b) Martinez de Ripalda (+1648) tried to improve Vasquez’s theory by restoring the Christian concept of grace and adding that Providence invariably precedes all naturally good works, including those performed by heathens and sinners, with the entitatively supernatural grace of illumination and confirmation.(208) In this hypothesis the necessity of grace is not theological but purely historic.(209)
Despite the wealth of arguments by which Ripalda attempted to prove his theory,(210) it has not been generally accepted. While some, _e.g._ Platel(211) and Pesch,(212) regard it with a degree of sympathy, others, notably De Lugo(213) and Tepe,(214) are strongly opposed to it. Palmieri thinks it may be accepted in a restricted sense, _i.e._ when limited to the faithful.(215)
Ripalda’s hypothesis of the universality of grace is truly sublime and would have to be accepted if God’s salvific will could be demonstrated by revelation or some historic law to suffer no exceptions. But Ripalda has not been able to prove this from Revelation.(216) Then, too, his theory entails two extremely objectionable conclusions: (1) a denial, not indeed of the possibility (Quesnel), but of the existence of purely natural good works, and (2) the possibility of justification without theological faith. Neither of these difficulties probably occurred to Vasquez or Ripalda,(217) because at the time when they wrote Pius VI had not yet condemned the teaching of the pseudo-Council of Pistoia,(218) nor had Innocent XI censured the proposition that “Faith in a broad sense, as derived from the testimony of creatures or some other similar motive, is sufficient for justification.”(219) If the love of God, even perfect love, (such as we have shown to be possible in the natural order), were of itself necessarily supernatural, as Ripalda contends, it would be possible for a pagan to receive the grace of justification without theological faith, which he does not possess, as is evident from the Vatican teaching that it is “requisite for divine faith that revealed truth be believed because of the authority of God who reveals it.”(220)
*Thesis III: Not all actions performed by man in the state of mortal sin are sinful on account of his not being in the state of grace.