Are the Sacraments a part of a generally graced world?
Absolutely not! First off, a “generally graced” world would appear to imply grace has been provided to the entirety of mankind and that would be patently false. However, what one could say is that, grace has been offered to the entirety of mankind and that would be true. The “Collective Salvation” model, where everyone is already saved by the Grace of God, as Henri De Lubac points out cannot work because sin is “eminently personal” and not collective in nature and as such the “avowal of guilt must be personal also, and God’s pardon must reach down into the depths of our heart, of our sinful councious, to convert it.” De Lubac points out that those who hold such beliefs often hold beliefs about sin that also make it impersonal and often seek to transfer sin outward into society or objectivize it rather than dealing with it in a personal manner.
Dealing with the concept of grace in this manner not only removes the personal responsibility of the individual but, it also removes the supernatural act of the sacrifice of the Incarnate Word from the equation. Once again, I will refer to De Lubac on the matter when he says, “ we sought to make clear how the supernatural had in fact affected man through the event of the Incarnation of God’s Son and in consequence of his revelation; but this incarnation could not yet be fully understood in its redemptive aspect because we had not yet considered the second meaning, often combined with the first, which the word “grace” has in the Scripture” To remove the Supernatural, the Divine from the process of Salvation is to also wipe away the entire concept of grace. Grace, despite how we use the word in our daily vernacular is uniquely a supernatural act. The very act of achieving grace implies that something or someone had the authority and ability to grant it to you because it is something you cannot grant to yourself or that another being can grant to you when dealing with the possibility of eternal salvation. It is the sole act of Love (and Sacrifice) reserved by God for those who turn unto Him in the humility of understanding how incapable that they truly are in achieving salvation on their own.
Grace and the Sacraments within the Church are inextricably tied together. One does not simply receive grace outside of having received the Sacraments inside of the Catholic faith unlike the beliefs of our Protestant brothers and sisters. The concept of general/universal grace is absurd from the outset in so much that Catechesis/Education is required of the candidate for initiation prior to partaking in the Sacraments of Initiation. Additionally, Catholic Sacraments still involve the Supernatural. Unlike many of the Protestant churches who have been swayed by realism, atheism and other modernist efforts to reform core tenets and liturgies of the Church, The Catholic Church has soundly held to the belief of Supernatural interaction within the Sacraments even when others have tried to rationalize them away as simply mimicked memorials. De Lubac addresses the secularization of the church, which is in fact what has happened within many of the Protestant traditions, very appropriately on Page 160 when he defines the role of the Church, he states, “This makes clear the proper role of the Church, she is the messenger and bearer of this salvation and hence she cannot be assimilated either in her structure or in her aims, to any of our human societies.”
To conclude, I would like to say that I found no clear position that De Lubac would have held on General Grace or even Calvinist “Common Grace”. I would have to think based upon the reading that he would have rejected, out of hand, General Grace if it involved universal salvation. I have to think as a rational man, he potentially was not opposed at least in concept to most of the tenets of “Common Grace” in so much that a loving God provided for the creation that He loved. However, where I am certain that De Lubac would have held firm was dealing the “nature” vs “supernatural” debate. He is firmly in the Supernatural court on this one and as such, would have also held the belief that the Supernatural was present in the Sacraments and that the Supernatural presence in those Sacraments are what produces the full measure of Grace. His thoughts on Grace on “conversion” in the chapter of the same name were inspiring when we look at the effects that both Grace and Faith should be having on our lives via “radical transformation”. The scary part, is that as I look around me, I see fewer people who are working their way through the transformation than I see of those that have given up both hope and God.