The Need for Grace According to Saint Thomas Aquinas

What is grace? How does grace relate to nature? Do human beings need the grace of God to wish and do good, and if so, to what degree and in accordance with what principle? Does man need grace necessarily because of some defect in his nature, or is grace merely an adorning benefit? These are some of the various dimensions of the questions that Thomas takes up in his Summa Theologiae, Question 109, in the first half of the second part of that work.

The primary question he raises is “Whether human beings can wish and do good without grace?”¹ Thomas understands grace to be a function of God’s love toward his creatures. The idea of grace must first be clarified, for there are a number of senses in which it may be taken. For Thomas, grace may be understood in two primary ways: simply as God’s unmerited favor toward us², or the fruit that is produced as a result of this undeserved favor working in us.³ Thomas mostly refers to grace in this second sense. The “unmerited” quality of this grace is best understood by contrasting grace with nature. The nature of a thing is that which makes it what it is, ordering it according to an end (telos) that is “proportioned” to it.⁴ This helps in understanding the need for grace by allowing us to distinguish between those things that are owed to human nature and those things that are gifts from God, which are not inherent in human nature, and which would otherwise not be attainable. This leads to a secondary distinction between the end (telos) which is according to our nature and the super-natural end to which God intends for us.

Thomas says that in our natural state of “integrity” (prior to the corruption of sin) human beings “could wish and do the good that was in proportion to human nature.”⁵ Yet, even this is impossible without help from God as the “first mover”⁶: the cause of our existence, the bestower of our capacity to reason, and the animating force of our souls. In short, nothing humans will or do is completely independent of God. Even still, Thomas does not call these qualities “graces,” because they are all owed to our human nature and contribute to our proportioned end. Under the curse of sin, human nature has become corrupted, and so even those things that are according to our nature are affected. Though we have not lost our human nature, it suffers from a fatal wound. Though still intact, human nature “cannot do all the good natural to it, so that it falls short in nothing.”⁷ Hence the primary need for grace according to Thomas is to heal the wounds of original sin, which allows one to will and to do what is truly good. But even in this state of “integrity” (without sin), one does not automatically and necessarily know God—to see and love Him as he truly is, that is, as he sees and loves himself (the “beatific vision”⁸). So, grace is necessary even without sin, because friendship with God is only granted by supernatural means—human nature by itself cannot rise to this summum bonum.

In his teaching on grace, Thomas sits quite comfortably within the Augustinian tradition—including the magisterial reformers, Luther and Calvin, after him⁹—tracking closely with them on matters like unconditional election, free will, the debilitating effects of sin (“original sin,” not the “origin of sin”), and the need for grace in spiritual regeneration.¹⁰ Like Augustine before him and the Reformers after him, Thomas believes that whether in our “integrity” or in our sin, grace is necessary: “It is clear that we need the help of God to move us [toward himself]…. Our heart would not be turned to God, if God did not turn it to himself.”¹¹

Bibliography

Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Holy Teaching: Introducing the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. Edited by Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt. Brazos Press, 2005.

The Thomistic Institute. “Grace: Necessity and Essence.” May 4, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clRZ8Swfb14&list=PL_kd4Kgq4tP8-CiJI0BaIfSRsd1zGBfhd&index=5.

Footnotes

1. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Holy Teaching: Introducing the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt (Brazos Press, 2005), Q. 109.2, p. 122. ↩

2. “God’s favorable disposition toward humanity…” Aquinas, Holy Teaching, 122, n1. ↩

3. “Those gifts that God gives so that we may attain eternal life…” Aquinas, Holy Teaching, 122, n1. ↩

4. See Thomas’ “I answer” section in ST I/II 109.2, Aquinas, Holy Teaching, 123–24. ↩

5. Aquinas, Holy Teaching, 124. ↩

6. Aquinas, Holy Teaching, 124. ↩

7. Aquinas, Holy Teaching, 124. ↩

8. See Qs. 3-4 of the Summa. ↩

9. Augustine → Augustinian Order → Dominican Order → Lutheran → Reformed / Calvinist ↩

10. See Michael Allen, “Lesson 4: Thomas and His Tradition.” Course ST 703: The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, Knox Theological Seminary, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. ↩

11. ST I/II 109.6. ↩