Andrew – Of course there is a distinction to be made between the grace being bestowed and its fruitfulness (or lack thereof) in the recipient.

Caroline – Therein lies part of the problem. In the Christian West, since William of Ockham rejected universals with his Nominalist cancer, human nature has been cut free from its grounding in the divine ideas. It has been progressively floating free in the modern academy (and subsequently popular thought) and has finally reached it the point of obliteration in our post-modern world where it is has been undergoing is final deconstruction and deontologization. I would agree that modernity/post-modernity must revisit the reality of “human nature” if it is to survive. As Hierothee has mentioned here many times before, the rejection of form has led to our techne obsessed culture’s trajectory toward self-annihilation. But thanks for the reminder that I need to define human nature at the outset of the series.

Can you be more specific? Do you think that talk of “natures” is generally “outmoded”? Certainly, it is true, post-modern philosophy and analytic philosophy have abandoned the concept. But one can just as easily argue that they have abandoned common sense. The concept stems from an observed reality: that you and I and all other humans share the same basic desires, desires that are specific to humanity. The fact that we can speak of a human being as such implies that we have a common nature.

Have you ever heard anyone define the concept? Because, frankly, in Catholic theology it has a fairly standard meaning, with some minor variations or extrapolations. Do you know the definition of human nature put forth in the Church’s theological tradition and reject it? If so, could you please specify?