“New Creation:” Grace and Experiences of a Renewed Nature

Abstract

In everyday life, one encounters many experiences of affliction that, for whatever reason, nature (ours or others’) cannot resolve. Yet, when nature’s finite resources are exhausted and hope seems in vain, humans often experience extra-ordinary moments of renewal and resolution—breakthroughs, remissions, insights, and conversions. We experience these moments in our natural existence; yet, we feel they cannot originate, cannot be attributed to nature alone. Rather, these experiences, called “graces” in Christianity, are attributed to a divine power acting in us. How do we come to describe these experiences in this way? Is it possible to formulate a general theory of these experiences as “graces”? Is there an “experience” of grace in general, a “state of grace”, which serves as ground and unifying experience for the “graces” we receive? Working from the Catholic theological point of view, this paper examines such experiences of affliction and renewal, as well as the basic Catholic framework schematizing them as found in the Bible and Catholic religious writings. In doing so, this paper highlights the theme of impossibility (absolutely or in context) underlying each experience, and broadly categorizes them as happening within three regions of human life: the external, ethical sphere, the interior self-relationship, and the vertical relationship to the Divine. In dialogue with theologians and phenomenological thinkers, general formulations of the experiences are placed within their respective spheres, and certain problems in the identification or interpretation of these experiences are identified. The paper then explores how the experience of a “New Creation” can serve not only as a label for the totality of these experiences, but also as a totalizing and overarching ground-experience of “grace” and an interpretive hermeneutic for graces in general. As a result, a graced moment of total personal “rebirth” or “recreation”, prevenient with respect to any personal co-operation or experiences of grace as grace, is identified as a potential ground for all other graces considered. Finally, this paper considers some potential implications of this account of grace for both Catholic thought and Phenomenology more generally.

Those things which, by their reality, are in the soul are known by experiential knowledge, inasmuch as a man experiences intrinsic principles through their acts; just as we perceive the will in willing, and life in the operations of life.

—(St. Thomas Aquinas 1920, Summa Theologiae (ST) I-II 112.5.ad 1)

1. Introduction

Afflictions are experienced in every aspect of everyday life, and many are beyond our natural powers (individually or collectively) to resolve. We often find ourselves in conflict against the world, against others, and ourselves in these afflictions, and even in our attempts to address them. For many, these situations have occasioned disbelief or even hatred of God, who seems hidden, absent, or even complicit in the arising of these afflictions. Overall, Nature, to use Paul’s phrase, seems “subject to futility” (Romans 8:20) in the presence of suffering, unable to overcome these afflictions even when it exhausts its efforts. Yet, amid these sufferings there can come, often inconspicuously or unknowingly, certain experiences we could never have hoped for: breakthroughs, remissions, insights, and conversions. These experiences are various in kind and presentation, and do not always conform to our expectations; nevertheless, they bring consolation and help when we most need it, resolution of troubles in many cases, and, often, a sense that the Divine has intervened on our behalf. For St. Paul, this is the work of God (especially the Holy Spirit), working in us and in the world, working in this life and preparing us for the next, even as it is invisible to us (cf. Romans 8:21–25). In Christianity generally, based on Paul and the rest of the New Testament, these experiences are called “graces”, gifts from God that make possible what we cannot naturally obtain by ourselves.

However, as Paul says, what we hope in—God’s grace and work in us—is not known to us certainly or directly.1 The Catholic Church has taught similarly that, unless one receives a special revelation from God, “no one can know with the certainty of faith […] that he has obtained the grace of God” (The Council of Trent 1978, “Decree on Justification”, IX; cf. Aquinas ST I–II.112.5). How can we then attribute these experiences to grace and to God? Is it possible to formulate a general theory of these experiences as “graces?” Is there an “experience” of grace in general, a “state of grace”, which serves as ground and unifying experience for the “graces” we experience? This paper sketches out initial reflections on graced experiences from the Catholic point of view, and how they occur amid afflictions that (absolutely or in context) cannot be overcome. In dialogue with Scripture, Catholic theology, and phenomenological sources,2 it then explores how a “New Creation” can serve not only as a label for the totality of these experiences, but a totalizing ground-experience of grace in general and a point of reference for the interpretation and understanding of experiences as graces. This then leads to concluding reflections on how analyzing this New Creation experience may impact Catholic theology and praxis, as well as discourse in contemporary phenomenology.

2. Afflictions and Graces within the Three Dimensions of Human Life: Vertical, Internal, and External

We will first address ourselves to the basic framework of afflictions and graces provided by Scripture and Tradition, categorizing them within three regions of human existence. These three regions are the relationship with the Divine, the inner life of self-relationship, and the ethical dimension of relationship with others and our world. These regions overlap significantly, since many experiences of affliction and grace are not limited to just one of them. Nevertheless, these three regions are distinct, and Scripture and Tradition contain numerous elaborations of both afflictions and graces within these regions. In addressing them, we will follow Scripture and Tradition’s understanding of their priority, describing the relationship with the divine, then the inner life, and lastly the ethical dimension.

The relationship to the divine is a vertical relationship between us and God, which when rightly disposed is characterized by faith, hope, and love. Afflictions in this relationship are identified with pride, and take various forms of self-centeredness. In a more directly “proud” way, a person (often due to ignorance and/or willfulness) projects onto “God” or gods their own ideas and desires. Paul describes such prideful people several times, for example, at Rom 1:23 and 25 and Phil 3:19. There is also a significant correspondence here with what we read of Augustine’s intellectual journey. Augustine witnesses to others’ pride most of all with the Manichaeans, whom he criticizes for, among other things, worshipping Mani (Augustine of Hippo 2009, Book V). Augustine also witnesses to his own pride, specifically his pride in his own intelligence, which leads him to disdain for the Scriptures and Christianity generally (Augustine of Hippo 2009, III). Henry also addresses this pride as the possibility of the self to view itself as self-grounding, and thereafter constantly project its self-actualization out from itself and into the world, always attempting to actualize its self by its own power yet never truly actualizing itself in this way (Henry 2003, pp. 140–44). The result of this is “idolatry”, the worship of false gods or a false conception of “God”. For as we see in Matthew 7:21–23, faith, hope and charity regarding God are more than what natural reason can conceive of by itself, even if reason assents in a natural yet explicit way to God. This would correspond with Catholic decrees against rationalistic or probabilistic conceptions of faith, common from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Lacoste discusses this throughout The Appearing of God, especially in the first study on Kierkegaard (Lacoste 2018, 1ff) and in the section on propositional knowledge and its limits (Lacoste 2018, “Resurrectio Carnis”, 178ff). In a less directly proud way, a person may feel ashamed and scrupulous before God and unworthy of relationship with Him. Such persons often desire distance from God. Consider, for example, Luke 5:8–9, where Peter desires distance from Jesus due to his perceived unworthiness of receiving the miracle of the great catch of fish. Similar scrupulosity is shown in the later parts of the Confessions, for example, in Augustine’s delaying Baptism while he still struggles with lustful living, which causes great torment (Confessions VII–VIII). In either case, God is objectified and/or relativized to one’s self, often little more than a self-projection of self-satisfaction or shame. As a result, there is either a weak, stifled relationship with God, no relationship with God, and/or relationship with false “gods”.

Graces in the relationship with God are experienced in this pride being humbled. God “scatter[s] the proud in the imagination of their hearts” (Luke 1:51), showing them the error of their false beliefs and selfish hopes. God “exalt[s] those of low degree” (Luke 1:52) and shows His love by dying and reconciling even sinners and “enemies” (Romans 5:10) to Himself. 1 John 4:9–10 and 19 discusses this in terms of the love of God absolutely preceding our ability to love Him, while empowering us to love Him in return through His love. As a result, both the proud and the scrupulous can be led to God, who Himself initiates true relationship with them. This God does by giving humans faith, hope, and love for Him, and the ability to live out this relationship in all they do—all actions beyond human nature’s power to do alone (Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:3 and Ephesians 2:8–9). God is not only the one who proposes the things to be believed in a manner extrinsic to a person, or who prompts a human to belief through external signs (by miracles, for example). God also internally moves a person to be capable of the act of faith. Thus the assent of faith is not grounded in man’s free will or natural reason alone; something must affect them to be able to do so.3 It is even said that these activities can deepen and become greater over time (cf. Aquinas ST. I–II.64.4.corp). Moreover, a person is adopted as a child of God,4 joined to Christ in body and spirit (especially through the Eucharist and the Church), and filled with the Holy Spirit who not only becomes the true center of our relationship with Him, but also the center of our own being: “more inward to me than my most inward part” (Augustine of Hippo 2009, III.6). Marion explicitly addresses this formulation of Augustine several times throughout In the Self’s Place, with the result that my self becomes an excessive experience, my inmost self a stage for an elsewhere, a someone else, namely God, who manifests Himself to give me my confession, my self, and so on (Marion 2012). This parallels also with Henry (Henry 2003, pp. 135–46), who discusses the self’s actualization by returning to the Life which engenders itself in giving life to the living’s self. As such, the vertical relationship’s internal locus is ultimately, and firstly, deeper than the self, and the experience also (re)constitutive of the self, as we will see.

The inner life of a person concerns their self-relationship, how they experience their inner activities of mind and heart. Afflictions in this realm concern the inability of a person’s mind and heart to know and desire God and their good. Despite their natural powers for knowing and willing, people face limitations in what their intellect and will can accomplish on their own. The mind, often lacking the illumination of faith, is described as “blind” or “veiled” (2 Cor 3:13–16; 4:3–4) regarding God, Scripture, and one’s good. The heart is overrun by the passions and desires of the “flesh” Even if the mind and/or the heart can set themselves on God, they often suffer internal conflict because they cannot be set on God wholly, consistently, or in an integrated way, as they often oppose each other in such pursuits. This is especially seen in Augustine’s famous garden conversion scene (Augustine of Hippo 2009, VIII.19ff), in which he speaks of being unable to will wholeheartedly and completely, of having a weakness of will, of having an incomplete will. He even speaks of having “two wills” (Augustine of Hippo 2009, VIII.19–26) that is, a lack of integration in himself because he both wants and does not want to fully convert and abandon his former life. Paul describes this similarly in Rom 7:15: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate”. As a result, the mind and the heart struggle, go astray and fall short in their pursuit of God and higher goods, and often set themselves onto lesser goods and “worldly” things that are known and pursued more easily by their natural powers alone, but often with evil results. The disregard of higher goods and the choice of lesser goods is also the point of the pears incident (Augustine of Hippo 2009, II.9ff). Augustine had deliberately wasted or ignored various good things (he had pears at his own house, he and his friends stole bad pears and not good ones, the pears were not even eaten, etc.) all for the sake of being with his friends, and so that he would not feel ashamed by not participating in their shameful activity. Thus, the mind and the heart indulge in evil thoughts and desires; are ignorant, led astray or discouraged regarding God and higher goods; and/or settle on enjoying lesser goods alone.5

Graces in this region both purify and strengthen the mind and heart, and heal the conflicts that can arise internally. The heart and the mind, affected by the work of the Spirit, are filled with the fruits and gifts of the Spirit (cf. Gal 5:22–23; 1 Cor 12:7–11). These fruits and gifts empower the mind and the heart to know and pursue God and their good wholly, consistently, and in unity. The mind is “renewed”, made capable of faith, knowledge of God, and right thinking regarding the good. The heart is “circumcised” (Rom 2:29) and made “pure” (cf. Matt 5:8; James 4:8), having the law written on the heart, and receiving the Spirit and love of God. Thus, following his discussion of “two wills” in the Garden and the description of his vision of Lady Continence, Augustine can speak of making a firm resolution with Alypius to be baptized, and in Book IX, to devote himself to the faith and work to convert his friends, Verecundus and Nebridius. Thus, both the mind and the heart “walk by faith”, “the Spirit”, and grace, and not their natural powers (“sight”, “the flesh”) alone (cf. Augustine of Hippo 2009, VIII.27). A person thus becomes a “new man” (Eph 4:24) or “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17) and enjoys true freedom and peace in their renewed self.

The ethical dimension concerns a person’s relationship with others and the world, defined by both a person’s actions and attitudes toward the world and others, and those of others and the world toward the person. In Scripture, afflictions of the ethical dimension are identified with the interplay between the “flesh” of the subject and the “world”6 from which our present lives cannot be extricated. The “flesh” is the part of us which comes into contact with the world, and in which arise passions and desires, many of which are inclined toward evil and away from goodness. These “fleshly desires”, which can “enslave” (cf. Rom 6:6–14) us even in our inner life, prompt us to abandon righteousness and engage the “world” and others as means for indulging in sin and evil. Meanwhile, the “world” in which we live is under the power of sin, death, and the devil. These forces, and others under their power, provoke us through temptations and trials (social, physical, mental, and spiritual) to engage our “fleshly” and “worldly desires”. The results of these afflictions are sinful actions and attitudes, described in affective (indulgence, infatuation, despair, helplessness), moral (wantonness, sinfulness, impurity), and relational terms (communal strife, marital/familial struggles, objectification of persons, etc.). Augustine writes of such experiences in Confessions I–III (Augustine of Hippo 2009). The cities of Thagaste and Carthage were, for Augustine, places full of every temptation, from lustful pursuits, to dissolute and reprobate behavior with his friends, to the theater and its effects on Augustine’s emotionality. Other people (starting even with the milk nurse in Book I) were often reduced to occasions for lust or jealousy or other sinful inclinations and temptations. This dynamic has multiple sources, and broadly follows the dynamic between the world (Augustine’s father, friends, the women of Thagaste and Carthage) and flesh (Augustine’s desires “to love and be loved”, and so on). As a result, we see Augustine’s relationships affected by his life, especially his relationships with his mother and Alypius. Further, amid such afflictions in a world created by God, persons will often experience feelings of God’s absence or even complicity in the midst of suffering. And so Purcell (following Levinas) in his analysis of Yosl Rakover Talks to God and Levinas’ article “To Love the Torah More than God” (Purcell 2006, pp. 64–72) reflects on Yosl’s experience of God’s hiddenness in the midst of the horrors of the Holocaust. There is also Mother Teresa, who experienced a period of spiritual desolation lasting for fifty years and until her death (mentioned in Steinbock 2007, p. 26). This occurred even as she cared for the poor of Calcutta, which she had been led to by God Himself in mystical prayer experience, and so such abandonment meant a loss of any contact or experience with the reference point—God Himself—for her life’s work in the world.7 Such experiences can thereafter occasion disbelief in God’s benevolence or even existence, as seen in the Problem of Evil.

Graces given in the ethical dimension address both “the world” and “the flesh”. “The world” is “overcome” by God (John 16:33), who overthrows sin, death, and Satan. The temptations and trials of the world are sometimes ended (either miraculously or inconspicuously), and if not, God strengthens a person to be able to withstand them. And so, on the one hand, we can contrast what Thagaste and Carthage were to Augustine in his youth as opposed to what the city of Hippo was during his time as bishop. Hippo was itself a major city, no less likely to present temptation to Augustine than the cities of his youth, but nevertheless was the place where Augustine worked for the spiritual and moral betterment of himself and the people in his ecclesiastical care. And on the other hand, as we see in the second part of Purcell’s analysis of Yosl Rakover and Levinas’ article, even when suffering means abandonment of humankind by God, it is precisely the space opened which enables the human act of abandoning one’s self to God. Thus, in such moments, to use Levinas’ words (quoted in Purcell 2006, p. 72), God “arises from within” in the act of faith, that is, faithful surrender. This also is recorded of Mother Teresa’s “dark night”, among other saints. In all these cases, the “flesh” is put to death (cf. Rom 8:13; Gal 5:24) and the new life in the Spirit shapes our passions and desires. Thanks to this Spirit, the “flesh” becomes the “body”—described as a temple of the Spirit, joined to Christ and the Church—and the “world”, even as “created”, becomes “Creation” in the fullest sense8—the realm ruled by God, filled with others who are also God’s Creations, where both God and His children are at work to sanctify the world. This situation then results in a life lived with hope in God’s presence and activity, moral righteousness, lawfulness, and purity, in contexts of a unified Church, care for the poor and oppressed, orderly societies and families founded on love, and so on.

3. Complications in the Account of Grace, and the Need for a Ground Experience

Having gone through this basic framework of affliction and grace experiences, it is important to show that certain characteristics of these experiences complicate the schema elaborated above. These complications, in dialogue with theological and phenomenological sources, demonstrate the need for a critical analysis of graced experiences, aimed at formulating a general theory of grace.

The first complication is that graces and afflictions often coincide and/or are confused with each other. There are countless examples among scriptural and traditional figures who are at once graced and afflicted. Christ’s Crucifixion and the deaths of martyrs are perhaps the most prominent examples, but even mystical experiences of God can come with afflictions, as in Paul’s personal experience in 2 Corinthians 12, where he at once has a mystical experience of God and an experience of a “demon from Satan”. We also notice in such accounts that receiving certain graces did not lead to complete resolution of their afflictions. Even amidst graced experiences, many still suffer greatly, and these situations can occasion personal doubts about God and his grace. Moreover, experiences often attributed to grace and God can also have subjective or even demonic origins, in which cases they would be afflictions and not graces (Cf. Steinbock 2007, pp. 51–52, 121–23). For example, Ignatius of Loyola writes in his autobiography of certain periods when he had mystical experiences in prayer. When he subsequently had periods of desolation or struggled in his studies, he concluded that his mystical prayer experiences were from Satan (cf. Ignatius of Loyola 1900, pp. 25–30, 57–58, 86–87) Yet, to expand Steinbock’s findings regarding mysticism and religious experience (Cf. Steinbock 2007, pp. 30–31, 115–25 et passim), authentic graces are the only point of reference for interpreting whether another experience is an authentic grace.9 It is therefore easy to confuse graces and afflictions, and create a subjective feedback loop of these experiences. As such, a ground experience of grace, which is constant amid various graces and afflictions, and which can claim authenticity and supernatural origin, requires description and delineation.

The second complication is that, generally, conspicuous graces are subordinated to inconspicuous or invisible graces in Catholic theology. What Catholic theology terms “actual graces” are graces meant to help persons on their path to sanctifying grace, either the recipients or others, and often both; (cf. Pohle 1909a, 1909c; Aquinas ST I–II.111). These actual graces can be either external (including various Revelatory acts) or internal (e.g., strength to meet a particular affliction). Nevertheless, in either the external or internal case, these graces are generally conspicuous, insofar as the experiences or their direct effects can be experienced clearly. But sanctifying grace has priority over actual graces in three major ways.

A.

Sanctifying graces (e.g., faith, reception of the Spirit) are the basis of one’s explicit vertical relationship with God per se; actual graces are not.

B.

Actual graces can only be known as graces because of sanctifying grace. For example, acts that are Revelations may prompt many persons to faith, but not all; and it is faith that enables a person to experience a Revelation as such (cf. Deketelaere 2018). Otherwise, such experiences, as we saw in the first complication, are not recognized as Revelatory, and are often attributed to madness, folly, self-projection, or even demonic activities (cf. Steinbock 2007, pp. 121–24 et passim; Matt 12:24–28; 1 Cor 1:18–31). Indeed, even after a series of experiences which seem common, there can come an experience which seems to order and reveal, in all of those common past experiences, God’s work. This is a common theme throughout the Confessions. Augustine is not aware of the meaning or purpose of the events of his life until the point of conversion reached in Book VIII (or possibly the writing of the Confessions), when all the events are seen as ordered by God to move Augustine to faith. Yet such events from Augustine’s life—the death of a friend, meeting Ambrose in Milan, and so on—are not great miraculous events, but everyday happenings that often occasioned Augustine moving in directions other than God’s before making clearer progress toward Christianity. Kugelmann’s (2017) account of first-person experiences parallels this: there are many cases where what evokes in us religious feeling or experience is not spectacular, and where the religious significance of such events can only be felt long afterward. And the reverse is also true: there is no amount of spectacularity will make us identify an experience as religious, as seen in Alvis’ critique of the spectacularity that often underlies phenomenological analysis of religious experiences (Alvis 2018).

C.

Thirdly, actual graces have a specific, limited scope for duration and region of occurrence; sanctifying grace has no similar limit, but is totalizing for a person’s life while received. Yet these sanctifying graces are unable to be directly experienced, but only in their accompanying signs and effects which, while directly experienced, do not give what causes them to come into direct view.

Therefore, an adequate phenomenology of grace should be grounded in such an inconspicuous and totalizing experience, with experienced effects that are nonetheless subject to alternative interpretations, especially when considered outside of the context of the inconspicuous and totalizing experience which gives rise to them.

The third complication concerns describing experiences as “graces” and ascribing them to God’s supernatural work in the first place. A defining characteristic of grace, which is its identification with the work of God, is easily problematized by the fact that God and His presence cannot be directly experienced or known with certainty in many, likely the majority of cases. As already seen in the first complication, it is possible for experiences of grace and affliction to coincide and be confused for each other. Nevertheless, God’s presence and work are what scriptural and traditional sources assert consistently as regards these experiences. It is also important to note that, according to Catholic Doctrine and in line with our second complication, both faith and Revelations are themselves graces, and so graces bring about not only Revelations, but even the ability to recognize Revelations and to know God, and not simply know about Him. As such, any degree of certainty or conviction in these matters is itself a grace, intrinsic to the grace experiences themselves. Further, grace is defined as prevenient, affecting our existence prior to any personal cooperation or reception. This prevenience lends itself in Purcell’s work to two conclusions. On the one hand, in his article “The Prevenience and Phenomenality of Grace, or, the Anteriority of the Posterior” (Purcell 2009), Purcell’s account of prevenience, founded on Levinas, focuses first on the “provoked response” and “the problem of the self and the other” who precedes me yet to whom I am ethically subjected. This first analysis occasions also the deeper level examination about the “provenance of the subject” as originating in the other, the subject as the work of the other-in-me (cf. also Purcell 2006, especially pp. 40–44, 47–50, 108–9, 123–24, 133–34, 147–51). On the other hand, Purcell also discusses (Purcell 2006, pp. 39–44) “doing” so that “hearing and understanding” may come, seemingly an example of the posterior effects showing the anterior grace that precedes and empowers doing. Yet these graces, despite this absolute prevenience to our understanding or experiencing them as graces, could not be experienced except that they are manifest to us as graces, and—as shown above—in our natural world and to our natural minds. Thus, we need an account of how nature can discern these graces, in a manner which respects both their supernatural origin and character, their natural locus of manifestation, and the primacy or prevenience of grace to the person’s experience of graces as graces.

4. “New Creation” as Potential Ground Experience

At the core of the various descriptions of grace experiences there arises a common theme. The relationship with the divine ends with Christ and the Spirit dwelling in us; as Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me” (Gal. 2:20). At the inner level, we speak of the new man, part of the new creation. At the ethical level, we see the transformation of the world and the flesh into Creation and the body, both leading new lives with a new set of activities since they are “made new”. These experiences all together form one image, as an overarching and totalizing experience we call here “New Creation”, of which we will give preliminary sketches here by its relationship to the natural creation of the world.

The New Creation of grace has similar traits to the first creation of nature. It is an event which we do not directly experience, because the effect of this New Creation is coming into a mode of existence in which graces can be experienced. It is “prevenient” to direct experiences; what we experience directly is its affecting and effecting us in our totality. Its effect, paralleling the totalizing experience of existence in the world, is a totalizing new way of life (cf. John 1:12–13), where the world and self can be affected by graces even amid afflictions in virtue of their total renewal. So radical is this renewal that it can even seem to overcome and overwhelm us. To present an edge case, Genesius of Rome (cf. Mershman 1909) acted out a seemingly mock-baptism as part of a play mocking Christians. On being baptized, however, he was apparently at once converted and became an earnest Christian.10 And just as our creation is beyond our direct experience or consciousness because it is what makes our experiences possible, so too this New Creation, which results in renewed life and consciousness, is also beyond our direct experience, since it makes possible the new life in which graces can be perceived directly. Yet, just as we can know of our creation by the experiences of our natural existence, we can also know by the experiences of a new way of life that we have entered into a new way of life.

And it is in this new way of life that we find the key differences between this New Creation and natural creation. First, such a new life, where the self and world are recreated and renewed, is not something we find in ourselves or in the world; it is clearly beyond the power of natural life to effect, unlike natural existence which nature seems to effect consistently. Rather, this New Creation is supernatural in origin, requires a supernatural cause, and brings my self and the world into a supernatural existence in the presence of the supernatural God who is bringing us beyond our merely natural concerns and ends. Second, while the first creation ends non-existence in causing natural existence, this New Creation, resulting in a new life filled with graces, does not end natural existence, but is lived out in continuity with natural existence and is often (mis)understood as part of natural existence. Indeed, when we speak of natural creation, we speak of an immemorial origin because of its preceding our subjective memory and our time. This New Creation is not immemorial in the same way; we feel its effects during our living, our time, and we often have specific moments when we become suddenly aware of living in a new state. Yet we also feel as though we and our world had been ordered and guided to these moments in ways we did not understand, perhaps even from before we were born, “from the foundation of the world” (cf. Eph. 1:3–14); that this new life had been hidden, yet also always at work in my natural existence to bring us onto its path (cf. Matt 13:33; Matt 13:44–46; Col. 1:26); and that our lives are being guided beyond these moments to a destiny we can only begin to hope for. Thirdly, the concept of natural creation is often signified, on the one hand, through experiences of a “radical” or “absolute dependence”, a “creature feeling” of being before overwhelming power or presence (Otto 1924)11 and on the other hand, through experiences of my own contingency or finitude. In both cases, I often understand myself to have my origin in something or someone other than myself. Yet such experiences, while necessary to describe and formalize, are inscribed within a system of causality and efficiency that can be reasoned about naturally and comprehensively as “pure nature”.12 The New Creation, however, defies such diminution and inscription in a system of causality and efficiency alone. As we see in Henry, the “birth” of a Son of God results in what is not created, since what is created is of-the-world, which Man as Son of God cannot be (Henry 2003, pp. 120–23). Rather, what Christianity calls spiritual rebirth is something that is not of this world, even if it is in-the-world; (cf. Alvis 2018, pp. 103–4). And so what I experience, giving me reprieve from the sufferings of natural life, does not merely bear the character of objectifiable causality. Rather, the New Creation bears an affective (cf. Lacoste 2018) and personal character, disclosing a personal presence manifesting Himself to me in ways that move me and show care for me.

Overall, in this New Creation, I am both affected and effected at a level deeper than my reason and even my self. And yet this flows out from that place; I find my self, my mind and body, and my world renewed in ways that I become aware of a new way of existing where I am not simply the effect of a cause which has left me to myself. Rather, I sense, I intuit that I am personally affected and effected by someone or something which is Personal Himself, who shows Himself to me as one loving me (cf. Lacoste 2018, pp. 73–74); who fully knows me (1 Cor 13:12) when I could not know Him; who approaches me when I could not approach Him; who calls to me as a person in letting me hear Him; who relates Himself to me so that I may be in relationship with Him. And in doing so, He opens in me, even if limited (cf. Lacoste 2018, pp. 34–38), the possibilities of loving, knowing, approaching, answering, and relating myself to Him.

Such a New Creation appears adequate to address the complications of Section III. The New Creation is itself inconspicuous to us, but with directly experienced effects that can give indirectly an intuition of the New Creation as signs of it, while admitting alternative interpretations in many cases, especially when considered outside the context of faith (cf. Lacoste 2018, p. 66; Deketelaere 2018). It can remain as a (semi)permanent and totalizing existential state in a person, even amid various afflictions, and serve as a reference point for experiences that may be either graces or afflictions. As a Creation, it is manifest to experience through its various effects as occurring in natural locī. Further, since an act of Creation itself is something that must necessarily be outside of what is created as its source, and since some of its effects are themselves beyond the possibilities of nature, it can also claim authenticity concerning its supernatural origin beyond the self and the world. Therefore, it may serve as the potential ground experience for “graces” in general, and the foundation for a phenomenology of grace.

5. Understanding the New Creation: Some Concluding Remarks

We have laid out the framework of graces as renewals of nature, and sketched out a preliminary description of a “New Creation” ground experience, which may be adequate to various complications in the experience of grace and as basis for a phenomenology of grace in general. Nevertheless, the initial remarks we have ventured here are by no means a full account of such an experience. More work will have to be done in this area. Further, there are other concerns, both theological and philosophical, that would have to be answered.

On the phenomenological side, there are two questions that seem paramount to address. The first is the question about the relationship between faith and Revelation and, interrelatedly, of the relationship between intention and intuition in religious experience. As discussed above, it is faith which allows for a person to experience Revelation as Revelation; otherwise, it is completely possible for Revelatory acts to never be recognized as such. And so Deketelaere (2018) holds that Marion’s account of saturated phenomena, which concern primarily excessive intuition according to Marion, are, concerning religious experiences, inscribed in a “logic of faith”, faith which seems to concern intentionality more properly. He also decries the idea that, in religious experience, what is experienced is there to be seen for those who have faith, but not seen to be there for those without. Yet, if we assign to faith so much a place that what saturates religious experiences arises from the faith and intentionality of the subject—as Deketelaere suggests, basing himself on Nancy—then Revelation is known as such not by what is seen or heard, but by what is intended by the subject regarding what is (perhaps not at all) seen or heard (cf. Deketelaere 2018, p. 7). However, such a supposition seems to recenter religious experience in the subject, and also risks collapsing the religious experiences into afflictions of the vertical relationship. It also seems difficult to reconcile with Marion’s broader account of saturated phenomena and its relation to religious experience.13 On the other hand, if religious experiences are saturated with intuition such that they shatter horizons and defy comprehension or constitution by intentionality, as Marion describes, they nevertheless require, in the case of religious experience, that they be experienced as Revelations and not as common phenomena. However, we are faced with the inconspicuous and unspectacular presentation of many Revelatory experiences, and with the clear need for faith to intuit these Revelations, conspicuous or inconspicuous, as Revelations and as saturated. The New Creation may be able to reconcile these concerns: the (possibility of) faith intentionality and the (possibility of) intuition of Revelations as such may be shown to proceed from affective and effective movements of grace, happening in a place within me deeper than my self and yet also in the world understood as Creation. Such is part and parcel of what we spoke of concerning vertical renewal insofar as it is initiated by God (the infusion of faith), the internal renewal of the mind and heart (formed by faith, hope, and love to be able to pursue God), and even external renewal (Creation as the place of God’s work). Yet this is not a complete formulation of the problem, and also requires of us we address a second issue.

The second problem is what grace and a New Creation entail as Creation or Rebirth. For with graces, we are speaking of things which affect and effect the intentionality of the subject, constituting and developing new intentions, new modes of consciousness. While such things have been addressed in limited ways by many others with regard to various experiences and their regions, we are dealing with what grounds all religious experience for Catholics, affecting every region (and perhaps effecting new ones). Indeed, we are dealing with new and totalizing modes of being that are nevertheless continuous with our natural existence. Exactly how, in religious experiences, such graces and New Creation can occur and come to mind, is a deeply complicated question for phenomenological analysis that exceeds this paper’s scope. Nevertheless, insofar as we must consider these situations as both affected and effected, continuous with and not opposed to natural existence, we face the prospect of addressing metaphysics. Such considerations are, of course, not foreign to Catholic Theology. Indeed, certain religious experiences in Scripture and Catholic Tradition necessarily include metaphysical considerations in describing the fullness of the experience, and it is thus necessary for an account of grace to not exclude the metaphysical or real from its analyses. For this New Creation, again, serves as a transformative and reordering experience for natural existence itself in such a way that, to use the words of scholastic theologians, nature is ordered to grace, and grace does not take away nature, but fulfills it. This was one reason for Paul VI’s (1965) encyclical Mysterium Fidei, issued in part as a response to theological work on the Eucharist which centered the experience, in Paul VI’s view, too much on the Eucharist’s symbolism and meaning for the conscious subject and diminished the doctrine of the real presence, defined by the Church in metaphysical terms of substance and transubstantiation (Paul VI 1965, pp. 9–12). Such views line up with our considerations of the external relationship with others and Creation, insofar as grace experiences can manifest in events of the world. Nevertheless, many phenomenologists, like Henry and Marion, at times seem to challenge these holdings about nature’s order to grace. Henry speaks of the Christian as “no longer natural beings; they no longer belong to the world and are no longer manifested in it”. (Henry 2003, p. 129). Marion consistently views his project as non-metaphysical, with often counter-intuitive results; for example, Marion says that Creation has nothing to do with Heidegger’s Seinsfrage, while nevertheless saying it answers the question of “Do these things come from themselves?” (Marion 2012, pp. 233–34). Whether or not their intention is to remove God and all religious experience from worldly/natural life, their formulations have faced criticism for their resistance to addressing religious experience in relation to the natural world (cf. Alvis 2018, pp. 39–40 and his sources in Steinbock and Gschwandtner, for example). Yet perhaps such resistance to metaphysics itself relies on an idea of “pure nature” which, in recent theological (cf. Oakes 2016, ch. 1; Purcell 2006, p. 117, quoting Rahner) and phenomenological research (e.g., Lacoste 2018, “Knowledge and Love of God”, 68ff.) has been heavily criticized. Such critiques of “pure nature” as something separated from the supernatural tend to this conclusion: nature is not absolutely separated from the supernatural, but instead is grounded in it and ordered to it. As such, an account of nature as ordered to this New Creation will be necessary to delineate.

On the Catholic theological side, three major issues come into play. First is the question of fallenness, especially since it is possible, according to Catholic theology, to fall out of the state of grace and also to re-enter it. Since there is no way by which we absolutely “fall out of” created existence for Catholics, we will have to determine an appropriate account of the New Creation that can account for and describe this possibility for falling from grace as New Creation. This will especially be important as regards not losing the character of being baptized while nevertheless falling from grace (cf. Aquinas, ST III.63, esp. a.6 and III.69.6 and 9).

The second problem is how to address the centuries of controversies on grace14—the relationships between grace and nature, grace and freedom, the natural and the supernatural—which this paper’s contents can only address in passing. The New Creation, as described above, may be capable of bridging some of these gaps. For example, the modern debate on the natural desire for God (cf. Oakes 2016, ch. 1; Purcell 2006, pp. 114–22) has been dominated by concerns over extrinsicism and intrinsicism. Any holding of the natural desire as innate--such as De Lubac’s—was critiqued as a naturalization of grace and also a compromise of grace’s gratuity. On the other hand, any holding that the desire was not innate—the “traditional” Thomist position—was critiqued as denying nature being ordered to grace, divorcing nature from grace, and leaving us with “pure nature” as an adequate fulfillment of human life. However, the New Creation does not suppose, on the one hand, that its activity always be external to or simply added to nature; nor on the other hand does it suppose that nature itself already bears within itself the means of realizing the New Creation. Rather, because it is transformative and continuous with nature, the New Creation pre-supposes a union and interpenetration of grace and nature. Such a union is picked up by Oakes (2013, 2016), following Scheeben,15 who holds that what grace effects is a substantial union between the Christian and God effected by grace. Nevertheless, more work is needed to precisely place the New Creation in relation to the various frameworks that Catholic theology has formulated on these questions.

Lastly, and most practically, this description of the New Creation and how we experience it will impact the practical concern of judging a person’s state of grace. The Catholic faithful and the Church community are often required to make such judgments, as, for example, in cases of presenting one’s self for the sacraments (self-judgment), or in the Church’s canonical penalties (judgment of others within the faith community). As a result, an account of graces will also require addressing how the signs of grace and the New Creation can be more clearly interpreted and judged, both individually and communally in the context of the church. At the same time, such an account may be of use for guiding discernment within those contexts, and possibly others, concerning one’s relationship with God, especially as it can be opposed by scrupulosity and presumption at all stages of the path toward God. Clarifying such discernment—a concept at the heart of Pope Francis’ recent statements on synodality—may prove helpful in defining not only the limits, but also the broad scope and possibilities of synodal accompaniment as part of the Church’s mission of evangelization.