Aquinas tends to explain human frailty in more intellective terms (lack of attention, grounded in imperfect thought processes); his near-contemporary Scotus thought the problem was more one of will—and that tends to be the modern diagnosis as well. Certainly there are issues in both faculties.
In any case, whether one puts the source of human error in the intellect or the will, or suspects both equally of frailty, the effect is similar: even good people, and people who know better, fall through frailty.
And grace? Doesn’t grace repair fallen human nature? Indeed, the frailty of the best of Christians is rather a scandal, if you think grace is meant to eradicate human frailty. But I don’t think that’s what St. Paul meant to convey when he talks about Christ’s power being made manifest in weakness, or when Julian of Norwich says that sin is behovable. Grace builds on nature, it shores nature up, but it seems that God only rarely bestows so much of it as to create a preternatural superstructure entirely ungrounded in its natural foundation. Or, to put it in English, God helps people slowly, in time, and not in an instant; and in eternity it all comes out in the wash.
That of course raises problems of theodicy for many. But that’s another problem for another blog series; and this one is not finished yet.
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