St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (Aug 2024)
Grace in Roman Catholic Theology
Abstract
Grace may be described as the gratuitous self-communication of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. The term also refers to the living, actual, and continuous experience humans have of this saving event. In a wholly unmerited way, the Spirit of the risen Christ becomes present in the church and in each believer, who thus shares in divine life expressed in a personal relationship with the Trinity and, in the creating Trinity, with the whole of the created world. The concept of ‘grace’ gives expression to an essential element of the Christian understanding of the human person, and of anthropology as a whole. The first two parts of this article will explain the origin of the term and its development throughout history in the patristic, medieval, modern, and contemporary periods. The following three parts present the key topics within a Roman Catholic theology of grace. The main theme of the first of these parts is God’s saving love, the second is the power of grace to transform those in whom God dwells, and the third is the way in which grace relates to human freedom.
