Summary of text [comment] page 39
[What about self-donation?]
In the same way that sins may lead to the final impenitence, basic moral acts may lead to the total self-donation and eternal reward. But the virtuous person is not going it alone. The Council of Trent talks about the special graces of perseverance.
[This is because, with every step upwards, there is a possibility of slipping back. Every illumination offers the opportunity for reification, the fixation of an illumination into a thinkgroup, lessons that tell people what they want to hear.
For grades of grace, the vertical nested form {thinkdivine(virtuous action(consciencefree))} trains the dispositions. A significant feature of training is desensitizing oneself to partial objects. Supernatural wisdom is needed in order to discern thinkdivine from the variety of partial objects through which God may be appreciated. Consciencefree and the dispositions learn to work together. Grace magically changes the possibilities of discernment and thus, the selection of human action.
Analogies between “grades of grace” and “grades of disgrace” break down because the dispositions respond to partial objects, not the whole object. No matter how hard one trains, each new good appears as a good in itself; that is, a temptation for idolatry.
Life is easier for grades of disgrace. Thinkgroup substitutes a partial object for the whole. Thinkgroup trains our dispositions to fixate, rather than to step back. How difficult is that?
Talk to any Professor in a Multiversity for a demonstration. They have selected one another for employment on the basis of the intensity of their fixations. Each department is ideologically pure. The conversation will always turn to the Professor and ‘his’ fixation.]