Development in Aquinas’s Theology of Grace and the Role of Saint Augustine
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/BPTH.2019.015Keywords
Aquinas, Augustine, nature, grace, justification, merit, perseverance, predestination and sinAbstract
This study explores the place of Saint Augustine’s mature theology of grace in the thought and development of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the same subjects. It begins with a review of Thomas’s Scriptum super sententiis, highlighting its stress on the formal effects of grace and wide appreciation for human merit. It then surveys three significant developments in the Summa theologiae, noting the introduction of divine auxilium as a category for grace, a pronounced stress on fallen human nature, and a reframed account of merit focused on divine ordinatio. The study notes the Summa’s citation of Augustine’s anti-Massilian works. It concludes that while Thomas’s mature theology is indebted to Augustine and Saint Paul, it also offers a reconceived framework for grace which makes Augustine’s positions on predestination, perseverance, and merit more viable for 13th century theology.
References
Aquinas, T., Scriptum super libros sententiarum, 4 vols., P. Mandonnet and M.F. Moos (eds.), Paris 1933–47.
Aquinas, T., Summa theologiae, 5 vols., Ottawa 1941–1945.
Augustine, On the Gift of Perseverance, in Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, J.A. Mourant and W.J. Collinge (trans.), Washington, D.C. 1992, pp. 271–337.
Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, in Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, J.A. Mourant and W.J. Collinge (trans.), Washington, D.C. pp. 218–270.
Bouillard, H., Conversion et grace chez S. Thomas d’Aquin, Paris 1944.
Bonner, G. Freedom and Necessity: Saint Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom, Washington, D.C. 2007.
Burns, J.P., The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace, Paris1980.
Colberg, S., “Aquinas and the Grace of Auxilium,” Modern Theology 32 (2016) 207–09.
Colberg, S., The Wayfarer’s End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine Rewards in Scripture and Sacred Doctrine, Washington, D.C. forthcoming.
Lonergan, B., Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, J.P. Burns (ed.), London 1971.
Levering, M., Paul in the Summa Theologiae , Washington, D.C. 2014.
Roszak, P., “The Place and Function of Biblical Citations in Thomas’s Aquinas’s Exegesis,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions, and New Perspectives, P. Roszak and J. Vijgen, (eds.), (Turnhout, ), 115–140.
Roszak, P. and J. Vijgen, Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions, and New Perspectives, Navarra, 2018.
Seckler, M., Instinkt und Glaubenswille nach Thomas von Aquin, Mainz 1961.
Torrell, J.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, R. Royal (trans.), Washington, D.C. 1996.
Wawrykow, J., “Grace,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, R. Van Nieuwenhove and J. Wawrykow (eds.), South Bend 2005, pp. 192–221.
Wawrykow, J., God’s Grace and Human Action: ’Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas, South Bend 1995.
Wawrykow, J., “Perseverance in 13th-Century Theology: the Augustinian Contribution,” Augustinian Studies 22 (1991) 125–40.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
CC BY ND 4.0. The Creator/Contributor is the Licensor, who grants the Licensee a non-exclusive license to use the Work on the fields indicated in the License Agreement.
- The Licensor grants the Licensee a non-exclusive license to use the Work/related rights item specified in § 1 within the following fields: a) recording of Work/related rights item; b) reproduction (multiplication) of Work/related rights item in print and digital technology (e-book, audiobook); c) placing the copies of the multiplied Work/related rights item on the market; d) entering the Work/related rights item to computer memory; e) distribution of the work in electronic version in the open access form on the basis of Creative Commons license (CC BY-ND 3.0) via the digital platform of the Nicolaus Copernicus University Press and file repository of the Nicolaus Copernicus University.
- Usage of the recorded Work by the Licensee within the above fields is not restricted by time, numbers or territory.
- The Licensor grants the license for the Work/related rights item to the Licensee free of charge and for an unspecified period of time.
FULL TEXT License Agreement
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 879
Number of citations: 4