Grace, Actual and Habitual: A Dogmatic TreatisePohle, Joseph
Religion
Grace, Actual and Habitual: A Dogmatic Treatise
Pohle, Joseph
Grace (Theology)
Calvin(683) carried this teaching to its logical conclusions by asserting:
(1) that the will of our first parents was free in Paradise, but lost its
freedom by original sin; (2) that we cannot be delivered from the slavery
of Satan except by the grace of Christ, which does not, however, restore
liberty, but simply compels the will to do good; (3) that, though the will
under the influence of grace is passive, and must needs follow the impulse
to which it is subjected, yet its acts are vital and spontaneous.(684)
Against these heresies the Council of Trent maintained the existence of
free-will both in the state of original sin(685) and under the influence
of efficacious grace: “If any one saith that man’s free-will, moved and
excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, ... cannot
refuse its consent if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does
nothing whatever and is merely passive: let him be anathema.”(686)
b) Jansenius differed from Luther and Calvin mainly in drawing a sharper
distinction between freedom from external constraint (_libertas a
coactione_) and freedom from internal compulsion (_libertas a
necessitate_), and maintaining that the will, when under the influence of
grace, is exempt from external constraint, though not from interior
compulsion, and that the _libertas a coactione_ is entirely sufficient to
gain merit or demerit in the fallen state.(687)
The Jansenist teaching on the subject of grace may be outlined as follows:
(1) By original sin man lost the moral liberty which he had enjoyed in
Paradise and became subject to a twofold delectation—_delectatio coelestis
victrix_ and _delectatio terrena sive carnalis victrix_. (2) These two
delectations are continually contending for the mastery; the stronger
always defeats the weaker, (3) and the will, unable to offer resistance,
is alternately overpowered now by the one and then by the other.(688) (4)
In each case the _delectatio coelestis_ is either stronger than the
_delectatio terrena_, or it is weaker, or it is of equal strength. When it
is stronger, the will is overcome by grace, which in that case becomes
_efficax_ or _irresistibilis_. When it is weaker, the will simply _must_
sin, because the _delectatio coelestis_ is too weak to overcome the
_delectatio terrena_. The grace given to a man under such conditions is
called by the Jansenists _gratia parva sive sufficiens_. When the two
delectations are equally strong, the will finds itself unable to come to a
definite decision.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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