, you are conflating “free will” with “absolute freedom”.

In this life, we are not absolutely free. If we were, we would be able to transport our physical body anywhere we wished merely by an act of the will. We lack the freedom to instantly transport ourselves to Jupiter. (In Heaven, we will have the gift of “agility” which will mean we will have perfect control of our bodies, and WILL be able to essentially teleport to any material place we desire.)

We also lack the freedom that comes as a result of our emotions being entirely subject to reason. For Adam and Eve before the Fall, their emotions were perfectly subjected to reason - what does this mean? It means that they could not feel anger, joy, sorrow, fear, or any other emotion until AFTER their intellect had determined it was reasonable to feel those emotions.

For us, however, we have lost that perfect subjection of emotions to reason, and so we are less free. We feel outbursts of emotional anger without wanting it. We often feel sorrow or joy without willing it. This is called “antecedent” emotion, and it is the opposite of “consequent” emotion, which is what Adam and Eve had perfectly.

Now, we still have consequent emotions, but until we reach perfection, we also have many antecedent emotions which throw rocks in our path.

Now back to freedom and free will. Just because we do NOT have perfect freedom does not mean we do not have free will. We always have free will, but since our other faculties are damaged and darkened by the Fall, we are highly likely to use our free will to choose evil things (as I explained at length in my previous post). Without grace, one is capable of avoiding sin for a little while, but before long, he no longer desires to avoid sin, and so he sins.

 

[o_mlly]

No grace, impossible.
Sufficient grace, always.

 

[thinkandmull]

Ah, I see, you are conflating “free will” with “absolute freedom”.

In this life, we are not absolutely free. If we were, we would be able to transport our physical body anywhere we wished merely by an act of the will. We lack the freedom to instantly transport ourselves to Jupiter. (In Heaven, we will have the gift of “agility” which will mean we will have perfect control of our bodies, and WILL be able to essentially teleport to any material place we desire.)

We also lack the freedom that comes as a result of our emotions being entirely subject to reason. For Adam and Eve before the Fall, their emotions were perfectly subjected to reason - what does this mean? It means that they could not feel anger, joy, sorrow, fear, or any other emotion until AFTER their intellect had determined it was reasonable to feel those emotions.

For us, however, we have lost that perfect subjection of emotions to reason, and so we are less free. We feel outbursts of emotional anger without wanting it. We often feel sorrow or joy without willing it. This is called “antecedent” emotion, and it is the opposite of “consequent” emotion, which is what Adam and Eve had perfectly.

Now, we still have consequent emotions, but until we reach perfection, we also have many antecedent emotions which throw rocks in our path.

Now back to freedom and free will. Just because we do NOT have perfect freedom does not mean we do not have free will. We always have free will, but since our other faculties are damaged and darkened by the Fall, we are highly likely to use our free will to choose evil things (as I explained at length in my previous post). Without grace, one is capable of avoiding sin for a little while, but before long, he no longer desires to avoid sin, and so he sins.

You haven’t explained how free will remains in your system, just as Aquinas avoided the question. Instead of at least saying “this is a huge mystery” you are trying to rationalize the unity of the ideas “you can’t not sin” with “to sin you have to choose”, and the idea that clearly gets thrown out eventually is free will because, well, you say we can’t avoid sinning

 

[dshix]

You haven’t explained how free will remains in your system, just as Aquinas avoided the question. Instead of at least saying “this is a huge mystery” you are trying to rationalize the unity of the ideas “you can’t not sin” with “to sin you have to choose”, and the idea that clearly gets thrown out eventually is free will because, well, you say we can’t avoid sinning

I am not a philosopher, so it is unlikely that I would be capable of making a perfect explanation that would stand against all scrutiny.

What I do know is that the existence of free will is self-evident. The fact that you are capable of choosing between any who things is evidence of that.

Further, this is teaching accepted by the Church, and as Catholics, it behooves us to have faith in the teaching of the Church.

If you truly want to delve deeper into this question, I advise you get in touch with some apologists with Catholic Answers. Or just continue to read Thomas Aquinas and ask specific questions to knowledgeable people regarding his works.

 

[thinkandmull]

I don’t really know how to go about having a good conversation with a CA apologist. Many members of this forum seem amply sufficient to discuss these issues. I don’t believe that Aquinas, however, is always the smoking gun. If I really put in the time, I could read his works and ask a pertinent “why” to much of what he said. He even rejected his writings in favor of mysticism at the end of his life

 

[dshix]

I don’t really know how to go about having a good conversation with a CA apologist. Many members of this forum seem amply sufficient to discuss these issues. I don’t believe that Aquinas, however, is always the smoking gun. If I really put in the time, I could read his works and ask a pertinent “why” to much of what he said. He even rejected his writings in favor of mysticism at the end of his life

Aquinas did not “reject” the veracity of his own writings… he merely stopped writing because of a mystical experience.