This article explores St. Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of grace for the way in which it heals and moves the sinner towards justification. It exposits Thomas's use of the language of “impetration” to express a causal yet non-meritorious role for human action, and it applies this conception to the free will's movement in justification. It argues that Thomas understands the prayer of a sinner to illumine the way in which God's infallible and predestinating will unfolds through human actors without destroying their contingent nature. To that end, it first exposits critical points in Thomas's doctrine of grace, including the notions of habitual grace and auxilium, intact and fallen human nature, and operative and cooperative grace. It then introduces the language of impetration for the way in which it elucidates a valuable role for human action in justification. It concludes that impetration illustrates the on-going perfection of nature in such a way that God's grace draws human beings into the causal sequence of divine providence. The sinner's impetration captures the indispensable movement of the free will while recognizing that, in its appeal to divine mercy, it has already been graced by God and cannot earn the gift of justification.

Recourse to natural law reasoning has long been a part of how Catholics and Christians engage in debates about issues of public and private morality with people and communities of people who do not share the Catholic/Christian faith. But with the rise of modernity, the scientific revolution, and the relative success of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, many Catholics have begun to question traditional natural law reasoning. Some, including theorists like Germain Grisez, and John Finnis have sought to modify traditional natural law reasoning and continue to employ it within debates concerning public and private ethics, while others, acknowledging the radically altered conception of nature that followed the scientific revolution have thought to look for alternative modes of engagement. The following paper will seek to develop an argument against proponents of this altered version of natural law theory, what has come to be called New Natural Law theory, on the basis of the altered understanding of nature in the contemporary West, and the New Natural Law propensity to sideline the question of nature itself. The paper will then go on to advocate for an alternative and more confessional mode of engagement in public debate.

The important, but unexplored, John Maclaurin of Glasgow (1693–1754) represents the branch of enlightened evangelicals in the Church of Scotland who defended aspects of supernaturalism as compatible with reason. Evangelicals like Maclaurin endorsed the transatlantic evangelical revivals while still maintaining that such pervasive and multifarious spiritual awakenings were not a chaotic display of enthusiasm. Maclaurin supposed that God had created humanity with the ability to reason and could influence one's thinking to adopt epistemological assumptions about religion which some saw as irrational and superstitious. In order to prove this point, Maclaurin turned the tables on the opponents of the revivals by arguing that in order to be truly natural, in the sense of being a complete human, one must embrace the inner workings of the Holy Spirit. The corruption of our nature which occurred as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve left mankind in an incomplete state. Therefore, the purpose of God's supernatural grace is to restore mankind to its authentic natural state. Without such divine aid to form knowledge, he argued, one would never be able to gain a full understanding of spiritual truth. Similar to Thomas Aquinas, Maclaurin assumed that humans can know many things about God and his work in the world using reason. Sin has not corrupted our intellect to the extent that we cannot ascertain any truth about God from observing the world around us. Nevertheless, in order to have a thorough understanding of God, divine grace is needed. Following Aquinas, Maclaurin claimed that God uses secondary causes like preaching to motivate people to seek grace. Such secondary causes cannot produce any real change in a person unless accompanied by the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. As opposed to many of the more liberal ministers of the day, Maclaurin, although not entirely comfortable with the fainting and weeping which sometimes appeared at the revivals, was willing to admit that emotional displays could be a natural response by a person whose heart had been moved by the spirit of God. While defending extreme emotions, Maclaurin's main point in his sermons was that evangelicalism was entirely reasonable.