Nature and Grace

Book 2, Chapter 54 of The Imitation of Christ, contrasts sharply what it refers to as "nature" and grace. The former cannot be contrasted thus, as something oppositional to grace, if it was something that God created. As one of my favorite writers, Mark Shea, would point out, the human nature that God established from the beginning was good. The problem is sin, because it perverted humanity, so that sin makes us gravitate away from God. I would join Mark in saying that the sins we commit are not due to our human nature, for that which God created was entirely designed to cooperate with grace. It's the gaping wound to human nature that gets us, but let us never forget that God made us good to begin with. That is who we are meant to be.