Nature and Grace

by Matthias Joseph Scheeben

The passing years, which bury so many once-famous names under deep layers of forgetfulness, are raising Matthias Joseph Scheeben to an eminence reached by very few scholars. Time is the judge of all achievements, and has pronounced its verdict that Scheeben is the greatest theologian who has written in the German language. The reason for his importance is not hard to find. Scheeben is the chief theologian of the supernatural economy of the world. The intellectual blight known as rationalism had spread widely in the nineteenth century and had made disastrous inroads even in Christian circles. Although preliminary battles waged by Catholics who were turning back the unholy invasion, Scheeben was the champion who finally and decisively drove the enemy out of theology. From the very outset of his theological career, Scheeben had cherished the ambition of making the drab naturalistic world glow again in the light and beauty of grace, of bringing back to the awareness of men the glorious truth that they are God's children. In the first of his major books, Nature and Grace, he describes the supernatural as a sharing in the nature of God. This same theme, the splendor of our supernatural life, is the leading idea of all his works. He thought that a deep appreciation of the mysteries revealed by God was so important that he consecrated the tireless powers of his genius to the task of bringing out their beauty and force, and of emphasizing their meaning for the daily life of man. He insisted that these mysteries are the richest treasure of our spiritual inheritance and that theology is the inspiration of the fullest lie open to use-supernatural life with Christ and in Christ. Scheeben's masterly theological synthesis is best proposed in The Mysteries of Christianity, his most original work, but was clearly formulated from the beginning of his literary activity in Nature and Grace, the book of his energetic youth.

Genres: Theology, Christian, Catholic, Spirituality, Christianity

386 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Scheeben studied at the Gregorian University at Rome under Carlo Passaglia and Giovanni Perrone from 1852 to 1859 and lived in Collegium Germanicum. He was ordained to the priesthood on 18 December 1858. He taught dogmatic theology at the diocesan seminary of Cologne from 1860 to 1875.

Reviews

[Fr. Zachary Galante · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly dense but full of poetic and brilliant passages on the gift of Divine Life that is bestowed upon the baptized. If only the world knew what a difference the life of grace actually is! Scheeben’s work is not a light read, but it is rich in its wisdom and reflections on God’s wonderful gift of grace.

[Jarrett Vandiver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scheeben’s central idea is the belief that grace elevates our nature, rather than destroying it. Grace, or supernature, collaborates with the soul, refining it in alignment with its natural inclination toward God. He goes through a huge selection of fathers, primarily eastern fathers in connection with the primary western father, Augustine. These fathers commonly use the following analogies when speaking of our justification:

Plant Analogy (90): Grace functions like sunlight and nourishment for a plant, elevating it beyond its natural limitations.

Sun and Fire Analogy (157): God is likened to the sun, and our souls are compared to a body warmed by its fire—receiving life and sanctification from the divine source without becoming identical to it.

Sanctifying grace, in contrast to the forensic view of justification, provides an inward justification for the soul (127). This approach goes beyond merely covering sin and actively transforms the person.

One of my favorite aspects of this book was his debunking of the myth that Augustine contradicts the theology of the early and eastern fathers on original sin and free will.

Pelagianism, prevalent in the early Church, posited that human nature was neutral, equally susceptible to good and evil, and that God provided no inherent inclination towards the good.

In response to Pelagianism, Augustine emphasized the inherent dependence of humans on God, both naturally and supernaturally. What many often miss is that when augustine said humans have the “freedom only to do evil,” he was talking about human nature in the abstract sense, divorced even from God’s natural influence. In perfect harmony with the Eastern fathers however, Augustine understood that human nature is always helped *naturally* by God to tend toward the good, because God is the act of being itself, and all human desire tends toward him. Why else, after all, would Augustine say his famous quote: our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” This quote would be senseless if Augustine believed in total depravity (309). If we are totally depraved, as Luther and some modern readers of Augustine would like it, then we certainly would have no natural desire to “rest” in God.

However, Augustine countered the pelagians by saying that God’s natural influence on human nature is not enough. In order to achieve salvation, we are totally dependent on receiving God’s *supernatural* help which elevates our nature. Augustine only seems to play a different tune than other fathers because he was responding to a particular heresy in a particular historical context.