The Beauty of Created Grace

The Apparition of our Lord to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

In modern theological discourse, the Catholic Church is often looked down upon for her teaching of “created grace.” Although I’m by no means an expert in philosophical theology, my experience tells me that oftentimes the reason for this isn’t merely because the non-Catholic critic doesn’t understand this doctrine (which they often do not), rather the problem goes deeper than this. The real problem, it seems to me, is that many of these critics have a fundamentally flawed understanding of the relationship between God and creation. Your average non-Catholic who condemns “created grace” as heretical tends to think that God, in His essence, is “out there” somewhere, at a distance from the creation. This is why He needs “uncreated operations” in order that He can “act upon” the creation that He’s otherwise divorced from by nature. Yet this conception is completely false, and to see why, consider what it means for God to be the Creator. 

Unlike human beings, who always create things out of already existing materials, the Lord created everything ex nihilo, out of nothing (2 Macc 7:28). Hence we say that the creation derives its being, its existence, not from any “eternal matter,” but rather from the very being and existence of God Himself. As it is written, “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This is a truth we can arrive at through natural reason as well. Consider that, in any created thing, there’s an irreducible distinction between that thing’s essence (what it is) and existence (that it is). For example, what I am is an adult human male, that I am is the fact that I really exist. If there were no real distinction between my essence and existence, if adult human males simply existed by virtue of their own essence, then it would be impossible for me not to exist. As Edward Feser explains:

If the existence of a contingent thing was not really distinct from its essence, then it would have existence just by virtue of its essence. It would exist by its very nature, and would therefore not be contingent at all but necessary—that is to say, it would be something that could not possibly not exist, not even in principle… we need to know why a contingent thing’s existence would need (or indeed could have) a cause in the first place if its existence were not distinct from its essence, and why it has (or indeed could have) a potentiality for nonexistence in the first place if its existence were not distinct from its essence. If existence were just part of what it is, then it would not need something else to cause it, and there would not be anything in it that could give it the potential to go out of existence.

Edward Feser, Five Proofs for the Existence of God, p. 119.

Therefore, since I am, in fact, a contingent being, it follows that my essence and existence aren’t identical. Though this truth is simple, its ramifications are profound. If I’m really distinct from my own existence, it begs the question: how is it that I exist here and now? At this very moment, what’s granting me my act of being? It can’t be my own essence, as that would require me to exist before I exist to grant myself existence, which is absurd. It must be something outside of myself that’s granting me existence. However, what if that thing that’s causing my being, whatever it is, itself had a real distinction between its essence and existence? Then that thing, like me, would also require something outside of itself to grant it its act of being. And so the causal chain goes. This causal series cannot regress infinitely, otherwise “it would never be reducible back to an actual beginning; the sequence, reaching back as it must into an infinite abyss of unrealized possibilities, would never actually begin.”¹ Thus, it follows that the only true cause of my existence must be a being in whom there’s no real distinction between essence and existence. This being we call God.

However, as many will be quick to point out, referring to this God as a “being” is a bit of a misnomer, since He’s not one particular being among many, but rather “being itself.” As demonstrated, there’s no real distinction between God’s essence and His existence, and therefore what He is simply is existence. His essence is identical to the act of being itself. This is the classical understanding of God, who is not a contingent being whose existence depends on a higher being than Himself, but rather who is actus purus, ipsum esse subsistens, “subsistent existence itself.” Now, you may be wondering why I’ve gone through this scholastic proof for the existence of God in a discussion about created grace, but I can assure you that understanding this is crucial to seeing the error into which many non-Catholics fall when discussing God. 

Unlike what many critics allege, the fact that God’s essence is identical to His existence does not at all remove Him from creation. On the contrary, it reveals that He, in His essence, is already present in all created things simply by virtue of granting those things their particular acts of being. In other words, simply by existing, all of creation already shares in the divine essence, or “partakes of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). This is why we can say, with the Eastern Church, that God is “everywhere present and filling all things.” It often seems that, for non-Catholics, affirming God’s omnipresence is an overlooked platitude, just a little footnote we have to throw in there before we can talk about “really” experiencing His presence through the “uncreated energies,” but this is wrong. Simply by being the Creator who creates ex nihilo, the Lord is already as present to the creation as He possibly could be. Anything that exists must do so by receiving its act of being from God’s essence, since He is existence. Thus, if we are to speak about having a more “direct” encounter with God’s presence, we must be speaking about a change that happens within us, within creation, not within God. This is where the Catholic doctrine of “created grace” comes into play.

By being a creature of the Creator who creates out of nothing, I am already a partaker of the divine essence. However, when 2 Peter 1:4 says that we “may become partakers of the divine nature” through faith in Christ, what does this mean? The Apostle explains in the previous verse: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3). Notice that the “divine power” itself is not what’s granted to us per se, but rather it’s the cause of “all things that pertain to life and godliness” within us, which themselves are the spiritual gifts “through” which we become “partakers of the divine nature.” Are these gifts created or uncreated? The answer is clearly “created,” since attaining to godliness means possessing a soul that is cleansed from all sin, and as St. Paul tells us, this entails becoming “a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). Salvation, or “theosis,” consists not in taking on uncreated divine attributes, but rather in being spiritually re-created such that we can have a deeper participation in the divine essence. In the words of a popular Russian Orthodox hymn, “salvation is created.” Or as St. Thomas Aquinas puts it,

Since the divine persons are everywhere by essence, presence and power, a divine person is said to be sent inasmuch as in some new way through some new effect he begins to be present in a creature. Thus, the Son… is also said to be sent to someone spiritually and invisibly inasmuch as he begins to dwell in him through the gift of wisdom… Similarly, the Holy Spirit is also said to be sent to someone inasmuch as he begins to dwell in him through the gift of charity.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Contra errores Graecorum, I, c. 14.

How can God get any closer to me than by granting me my very act of being? The only one who can change is me, not God. Thus, when Catholics say that grace is “created,” we’re referring to the fact that God, in His uncreated power, causes our souls to be oriented towards Him in a new way. He does this by granting us the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, all of which must be created because they belong properly to our created souls. Through creating these “new effects” in us, God is able to become present “in some new way.” For example, when God grants someone the “repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18), is that repentance not created? It must be given that uncreated things cannot change, and yet repentance, by definition, means a change of heart. Virtuous repentance is the “created effect,” the “created grace” that God bestows, enabling us to experience His presence (which was already there) in a new, more intimate way. This is why the Council of Trent spoke of justification as “the sanctification and renewal of the inward man,”² because salvation is a created transformation that allows us to more intimately partake of the uncreated divine nature.

What piqued my interest in this subject was a conversation between Erick Ybarra and Fr. Peter Tottleben (O.P.) entitled, “Can Catholics Affirm a Real Deification Without Palamism’s Distinction Between Essence and Energies?.” I highly recommend listening to this entire discussion, and I’ll close this article with Fr. Peter’s beautiful and concise summary of the Catholic teaching on created grace and deification: “Thomists believe that it is the continuous uncreated action of the Holy Spirit that efficiently deifies you, but it efficiently deifies you by producing a formal effect in your soul that makes you yourself deiform, and it makes you yourself deiform by orienting you towards God in a new way that transcends the possibilities of your nature.”

1. David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God, p. 101

2. Council of Trent, Session IV, Chapter VIII.