Nature and Grace

[mel1]

Paraphrasing a theologian I recently read:

1. Things exist because they are loved into being.
2. This agapic love, the self-gift of God outside the Trinity, is called “grace”,
3. Thus the universe, and all things in it, are rooted in grace; things exist because they are engraced.
4. When we appreciate a thing, we see it as revelatory of grace.

Paraphrasing other Catholic resources:

1. Actual grace is the love given that helps us respond to his call
2. Sanctifying grace it the love that grows in us as we continue to respond to his call.

My question:

1. How is this grace different from actual and sanctifying grace?
2. Is the grace underlying all things an aspect of actual grace? Or is it something different altogether?

 

[Vico]

…

Grace is a supernatural rather than a natural gift.

Modern Catholic Dictionary (Fr. John Hardon)

Grace. In biblical language the condescension or benevolence (Greek charis ) shown by God toward the human race; it is also the unmerited gift proceeding from this benevolent disposition. Grace, therefore, is a totally gratuitous gift on which man has absolutely no claim. Where on occasion the Scriptures speak of grace as pleasing charm or thanks for favors received, this is a derived and not primary use of the term. As the Church has come to explain the meaning of grace, it refers to something more than the gifts of nature, such as creation or the blessings of bodily health. Grace is the supernatural gift that God, of his free benevolence, bestows on rational creatures for their eternal salvation. The gifts of grace are essentially supernatural. They surpass the being, powers, and claims of created nature, namely sanctifying grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and actual grace. They are the indispensable means necessary to reach the beatific vision. In a secondary sense, grace also includes such blessings as the miraculous gifts of prophecy or healing, or the preternatural gifts of freedom from concupiscence.

The essence of grace, properly so called, is its gratuity, since no creature has a right to the beatific vision, and its finality or purpose is to lead one to eternal life. (Etym. Latin gratia , favor; a gift freely given.)

Grace of Sanctification. The supernatural gift whose purpose is the personal sanctification of the one who receives it. It is called the grace that makes one pleasing ( gratia gratum faciens ) to God either by making the person holy (sanctifying grace), or by preparing him for sanctification, or by preserving and increasing his sanctification (actual grace).

 

[vivnes]

Grace is for the reason of souls, made in the image and likeness of God, and intends to be perfect and complete at the beatific vision.

 

[mel1]

I’m clear on the definitions of actual and sanctifying grace as listed inn my initial post.

My question has to do with the kind of grace that underlies all reality, and how it relates to these definitions.

The more I consider it, the more they seem to be synonymous.

Some random quotes.

“In all things,” Thomas Aquinas wrote, “God himself is properly the cause of universal being… in all things God works intimately.” Or as John Milbank writes, “Everything is therefore ‘engraced.’”

There is no schism between faith and reason, between the sacred and secular, between the natural and the numinous; God, the ground of all Being, inhabits each of these realms. All of reality is engraced. — A Favale

The logic of the Incarnation brings us back to … engraced creation, and engraced creation … lead to Christ and the Incarnation. — E. Ranstrom

The most striking example of God’s determination to communicate with us through engraced matter is, of course, the Incarnation of the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Christ Our Lord. — J Mirus

 

[Vico]

I’m clear on the definitions of actual and sanctifying grace as listed inn my initial post.

My question has to do with the kind of grace that underlies all reality, and how it relates to these definitions.

The more I consider it, the more they seem to be synonymous.

Some random quotes.

“In all things,” Thomas Aquinas wrote, “God himself is properly the cause of universal being… in all things God works intimately.” Or as John Milbank writes, “Everything is therefore ‘engraced.’”

There is no schism between faith and reason, between the sacred and secular, between the natural and the numinous; God, the ground of all Being, inhabits each of these realms. All of reality is engraced. — A Favale

The logic of the Incarnation brings us back to … engraced creation, and engraced creation … lead to Christ and the Incarnation. — E. Ranstrom

The most striking example of God’s determination to communicate with us through engraced matter is, of course, the Incarnation of the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Christ Our Lord. — J Mirus

Matter is not endowed with supernatural grace, but the spiritual soul can be. The grace endowed on nature can be called natural.

Catechism

302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created “in a state of journeying” ( in statu viae ) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call “divine providence” the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection: …

Catholic Encyclopedia

From the creeds we learn that God the Father is the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth; that God the Son descended from heaven, became man, suffered and died for our salvation, and is to be the judge of the living and the dead; that the Holy Ghost inspired the Prophets and the Apostles, and dwells in the saints — all of which implies Providence, natural and supernatural.

Walker, L. (1911). Divine Providence. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12510a.htm

 

[SeraficLeo]

1/2
I think if your going to work or start from that POV - as seeing the natural world and created order itself as being a kind of grace - then it becomes important still to distinguish between natural and supernatural grace, though the idea of “natural grace” can be at best strange for many Catholics as grace is primarily understood as being from God and oriented to God and the supernatural. So even if we understand the created world and order to exist by God’s grace and, in a sense at least, be a grace or kind of grace, then still it must be understood that the natural order exists ultimately for the sake of the supernatural one. Because generally in Christian thinking that is only seen to be a grace when it has a supernatural origin and end: but there are some things we confidently expect will “pass away.” I have read Christian thinkers claim that the world and even the angelic order was created and exists for the sake of the Church, which in her turn lives for God. But some thinkers worry that conflating the orders of nature and grace might even lead to pantheism. As others have pointed out here, there are some things that can be properly claimed by nature and in nature and are the bases of universal human rights, for example; however, there are other things that can be claimed only on account of grace (e.g. the sense in which Christians or the faithful can be said to have a right to the Sacraments - or certain of them, which right derives from God’s grace, which no man or woman can claim to have had a right to, as such). Further, the supernatural takes precedence over the natural: so that while men ordinarily have rights and duties before each other that they cannot presume to deny or violate, yet God has rights and prerogatives that can, at times, supersede any human right or duty.

Another problem too: if we think of everything created as “engraced,” then how does one account for evil things or sin? How do you go about preventing evil and sin from also being “engraced,” even though obviously they are not? And how could grace be said to die or perish, as many things do? Again, even if we were to think of the natural and created world as being a kind of grace, in virtue, perhaps, of the fact that God gives it being and existence and is in no way thought to be or have been actually bound to do this, then still there is an understanding that the natural and created order exists for the sake of the supernatural one, and that there is a kind of subordination, and dependence of the natural upon the supernatural and not the other way around (which would be absurd).

 

[SeraficLeo]

2/2
I think Saint Augustine makes a pretty good case for this difference in the natural order and the order of grace (in his On Nature and Grace), because even granting that we can speak of a natural grace or natural blessings, as coming from the hand of our Creator, still we can perceive that these are ultimately vain things, insofar as of themselves they cannot bring the creature to final redemption, salvation or eternal perfection - or eternal life, happiness or security (beatitude) certainly not in and of themselves. Hence grace is singled out as being that which can and does accomplish this and is oriented to it, even if there are certain natural goods that can and do assist or complement grace. I think, then, that if what exists by a natural grace can in no way lay claim absolutely even on a right to its own existence (as grace itself provides this), then all the more it cannot presume to have something like a right to beatitude or something more excellent than the nature provided for it by the Creator in its present created state could have or achieve, and so for all the more reason are those graces that lead to eternal life and beatitude properly called graces: but nature, as it falls short of itself for this and can make no claim on it, as if by right, is typically not called grace for that reason: a creature’s nature of itself does not have or enjoy supernatural life and hasn’t even a natural capacity for it (or rather Him).