onnections where it
cannot possibly mean theological love.(68) This peculiar usage is based on
the idea that love of goodness in a certain way attracts man towards God
and prepares him for the theological virtue of charity. In studying the
writings of St. Augustine, therefore, we must carefully distinguish
between _caritas_ in the strict, and _caritas_ in a secondary and derived
sense.(69) The champions of the falsely so-called Augustinian theory of
grace(70) disregard this important distinction and erroneously claim that
St. Augustine identifies "grace" with _caritas_ in the sense of
theological love; just as if faith, hope, contrition, and the fear of God
were not also graces in the true meaning of the term, and could not exist
without theological charity.

b) Not a few theologians, especially of the Thomist school, enlarge the
list of actual graces by including therein, besides the supernatural vital
acts of the soul, certain extrinsic, non-vital qualities (_qualitates
fluentes, non vitales_) that precede these acts and form their basis. It
is impossible, they argue, to elicit vital or immanent supernatural acts
unless the faculties of the soul have previously been raised to the
supernatural order by means of the _potentia oboedientialis_. The _gratia
elevans_, which produces in the soul of the sinner the same effects that
the so-called infused habits produce in the soul of the just, is a
supernatural power really distinct from its vital effects. In other words,
they say, the vital supernatural acts of the soul are preceded and
produced by a non-vital grace, which must be conceived as a "fluent
quality." These "fluent" (the opponents of the theory ironically call them
"dead") qualities are alleged to be real graces.(71) Alvarez and others
endeavor to give their theory a dogmatic standing by quoting in its
support all those passages of Sacred Scripture, the Fathers and councils
in which prevenient grace is described as _pulsatio_, _excitatio_,
_vocatio_, _tractio_, _tactus_, and so forth. The act of knocking or
calling, they say, is not identical with the act of opening, in fact the
former is a grace in a higher sense than the latter, because it is
performed by God alone, while the response comes from the soul cooeperating
with God.(72)

The theory thus briefly described is both theologically and
philosophically untenable.

{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}) Holy Scripture and Tradition nowhere mention any such non-vital