Christianity teaches that men are saved by human actions: first because we are saved by Christ’s actions, and Christ is human; and second because we are saved by our own action of accepting Christ. So far as these actions are human they have a human source. We call this source grace.
Grace, therefore, first means the human source of a salvific act. Just as nature is the source of natural actions, and the soul is the source of the action of a living being, so grace is the source of a salvific act. Grace can be seen as the ultimate term of various proportions or analogies: as art is to nature, so is nature to life, and so is life to grace. Art is a principle only externally, nature within. Nature is within primarily as passive, life as an active principle. Life is within as a principle of self motion; grace is within as the principle of a divine motion. Nature is most fully a logos or ratio of the divine art that allows a the thing itself to act for its own end- but grace is is the a more perfect logos of the divine that allows us to act for a properly divine end.
