Grace

One could be forgiven for thinking, on reading the so-called ‘treatise on grace’ within Thomas’ mature Summa (I-II.109–114), that the thirteenth century Dominican would agree with the twentieth century Carmelite, Thérèse of Lisieux, when she said shortly before dying that ‘tout est grâce’ (‘all is grace’).Footnote1 There is a strong sense in these questions that one needs grace to do anything whatsoever: thinking, knowing, willing, acting, loving. And, as we shall see below, there is a real sense in which this is true: for Thomas here we do indeed need God’s grace to do anything, just as it is only by God’s continuing act of creation that we are in existence at any moment. Absent God and God’s grace and we would neither exist nor do anything. Granted that we have been created and do indeed exist, there is not much we can do without reliance, in some way or other, on God’s grace.

© Cambridge University Press 2016