GRISEZ’S CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

PATRICK LEE

 

            It would be an oversimplification of Germain’s Grisez’s thought to try to reduce it  to the development of one or two ideas.  Nevertheless, I think it is fair to say that Grisez has focused on trying to recover and develop for contemporary moral theology the genuine humanism of the Gospel.  Such humanism includes two key ideas: 1.) an appreciation of the goodness of all creation, in particular the goodness and importance of bodily goods; 2.) an appreciation of the role of our active participation in Christian life, a notion that also involves a clear idea of free choice and a recognition of the irreducibility of the moral sphere to other domains, such as the natural or the technical orders.  I will comment on three points made in the paper, from this standpoint of seeing how they contribute to Grisez’s humanism.  My third comment, on Grisez’s argument against Aquinas’s position on the beatific vision, will also contain unresolved questions or puzzles.

 

I. THE BASIC MORAL CRITERION

First, I would like to suggest that the distinctiveness of Grisez’s position on the basic ethical criterion is actually due to his holding fast to three traditional, foundational ideas:  1.) All creatures are good, to the extent to which they have actuality, and evil as such is a privation.  2.) Every deliberate action by a moral agent is for the sake of a good. 3.) Human persons make genuinely free choices, and as a consequence, the moral order (the order of free choices) is not reducible to the natural or technical orders.   As is well known, Grisez is often classified as a “non-Thomist” and, as we see in this paper, he often is quite critical of Aquinas.  It seems to me, however, that there is a bit of irony here. It seems to me that Grisez’s most distinctive positions in ethical theory stem from his working out more clearly than others the logical consequences of the ideas listed above, ideas which were perhaps the central ones in Thomas’s moral philosophy and theology. 

            Grisez’s ethical theory begins with the position that when we freely choose we always choose for the sake of a good. That good may be instrumental, but of course not all goods can be merely instrumental.  The intelligible, basic goods are those aspects of options for choice which make them choiceworthy.  And the basic goods, Grisez holds, are aspects of human fulfillment.  So, that which makes an option choiceworthy, the ultimate reasons for action, are fulfillments for me and for those persons with whom I am in communion. [1]   This is the application to human agents of the general truth that every agents acts for its good:  every deliberate action of a rational agent is for the sake of his or her good (which may include the good of others with whom he or she is in communion). [2]   As Grisez explains in Christian Moral Principles: 

 

Love is always in the first place a disposition to the fulfillment of the one loving; for love disposes to fulfillment through action, and every action is a fulfillment of the one who acts. [3]

 

I can choose among options X, Y, and Z only if X, Y, and Z each already has something about it making it appealing to me.  Conversely, there must be in me a natural tendency, inclination, or disposition toward the attractive aspects of X, Y, and Z.  Thus, free choice must be rooted in natural inclination.  But natural inclination must be toward actions, and the actions to which I am naturally inclined must be the actuations of my basic capacities.  But the actuation of my basic capacities is my fulfillment or my good.  Thus, free choice presupposes and is rooted in natural inclinations toward the basic goods which actualize the various aspects of me. 

            Could that which makes options X, Y, and Z appealing be the perfection of something alien to me?  Could it be a value independent of me, [4] or the fulfillment of duty viewed as independent of my fulfillment? [5]   To say “yes” to these questions would be incoherent.  Any tendency toward an object which is not my fulfillment, in some way or other, would not come from within me, that is, from my nature, which is just an orientation toward actualization in one direction rather than another. Were I naturally inclined toward the fulfillment of something completely outside me, then that inclination would make me naturally an extrinsic instrument of something else—and nothing can be just an extrinsic instrument, since it must have some inherent nature of its own.

So, Grisez is right to maintain that every rational agent always acts for its own good.  Whenever someone chooses he does so for the sake of a good.  And therefore the difference between morally good choices and morally bad choices cannot be that bad choices are for evil natures while good choices are for good ones.  Both morally good and morally bad choices bear on the good (real or apparent).  So where is the difference?  There are not that many options. 

            Kantians say that one does not always act for the sake of one’s fulfillment.  According to them, one acts for one’s fulfillment when one acts amorally or immorally.  But when one acts morally, that is, when one performs morally good actions, then one acts for the sake of duty rather than fulfillment.  Similarly, Duns Scotus held that we can act in one of two ways:  either to follow our natural inclination toward our own fulfillment; or alternatively, to render to an object what is due the object, which he describes as acting from our “affectio iustitiae”.  And only if we act in this second way, said Scotus, according to the affection iustitiae, are we acting in a morally upright way. [6]

Value philosophers, such as Max Scheler, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, and my friends at Franciscan University of Steubenville, say that in morally good actions one’s action is a response to value rather than for the sake of one’s fulfillment.  In Christian Moral Principles, Grisez points out that a theory such as Scheler’s, which distinguishes the objects of morally good actions and the objects of morally bad actions as contraries, leads to the position that evil is an actual nature, and Grisez rejects this on both theological and philosophical grounds. [7]

            Another option is to grant that every agent acts for a good, but to hold that the immoral action is always for something that is only apparently good. [8]   However, this view is mistaken:  not every immoral action involves a merely apparent good.  For example, killing as a means to support one’s family, or stealing a library book, may be motivated by real goods.  In other words, it is possible to act for a genuine good but to do so unreasonably and immorally.   

A third option is to say that an immoral act is for an object that, while good in some respects, does not effectively lead to the ultimate end, the overall flourishing of the human being. [9]   The problem with this option is that it reduces immorality to inefficiency.  It confuses the technical order and the moral order.  The relation of the morally good act to the end or ultimate good which measures it is not a means-end relation.  Moral goodness is not the relation of effectiveness of an external action to an external goal, even if that goal be the overall fulfilled human being.  Rather, morality primarily concerns the will, and moral goodness consists in the relation of the act of will to all of the basic goods of persons, both in oneself and in others.  So the relation of the morally good act to its standard or criterion—integral human fulfillment—must be one of harmony or openness rather than one of productivity or effectiveness.  While these last two options are consistent with the proposition that every agent acts for a good, they are not consistent with the irreducibility of the moral order.

            Thus, I suggest that only Grisez’s position is fully consistent with the propositions that every agent acts for a good and that human acts are genuinely and irreducibly free. According to Grisez’s position, moral wrong is a defect precisely in the will; it is not a mere intellectual error. [10]   Thus, it is not a matter merely of selecting inefficient means to an end.  Good is fulfillment, badness is privation, and privation is not as such attractive.  Thus, the difference between the morally good action and the morally bad action must be between the fullness of being due the will and a falling short of that being.  It is the difference between acting for a good with a love of, or at least an openness to, the whole of what is intrinsically good, versus acting for a good without a love of or openness to the whole of what is intrinsically good. [11]   The difference between moral good and moral evil in Grisez’s position is precisely where one should find it, given the metaphysical truth about the goodness of all being and the anthropological truth that free action is not just a matter of selecting the apparently most effective means to a given end. 

 

II. THE BASIC GOOD OF RELIGION

 

            The second issue I would like to comment on (though briefly) is the suggestion Grisez makes now more clearly than he has before that there is a certain primacy of the basic good of religion or harmony with God.  This claim of course immediately suggests the question: how is this primacy compatible with the position that the basic human goods are, considered as such, both basic and incommensurable? 

            Grisez’s claim seems to me correct:  the basic good of religion is, not more excellent of itself, but more architectonic.  That is, it belongs more to the nature of religion to have the function of organizing one’s pursuit of other basic goods than it does to the nature of any other basic good.  Frequently, one basic good may require more effort and time devoted to it than others, because of the situation and what that good here and now requires.  For example, someone very old and infirm may be morally required to spend ten times as much time and effort on the good of health as on the good of understanding or even on the goods of friendship or self-integration.  A healthy eighteen- year-old student, on the contrary, may need to spend very little time and effort on the basic good of health but large amounts of time on the good of understanding.  These facts do not imply that health is a greater good for the elderly person and understanding a greater good for the eighteen year-old.  Rather, the nature of the good and the concrete situation require greater effort in its regard at some times than at others.  Now the nature of the good of religion, or harmony with God, which involves cooperating with God’s plan for creation, is such that it “englobes” or organizes all of the other basic goods.  This is not because it is of itself more excellent, nor certainly, because others are merely instrumental in relation to it; rather, it is something that belongs to the nature of this good.  So, a basic good may require more attention or a different kind of attention because of the kind of good it is, without being more excellent than the other basic goods. 

 

III. NATURE-GRACE, BEATIFIC VISION

 

A. The General Direction of Grisez’s Thought on Nature and Grace.  It seems to me that the direction of Grisez’s thought on nature and grace is correct.  Too often, as for example in the teachings of those theologians who follow de Lubac and von Balthasar closely, human nature seems reduced to a mere vehicle or occasion for grace or spiritual communion with God.  If one says that within our nature there is an orientation to supernatural communion with God, calling this the “Christian paradox of man,” [12] then one reduces the other aspects of human nature, the aspects which do not directly involve union with God, to a purely secondary, or perhaps merely instrumental, significance.  In contrast, Grisez makes two very significant moves.  First, he unequivocally distinguishes between supernatural communion with God and our natural fulfillment.  This allows him to avoid reducing natural fulfillment, or any aspect of natural fulfillment, to the level of a mere means.  Communion with God does not substitute for any natural fulfillment, because it is not the actuation of any natural capacity.  As the Councils of Constantinople (381) and Chalcedon (451) had to protect the full humanity of Christ by condemning Apollinarism (the theory that Christ did not have a human soul, that the divine Word substituted for that), so, Grisez holds, we must set aside any theory which, in a similar way, holds that grace, or the divine life received at baptism by the Christian, substitutes for some part of the fulfillment of the Christian’s human nature. 

            Grisez’s second move in respect to the relation between nature and grace is to insist that heaven, the completed eternal kingdom, will include both supernatural personal communion with the divine Persons and complete fulfillment of human nature, including the bodily, the technical, the existential, as well as the intellectual dimensions.  To make this point, he repeatedly, and with delight, quotes Gaudium et Spes (#38 and #39).  Thus, Grisez’s answer to secularism is the same as Vatican II’s:  the Christian religion does not distract from nor devalue human, temporal goods for the sake of placing all one’s energies and focus on the eternal (the secularist accusation against Christianity), for the completed eternal kingdom will include the human, temporal goods, recreated by God and purged of all their imperfections (GS, 34, 39)  Thus, the mystery of heaven is preserved:  “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, what God has prepared for those who love him.”  And the richness of heaven is also preserved:  heaven is not conceived as just an intellectual perfection, or a purely spiritual reality:  it includes what transcends our understanding, but also includes every aspect of our natural human fulfillment that we do understand and rightly value for its own sake when not lulled into being neo-platonists by theological distortions of the Gospel and Church teaching. 

 

B. Grisez’s Argument that the Beatific Vision is not the Actuation of the Human Intellect.             Grisez’s argument against Aquinas’s position that the beatific vision is the fulfillment of a power in human nature seems to be this:  A nature just is a potentiality for a certain type of act, in relation to a certain type of object.  It is the potentiality, together with the orientation or tendency toward, this type of act rather than that type of act.  Now, if the divine essence itself could be the fulfillment of the human intellect, that would mean that the human intellect is, according to what it is, a potentiality for this actuation.  But no created nature can be a potentiality or an orientation to the divine essence itself.  Only the divine intellect is proportionate to the divine essence.  Every other intellect is proportionate to another object. 

            There are three objections one could raise to this argument. First, one might argue as follows:  The tradition already recognizes that the immediate vision of the divine essence is not proportionate to any creature or any created power.  And this is precisely why the tradition holds that God causes in the creature a lumen gloriae, which (the objection continues) is a supernatural entity disposing the creature to perform an act which does transcend its nature.  As Aquinas explains it:

 

Hence it is necessary that some supernatural disposition be added to it [the created intellect] so that it be elevated to such a sublimity.  Since therefore the power of the created intellect is not sufficient to see the divine essence, as was shown above, it is necessary that the power of understanding be added to by divine grace. [13]

 

However, this position on the lumen gloriae only delays the problem rather than solves it.  If a created and finite nature is not capable of doing X, then how does the addition of another created and finite entity, though a supernatural one, help?  It does not seem that a finite entity can enable a created and finite entity to perform an action which is only proportionate to an infinite entity. [14]

A second objection to Grisez’s argument against Aquinas could be presented as follows.  As Grisez indicates in footnote 46, Aquinas considers an argument similar to the one Grisez presents against the position that the beatific vision is an actuation of the created intellect.  But Aquinas replies by distinguishing between the object of the orientation or act, and the manner in which it is actuated by the object.  He argues that the divine essence is the same end toward which both God and created persons are oriented, but God is oriented toward comprehending the divine essence while created persons are oriented toward directly seeing but not comprehending the divine essence. 

Grisez  points out that the position that the beatific vision is an actuation of the created intellect is not merely saying the object of a created act is a participation of the divine, an imitation, to some degree, of uncreated goodness.  Rather, the beatific vision requires that the divine essence itself inform the intellect by which one sees.  Knowledge is an immanent action.  That is, it is not an action that crosses over from the agent into a distinct entity, a patient, (that would make it a transitive action) but it remains within the agent, perfecting the agent.  Knowledge is a distinctive type of union with the thing known, an act by which the thing known is present in the knower.  Now, since knowing is an immanent action, when a created intellect knows things other than God, the specification of the knowledge—what Aquinas calls the “intelligible species”—is an aspect of the intelligent act, and so an accident inhering in the intellect of the knower, and so distinct from the thing known. [15]

In other words, in natural knowing performed by created intellects, the specificity of the intellectual act—the intelligible species—is the content whereby the thing known is made present to the knower.  The content of the act is some intelligible aspect of some thing, and thus, to that extent, identical with it, and therefore in this act one is made one with—intentionally one with—the thing known. [16]   But Aquinas convincingly shows that the beatific vision cannot occur in that manner.  No finite being, no finite intelligible species distinct from God himself, can make God as he is in himself present to a knower.  So, the beatific vision cannot take place by means of a finite act whose specific content (intelligible species) makes present the divine essence.  Rather, what must be the case (according to Aquinas) is that the divine essence itself informs the intellect that sees the divine essence.  This means that if a created intellect has the beatific vision, the vision of the divine essence in itself, then there is in the intellect no finite action making present an infinite object in an intentional manner.  Were that the case, the specificity of this finite action would be an intelligible species distinct from the divine essence.  Rather, if the created intellect has the beatific vision, then the divine essence itself informs the created intellect.  This point is important for understanding Grisez’s argument in footnote 46,  regarding the lumen gloriae:

 

But this reply of Aquinas misses the point , at least of my objection. This concerns neither the sameness of all creatures tending toward divine goodness nor the difference between God and the blessed in how they know the divine essence.  Rather, it concerns Aquinas’s claim that created persons, by an act (albeit a supernatural act) of a capacity pertaining to their own created nature, can attain to divine goodness itself and thereby be absolutely fulfilled by it. [17]

 

The problem is that, on the one hand, if something is an actuation of a finite potentiality then it must be finite; on the other hand, God himself cannot be made present by a finite something, a finite specificity in an intelligible species.  I believe that when thinking of the beatific vision as the actuation of a created intellect theologians implicitly suppose an intermediary between the divine essence and the created intellect, namely, the human or angelic intellectual act, and, of course, this intellectual act must be finite.  But if the intellectual act is finite then its determination must be finite. 

            A third objection one might raise to Grisez’s argument against the position that the beatific vision is the actuation of a created intellect is as follows.  Let us distinguish between natural being and intentional being.  Then, in God the divine essence is, of course, present naturally as well as intentionally. Then (it might be argued), the beatific vision can occur in a creature, a created and finite power, because in this vision the divine essence is present not naturally but only intentionally. [18]  

But this will not solve the problem.  God is simple; that is, there are no real distinctions in God except relational distinctions (the opposed relations are distinct persons).  So if God is present intentionally, then God is substantially present in an infinite manner.  It is just this consideration that Aquinas appeals to in order to obtain some analogous understanding about the distinction between the first and second persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Son.  So, Grisez’s argument does seem correct.  I must confess, however, that this area is so difficult that I cannot bring myself to have great confidence in this conclusion.

 

C. Consequences of Aquinas’s Position. What about the significance of the position that the beatific vision is a fulfillment of the human intellect?  Does Aquinas’s position really have the logical consequences Grisez claims it does?  That is, does the position that the beatific vision is an actuation of the created intellect really downgrade the aspects of human fulfillment other than intellectual fulfillment, as Grisez argues on pp.25-26? 

            Someone might argue that it does not, for the following reason.  One could say that the beatific vision really is supernatural, that heaven includes both supernatural communion with God and complete human fulfillment, but that the supernatural communion occurs by an actuation of the intellect.  In other words, one might say that the union of the divine essence with the created intellect is only the change produced in us by which we became one with God. [19]  

There are two distinct problems Grisez rightly wants to avoid:  first, he does not want to locate complete human fulfillment within a part of human nature, for that will devalue the other aspect of human nature, the other basic goods.  We see, therefore, how this issue is related to the incommensurability of basic goods issue.  Second, he rightly wants to avoid all of the problems which arise precisely from confusing the supernatural with the natural, or from making the supernatural a demand of the natural.  (One of the consequences seems to be that one denies, perhaps implicitly, a truly natural fulfillment and thus does not recognize a distinctive place of natural fulfillment in the completed kingdom.)  The first problem concerns the relation between intellectual fulfillment and other basic goods.  The second problem bears on the relation between the natural and the supernatural.  The proposal I am examining now is that one could perhaps avoid these problems by:  a.) distinguishing between natural and supernatural fulfillment; b.) describing the created intellect’s role in union with God as the means by which, or the change in us by which, a union is brought about (rather than the fulfillment itself); and c.) insisting that heaven, or the completed kingdom, will include both supernatural communion with God and every aspect of human fulfillment including the perfection of every aspect of human nature.  

Now, this proposal is at least fairly close to what we find in Aquinas.  It would be a humanist reading of Aquinas, or, at least, as humanist a reading of Aquinas as one can get.  It seems to me that this reading would still raise questions about the relation between the natural and the supernatural, but one might argue that it does not devalue human goods (as Grisez argues Aquinas’s view does, on pp. 25-26).  After all, if one does not take too literally the term “essence of beatitude,” one can see that in Aquinas’s treatment of beatitude he is merely distinguishing between three levels of fulfillment or “beatitude”:  1.) imperfect beatitude, which he identifies with participation in various basic goods that we can achieve in this life; 2.) what he calls “the essence of beatitude,” which is the vision of the divine essence granted the blessed souls in heaven after death but before the resurrection of the body;  and 3.) what he calls the “bene esse of beatitude” but which I would call, beatitude simpliciter, or beatitude in the fullest sense.  In the bene esse of beatitude, there is an overflow or redundantia from the union with God, to the other aspects of the blessed, resulting in the fulfillment of every aspect of human nature, including health, friendship, and so on.  The best and most sympathetic interpretation of this position, it seems to me, would identify the third level as beatitude simply speaking, or beatitude in the strict or fullest sense. 

            According to this reading, the beatific vision is not an actuation of the human intellect, but an exercise of our divine nature received at Baptism.  This interpretation of Aquinas, does not, at least, seem to be as anti-humanist as Grisez says Aquinas’s doctrine is.  However, while this view is, I think, a move in the right direction, there are two problems with it.

             Problem 1:  It is not really Aquinas’s view.  Aquinas did maintain clearly, as Grisez shows on p. 20, that the beatific vision is a human act, and that it does fulfill the potentialities of human nature, though it is not a condition to which human nature has an active potentiality.

            Problem 2:  This view still does not avoid devaluing aspects of human fulfillment.  If there were some faculty in us which was oriented to the divine, would it not follow that that faculty would be in a higher category than the other powers in us?  If part of me is such that it is oriented to God as he is in himself, then that part of me must be what is really important:  it must be on an entirely different level than the other powers I have.  Nor is this empty speculation.  It seems to me that many theologians have really drawn this conclusion, and it seems to me that Aquinas himself drew it.  The result is detrimental to the Christian moral life.  It implies that the religious part of me is the spiritual part, and that if I am exercising my spiritual part, then I am operating on the first level.  If I am exercising my other powers, then I am operating merely on the second level. 

 

D. Our Knowledge of God is Negative or Relational.  This point helps to show why Grisez’s insistence that in this life our knowledge of God is only negative and relational is important for his humanist project. We do not grasp what God is in himself; we do not know what God is.  Still, we can refer to him through the relationship which creatures have to him.  He is the ultimate source of the existence, perfection, and moral order in the universe.  He is the Creator of heaven and earth.  This causal relation, the relation of creation, enables us to know and speak about him. He is the entity at the term of this relation.  However, this causal relation does not enable us to apprehend what he is in himself. The relation of creation allows us to speak about God through natural reason (that is, without the aid of special revelation). But with grace and revelation God initiates a new relation to created persons.  With grace and revelation God is known not only as the first cause of all things, and as the source of moral directives, but now as the initiator of the covenantal relationship, a personal communion. What God is, is still not apprehended.  But now God is known on a new level, on the basis of a deeper relationship. [20]

            This doctrine is important for Grisez’s view of the ultimate end of the human person because thinking that we do know what God is also leads to devaluing bodily human goods. Christians are tempted to think:  “I know what God is.  God is a mind, like my mind (or even, like me).”   From there it follows that development of that part of me must be on an entirely higher level than the other parts.  Purely spiritual pursuits will be viewed as inherently valuable, while other pursuits, such as health, procreation, everyday work, will be viewed as inferior, as inherently meaningless except perhaps as an occasion for developing spiritual virtues.  Grisez’s view is different.  God really is beyond what we can directly apprehend, including both the spiritual things we apprehend and the bodily.  The spiritual and the bodily aspects of the human person are inherently equally valuable.  The human being is the image of God not just in his intellectual capacities, but especially in his capacity to make free choices, that is, freely to shape his whole life. 

 

E. How Is the Divine Nature United to the Christian?  But all of this still leaves the following question:  If actuation of the human (or angelic) intellect directly by the divine essence is not that whereby the blessed are one with God in heaven, how are they united?  One might raise the following objection to what Grisez holds about the beatific vision and about uncreated grace.  Of course, one might say, the real point of grace is uncreated grace, personal communion with God himself, communion with the divine persons themselves.  Created grace, that is, any created entity within us, is secondary.  Still, in order for a creature to acquire a union with God, who is in himself perfect and immutable, there must be some change, or some factor, in the creature whereby it is one with God.  Following on that change or factor there will be a relation of union with the divine, but there must be in the creature a foundation for that relation.  Now what is that factor according to Grisez? 

            His answer is given in chapter 24 of Christian Moral Principles.  There he explains that the union of the Christian with the Divine persons is modeled on that of the human nature of Christ with the Divine Word.  As in Christ, there is a divine person but both a divine nature and a human nature, and the natures are not confused or commingled, so the Christian is a created person who, after baptism, has both a human nature and a divine nature, neither confused nor commingled.  Thus, with baptism the Christian in some way receives the full divine nature.  But, Grisez adds, while the union is similar to the unity of Christ’s two natures, it also is quite different.  The union of the divine and the human in the Christian is not a hypostatic union.  The union, he says, is a dynamic unity.  He expresses it as follows in Beyond the New Theism: 

 

The unity of the natures in [Christ’s] case is in his person; his personal being is that of creator, not that of creature.  In those who become God by adoption the unity of the two natures is in their acts of love and knowledge. [21]

 

I find this puzzling, for two reasons.  It seems right to me to say that our supernatural love and knowledge of God is in virtue of the divine nature that is somehow in us, or having its abode in us.  So, Christian love is more than human.  Likewise with Christian faith and the beatific vision.  These are acts which are not proportioned to human nature, or any created nature, so they are acts that the Christian performs but with the divine nature somehow present in him.  But then it seems to me that this would mean that the divine nature, the divine life, must already be in the Christian, somehow united to the Christian, as a prerequisite of those divine acts.  It does not seem that the unity with the divine nature would be precisely in those acts of love and knowledge, but would be presupposed by them. 

            Perhaps Grisez holds that too, and he does not mean that the unity is in the acts.  Perhaps he means that the unity is of another, irreducible type—not one whose intrinsic  we can grasp—but is oriented toward, or bound up with, those acts.  For Grisez also stresses that there are various types of unity.  He distinguishes between four types of created unity on the basis of the four irreducibly distinct, created dimensions of being:  the natural, the logical, the existential, and the technical or cultural. [22]   The unity of grace is none of these types and so perhaps how the created person is united to the divine for such acts of love and knowledge to be possible will simply remain mysterious. [23]

            A further objection could still be raised.  Grisez objects to holding that the divine actualizes a created nature.  One might begin to wonder, however, whether his objection applies not only to Aquinas’s conception of beatific vision and grace but to any idea of a real personal communion of  a creature with the divine.  For, on any conception of grace and vision, does there not have to be some change in the creature by which the union is established?  But if one follows Grisez’s approach, would one not also argue that that change cannot be merely a created something, for no creature (again) can bridge the gap between God and creature.  But it seems that if the change is not something created then it cannot be a change, and we are back to the problems associated with Aquinas’s notion of beatific vision to begin with.

We could express the point this way:  There must be some change in the creature to bring about the union, but even if the change is not in a power such as the intellect, it will have to be in something finite and therefore in something not proportionate to the divine.  So, is the problem Grisez raised a problem only for Aquinas’s view of beatific vision and divine grace, or is it rather a problem for any view of beatific vision and divine grace? 

            I believe Grisez could reply to this objection by distinguishing the actuation of a potentiality, which is the actuation of that to which the power inherently tends, from a change in the human person whereby he or she receives a share in the divine nature. I believe Grisez is right that the beatific vision cannot take place as the actuation of any power in the human nature.  However, there still must be some change in us by which the union with the divine nature begins and continues.  What that change is remains mysterious.  Moreover, since that change is not the actuation of a power in our nature, one need not locate the change, or the union with the divine nature, in just in one part of us, or just in the spiritual aspect of us.  Perhaps it should be thought of us as a change in the whole person. 

In other words, if we accept Grisez’s proposal, then we will simply say that the Christian shares in the divine nature, and this union with the divine nature is a distinctive union not of the same kind as any other union we are familiar with, including the union which consists in an actuation of a natural capacity.  This interpretation is supported by Grisez’s summary of his view of divinization in Christian Moral Principles: 

 

Human persons remain always of human nature and always creatures; yet by a free self-giving of the divine persons, a self-giving which always presupposes their own interpersonal relationships, human persons also in a real way share—“share” in an irreducible sense—in divinity. [24]