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For Scheeben, our status as creatures means that not only all our actions but even our very existence from moment to moment depend on God, who, as our loving Creator, grasps us at the root of our being. This is radical dependence also means that we have certain duties toward God. Ultimately, the only proper posture we can adopt toward him is to bow our heads in profound humility before the one who has granted us participation in being from his infinite generosity. On a very practical level, this dependence means that our true exaltation can only come about through humble submission in love to him who made us. We do this through the handing over of our being to him in sacrifice (made possible by the sacrificial self-offering of Christ), just as true Aufklärung (enlightenment) can only come about by the sacrificium intellectus, the handing over of our intellect to the one who gives it back to us divinized by the light of faith.

Everything is ultimately grace in that creation itself is absolutely gratuitous, a pure gift. But in God’s providence, we stand in relation to God in distinct ways on account of his stupendous generosity and love. While everything is indeed grace, there is a “double gratuity” that marks the Christian life: the grace of creation and that of divine sonship. The whole point of distinguishing nature and grace lies precisely in preserving the supernatural splendor of this twofold gratuity—that is, in distinguishing the grace of the natural order from the grace of our supernatural participation in divine life. If we don’t have a robust sense of the natural order, we won’t see how transcendent the supernatural order truly is.

Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1835–1888) was a German priest and scholar whose theology points to the inner coherence of the Christian faith and its supernatural mysteries. Notable in his own time, Scheeben later received praise from Pope Pius XI, who in 1935 encouraged study of the late theologian’s works, reflecting: “The entire theology of Scheeben bears the stamp of a pious ascetical theology.” Hans Urs von Balthasar credited Scheeben as “the greatest German theologian to date.” Scheeben’s works include Nature and Grace, The Glories of Divine Grace, The Mysteries of Christianity, and the Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics.

“Written when he was just twenty-five years old, Nature and Grace introduces the themes at the heart of Scheeben’s theology: the supernatural, grace, and deification. Scheeben believed that the Church in his time was threatened by an attempt to trim the Gospel down to the level of human reason and nature, thereby turning Christianity into a form of secular humanism. His response, found in this book, was a full-throated proclamation of the glory and beauty of the supernatural. Drawing from the Fathers and Scholastics, Scheeben explains how grace elevates us beyond our nature, makes us into God’s adopted children, and gives us a share in the divine life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The relation between nature and grace is fundamental for all Christian theology, and Scheeben articulates this relation as well as any theologian in the modern era.”

Fr. Vincent L. Strand, S.J. The Catholic University of America

“In his early masterpiece, Nature and Grace, a young Matthias Scheeben argues that the theory of pure nature is essential to preserve the integrity of nature and the gratuity of grace as supernatural. This was controversial in the nineteenth century and remains so today. In an age where the supernatural dimension of Christianity is often immanentized, Scheeben’s emphasis on the absolute supernaturality of grace is both welcome and salutary.”

David Augustine Associate Editor, Word on Fire Academic

“Emmaus Road and Emmaus Academic here completes their publication of all the major works by this nineteenth-century master. Scheeben is taking the English-speaking theological world by storm—and for good reason, since he provides a path for moving beyond the sterile antitheses and caricatures found in much post-Vatican II theology. Discovering Scheeben is a discovery of theological worlds, one that enables twenty-first-century theologians to appreciate more deeply the best insights not only of the Fathers and doctors of the Church but also of neo-scholastic and Ressourcement theologians. This classic work on nature and grace merits the widest possible readership.”

Matthew Levering James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

“Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger once described Matthias Scheeben as justly praised but sadly seldom read. That has not always been the case. When Fr. Cyril Vollert, S.J., first translated Nature and Grace into English in the early 1950s, he stated that it ranked among the most import works of nineteenth-century German theology. Theologians as different as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., similarly praised him as a master of the sacred science. Yet, after the Second Vatican Council, a terrible amnesia settled into the Church, and Scheeben was forgotten. Today all that is changing. Nature and Grace was the first fruit of Scheeben’s extraordinary theological achievement, and I believe it shows us a path through the seemingly interminable nature–grace disputes of the twentieth century. Tolle lege!”

C. C. Pecknold The Catholic University of America

“In this, his first major work—finished when he was twenty-five years old—Matthias Joseph Scheeben shows himself to be already in full possession of his considerable powers. He aims to draw a clear distinction between nature and grace, precisely in order to understand how rational creatures are oriented to union with God as our supernatural end. Only so—he argues against Catholic theologians who even then neglected or elided this distinction—can we begin to sense the glory of the triune God, whose grace freely lifts us up to an intimacy with himself beyond all that nature could achieve or imagine. The Cologne theologian would return to this topic throughout his theological career, but this first statement has lost nothing of its freshness, vigor, and provocation.”

Bruce D. Marshall Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine, Southern Methodist University