290. Grace as a Quality in the Soul

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

The Three Senses of Grace #

Grace is equivocally predicated in three ways:

1. Grace as favor or love - as when we say someone ‘has the grace of the king’ (favor/acceptance)
2. Grace as a gratuitous gift - something given freely without obligation
3. Grace as gratitude - thanksgiving for a benefit received gratis

These senses are ordered intelligibly: the first (love/favor) causes the second (the gift), which causes the third (gratitude).

Divine Love vs. Human Love #

Key reversal: In human love, the good in the beloved causes our love. In divine love, God’s love causes the good in the creature.

• When a man is said to have God’s grace, something is placed in the soul (by God’s efficient causation)
• This is reversed from human favor, where favor presupposes existing goodness in the one favored
• God’s love is the efficient cause of the goodness it causes in creatures

Two Types of Causation #

Efficient cause (mover/maker): That which produces or acts upon something from outside

• Example: The writer/printer arranging letters
• God acts as an efficient cause in vivifying the soul
• God’s love operates as an efficient cause, causing the good in creatures

Formal cause: That by which something is what it is (intrinsic form)

• Example: Whiteness makes something white; form gives a thing its nature
• The soul vivifies the body as a formal cause (substantial form)
• Grace vivifies the soul as a formal cause (accidental form)

Grace as an Accidental Quality #

Grace must be distinguished from substance:

• Grace cannot be a substance because what is substantial in God (divine goodness) comes accidentally to the soul
• Grace is therefore an accidental quality - a form that beautifies and perfects the soul without being its essential nature
• Grace is that by which the soul is sweetly and promptly moved to supernatural acts

Key Arguments #

Objection 1: Grace Does Not Place Something in the Soul #

Argument:

• When we say someone ‘has the grace of a man,’ nothing is placed in that person but only in the one whose grace they have
• Therefore, ‘having the grace of God’ should mean only that God accepts us, placing nothing in the soul

Response:

• There is an equivocation in the word ‘grace.’ The grace of a man means only favor (nothing placed in the soul)
• But the grace of God works differently: it is an accidental quality placed in the soul through God’s efficient causation
• The difference stems from the reversal of how human and divine love operate

Objection 2: God Vivifies the Soul as the Soul Vivifies the Body #

Argument:

• The soul makes the body alive immediately; nothing falls between God and the soul
• Therefore, grace (something created) should not be placed between God and the soul

Response:

• The analogy breaks down through different modes of causation
• The soul vivifies the body as a formal cause (intrinsic substantial form)
• God vivifies the soul as an efficient cause (maker/mover from outside)
• Grace is not ‘between’ God and soul but rather is the formal cause by which the soul participates in divine life
• Example: Medicine assists the body’s natural healing as an assisting efficient cause, not as a form

Important Definitions #

Substance vs. Accident #

• Substance: That which exists in itself; the being or nature of a thing
• Accident: That which exists not in itself but in another (as in a subject); defined as ’to be in another’
• That which is substantially in God is accidentally in the soul (Thomas’s principle)
• Since divine goodness is God’s very substance, grace must be accidental in the soul

Quality #

• One of the nine accidents in Aristotle’s categories (the category of ‘how something is’)
• Grace is a quality that beautifies, perfects, and adorns the soul
• Examples of quality: colors, shapes, the state of being healthy or sick

Participation (participatio) #

• The soul participates imperfectly in divine goodness through grace
• Participation means taking a part of something, not being that thing substantially
• The soul receives a partial share of divine life, not its full substance

Form and Matter #

• Form: A principle of being that actualizes and determines matter; what makes a thing what it is
• Matter: That from which something comes to be, existing in that thing
• The surface of the sphere can be said to contain the matter of the sphere, as matter is in its limit
• Grace acts as a formal cause beautifying the soul

Examples & Illustrations #

The Word ‘Cat’ on the Blackboard #

Berquist uses this pedagogical example to illustrate the four causes:

• Matter: The letters C-A-T (that from which the word is made)
• Form: The order of the letters (that by which C-A-T is distinguished from A-C-T)
• Efficient cause: The writer/printer (that which arranges the letters)
• Final cause: The purpose (e.g., to discuss the king of beasts, or to illustrate Aristotle’s actus/potentia from Book IX of Metaphysics)

This illustrates why knowing the four causes is essential to understanding how grace operates differently from mere divine favor.

Natural and Supernatural Causation #

• Soul and body: The soul causes life in the body as an intrinsic formal cause
• God and soul: God causes life in the soul as an extrinsic efficient cause
• Grace and supernatural acts: Grace causes the soul to be moved to supernatural acts as a formal beautifying quality

Questions Addressed #

Does Grace Place Something in the Soul? #

Resolution: Yes, but with crucial distinctions:

• Grace places an accidental quality in the soul (not a substance)
• This quality beautifies and perfects the soul, making it apt to supernatural acts
• God’s efficient causation (divine love) produces this formal quality in the soul
• This reverses the order of human love, where existing goodness causes love

How Can God Vivify the Soul if Not Through Grace as a Substance? #

Resolution:

• God acts as an efficient cause (maker/mover), not as a formal cause
• Grace acts as a formal cause beautifying the soul, analogous to how the soul’s form vivifies the body
• These are two different modes of causation operating at different levels
• The medicine example: medicine assists healing as an efficient cause, not by becoming the body’s form

How Can Something Created and Accidental Be Divine Life in the Soul? #

Resolution:

• What is substantially in God (divine goodness) comes accidentally to the soul through participation
• The soul imperfectly participates in divine goodness through the accidental quality called grace
• This is not a defect but the necessary mode by which a creature participates in the divine
• Example: Anger participates in reason without being substantially reason