Preparation for justification

The medieval arguments in favor of the notion of preparation for justification through created grace are founded on anthropological and cosmological claims. McGrath summarizes the Summa Fratris Alexandri , which he calls “the first systematic discussion of the nature of created grace,” as follows: “The Holy Spirit can be said to dwell in the souls of the justified as in a temple; this is impossible unless there is something within the soul which, although not itself the temple, is capable of transforming the soul into such a temple capable of receiving the Spirit.”

But why can’t man be created as temple?

Dominican theologians argued that they were: anima naturaliter est gratiae capax . Yet, even among Dominicans, this was undercut by anthropological assumptions: Aquinas rejected Peter Lombard’s straightforward claim that the “caritas infused into the soul in justification” was Spirit because “the union of the uncreated Holy Spirit with the created human soul appeared to him to be inconsistent with the ontological distinction which it was necessary to maintain between them” (McGrath again).

Further, Dominican theologians defended the idea of preparation for grace on the basis of “an Aristotelian analysis of motion. Grace, being a form, exists as a disposition in the subject who receives it. Application of the Aristotelian theory of generation to this results in the deduction of a stage of preparation.”