De gratia Redemptoris

God, in the first creation of the human race, elevated it to a supernatural order and gave it as its end the intuitive vision of God together with the corresponding love of God and joy, an end which altogether exceeds the powers and exigencies of human nature. By a special gift he made man a partaker of the divine nature and constituted him an adopted son of God; he also furnished him with powers and granted him helps, so that by acts corresponding to his supernatural state he might prepare himself for the attainment of this end. But when the first man sinned, the human race cast away those gifts; the whole human family, all men descending from Adam by natural generation, were constituted sinners, the whole human race was a damned mass, nor could it rise by its own powers and return to its former friendship with God. But God took pity on the human race; the second divine person assumed human nature and offered to God, on behalf of the human race, perfect satisfaction for sin, and merited again the gifts that had been lost. Thus men can return to love and friendship with God. Man can be freed from sin, become a partaker of the divine nature and an adopted son of God; he can also receive the powers and helps by which he is able to come to the intuitive vision of God. All these things, however, in the present order are conferred from the merits of Christ the Redeemer, whence all those gifts are called the grace of Christ the Redeemer, whereas the gifts conferred on Adam before sin are customarily called the grace of God. Of this grace of Christ the Redeemer, by which fallen man is brought to justification and justified man is prepared for the attainment of eternal life, the present treatise treats.

A division of grace is often set out at the beginning of the treatise; but since divisions of this kind for the most part already presuppose a knowledge of the doctrine of grace, it seems better to propose these divisions in the course of the treatise.

The order of the treatise will be that there is considered first, what the justification of the sinner is; then whether, in what manner, and by what helps a sinful man can prepare himself for justification; third, what a justified man can and ought to do. Fourth, the nature of actual grace, fifth, its efficacy, and sixth, the distribution of grace are to be treated.

There is prefixed a historical survey of the principal errors in the matter of grace, on the occasion of which the Church set forth the true doctrine to be held.