The Prince of this World by Adam Kotsko

Author:Adam Kotsko [Kotsko, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2016-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE TRAP OF GRACE

Thomas Aquinas’s account of the fall of the devil in the Summa Theologiae initially has a much more positive cast,1 insofar as it begins with the experience of the good angels. In discussing the happiness or beatitude of the angels, for instance, he claims that happiness is twofold:

The first is one which it can procure of its own natural power; and this is in a measure called beatitude or happiness. . . . Above this happiness there is still another, which we look forward to in the future, whereby “we shall see God as He is.” This is beyond the nature of every created intellect. (1a, q. 62, a. 1)

Already the tone seems to have shifted radically in comparison with Anselm, insofar as the accent is on God’s generosity and abundance. God initially provides his creatures with a natural happiness and then adds an even greater happiness that exceeds nature. With this division in mind, Aquinas claims that the angels are initially created in perfect natural happiness, but because the second level of happiness “is no part of their nature, but its end; . . . consequently they ought not to have it immediately from the beginning” (q. 62, a. 1).

To this division within happiness corresponds a division between two forms of capacity for happiness. The first is nature, which consists of the creatures’ own internal resources, and the second is grace, whereby God supernaturally grants them the opportunity to rise to the higher level of happiness attainable only in him (q. 62, a. 2). While Aquinas entertains the possibility that angels were created only in the natural state, he concludes that it “seems more probable, and more in keeping with the sayings of holy men, that they were created in sanctifying grace” (q. 62, a. 3).

Yet this grace does not automatically lead to perfect beatitude. Rather, it puts the angel into a position where it can merit beatitude. Here Aquinas seems to distantly echo Anselm’s division between the amoral animal will and the will to rectitude, insofar as “free-will is not the sufficient cause of merit; and, consequently, an act cannot be meritorious as coming from freewill, except insofar as it is informed by grace” (q. 62, a. 4). As in Anselm, then, the will requires a divine supplement in order to attain moral rectitude, the angels’ morally relevant act occurs instantly (q. 62, a. 5) and with permanent consequences:

The beatified angels cannot sin. The reason for this is, because their beatitude consists in seeing God through His essence. Now, God’s essence is the very essence of goodness. Consequently the angel beholding God is disposed towards God in the same way as anyone else not seeing God is to the common form of goodness. Now it is impossible for any man either to will or to do anything except aiming at what is good; or for him to wish to turn away from good precisely as such. (q. 62, a. 8)

Utterly captivated by God, then, the good angel remains invincibly enraptured in beatitude for all eternity.

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