Single Question. Whether Grace is a Virtue

1. Concerning the twenty seventh distinction I aska whether grace is a virtue.

a. a[Interpolation] About this twenty seventh distinction, where the Master deals with inquiry about virtue, the question is asked:

2. That it is not:

Because as the supernatural light is disposed with respect to the virtues of grace, so is the natural light disposed with respect to the natural virtues; but the natural light is not a virtue;     therefore etc     .a

a. a[Interpolation] nor is grace, which is the supernatural light, a supernatural virtue.

3. To the opposite:

Grace is a habit (from the preceding question [d.26 nn.9, 24]), and it is not a vice; therefore it is a habit-virtue.

I. To the Question

A. First Opinion

4. [Exposition of the opinion] - The opinion here was onceThe opinion of Thomas Aquinas (ST Ia IIae q.110 a.3, Sentences 2 d.26 q.un. a.3) as well as of Albert the Great (Sentences 2 d.26 a.11), which Scotus, like Giles of Rome (Quodlibet 6 q.5), here speaks of as definitely abandoned by theologians. ³⁵ that grace was the supernatural light as it were, being related to the theological virtues [sc. faith, hope, charity] as the natural light is related to the acquired virtues; in the way that the soul is posited to be the same as its powers, so either grace would be the root of the theological virtues, or these three virtues would perfect in ordering to the supernatural light (which is grace) just as the acquired virtues perfect in ordering to the natural light.

5. [Rejection of the opinion] - But from this it would follow that faith cannot remain unformed [sc. without charity], because it could not perfect if the light did not remain in its ordering to what it perfects, just as neither can acquired virtue remain a virtue if its natural disposition toward what it has respect to (as prudence) does not remain.

6. And if it be said that degrees can be assigned to grace and that in its lower degree it is faith and hope and in its higher degree it deserves the name of charity, and so the lower can remain without the higher (and in this way do faith and hope remain without charity) - against this:

The same essence cannot perfect the powers of the soul in diverse ways like this.a

a. a[Interpolation] Again, although charity of itself could be diminished without grace, yet in fact it is never diminished or corrupted save by a cause removing merit; venial sin is not of this sort because it stands along with charity, but mortal sin does not, because it does not permit anything of charity to stand along with it.

7. Further, it would also seem that the three theological virtues would exist in the fatherland; for then perfect grace will remain, and so all the virtues, according to this opinion, will remain.

B. Scotus’ own Opinion, already Proposed by Others

8. So there is another opinion, which says that grace is formally the virtue that is charity, because whatever excellences are attributed to charity are attributed also to grace, and conversely; for both equally “divide the sons of the kingdom from the sons of perdition” (Augustine On the Trinity 15.18 n.32), both are also the form of the virtues and neither can be unformed, and both join the wayfarer to the ultimate end with that perfect conjunction which is possible for wayfarers; and if they are posited as distinct, one of them would be superfluous because the other would suffice.

9. And in this regard can the opinion of the Master be held (as it was in 1 d.17 nn.167-168), that the Holy Spirit by no other habit distinct from charity (distinct from the habit by which he also indwells) moves the will to meritorious loving of God; for the habit by which the Holy Spirit indwells the soul is grace and grace is charity. And by the same habit by which the Holy Spirit indwells the soul does the will incline to its meritorious act; but not so does the soul believe and hope all things by the same habit by which the Holy Spirit indwells, but by other imperfect habits, because the acts of these habits do not require perfection.

10. But from this there seems to follow a distinction between grace and charity, because charity is a perfection simply, for otherwise it would not formally belong to God who, according to John, is charity, 1 John 4.16, “God is charity;” but grace is not a perfection simply, nor is it formally posited in God;     therefore etc     .

11. Response:

Charity is that whereby he who has it holds God as beloved, so that charity considers God not under the idea of lover but under the idea of lovable; grace is that whereby God holds someone as pleasing, so that grace considers God as approving or loving, not as loved. However grace is not said to be that because of which God loves (because then the divine essence in the Son could be called grace, since because of it God loves the Son), but grace is said to be that because of which God approves him who has it as worthy of blessedness (with the worth that is the correspondence of merit to reward); and so grace includes some imperfection, because such worth posits some imperfection in the worthy person, that he is not blessed of himself.

12. In this way then we can concede that, although the same absolute thing in the soul is that by which the soul loves God as object and that by which the soul is approved by a special approval that ordains it for blessedness, yet there is a different idea in that absolute thing insofar as it considers God in this way or in that; and one of these ideas, namely the first and principal, belongs to the soul as this idea is a perfection simply, while the other belongs to it as this idea is a limited perfection; and thus in the first way it is appropriately called charity, and in the second way called grace; and thus all grace is charity but not conversely.

13. And yet this distinction of reasons, or this non-convertibility, does not entail that when grace and charity come together in the same soul they are distinct in form, just as, though wisdom is a perfection simply and ‘a wisdom of this kind’ is a limited perfection, yet, when they come together, it does not follow that the second is distinct from the first in form (or according to form), and yet they are distinct from each other formally; for that which is science [sc. a habit] in my intellect and that which is acquired by teaching [sc. a doctrine] are the same, and yet in God there is wisdom and no such limited habit. The two state the same thing, then, but as taken in different ways.

14. And grace and charity do not differ only in this way but in a connoted respect, because the absolute thing that they state can be considered as it is a principle of operating for the one who has it, and thus it does not state imperfection; and in this way it can be in God and in this way it is called charity; in another way it can be considered as it is the object in me of God, insofar as God holds me as dear, and in this way it determines the object and is called grace [1 d.17 nn.115-118].

II. To the Principal Argument

15. To the argument [n.2] one must say that the acquired moral virtues perfect the soul in ordering it to some light that can be called prudence, and prudence does not perfect in ordering to any light other than that of the agent intellect; yet prudence is a virtue. So it is in the issue at hand: the supernatural virtues perfect the soul in ordering to the virtue that is charity, and charity perfects further in ordering to the supernatural end.