Joseph Pohle

“ This scheme of salvation must not, of course, be conceived as a divine precept to commit venial sins. It is merely a wise toleration of sin and a just refusal, on the part of the Almighty, to restore the human race to that entirely unmerited state of freedom from concupiscence with which it was endowed in Paradise, and which alone could guarantee the moral possibility of unspotted innocence. ”

“ There is something incongruous in the notion that the efficacy or inefficacy of divine grace should depend on the arbitrary pleasure of a created will. If sufficient grace does not become efficacious except by the consent of the will, how can the resultant salutary act be said to be an effect of grace? St. Paul, St. Augustine, and the councils of the Church do not say: “Deus facit, si volumus,” but they declare: “Deus facit, ut faciamus,” “Deus ipse dat ipsum velle et facere et perficere,” and so forth. ”

“ What influence do the merits of a man exert on his predestination to grace and glory? [pg 197] Catholic theologians are unanimous in holding that, since grace is absolutely gratuitous and inseparably connected with glory as its effect, the union of both can no more be based upon natural merit than the initial grace of vocation itself, which transmits the quality of gratuitousness to each and every one of the graces that follow in its wake, up to and including justification and eternal beatitude. ”

“ If delectation is only one motive among many, its varying intensity cannot be the standard of our conduct; and still less can it be said that the will is morally compelled in each instance to obey the relatively stronger as against the weaker delectation; for any necessitation that does not depend on the free will excludes the libertas a coactione, but not that libertas a necessitate which constitutes the notion of liberty. There can be no freedom of the will unless the will is able to resist delectation at all times. ”

“ The Scholastics draw a distinction between entitative and operative habits. An operative habit (habitus operativus) gives not only the power (potentia) to act, but also a certain facility, and may be either good, bad, or indifferent. An entitative habit (habitus entitativus) is an inherent quality by which a substance is rendered permanently good or bad, e.g. beauty, ugliness, health, disease.
Philosophy knows only operative habits. But sanctifying grace affects the very substance of the soul. ”

“ The Protestant contention that the grace of justification is shared in an equal measure by all the justified, was a logical deduction from Luther's false principle that men are justified by faith alone through the external justice of Christ. ”

“ Indeed, if man were able by his own power to merit for himself the first beginnings of grace, then faith itself, and justification which is based on faith, and the beatific vision, would not be strictly graces.
As for the precise moment when prevenient grace begins its work in the soul, the common opinion is that the very first judgment which a man forms as to the credibility of divine revelation (iudicium credibilitatis) is determined by the immediate grace of the intellect,330 and that the subsequent affectus credulitatis springs from the strengthening grace of the will. ”

“ Can the human will, without the aid of grace, overcome all the grievous temptations to mortal sin by which it is besieged?
It is the common teaching of theologians that, without the aid of grace, man in the fallen state succumbs with moral (not physical) necessity to grievous temptations against the moral law, i.e. to mortal sin. This conclusion flows from the impossibility, which we have demonstrated above, of observing the whole law of nature for life or for any considerable length of time without the help of grace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Actual grace exercises a healing influence on the will27 and is therefore called gratia sanans sive medicinalis. “Unless something is put before the soul to please and attract it,” says St. Augustine, “the will can in no wise be moved; but it is not in man's power to bring this about.”28 Concretely, this moral causality of grace manifests itself as a divinely inspired joy in virtue and a hatred of sin, both of which incline the will to the free performance of salutary acts. These sentiments may in some cases be so strong as to deprive the will temporarily of its freedom to resist. ”

“ To resist sufficient grace involves an abuse of liberty. Now, where does the right use of liberty come in? If coöperation with sufficient grace moves God to bestow the gratia per se efficax, as the Thomists contend, then the right use of liberty must lie somewhere between the gratia sufficiens and the gratia efficax per se. But there is absolutely no place for it in the Thomistic system. The right use of liberty for the purpose of obtaining efficacious grace is attributable either to grace or to unaided nature. ”

“ So important did the distinction between the causa meritoria and the causa formalis of justification appear to the Fathers of Trent, that they made it the subject of a separate canon, to wit: “If anyone saith that men are just without the justice of Christ, whereby He merited for us to be justified; or that it is by that justice itself that they are formally just; let him be anathema.”911 Justification in the Catholic sense, therefore, is not a mere outward imputation of the justice of Christ, but a true inward renewal and sanctification wrought by a grace intrinsically inhering in the soul. ”

“ We can imagine but two reasons why God should not truly forgive us our sins in the process of justification: inability and unwillingness. To say that He is unable to forgive us our sins would be to assert that the remission of sin involves a metaphysical impossibility. This no Protestant will admit, because all believe that “nothing defiled shall enter into heaven.”901 To assert that God is unwilling to forgive our sins would be to contradict the plain teaching of Scripture, as set forth above. ”

“ Moreover, by enabling man to participate in the Divine Nature,1063 grace produces in the soul a physical reflection of the uncreated beauty of God, a likeness of the creature with its Creator, which far transcends the natural likeness imprinted by creation. True, only God and the Elect in Heaven perceive and enjoy this celestial beauty; but we terrestrial pilgrims can, as it were, sense it from afar and indulge the hope that we may one day be privileged to contemplate and enjoy the divine beauty that envelops the souls endowed with grace. ”

“ If the rational creature were compelled to perform a sinful act, as act, resistance would be impossible. And if it were true that the malice of an act practically cannot be separated from its physical entity, then in the Thomistic hypothesis God would be the author not only of the entitas but likewise of the malitia peccati. The devil tempts us only by moral means, i.e. by suggestion; are we to assume that God tempts us physically by inducing sin as an act and simultaneously withholding the praemotio ad bonum, thus making sin an inevitable fatality? ”

“ True, the Church has not definitely declared her mind with regard to hope, but it may be set down as her teaching that hope is not lost with grace and charity but survives like faith.1217 The two contrary opposites of hope are desperation and presumption, concerning which theologians commonly hold that the former destroys hope, while the latter probably does not. But even if hope and charity are lost, faith may remain in the soul like a solitary root, from which, under more favorable conditions, new life is apt to spring. ”

“ Now no act is truly “human” unless it be freely performed. Consequently, freedom of choice is an indispensable condition of moral goodness and therefore also of merit.
What kind of liberty is necessary to enable the will to acquire merit? Theologians answer by saying that it is libertas contradictionis sive exercitii. If I do a good deed which I am free to do or not to do, I perform a morally good and therefore meritorious work. ”

“ No supernatural enlightenment is needed to perceive the intrinsic propriety of a moral preparation for justification. Not only must the sinner learn to know God as His supernatural end and the source of all righteousness, but he must also be persuaded that it is his duty, with the help of sufficient grace, to direct his will towards this final end. ”

“ Can the will, under the predetermining influence of the gratia efficax, change its consent into dissent at any time and as easily as a man who is sitting on a chair can rise and thereby demonstrate that his sitting was an absolutely free act? ”

“ Every increase or decrease of sanctifying grace must eo ipso entail a corresponding increase or decrease, respectively, of theological charity. Charity is either identical with grace or it is not.1195 If it is, an increase of the one implies an increase of the other; if it is not, the one cannot increase without an increase of the other, because they are inseparable and related to each other as nature to faculty, or root to blossom. Moreover, the degree of heavenly glory enjoyed by a soul will be commensurate with the measure of charity which it possessed at death. ”

“ Consequently, there can be no efficacious prayer without prevenient grace, and purely natural prayer is inefficacious for salvation.
Ripalda holds that, in an economy different from the present, natural prayer would have a claim to be heard. This opinion can be defended without prejudice to the dogma of the gratuity of grace. No doubt God might condescend to hear such petitions if He would, though, of course, He is not bound to do so by any intrinsic power inherent in natural prayer. Unlike merit, prayer appeals to the mercy of God, not to His justice. ”

“ Sacred Scripture and Tradition both strongly emphasize the importance and necessity of prayer, so much so that one naturally expects to find prayer playing an essential and indispensable rôle in every complete and orthodox system of grace. “The present economy of grace is essentially and intrinsically an economy of prayer,” is a theological axiom which cannot be too strongly insisted upon. To have brought out this great truth forcibly and luminously is the merit of Syncretism. ”

“ If true, it presupposes that which it is to effect, in other words, it puts the cause before the effect. An orthodox Lutheran theologian of the old school would probably retort: My sins are actually forgiven by virtue of the atonement, because all men without exception are redeemed through the merits of Jesus Christ. If this be true, then why not be consistent and say: All men are justified because all are redeemed, consequently there is no need of faith and sacraments, and keeping the commandments is a matter of indifference! ”

“ A man performing moral acts may be either in a state of unbelief, or of mortal sin, or of sanctifying grace. The question here at issue is chiefly whether all the works of pagans, that is all acts done without grace of any kind, are morally bad, or whether any purely natural works may be good despite the absence of grace. Baius and Jansenius [pg 056] affirmed this; nay more, they asserted that no man can perform good works unless he is in the state of grace and inspired by a perfect love of God (caritas) . ”

“ Alphonsus teaches that every man is obliged to make an act of charity at least once a month, but he is contradicted by other eminent moralists. In practice it is well to insist on frequent acts of charity because such acts not only confirm and preserve the state of grace, but render our good works incomparably more meritorious in the sight of God. ”

“ It is impossible to answer with anything like certainty the question whether the just man is able to merit for himself in advance the grace of conversion against the eventuality of a future lapse into mortal sin. ”

“ The last-mentioned species of faith they subdivided into general and particular. Fides generalis is that by which we believe that the righteousness of Christ “covers” (but does not wipe out) our sins. Fides specialis or fiduciary faith (fiducia) is that by which a man applies to himself the righteousness of the Redeemer, firmly trusting that his sins are for Christ's sake not imputed to him. Thus the Reformers erroneously transferred the seat of justifying faith from the intellect to the will and completely subverted the Catholic notion of faith as an intellectual assent to revealed truth. ”

“ God, who is the first and sole cause of all things, is no doubt able to excite in the human imagination phantasms corresponding to the supernatural thoughts produced in the intellect, and to impede or paralyze the rebellious stirrings of concupiscence which resist the grace of the will,—either by infusing contrary dispositions or by allowing spiritual joy to run over into the appetitus sensitivus. ”

“ God's will to save is universal. He wills the eternal happiness of all men antecedenter, and the reprobation of some only consequenter; hence eternal predestination is not absolute, but hypothetical, that is, it depends on merit. That the divine scheme of grace can take a different course in ordine intentionis from that in ordine executionis is a mere fiction. If eternal salvation in the order of temporal execution is given only as a reward of merit, it must be a reward of merit also in the order of intention. ”