The Glory of God's Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas

by Daria Spezzano

The Glory of God's Grace offers the first full-length comprehensive study of Thomas's teaching on deification in its scriptural, patristic, philosophical, developmental, and systematic context. Daria Spezzano traces Thomas's theology of deification throughout the Summa, exploring in depth how the notion of deification links his treatments of the divine missions and image, the journey to beatitude through the moral life, adopted sonship through Christ and his sacraments, and the deiform worship of the beatific vision. Also examined are Thomas's other works, in particular his Scripture commentaries, as well as the evolution of his thought. Spezzano argues that Thomas's theology of deification in the Summa theologiae demonstrates his mature vision of God's loving and sapiential ordering of predestined human persons to communion with himself by a progressive participation in the divine likeness and activity, accounting for both the primacy of divine causality in all its modes and the fullness of graced human freedom. The fruit of this theology is ultimately the deification of adopted sons gives praise to God's glory by fully manifesting God's gracious plan to share the divine life with rational creatures.

Genres: Theology, Christianity

390 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2015

Reviews

[Joseph]

In this ambitious project, Daria Spezzano gives us an intriguing look at the doctrine of "deification" or "becoming like to God" in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas with special focus on the Summa Theologiae. She effectively shows the centrality of deification - traditionally seen as a doctrine belonging exclusively to Eastern Christianity - to St. Thomas's theology, possibly opening a road to dialogue between the West and the East (though this is by her own admission not the purpose of this work).

Underlying her exposition is a Thomistic metaphysics of participation which is also where she begins her work. Following this, she gives us the meat of the Thomistic doctrine of God with focus on divine providence and predestination and the Trinitarian processions and missions. Following this, she gives an in-depth exposition on the Thomistic doctrine of man as the Image of God - a unique form of participation in the Blessed Trinity only possible for rational beings. Following this, she discusses the notion of grace as a participation in the divine nature [including discussion of the Thomistic doctrines of divine government, human freedom, the New Law, and of course the treatise on grace]. She then turns to an insightful discussion of the Incarnation as the source of our grace being the ultimate form of participation in the divine mysteries available to humanity.

Finally, in her remaining two chapters, she turns to the questions on charity and wisdom in the secunda secundae (and returns to the question on the missions of the Word and Love). Here she shows how these questions link up all that has gone before, by showing that the virtue of charity is a participation in the procession of the Holy Spirit and the gift of wisdom is a participation in the procession of the Word. She closes with a discussion of how we receive these gifts through the Sacraments as participations in the Passion of Christ.

This excellent book is well worth the read because it gives both breadth of coverage (effectively covering the spiritual high points of the entire Summa) and depth of insight into the glories of His grace.

[Josh]

Technical, and correspondingly tedious. Spezzano clearly is a master of Thomistic theology, and understands the larger system of his theological project. Unfortunately a greater understanding of Thomism doesn't lead directly to a greater understanding of Scripture...