|
Some modern writers hold that in Adam sanctifying grace
was not an endowment of nature but purely a personal
gift.[1476] They admit that the gift, of original
justice was an "accident of nature," to be transmitted
with nature itself by generation, but they say that
sanctifying grace has no intrinsic connection with original
justice and was only the efficient cause or a condition
"sine qua non" of original justice. From this
it would follow that sanctifying grace was not transmitted
with the nature and original justice by generation but that
God immediately granted this grace to the person when he
was generated, because of the disposition of the integrity
of human nature. Finally, it would be inferred from this
that original sin is not the privation of sanctifying grace
but only the privation of integrity of nature.
Indeed, according to these writers, this doctrine is
found not only in the works of many Scholastics who before
the time of St. Thomas held that Adam received
sanctifying grace after his creation and in view of his
personal disposition, but these writers say that this is
the definitive teaching of St. Thomas himself as found
in the Theological Summa.
We shall inquire first whether this thesis is true
according to the obvious sense of the Church's
definitions, and secondly whether it is the teaching of
St. Thomas.
|
|