Tractatus de Gratia Divina Actuali

I. Habitual grace is simply said to be that gift by which a man is formally and permanently just and acceptable to God, even if he does nothing. There are, moreover, other supernatural habits which perfect a man formally, although they do not justify, such as the habits of faith and hope, which, lest confusion arise, are not called habitual grace, but simply habits or virtues. What is proper to all of these is that a man is perfected by them according to his state.

Actual grace is that by which a man is perfected according to act or operation, which can both precede and follow sanctification. It is proper to actual grace to dispose to justification, although it does not accomplish this alone: it is proper to habitual grace, simply so called, to sanctify formally. Habitual grace and the other habits are something permanent; for that is proper to a habit.

Actual grace is both the help of God, which is in us the principle of a salutary act, and the act itself, which is itself a gift of God and can be the principle of another salutary act, as we shall see later. This latter grace, however, which is either placed in the act or given for the sake of the act, is something transient, just as the act passes away.

II. The existence of both graces is manifest. And first, indeed, from the analogy of faith. For it is established that the just live a certain supernatural and divine life. Moreover, life can be regarded in two ways, that is, both in first act and in second act. In first act it is the very essence of the living thing, the principle itself from which acts of life can be elicited. In second act, life is the very operation of that same principle: the former is permanent, the latter transient. But since the divine life is in us only through some participation, the principle of supernatural life cannot be had except in the manner of an accidental form inhering permanently, and this is habitual grace, by which we are made like God and constituted his sons and friends. Its existence is evident in baptized infants, who have the grace of God, but not actual grace, for they are incapable of acts: therefore they have habitual grace. But in order that the divine life be exercised in second act, divine help is required, which is given so that the act may be, and which therefore ceases when the act ceases; it is therefore something transient.

II. And assuredly the same thing is evinced from the divine testimony. For testimonies occur frequently in Scripture which signify both graces. For habitual and permanent grace is signified when mention is made of the new creature, Gal. VI. 15; of adoption, Rom. VIII. 15. 23: of filiation, Rom. VIII. 14: Ioan. I. 12; of regeneration, Tit. III. 5; Ioan. III. 5; of the recall to the original likeness in which man was created, Ephes. IV. 23.For all these things presuppose something habitual and permanent. Actual and transient grace, however, is signified when God is said to make men fit in good, so that they do his will, working in them what is pleasing before him, Hebr. XIII, 21; when God is said to work in us both to will and to accomplish, Philip. II, 13; when we are taught that no one can say: Lord Jesus, except in the Holy Spirit, I. Cor. XII, 3; when we are taught that we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, 2. Cor. III, 5. For these things, which are shown to be done through God helping, are acts, and they pass away; whence also, when they have passed, that help ceases which is given on account of them.

There comes next the authentic magisterium of the Church. The Council of Trent, Sess. VI, On Justification, canon 3, says this about actual grace: «If anyone shall say that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his help a man can believe, hope, love, or repent as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be conferred upon him: let him be anathema.» And canon 2 has this about habitual grace: «If anyone shall say that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Spirit and inheres in them, or even that the grace by which we are justified is only the favor of God: let him be anathema.»

IV. And let these things suffice for the demonstration of the thesis, since the whole following treatise on actual grace is to be set forth most fully. Habitual grace, however, claims for itself another treatise, which, God willing, we shall publish later. We must therefore treat of created, supernatural, actual grace, which in the business of justification is prior, unless the subject is unfit for eliciting acts, and whose notion the Tridentine Synod therefore premised to the other: Cf. Sess. VI. capp. 5. 6. Moreover, the whole treatise on actual grace will be completed in five questions: 1ª on the nature, 2ª on the necessity, 3ª on the gratuitousness, 4ª on the efficacy, 5ª on the distribution of actual grace.