De gratia Redemptoris

On the nature of justification

Justification (δικαίωσις), by the force of the term, is the act of justifying; it can also be understood terminatively, or passively, for the effect which that act has in the one who is justified.

Just (δίκαιος) is said of a person, a thing, an act, which agrees with the norm of morals¹. Justice (δικαιοσύνη) is that quality or condition of a person or thing by which it is conformed to the norm of morals, to the law, to the divine will. In a restricted sense it is understood of the virtue which renders to each his own. The justice of God is either that by which he himself is just (Dei = genitive of possession), or that which proceeds from God, by which he makes us just (Dei = genitive of origin). To justify (δικαιόω), by analogy with the other verbs ending in — οω (τυφλόω = I make blind), can mean to make just; thus, as will appear from the argument of Sacred Scripture, in the New Testament. Yet in this sense it does not occur among profane authors, which is easily understood; for by nature a man cannot make another man just. For profane authors, then, to justify is to visit with punishments or rewards, to punish or to reward; besides, to esteem or judge something just; among the LXX the forensic use is frequent, for the act by which a judge absolves someone of a crime, declares him just, or declares which party the law favours.

The words of the thesis are taken from session 6, chapter 7 of the Council of Trent. For the innovators of the sixteenth century wholly overthrew the catholic sense of justification². According to them, in justification (through faith) the justice of Christ becomes our justice; as original sin is alien to us, so also is the justice by which we are justified: the justice of Christ is imputed to us. Nor is sin truly and perfectly destroyed in us in this justification, but it passes away in guilt and remains in act; that is, although we are truly sinners and sin remains in act in us, nevertheless God wills mercifully to spare us; the force of sin, which is to accuse, to condemn, to set an angry God before us, is taken away; in other words: sin remains, but is no longer imputed: before God the Father we are reckoned holy and just. Regeneration, vivification, the renewal of man do not belong to this justification but are distinguished from it; this follows the justification of faith and is its fruit, if faith is living and not dead.

From the opposition to these errors the doctrine stated in the thesis is easily understood. The sinner is unjust and an enemy of God. Justification is a true and properly so-called remission of sins; a true remission, not merely the non-imputation of a sin that in fact remains, but sin itself ceases in man, is truly destroyed, is no longer present. Sins are understood here as those by which a man is truly made unjust, original sin and personal mortal sins. These, as is clear, are not to be conceived as though the act of sin itself, once performed, were made undone, but the guilt contracted by that act and the stain brought upon the soul are wholly taken away. Justification is further said to be the sanctification and renewal of the inner man; therefore man not only ceases to be a sinner, but is positively transferred to a higher state.

Sanctity means internal sanctity, by which a man is not only held to be holy and just but is inwardly constituted holy — that sanctity, as is clear, which alone is had in the present order; renewal, that is, the passage from the former state to a new and better one, which consists in this, that man be truly just, a friend of God, and an heir according to the hope of eternal life, who can and ought by right to hope for eternal life promised to him as to a friend of God.

Both the remission of sin and the internal renewal are had in justification itself. But what relation exists between them is not yet treated in this place; in fact one is not had without the other: sin is not remitted without sanctification and renewal, nor is the renewal and sanctification of the sinner without the remission of sin. Nor does this thesis yet determine more accurately in what that sanctification and renewal consists.

Briefly, then, it can be said: the Protestants defend an imputed justice, catholics an internal justice of their own, inherent in the justified man himself.

A middle view, as it were, has also been proposed: some Protestants (Martin Butzer) admitted, besides imputed justice, a certain inherent justice. Some catholics too (Contarini, Pigge, Gropper, the “Colonienses”) proposed a doctrine of a “double justice”. This is found in the book “Interim” (1541); in the “Antididagma” (Cologne 1544, f. 13) it is stated thus: “We are justified by God by a double justice as it were through formal and essential causes. Of these the one and the prior is the consummated justice of Christ, not indeed as it is outside us in him, but as and when the same is imputed to us for justice (so long, that is, as it is apprehended by faith). This very justice of Christ thus imputed to us is the chief and highest cause of our justification, on which we ought principally to rest and to trust. In another way, however, we are formally justified by an inherent justice, which is given, infused and made our own together with the remission of sins, the renewal of the Holy Spirit and the diffusion of charity into our hearts, according to the measure of each one's faith. Yet upon this inherent justice (because it is imperfect) we do not principally rest”. In the Council of Trent the question of the double justice, which Seripando especially defended, was proposed for discussion in this form:

“Whether the justified man, who has performed good works out of grace and divine help, deriving from the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that he has retained inherent justice, presenting himself with it before the tribunal of Christ, is to be reckoned to have satisfied the divine justice unto the merit and acquisition of eternal life; or whether with this inherent justice he further needs the mercy and justice of Christ, that is, the merit of his passion, whereby the defects of his justice may be supplied, which justice is communicated by divine dispensation according to the measure of faith and charity”³. The Council rejected the doctrine of the double justice; therefore, after it had said in ch. 7: “the sole formal cause (of justification) is the justice of God, not that by which he himself is just, but that by which he makes us just, by which... we are not only reputed, but are truly named and are just, receiving justice in ourselves, each one his own”⁴, it teaches in ch. 16: “nothing further is to be believed wanting to the justified themselves, so that they be reckoned to have fully satisfied the divine law by those works which have been done in God, according to the state of this life, and truly to have merited eternal life, to be obtained also in its own time (if nevertheless they depart in grace)... Thus neither is our own justice set up as though it were of ourselves, nor is the justice of God ignored or rejected; for the justice that is called ours, because we are justified by it as inherent in us, that same is God's, because it is infused into us by God through the merit of Christ”⁵.

THE CHURCH'S DOCUMENTS

Leo X condemned the proposition of Luther: “To deny that sin remains in a child after baptism is to tread under foot both Paul and Christ”⁶.

The Council of Trent, in session 6, defined this doctrine. Ch. 7: Justification “is not the remission of sins alone, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner man... whence man from unjust is made just and from an enemy a friend, that he may be an heir according to the hope of eternal life... we are not only reputed, but are truly named and are just, receiving justice in ourselves, each one his own... in justification itself, together with the remission of sins, man receives all these things infused at once...”⁷.

Can. 11: “If anyone says that men are justified either by the imputation of the justice of Christ alone, or by the remission of sins alone, to the exclusion of grace and charity, which is poured forth into their hearts by the Holy Spirit and inheres in them, or even that the grace by which we are justified is only the favour of God: let him be anathema”⁸.

In session 5, in the decree on original sin, it had already laid down: “If anyone denies that by the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted, or even asserts that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken away, but says that it is only shaved off or not imputed: let him be anathema; for in those who are reborn God hates nothing...”⁹.

Pius V condemned the propositions of Baius: 42. “The justice by which the ungodly is justified through faith consists formally in obedience to the commandments, which is the justice of works...” 43. “In men doing penance before the sacrament of absolution, and in catechumens before baptism, there is true justification, separated however from the remission of sins”¹⁰.

SACRED SCRIPTURE

A true remission of sins: Act 3, 19: “Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out”. Ἐξαλείφειν means to wipe out; it is used of a writing that is to be blotted out, Col 2, 14: blotting out... the handwriting of the decree; Apoc 3, 5: I will not blot out his name from the book of life. Cf. Is 43, 25; Ps 50, 3. — 1 Cor 6, 11: “And such (namely sinners) were some of you; but you are washed (properly: you have taken care to wash yourselves), but you are sanctified, but you are justified”. By washing, stains are removed, not merely covered. — Rom 5, 19: “For as by the disobedience of one man many were constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of one many shall be constituted just”. As true sin (which the Protestants themselves concede), so also true justice; therefore it is no longer sin. — Rom 8, 1: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus”. Cf. Eph 5, 25 ss.; from the Old Testament 1 Par 21, 8; 2 Reg 12, 13; Ps 102, 12.

They are renewed: Baptism is the laver of regeneration and renovation: Tit 3, 5. On this regeneration Io 1, 3; 3, 6; 1 Io 2, 29; 3, 9; 4, 7; 5, 1. 4. 18; 1 Petr 1, 3. 23. (See the following thesis.) Before regeneration man is the old man (παλαιός, the former): Rom 6, 6; Eph 4, 22; Col 3, 9. By this word is indicated both the corruption of the former state and that something new succeeds it. After regeneration he is the new man: Rom 6, 4, newness of life (καινότης); they put on the new man Eph 4, 24 (καινός); Col 3, 9 (νέος); cf. Gal 3, 27, to put on Christ; they are renewed: Col 3, 10 (ἀνακαινούμενον); Eph 4, 23 (ἀνανεοῦσθαι). And so there is talk of a new creature: Gal 6, 15 (καινὴ κτίσις); 2 Cor 5, 17: if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; cf. Iac 1, 18. But such a renewal cannot be understood except as a real, true change in the man himself. And this is had by baptism, the laver of renovation.

They are justified: Rom 3, 24: “Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”. Rom 3, 28, justification through faith; cf. Gal 2, 16. 17; Rom 5, 1, from faith; Rom 5, 9, in his blood; Rom 5, 19, “they shall be constituted just”; 1 Cor 6, 11: “you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God”; Tit 3, 7: “justified by his grace”. These things cannot be understood in the sense that men are merely reputed or declared just, while in fact they are not inwardly just; for 1) the discourse is of a justification to which man cooperates, and which is the effect of redemption; 2) Rom 5, 19 has a parallelism between constituting a sinner and constituting a just man; but sinners are constituted really and not only imputatively; therefore the same must be said of their being constituted just; 3) much less can these things be so understood when one attends to the rest of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture (sins are truly blotted out, man is inwardly renewed); 4) God, who is truthful, cannot declare or repute just one who is not truly just.

But the justice which is thus communicated is the justice of God, namely that which is from God, which has God for its author, Phil 3, 9¹¹.

A friend of God: on this friendship between God and the just man there is fuller treatment in the treatise on charity.

An heir according to the hope of eternal life: Tit 3, 7.

THE FATHERS

Several texts of the holy Fathers are found in Rouet de Iournel, Ench. Patr., ser. 355, 356, 360, 361, from which we select some; cf. also what is proposed on this matter in the treatise on Baptism and on Penance.

Sins are blotted out: ST JUSTIN: “If they do penance, all who will can obtain mercy from God, and the Scripture proclaims them blessed, saying: Blessed is he to whom the Lord has not imputed sin. That is, if he repents of his sins, he receives from God the remission of his sins; but not, as you deceive yourselves and certain others like you in this, who say that even if they are sinners, provided they have known God, the Lord does not impute sin to them”¹²

ST AUGUSTINE: “We say that baptism gives the pardon of all sins, and takes away crimes, does not shave them off; nor is it that the roots of all sins are retained in the evil flesh, as though in the case of the hairs of those who are shaved on the head, whence the sins that are again to be cut back may grow”¹³. “You affirm that I have said that grace does not perfectly make the new man. I do not say this; attend to what I say. Grace perfectly makes the new man, since it even leads him to the immortality of the body and to full felicity. Now too it perfectly renews man, as far as pertains to liberation from all sins whatsoever, not as far as pertains to liberation from all evils and from all the corruption of mortality, by which the body now weighs down the soul”¹⁴. “But you, who think that if concupiscence were an evil, the baptized would be free of it, are much mistaken. He is free of every sin, not of every evil. Which is said more plainly thus: he is free of every guilt of all evils, not of all evils”¹⁵. ST GREGORY THE GREAT: “He therefore who says that sins are not utterly forgiven in baptism, let him say that the Egyptians did not truly die in the Red Sea. But if he confesses that the Egyptians truly died, he must needs confess that sins utterly die in baptism, because surely in our absolution the truth avails more than the shadow of the truth”¹⁶.

Men are renewed: EPISTLE OF BARNABAS: “Where therefore he renewed us by the remission of sins, he made us that we might have another form, a soul namely after the manner of children, inasmuch as he refashioned us”¹⁷. “But it shall be built in the name of the Lord: take heed that the temple of the Lord be built magnificently. How? Learn. Having received the remission of sins and having hope in the name of the Lord, we are made new, created again afresh; therefore in us, in our dwelling, God truly dwells”¹⁸. ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM: “The water is poured around outwardly, and the Spirit inwardly washes the soul without failing. And why do you marvel? Take a bodily example, small indeed and lowly, but useful for the simpler sort. If fire, passing through the thickness of iron, works so great a thing within, so that the iron becomes fire, and the cold becomes hot, and the black becomes shining; if fire, which is a body, penetrating into the body of iron, thus works without hindrance, why do you marvel if the Holy Spirit enters into the inmost soul?”¹⁹. ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: “Just as if someone should melt down again a golden statue, defiled by time, smoke, dust and rust, he restores it to us most pure and shining, so also God has melted down our nature again, deprived of that beauty which he had himself put into it from the beginning, casting it into the waters as into a furnace and sending in the grace of the Spirit in place of fire, and thence he brings out the renewed, contending in splendour with the rays of the sun, the old man being crushed and the new man fashioned more splendid than the old was”²⁰.

Heirs of the heavenly kingdom: ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: “For they are not only free but also holy, not only holy but also just, not only just but also sons, not only sons but also heirs, not only heirs but also brothers of Christ, and not only brothers of Christ but also co-heirs, not only co-heirs but also members, not only members but also a temple, not only a temple but also organs of the Spirit. You see how many are the bounties of baptism, and yet some reckon that heavenly grace consists in the remission of sins alone; but we have counted ten honours”²¹.

A friend: ST JOHN CHRYS.: “If then this faith has saved you, keep it also now; for what has conferred so many good things on you will without doubt not deceive you concerning things to come. For that which made the dead man, the lost man, the captive and the enemy a friend, a son, a free man, a just man and a co-heir, and furnished him with such great things as no one had ever expected — how, after such liberality and benevolence, will it not receive you hereafter?”²²

Objections

1. Ps 31, 1. 2. “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin, nor is there guile in his spirit”. The same is cited in Rom 4, 7. 8. Therefore sins are only covered, not imputed. — I answer. From what has been said in the argument from Sacred Scripture, it cannot have this sense in St Paul. Nor in the Psalm itself: before God something can be covered only in such a way, that is, withdrawn from the eyes, that it is no longer present; and because the sin is no longer present, God no longer thinks of it, that is, does not impute it.

2. 1 Petr 4, 8: “Charity covers a multitude of sins”. — I answer. The sense is: charity towards the neighbour brings it about that we dissemble the sins of others, do not attend to them; the discourse is not of the remission of one's own sins through charity; cf. Prov 10, 12; 1 Cor 13, 7.

3. To justify signifies to declare just. — I answer. It can have this sense: I grant; it always has it: I deny.

4. Rom 4, 3. 9, the discourse is of the justice of Abraham imputed. — I answer. The discourse is not of imputed justice, but faith is imputed unto justice, that is, the justice of Abraham is not from his works but from faith.

5. We are justified not by our justice but by the justice of God or of Christ (1 Cor 1, 30; 2 Cor 5, 21; Phil 3, 9); therefore the justice of Christ is imputed to us. I answer. It is not our justice, because it is not from our merit and our works but from the merit of Christ, and is conferred on us freely by God: I grant; it is not our justice, because it is not internal and proper to us: I deny. Through the merits of Christ we are justified freely, inwardly and truly by God.

6. If we were justified by our own justice, we could place our confidence in ourselves. — I answer. If it were our own, that is, from our merits alone: I grant; if it is our own, that is, internal to us, but from the merits of Christ: I deny.

For more objections see Beraza, De gratia Christi, nr. 715 ss.

The fact of a true internal renewal in the justification of the sinner being established, that renewal must now be further described. We affirm that in justification the sinner becomes a partaker of the divine nature and is constituted an adoptive son of God.

By the consortium of the divine nature is not understood that which is had by reason of the hypostatic union, nor that which is had by reason of the reception of the Eucharist; but how it is to be conceived positively cannot yet be explained in this thesis, but will become clearer and clearer in the following theses. One thing, however, must here be noted: there is no transformation into God, as appears from the condemned propositions of Eckhart and Molinos. Eckhart, prop. 10: “We are wholly transformed into God and converted into him; in like manner as in the sacrament the bread is converted into the body of Christ: so I am converted into him, because he works me into his own being, one, not like; by the living God it is true that there is no distinction there”. Prop. 11: “Whatever the Father gave to his only-begotten Son in human nature, all this he gave to me: here I except nothing, neither the union nor the sanctity, but he gave the whole to me as to himself”. Prop. 12: “Whatever Sacred Scripture says of Christ, all this is verified also of every good and divine man”. Prop. 13: “Whatever is proper to the divine nature, all this is proper to the just and divine man; on this account this man does whatever God does, and with God created heaven and earth, and is the begetter of the eternal Word, and God without such a man would not know how to do anything”¹. Molinos, prop. 5: “By doing nothing the soul annihilates itself and returns to its principle and to its origin, which is the essence of God, in which, transformed, it remains and is divinized, and God then remains in himself; for then there are no longer two things united, but one only, and in this way God lives and reigns in us, and the soul annihilates itself in operative being”².

Adoption³ is the assumption of a person outside the family to the rights of a natural son (specifically to the right of inheritance). A person outside is one who is not a natural son. Since of themselves these rights belong to no one but a natural son, adoptive assumption of itself says something not due to the adopted person, something gratuitous. In justification, therefore, there is gratuitously communicated by God to the sinner a right to the divine inheritance, so that that man is truly an adoptive son; but that son does not succeed to the goods of a Father who has died, but in his own time will share these goods with the Father. Since in adoption as it takes place among men the adopter and the adopted are already of the same nature, in divine adoption God the adopter communicates his own nature⁴. Yet formally “to communicate the divine nature” and “to adopt” do not say the same thing. That communication of the divine nature without adoption can be had, indeed in fact is had in Christ the man. But where divine adoption is had, there the divine nature is also communicated. To the question whether divine adoption without the communication of the divine nature can be found at least in another order, it can be answered that no repugnance appears in God's willing to confer on a wayfaring man the right to the heavenly inheritance without communicating to him even in this life the divine nature; in the other life, however, he must confer that without which man could not enter into the inheritance, that is, without which he could not see God intuitively.

The thesis, insofar as it affirms a special consortium of the divine nature and adoption itself, although no explicit definition of this matter is had in its own right, must be said to be taught so clearly in Sacred Scripture and Tradition that it is simply of faith.

THE DOCUMENTS OF THE CHURCH

CONC. TRID. ses. 6, cap. 4, justification is described as “the translation from that state in which man is born a son of the first Adam into the state of grace and of the adoption of sons”⁵. Ch. 7: “that he may be an heir according to the hope of eternal life”⁶. Sess. 5, can. 5: the reborn “have been made beloved sons of God, heirs indeed of God, but co-heirs of Christ”⁷.

Pius V condemned the error of Baius, 42: “The justice by which the ungodly is justified through faith... does not (consist) in any grace of the soul infused, by which man is adopted as a son of God and renewed according to the inner man and made a partaker of the divine nature...”⁸

SACRED SCRIPTURE

Adoptive filiation: the use of the word “sons” alone does not of itself prove the matter; indeed the very term “adoption of sons” in Rom 9, 4 is applied to the Israelite people, and must be explained there in a theocratic sense. But of individuals adoption is spoken only in the strict sense; for this adoption, according to St Paul, includes the right of inheritance together with the natural Son of God. Rom 8, 12-18: Christians have received “the spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry: Abba (Father)” (v. 15). Of this filiation the Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit (v. 16).

“But if sons, also heirs: heirs indeed of God, but co-heirs of Christ” (v. 17). But the condition of actually acquiring this inheritance is: “if nevertheless we suffer with (Christ), that we may be glorified with (Christ)” (v. 17). To this glorification belongs in a special way the glory of the body to be communicated in the resurrection. The revelation of the sons of God is still awaited; so the sons of God themselves also still await what pertains to the perfect effect of this filiation, the glorification of the body. In this sense the Apostle says: “And we ourselves also, having the first-fruits of the Spirit: even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body” (v. 23). — In a similar way the same doctrine is set out in Gal 4, 4-7: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. Therefore now he is not a servant but a son: and if a son, an heir also through God”. Cf. Eph 1, 5.

Generation: these sons are begotten, are born, of God. Io 1, 12. 13: “he gave them power to become the sons of God, to those... who were born of God”. This St John repeats several times in his first epistle: 1 Io 2, 29; 3, 9; 4, 7; 5, 1. 18. Similarly 1 Petr 1, 3. 23; Iac 1, 18; baptism is the laver of regeneration, Tit 3, 5; cf. Io 3, 5. The same is contained in the use of the phrase τέκνα θεοῦ, both in St John (Io 1, 12; 1 Io 3, 1. 2; 5, 2) and in St Paul (Rom 8, 16. 17. 21; 9, 8; Eph 5, 1). Thus Christ is the first-born among many brethren (Rom 8, 29). Therefore when God makes men his sons, he not only confers certain rights on them, but he begets the sons whom he adopts, that is, he communicates a new life to them, he confers his own nature on them in some special way (for this is to beget), so that they now lead a divine life.

Consortium of the divine nature: this communication of the divine nature is explicitly taught in 2 Petr 1, 4: “by whom he has given us the greatest and most precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature”. These things, if they are considered together with the rest of the doctrine of the New Testament, are easily understood of a communication of the divine nature already made to these wayfarers on earth (not of something still to come), and that physical and real, not merely moral in the sense that we should become conformed to God through good acts. And the text itself not only admits this explanation but altogether suggests and urges it.

THE FATHERS

Adoptive filiation⁹: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: “Baptized, we are enlightened; enlightened, we are adopted as sons; adopted, we are perfected; perfected, we are made immortal: I, he says, said: you are gods and all sons of the Most High”¹⁰. ST ATHANASIUS: “This is the benignity of God, that those whose maker he is should afterwards become also their father by grace: which comes about when men, once created, as the Apostle says, receive in their hearts the Spirit of his Son crying: Abba, Father. These are they who, having received the Word, have received from him power to become sons of God. Nor can they become sons in any other way, since by their own nature they are creatures, unless they receive his Spirit who is the natural and true Son. That this might come about, the Word was made flesh, that he might make man fit to receive the divinity”¹¹.

ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM: “If you too have sincere piety, the Holy Spirit descends also into you, and the paternal voice resounds to you from above: not ‘this is my Son’, but ‘this is now become my Son’. For to him alone ‘is’ befits, since in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word; to him ‘is’ befits, because he is always the Son of God; for you it has now become, because you have not the name of son by nature but receive it by adoption”¹². ST BASIL: “Through the Holy Spirit is given the restoration to paradise, the ascent to the kingdom of heaven, the return to the adoption of sons”¹³. ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: “The Son, the genuine Son of God, who exists without beginning, suffered to hear himself called the son of David, that he might make you a son of God; he suffered to have a servant for a father, that he might make the Lord a father to you, a servant. Do you see, from the very beginning, what the Gospels are? But if you doubt about your own affairs, be led to believe these things from those which pertain to him. For it is far more difficult, as far as pertains to the human intellect, that God should become man, than that man should be a son of God. When therefore you hear that the Son of God is the son of David and of Abraham, cease now to doubt that you, the son of Adam, are to be a son of God. Nor would he have humbled himself thus in vain and to no purpose, unless he was to exalt us. For he was born according to the flesh, that you might be born according to the spirit; he was born of a woman, that you might cease to be the son of a woman”¹⁴

ST AMBROSE: “Can men then be so loved by God as the Son, in whom the Father was well pleased? He is well pleasing through himself, we through him; for those in whom God beholds his Son according to his image, them he adopts through the Son into the grace of sons, so that, as through the image we are brought to the image, so through the generation of the Son we may be called to adoption. One love, then, is that of nature, eternal; another that of grace”¹⁵

ST AUGUSTINE: “This is the grace of the new testament, which lay hidden in the old, nor yet did it cease to be foretold and announced by shadowing figures, that the soul may know its God and be reborn to him by his grace. For this birth is spiritual, therefore not of bloods, not of the will of man, but of God. This is also called adoption. For we were something before we were sons of God, and we received the benefit of becoming what we were not: as he who is adopted was not yet, before he was adopted, the son of him by whom he is adopted, yet was already one who could be adopted. And from this generation of grace that Son is distinguished, who, when he was the Son of God, came that he might become the son of man, and might grant to us, who were sons of man, to become sons of God”¹⁶. “The only Son of God by nature was made, for us, by mercy the son of man, that we, sons of man by nature, might by him become sons of God by grace... For as through one man sinning we came into so grave an evil, so through one man, and him God, justifying, we shall come to that good so sublime”¹⁷. “It is clear, then, that he called men gods, deified by his grace, not born of his substance. For he justifies who is just through himself, not through another; and he deifies who is God through himself, not by participation in another. But he who justifies, he it is who deifies, because by justifying he makes sons of God. For he gave them power to become sons of God. If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods; but this is the work of grace adopting, not of nature begetting”¹⁸

ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: “We ascend, then, to a supernatural dignity through Christ; but we shall not be sons of God as he is, without distinction, but by the grace by which we imitate him; for he is the genuine Son existing from the Father, but we are adopted sons by his benignity, receiving this as a grace: I said: you are gods and all sons of the Most High. For the created and servile creature is called to supernatural things by the mere nod and will of the Father; but the Son, God and Lord, has the ground of his being God and Son not by a decree of God and the Father, nor only because he willed it, but shining forth from the very substance of the Father, he receives by nature the good proper to his substance”¹⁹

Consortium of the divine nature. ST ATHANASIUS: “We are all said similarly to be partakers through the Spirit of God... If, then, by the communication of the Spirit we are made partakers of the divine nature, no one surely but a madman would say that the Spirit is not of God but of a created nature”²⁰. ST AMBROSE: “Who would dare to say that the Holy Spirit is separated from God the Father and from Christ, when through him we merit to be according to the image and likeness of God, and through him it comes about, as the Apostle Peter said, that we are partakers of the divine nature”²¹. ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: “If (the Spirit) is neither God by nature, nor his own Spirit from God and therefore substantially existing in him, but is different from him and not remote from the nature of created things, how are we, who are born through him, said to be born of God? For either we shall confess that the evangelist plainly lied, or, if he is truthful and so it is and not otherwise, the Spirit will be God and from God according to nature; by participation in whom, being endowed through faith in Christ, we are both made partakers of the divine nature, and are said to be born of God, and are therefore called gods, not only raised by grace to supernal glory, but now having God dwelling and abiding in us, according to that word of the prophet: I will dwell in them and walk among them”²². ST LEO THE GREAT: “Acknowledge, O Christian, your dignity: and, made a partaker of the divine nature, do not return by a degenerate manner of life to your former vileness”²³.

There can be added from the liturgy: in the preface of the Holy Spirit: “he poured forth the promised Holy Spirit into the sons of adoption”. In the Mass, when water is mixed with the wine: “grant us, through the mystery of this water and wine, to be partakers of his divinity, who deigned to become a partaker of our humanity”.

THE THEOLOGIANS

That the theologians agree in the matter, which is contained so clearly in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, is clear. But in the further explanation of the consortium of the divine nature and of adoptive filiation not all think exactly the same; but these things, as has already been said above, must be set out later (in the third section). From what has been brought forward from Sacred Scripture and from the holy Fathers, it already appears that the communication of the divine nature cannot be reduced to a mere metaphor, or to a moral participation which would consist only in this, that the justified man ought to render himself conformed by good acts to God, who by his nature works only what is good and holy; but without doubt there must be asserted a physical participation of the divine nature, which consists at least in part in a certain special assimilation to God, or likeness with God. For this is an idea so frequent among the holy Fathers in this matter, and recurring again and again among the theologians, that it cannot be passed over in oblivion in explaining the participation of the divine nature. But what this likeness is, and whether the whole participation of the divine nature is contained in it alone, must be explained later.