De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

ON THE HELPS OF DIVINE GRACE AND ON THE POWERS AND FREEDOM OF HUMAN FREE CHOICE, AND ON ITS PROPER HARMONY WITH THE EFFICACY OF THOSE SAME HELPS.

The First Book.

IN WHICH THERE ARE SET FORTH BEFOREHAND

Certain preliminary discussions of matters to be treated in this entire work.

BY THE MOST REVEREND LORD, FRIAR DIDACUS ALVAREZ

Metimnensis, Archbishop of Trani and Salpi, chosen from the Province of Spain, of the Order of Preachers.

PREFACE IN WHICH THE DIVISION OF THE ENTIRE WORK

is touched upon, and the rationale for the order of its parts is given in part and explained.

As we are about to treat the helps of divine grace, with confidence in divine help, so that we may gather within certain bounds all those matters concerning this subject that are disputed in various places of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas or in other Opuscula by different writers, arrange them in due order in this volume (which contains twelve books), and explain our opinion briefly and clearly, insofar as it shall have been divinely granted to us, it is necessary to set forth beforehand a general division of those same helps, so that afterward we may proceed step by step to the particulars to be discussed in their proper places.

The helps of divine grace, then, are of two kinds, as is clear from the common opinion of the Scholastics.¹ Some are extrinsic, because, speaking formally, they posit nothing in created free choice; they exist only in God himself or in another subject external to that free choice. Thus predestination is not in the person predestined, but in God who predestines, as St. Thomas teaches 1. par. q. 23. ar. 2.. For since, according to St. Augustine, predestination is the foreknowledge and preparation of God's benefits, by which all who are delivered are most certainly delivered,² and since foreknowledge and preparation are not in the things foreknown but in the one who foreknows and prepares, it follows that predestination is formally in the one who predestines, not in the one predestined. It is clear, moreover, that predestination is wholly gratuitous, as will be shown below, and consequently must be reckoned among the divine gifts.³ Likewise, the love and election by which the predestined are chosen and loved by God are an extrinsic gift to those loved and chosen. Sacred Scripture⁴ bears witness with the clearest testimonies that this is a gratuitous gift: God loved the predestined not for any merits of ours that came before, but through his mercy; and from the many infected by the mass of perdition he chose them by his sheer will, which may be hidden but is not unjust. For the Apostle says: Before they had been born or had done anything good or evil, so that God's purpose according to election might stand—not from works but from the one who calls—it was said to her: “The elder shall serve the younger,” as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”⁵ Hence St. Tho. 3. par. q. 7. art. 13. ad 1. says that Augustine there, that is, in lib. On the Predestination of the Saints, cap. 15, calls grace the gratuitous will of God, freely bestowing benefits. From God's love, as the same St. Thomas observed, all good things come to creatures.⁶ Moreover, love is an act of the divine will, and so is election, as St. Thomas teaches 1. p. q. 23. ar. 4.. Therefore it must formally be in God, not in the intellectual creatures who are loved and chosen; and for this reason it is called an extrinsic gift, because it formally implies nothing inhering in a creature. The sacred Scriptures also belong among the extrinsic helps, for they teach us what we ought to embrace and what to avoid; so too does the example our Savior left us, the preaching of the Gospel, and tribulations, by which people are drawn back from evil and led to good; as do creatures, which show forth the divinity of their one Creator, as the Apostle says: For the invisible things of God, understood through the things that have been made, have been seen since the creation of the world: his eternal power and divinity as well, so that they are without excuse.⁷ More will be said about this prompting in disp. 75, n. 1.

Intrinsic helps, which are more properly called helps, are those that formally imply something inhering in intellectual creatures, whether on the part of the intellect, the will, or another rational power. And these, as St. Thomas often says, are of two kinds. Some are habitual helps, such as justifying grace, the habit of charity, and the other infused habits. Others are actual helps, such as a motion received in the intellect and will, by which God moves free choice to the act of faith, hope, and charity, and to other supernatural acts. ^{8 9}

Therefore, since the extrinsic gifts, which are in God himself, precede the intrinsic helps in the order of nature and causality, the right order of teaching requires that we treat first the extrinsic gifts, and afterward the helps inhering in created free choice. Since in God knowledge, which pertains to the intellect, precedes in the order of reason and is understood as prior to matters pertaining to the will—for nothing is willed unless it is foreknown—we must first discuss God's foreknowledge, before his will and general concurrence. Afterward we shall speak of providence and gratuitous predestination, so that in due order we may proceed to explain the intrinsic helps by which rational creatures can reach, or in fact do reach, the supernatural end. Next we must treat reprobation and the reprobate, who fall short of that same end. Finally, we shall establish the proper harmony of free choice with divine foreknowledge, providence, and predestination, and also with the efficacy of the helps of grace, noting what will be better suited to explaining that same harmony.

But before all these things, it is necessary to set forth certain preliminary discussions that open the way to an easy understanding of this subject.

First, we must determine what the error of the Pelagians was concerning the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice.

Second, we must explain which assertions constitute the Semi-Pelagian position, and how in some matters they depart from the error of Pelagius, Celestius, and Julian, although on the principal question—which the holy Father Augustine, the preacher and defender of grace next after the Apostle Paul, disputed against Pelagius and Celestius—they fell into their condemned heresy. Here the error of Faustus and Cassian concerning the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice is laid open.

Third, what the Lutherans and Calvinists held concerning the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice.

Fourth, what certain more recent theologians thought concerning the necessity of that same grace and the natural powers of free choice, and concerning the harmony of free choice with divine foreknowledge, providence, and predestination.

Fifth, how much authority the opinion of St. Augustine has concerning the matter of predestination and grace, and whether it is permissible to depart from it. Here the authority of the teaching of St. Thomas is also discussed.

Whether the Pelagians ever admitted that some inward grace or some supernatural help from God is given for salvation or for fulfilling the precepts of the law.

I. Some said that Pelagius admitted no inward grace, whether on the part of the intellect or on the part of the will; rather, by the name of grace, which he inserted frequently in his writings, he understood only free choice freely created by God; or the external law and teaching, that is, the preaching of the Gospel, through which he shows us what we ought to do and what we ought to avoid; or even the example of Christ the Lord, as Augustine reports in his book On the Grace of Christ Against Pelagius and Celestius, ch. 2, where he says: They are accustomed to tell us that Christ provided help for not sinning in this respect: that, by living justly and teaching justly, he himself left an example. These authors also affirm that Pelagius denied every actual concurrence of God, not only that which precedes the operations of secondary causes but also that which accompanies them, even with respect to natural acts; and that he admitted only that, at their creation, God conferred on them a power by which afterward they could act by themselves, without God's operation and cooperation. All these claims can be supported by the following arguments.

First. Because St. Augustine, speaking of the Semi-Pelagians, says: But these brothers of ours, for whom your pious charity is solicitous, have come to believe with the Church of Christ that the human race is born subject to the sin of the first man, and that no one is freed from this evil except through the righteousness of the second man. They also admit, concerning infants, that human wills are preceded by God's grace, and agree that no one can suffice for himself for any good work, whether to begin it or to complete it. These retained points, then, at which they have arrived distinguish them greatly from the error of the Pelagians.¹ In these words he teaches quite plainly that the Pelagians denied all prevenient grace and asserted that, for every good work, not only one to be begun but also one to be completed, a person's free choice suffices for itself without God's grace. For he says that in this respect the Semi-Pelagians differ greatly from the Pelagians; they would not differ if the Pelagians had conceded that God's prevenient grace is needed for a good work, whether to begin it or to complete it.

II. Second. Pelagius denied that the grace is necessary which the Supreme Pontiffs, the sacred Councils, and the holy Fathers—especially Augustine and Jerome—taught to be necessary when condemning Pelagius's error. But in condemning Pelagius's error they taught that an inward, prevenient, supernatural grace is necessary. Therefore Pelagius professed no inward, actual, supernatural, prevenient grace.

This is confirmed. For in the Council of Carthage it is said of Pelagius and Celestius: They leave no room for the grace of God by which we are Christians. And again: They claim that God's grace is to be reckoned in this: that he established and created human nature such that, by its own will, it could fulfill God's law.² Likewise, in the Council of Milevis it is affirmed: These men say that one can attain such perfection of righteousness without the help of the Savior's grace that it is unnecessary to say, “Forgive us our debts.”³ Again, Augustine, speaking of the Pelagians, says: They say that the grace of God, without which we can do nothing good, is nothing other than free choice, which our nature received from him without any preceding merits of its own, with his help directed only to this: that through his law and teaching we learn what we ought to do and what we ought to hope for; but not through the gift of the Holy Spirit, so that we do what we have learned ought to be done.⁴

III. Third, the argument is as follows. Pelagius denied the grace given to us through the ministration of the Spirit, as St. Augustine reports in book 1 of On the Grace of Christ, ch. 2, where he says that Pelagius thought we are saved with help, not through any ministration of power, but by the powers of our own will. And in ch. 34 he adds: Nor could I anywhere find that he, namely Pelagius, professed this grace, by which not only the natural capacity of the will and action—which he says we possess even when we neither will nor do what is good—but also the will and action themselves are helped through the ministration of the Holy Spirit. And in Letter 95, which is from the five bishops to Pope Innocent: For whether he said that grace is free choice, or that grace is the remission of sins, or that grace is the precept of the law, he says nothing that pertains, through the ministration of the Holy Spirit, to conquering desires and temptations. Therefore he admitted no inward grace, but only nature freely created, external preaching, the law, and other such things, which can come about without the ministration of the Spirit.

This is confirmed. For Pelagius asserted that grace is given according to our merits, as is clear from what Augustine writes against him.⁵ Therefore he admitted no true grace. The consequence is clear, for it is contrary to the nature of grace that it be given on the basis of merits, as is clear from the passage in Romans 4: To the one who works, the wage is not reckoned according to grace but according to debt.⁶ And in chapter 11: But if it is by grace, then it is no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.

Fourth, it is proved that Pelagius denied the necessity of God's actual concurrence even for the works of nature. For St. Jerome, in Against the Pelagians, tacitly reports the Pelagian error under the name of Christobulus, arguing as follows: If we must use God's help in each thing we do, then unless God helps us we will be unable to trim a pen for writing, smooth it with pumice once trimmed, fit the hand to the letters, be silent, speak, sit, stand, walk, run, eat, fast, weep, laugh, and do the other things of this sort.⁷ And in his Letter to Ctesiphon, against the Pelagians, reporting their error, he says: They place God's grace in such a way that we do not rely on his help and are not guided by it in each act, but refer the matter to free choice and the precepts of the law, setting down that saying of Isaiah: “For God appointed the law as a help”; so that thanks are to be referred to God on the ground that he made us such that by our own choice we can both choose good and avoid evil. Those who say this do not understand that the Devil hisses an intolerable blasphemy through their mouths. And a little later: Listen, I ask you, listen to the sacrilegious man: “If, he says, I wish to bend a finger, move a hand, sit, stand, walk, run about, spit, clear the mucus from my nostrils with two fingers, relieve my bowels, or pass urine, will God's help always be necessary for me?” After a few intervening words: Free choice itself, as we have said, leans on God's help and needs his aid at every step, which you do not want; rather, you want the person who once has free choice to need no help from God.⁸

IIII. The resolution of this difficulty must be drawn principally from St. Augustine's writings against the Pelagians. To explain it, we must assume first that although Pelagius admitted some inward grace, whatever it may be, he ultimately destroyed it in fact, since, as St. Augustine reports, he asserted that grace is given according to our merits. For if it is from works, then grace (as the Apostle says) is no longer grace; but specifically, in book On the Grace of Christ Against Pelagius and Celestius, ch. 31, Augustine says: You say that grace, whatever you think it may be, is given to Christians themselves according to their merits, ⁹

Second, it must be observed that the heresy of Pelagius had four stages. In the first he denied every supernatural help and every inward grace of the supernatural order, both sufficient grace, which grants the ability, and efficacious grace, which infallibly grants pious action; he affirmed that the natural powers of free choice suffice for fulfilling all the commandments and for meriting and attaining eternal salvation. In the second stage he admitted that God's grace is bestowed on people to do his commandments; yet he asserted that this help consists in the external law and teaching, or even in Christ's example, and that it is necessary only so that a person might fulfill more easily through grace what he could do simply by nature. St. Augustine reports these two stages: The heresy of the Pelagians, he says, is the most recent heresy of our time, having arisen from the monk Pelagius, whom Celestius followed as his teacher so closely that their followers are now called Celestians.¹⁰ They are strenuous enemies of the grace of God by which we have been predestined to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, and by which we are rescued from the power of darkness so that we may believe in him and be transferred into his kingdom;¹¹ for this reason he says, ‘No one comes to me unless it has been granted to him by my Father’; and of the love that is poured into our hearts so that faith works through love.¹² They are such enemies of it that they believe a person can do all the divine commandments without this grace, although, if that were true, the Lord would seem to have said in vain, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’¹³ Finally, Pelagius, rebuked by the brothers for attributing nothing to the help of God's grace in doing his commandments, yielded to their correction to this extent: he did not place grace before free choice, but with faithless cunning put it beneath free choice, saying, ‘Grace is given to people for this purpose: that what they are commanded to do by free choice they may fulfill more easily through grace’.

By saying that they may do it more easily, he certainly wanted it to be believed that people can, though with greater difficulty, still carry out God's commands without grace. But they say that the grace of God without which we can do nothing good is nothing except free choice, which our nature received from him without any preceding merits of its own, solely for this purpose—with his help through his law and teaching—that we may learn what we ought to do and what we ought to hope for; but not through the gift of the Holy Spirit, so that we may do what we have learned must be done. And so they confess that knowledge is given to us by God, by which ignorance is driven away; but they deny the love of God, by which one lives piously. Thus, although knowledge, which without love puffs up, is God's gift, they claim that love itself is not God's gift, even though it builds up so that knowledge may not puff up. ¹⁴

V.

The third stage of the Pelagian heresy was this: after long disputes with St. Augustine and the other Fathers, Pelagius at last admitted an inward grace that grants ability, namely, an internal illumination of the intellect and an internal prompting of the dormant will. Yet he always denied the grace by which God would bring it about that we will, and he always remained in the same error, believing that the inward grace he admitted as granting ability was not absolutely necessary, but only enabled a person more easily to fulfill the divine commandments through it. This third stage will become clear from what is to be set out in the first and second points concerning the Pelagian heresy.

The fourth stage of the Pelagian heresy was the one it had under Celestius. For, as will be clear in the third point, he admitted that the inward grace which Pelagius conceded in the third stage as granting ability was absolutely necessary—not indeed for beginning works of virtue, but for completing them. In this respect he moderated Pelagius's error to some extent; nevertheless, because he wished no inward grace to be necessary for beginning, he did not depart from the doctrine of Pelagius, who asserted that grace is given according to our merits.

Thus Pelagius, in certain statements, explained his final opinion, although concealing himself in hiding places by covering the old heresy with deceptive words rather than professing the true grace of Christ. Hence, by cleverly equivocating, he misled the judgment of many bishops at the Council of Palestine, as Augustine reports: He deceived the Palestinian judgment, he says, and for that reason there he seems to have been cleared. But he could not deceive the Roman Church in any way, where you know he is very well known. Although he tried both things, as I have said, he did not succeed at all.¹⁵ And again he says: The more artfully he explains these matters, the more secretly he deceives the judges.¹⁶ And after a few intervening words he adds: Finally, observe how he answers, and see how the hiding places of ambiguity prepare refuges for falsehood, casting darkness over the truth, so that even we, when we first read these things, almost rejoiced that they were right or corrected.¹⁷

And in book 1 of On the Grace of Christ Against Pelagius and Celestius, ch. 37, he reports these words of Pelagius.

Let them also read, he says, what we wrote in the East to the holy virgin of Christ, Demetrias, and they will find that we praise human nature in such a way that we always add the help of God's grace.

Considering this, St. Augustine says there: I certainly read that, and it had almost persuaded me that he professed this grace at issue, although in many places of that little work he seemed to contradict himself. But when other writings came into my hands, which he composed later and at greater length, I saw how he could have named grace even there, hiding what he thought beneath an ambiguous generality; yet by using the word “grace” he broke down hostility and avoided offense. ¹⁸

Hence Pelagius, as the same Augustine noted, exalted himself and boasted arrogantly and deceitfully that he had been cleared of his errors at the Council of Palestine. Yet it is absolutely certain that he covered himself by means that were more false than true, denying some things and turning others through false interpretation.¹⁹ Sometimes, too, as St. Augustine reports, he complained in letters about the Catholics, which he sent to Pope Innocent of blessed memory, saying that people were defaming him by claiming that he denied the sacrament of Baptism to infants and promised the kingdoms of heaven to some without Christ's redemption.²⁰ That crafty man did this so that he could easily answer the charge brought against him while preserving his own doctrine. But setting aside Pelagius's craftiness, let us set out his statements by which he seemed to cloak his heresy.

VI.

First, Pelagius conceded that an inward grace sent by God illuminates the intellect by showing what should be done and what should be avoided, and, on the part of the object, awakens a stunned will by attracting and persuading it. Nevertheless, he denied that this grace is absolutely necessary for fulfilling the precepts of the law; he said it gives a person only this: to fulfill more easily through grace what he could, simply though with difficulty, fulfill by nature. This is shown only from Pelagius's own words, which survive in St. Augustine's books. For Augustine reports that Pelagius says in one place: Here the most ignorant of men think that we do an injury to divine grace because we say that it does not bring holiness to completion in us without our will, as though God had commanded something of his grace but did not also supply the help of his grace to those whom he commanded, so that what people are commanded to do by free choice they might fulfill more easily through grace. And, as if about to explain what he means by grace, he went on and added, saying: We confess that grace is not, as you think, in the law alone, but also in God's help.²¹ Considering these words of Pelagius, St. Augustine says: Who would not want him to show what he wishes grace to be understood as? For above all, for this reason we ought to expect him to say what he says: that he confesses grace to be not only in the law. But while we are held in suspense by this expectation, observe what he has added. “God helps us,” he says, “through his teaching and revelation, when he opens the eyes of our heart; when he shows us future things, so that we are not occupied with present things; when he lays bare the snares of the Devil; when he illumines us with the many-formed and ineffable gift of heavenly grace.”²² Then, concluding his opinion with something like an absolution, he says: “Does the one who says this seem to you to deny grace? Or does he confess both human free choice and God's grace?”²³ From these words St. Augustine concludes that Pelagius professes the grace by which God shows and reveals what we ought to do, not the grace by which he gives and helps us to do it.²⁴ And elsewhere Pelagius says: He works in us the willing that is good, the willing that is holy: when he sets us, devoted to earthly desires and loving only present things like mute animals, on fire with the greatness of future glory and the promise of rewards; when, through the revelation of wisdom, he awakens the dormant will to desire God; when he persuades us of everything good—which elsewhere you do not hesitate to deny.²⁵ By these words he plainly concedes a grace that illuminates the intellect and moves the will by persuasion. That he is speaking of inward illumination, which comes from the Holy Spirit, is clear: for in the following chapter 11, when St. Augustine explains the Apostle's words, Lest the greatness of my revelations should exalt me, a thorn in my flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan to buffet me,²⁶ and that saying, Charity is not jealous, it is not puffed up,²⁷ he says: This charity, then, is still being renewed day by day even in the holy Apostle, surely to be perfected where it could no longer be puffed up. But then his mind was still in a state where it could be puffed up by the greatness of revelation, until it was filled by the solid structure of charity; for he had not yet grasped, by arriving at it, that toward which he was running through being perfected. By these words the holy Doctor refutes what Pelagius had said: namely, that God works in us to will and to bring to completion when, through the revelation of wisdom, he awakens the dormant will to desire himself, and when he persuades us of everything good. Augustine concludes that this revelation would also have puffed up the Apostle Paul unless charity had built him up. He therefore holds that Pelagius admitted an inward revelation of wisdom by which God himself shows what must be done and what avoided, but denied the grace by which he gives and helps us to do these things. Hence, in chapter 10 of the same book, St. Augustine says: It pertains to teaching also when wisdom is revealed; it pertains to teaching when one is persuaded of everything good. And if there seems to be some difference between teaching and persuading—or rather, exhorting—even this is included within the general meaning of teaching, which is conveyed in any words or writings. For the sacred Scriptures both teach and exhort; and human activity can also play a part in teaching and exhorting.²⁸ There he teaches clearly enough that inward revelation, by which the Holy Spirit inwardly shows what should be done and avoided without human ministry or activity, is included generally under the name of teaching. He also shows this in his writing to Vitalis and against Pelagius, arguing as follows: If, then, God were to prepare and work the human will in such a way that he applied only his law and teaching to that person's free choice, and did not by that high and secret calling so move his understanding that he directed his assent to that same law and teaching, then without doubt it would suffice to read it, or to understand it by reading, or even to explain and preach it.²⁹ But this argument would prove nothing against Pelagius unless he had conceded a revelation of wisdom not only external, through reading or preaching, but also internal, which comes immediately from God alone. For the meaning would be: If God worked in us to will only by persuading us through external teaching, it would suffice to read it, understand it through external reading, or likewise explain or preach it externally. It is clear that this argument would contain a useless repetition, by which St. Augustine would attack the same thing by means of itself.

VII. This is established still more explicitly by what the same Augustine wrote against Pelagius and Celestius in the same book, chapter 41. For, among other things that must be considered, he says: The help itself, by which he claims that natural capacity is helped, he places in the law and teaching, which he admits is also revealed to us by the Holy Spirit; for this reason he grants that the Holy Spirit ought to be worshiped.³⁰ From these words the strongest argument is drawn. Adoration is not owed to one who reveals the law and teaching only externally, for this can be done through the ministry of a human being or an angel. Since Pelagius confesses that the Holy Spirit is to be worshiped because he has revealed the teaching to us, it follows that he is speaking of an inward revelation, by which God alone teaches inwardly what we ought to do and what we ought to avoid. A little earlier in the same chapter Augustine had said: But in these four books too, whatever he seems to say in favor of grace, by which we are helped to turn from evil and do good, he says it in such a way that he never leaves the ambiguity of his words, which he can explain to his disciples so that he believes there is no help of grace by which natural capacity is helped except in the law and teaching. Thus he thinks that prayers themselves, as he most plainly affirms in his writings, are employed for no other purpose than that teaching be disclosed to us also through divine revelation, not so that the human mind be helped to complete through love and action what it has learned should be done. Let us examine the words “also through divine revelation”: they clearly indicate that Pelagius admitted an inward divine revelation. Hence Augustine himself concludes against Pelagius and Celestius as follows: Let them, then, read and understand, consider and acknowledge that God works in human hearts not by a law and teaching sounding outwardly, but by an inward, hidden, marvelous, and ineffable power—not only true revelations, but also good wills.³¹ Let us also examine the words “not only true revelations,” for they assume that Pelagius admitted true revelations and denied that good wills are brought about by God through the help of grace, making people willing instead of unwilling. This will become clearer from what is said below.

VIII. Second, Pelagius admitted an inward grace superadded to nature that grants ability. St. Augustine reports this; after citing some words of Pelagius, he explains his meaning as follows: Whenever we read or hear him confess the help of divine grace, so that we may turn from evil and do good, whether in the law and teaching or wherever else it has been established, let us understand what he is saying, and not err by understanding him otherwise than he thinks. For we must know that he does not believe either our will or our action is helped by divine aid, but only the capacity for willing and acting, which alone among these three he affirms we have from God, as though this were something weak that God himself placed in nature. But the other two, which he wanted to be ours, are so firm and strong and sufficient in themselves that they need none of his help; and so he does not help us to will, nor help us to act, but only helps us to be able to will and act.³² And in chapter 14 of the same book he adds: Pelagius places the ability to come in nature, or even, as he has now begun to say, in grace, whatever he may understand it to be. In the preceding words, to attack this teaching of Pelagius, he had set forth the following argument: For if this grace helped only our ability, the Lord would have said: “Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned can come to me.” But he did not say this; rather, he said: “Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me.”³³ In this Augustine clearly assumes that Pelagius admitted a grace that confers ability and denied the grace that confers coming to Christ and doing good. Moreover, the same point is proved as follows: in book On the Grace of Christ, ch. 25, St. Augustine proves against Pelagius and Celestius that God helps us by his grace and grants us not only the ability to do good but also the willing and the doing themselves. And in ch. 26 he says: Let him distinguish thought and love as they are to be distinguished, since knowledge puffs up and charity builds up, and knowledge does not puff up when charity builds up. And since both are God's gifts, though one is lesser and the other greater, let him not elevate our righteousness above the praise of our justifier, attributing to divine help what is lesser of these two, but what is greater let him claim as his own by human free choice. And in ch. 11 of the same book, On the Grace of Christ, explaining what grace Pelagius must confess if he does not wish to depart from the teaching of the Catholic Church, St. Augustine says: But we want them at last to confess that grace by which the greatness of future glory is not only promised but also believed and hoped for; wisdom is not only revealed but also loved; and not only is everything good recommended, but people are also persuaded of it. And below: Whose faith it is, and who are persuaded to come to him, he himself showed clearly enough when he said: “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” And a little later, when he was speaking of those who do not believe: “I told you,” you say, “that no one can come to me unless it has been given to him by my Father.”³⁴ Pelagius ought to confess this grace if he wishes not only to be called a Christian but also truly to be one. And in ch. 47 the same Augustine, identifying the difference between himself and Pelagius concerning the help of grace, speaks as follows: If, then, he agrees with us that not only a person's ability—even if he neither wills nor does good—but the will and action themselves are helped by God, so that without that help we will and do nothing good; and that this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, in which he makes us righteous by his righteousness, not ours, so that our righteousness, which comes to us from him, is true righteousness, then, as far as I can see, no controversy between us will remain concerning the help of God's grace. Therefore it is a sign that Pelagius admitted inward grace that grants ability, but denied the help by which God brings it about that we will.

IX. Third, Celestius, Pelagius's disciple, said that grace which confers ability is absolutely necessary for the works of nature to reach the completion of virtue; by this means, moderating Pelagius's error to some extent, he thought he preserved a place for grace. This is clear from St. Augustine, who says: They thought this was to be brought against us: that we say God inspires in a person who is unwilling and resisting the desire not merely for any good, but even for good itself in its imperfect form. Perhaps, then, at least in this way they preserve a place for grace: they think a person can have a desire for good, though imperfect, without it; but that a desire for perfect good is not merely had more easily through it, but cannot be had at all except through it. Yet even so they say that God's grace is given according to our merits, a claim which Pelagius condemned in the East for fear of being condemned by ecclesiastical proceedings. For if desire for good begins in us by ourselves, without God's grace, the beginning itself will be a merit to which grace comes as help due, as if by debt; and thus God's grace will not be given freely, but our merit will be paid.³⁵ And elsewhere, arguing against Julian, who located the beginning of a good work in nature but attributed its perfection and completion to grace, Augustine says: Since, then, a person is helped by God, he is helped not merely to attain perfection, which is what you posited—wanting, of course, it to be understood that he himself begins without grace what grace completes—but rather in the way the Apostle speaks: “May he who began a good work in you bring it to completion to the end.” For in the very respect in which you would have a person, as you put it, be stirred by impulses of a generous heart to something praiseworthy, you do not want him to boast in the Lord but in free choice; and in this way he gives first so that it may be repaid to him, and grace is no longer grace, because it is not given freely.³⁶³⁷ Nevertheless, as was said above, although at the third stage of his heresy Pelagius admitted an inward illumination and prompting of grace that grants ability, he never wished to concede that it was absolutely necessary for fulfilling the commandments, but only that it made this easier. St. Augustine expressly attests this in book 2 of Against the Two Letters of the Pelagians, ch. 8, when he says: These men, namely Julian and Celestius, want the desire for good to begin in a person by that person himself, so that the merit of this beginning may obtain even the grace of completing it—if indeed that is what they want. For Pelagius says that what is good is fulfilled more easily if grace helps. By this addition—that is, by adding “more easily”—he indicates that this is his view: even if the help of grace is absent, a person can fulfill what is good through free choice, though with greater difficulty.

X. Hence, wherever St. Thomas reports Pelagius's error, he explains it only by saying that Pelagius thought the beginning of acting well comes from us, but its completion and perfection come from God, as may be seen in 1. p. q. 23. art. 5. in corp. 2. 2. q. 6. art. 1. in corp. 3. contra Gent. c. 149. quodl. 1. art. 7. in corp. ad Rom. 7. lect. 3. in fin. et 2. ad Cor. 3. lectione 1. in fin. et ad Ephes. 1. lect. 1. etiam fine. ³⁸

XI. Fourth, the Pelagians, at least Julian, admitted divine grace as help subsequent to the determination of created free choice, in such a way, namely, that a person begins first in the order of nature and the help of grace follows later in the order of nature, through which the person is helped by God in the very act. This is proved from Julian's own words, which St. Augustine reports: We defend man as the work of God, and say that he is not compelled by that power to begin either evil or good, but by his own will either to do good or evil; in a good work, however, he is always helped by God's grace, while in evil he is incited by the Devil's suggestions.³⁹ In reply, the holy Doctor says: But you think a person is helped by God's grace in a good work in such a way that you believe that God does nothing in arousing his will to that very good work, as your own words make clear. For why did you not say that a person is stirred by God's grace to a good work, just as you said he is incited to evil by the Devil's suggestions? Instead, you said that in a good work he is always helped by God's grace, as though a person who began a good work by his own will, without any grace of God, were now helped divinely in the work itself on account, evidently, of the merits of his good will, so that grace owed is repaid, not given as an unowed gift; and thus grace is no longer grace.⁴⁰ The same point is clear from other words of those same Pelagians, which the same St. Augustine reports in book 2 of Against the Two Letters of the Pelagians: These, he says, are your words: we confess that Baptism is necessary at every age, and that grace also helps each person's good purpose, but does not instill zeal for virtue in one who resists, because there is no favoritism with God.⁴¹ And again he says: They say that they confess that grace also helps each person's good purpose, but does not instill zeal for virtue in one who resists. They say this as though a person has a good purpose and zeal for virtue from himself, without God's help, and by the preceding merit of these is worthy to be helped by the grace of God that follows.⁴²

XII. From these points the Pelagians inferred their fifth dictum, namely, that this causal proposition is true: because I first willed, God willed; because I will, God helps me.⁴³ But this proposition is false: because God wills, I will; because God helps a person, the person wills. In this way they always assign the prior role to free choice and leave the later role to God. St. Augustine reports this dictum in writing to Vitalis, when he says: You recognize, I think, that among the things I said we know, I did not wish to mention everything pertaining to the Catholic faith, but only those things that pertain to this question about God's grace being debated between us: whether this grace precedes or follows the human will—that is, to put it more plainly, whether it is given to us because we will, or whether through it God also brings it about that we will.⁴⁴ Hence, attacking this Pelagian assertion in book 3 of the Hypognosticon, he says: In every holy work, then, God's will is prior and free choice's is later; that is, God works and the human being cooperates. But if you say, as you are accustomed to say, “Because I first willed, God willed,” you already make this a merit, so that grace is no longer grace from works, but a reward. As will be clear below, the Semi-Pelagians also maintained this causal proposition.⁴⁵ In what sense they understood it will be explained in disputations 99 and 100.

XIII. Pelagius's sixth dictum is this: if it is asserted that God's grace precedes human merits and makes the unwilling willing, then by such grace the freedom of human choice is destroyed and fatal necessity is introduced. Pelagius often brought this objection against St. Augustine, as is clear from book 2 of Against the Two Letters of the Pelagians, ch. 5, where St. Augustine replies to Pelagius's calumnies: We do not assert fate under the name of grace, because we say that God's grace is preceded by no human merits. A little later, after repeating some words of the Pelagians cited above, he adds: From these words of theirs I understood why they either think or want others to think that we assert fate under the name of grace: because we say God's grace is not given according to our merits, but according to his own most merciful will, who said, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I am compassionate.”⁴⁶ Speaking against Julian, he says: You say that we claim people are made good by fatal necessity under the name of grace. A little later he adds: You falsely accuse me of saying that no effort should be expected from the human will, contrary to that Gospel where the Lord says: “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.”⁴⁷⁴⁸ And Jerome, writing to Ctesiphon, says: As for your tossing about the claim that we destroy free choice, hear in reply that those destroy the freedom of choice who misuse it against the benefaction of the giver.⁴⁹ Who destroys choice? The one who always gives thanks to God and refers whatever was in his own little stream back to its source? Or the one who says, “Depart from me, because I am clean; I do not need you: for you once gave me the freedom of choice to do whatever I wish”? Why do you thrust yourself in again, so that I can do nothing unless you complete your gifts in me? You fraudulently put forward this pretext so as to refer God's grace to man's creation and avoid seeking God's help in each work, lest you seem to lose free choice, while, scorning God's support, you seek the help of men.

This was always the Achilles of all the Pelagians, by which they boasted that they triumphed over the defenders of grace and by which they tried to cloak their heresy: under the pretext of defending the rights of human freedom, they declared an internal war against the grace of God through which we are freed from death. But how ineffective their argument is will become clear below.

XIIII. Pelagius's seventh dictum is this: when the Apostle says that God works in us both to will and to accomplish, this is understood as an operation through the illumination of the intellect and the awakening of a stunned will, by which God persuades it of what is good. This is proved only from Pelagius's explicit words, which St. Augustine reports in his book On the Grace of Christ Against Pelagius and Celestius, ch. 10, where he says: For in another place, after asserting at length that a good will is produced in us by ourselves, not by God's help, Pelagius posed a question against himself from the Apostle's letter and said: “And how will that saying of the Apostle stand? For it is God who works in us both to will and to accomplish.”⁵⁰ Then, to resolve this objection, which he saw was strongly contrary to his doctrine, he went on and added: “He works in us the willing that is good, the willing that is holy: when he sets us, devoted to earthly desires and loving only present things like mute animals, on fire with the greatness of future glory and the promise of rewards; when through the revelation of wisdom he awakens the dormant will to desire God; for he persuades us of everything good—which elsewhere you do not hesitate to deny.” Pelagius interprets other similar passages of Scripture in the same way, passages in which the conversion of a human being is attributed to God, such as John 6: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.⁵¹ And Isaiah 26: You have done all our works for us, and other such passages.

XV. From this dictum the Pelagians inferred that God works in us to will as far as lies in him; but to consent or dissent to him is so much our own that, if we will, it happens, whereas if we are unwilling, we bring it about that God's operation benefits us in no way. St. Augustine reports this dictum in referring to and refuting the Pelagian error, saying: What, then, is the meaning of the Apostle's saying, “God works in us both to will and to accomplish”? You reply that God works through his law and Scripture so that we will, through the Scripture that we either read or hear. But our consenting to it or not consenting is so much our own that, if we will, it happens; if we do not will, we make God's operation of no use to us. For he works, you say, as much as lies in him, so that we will when his sayings are known to us; but if we do not wish to acquiesce in them, we make his operation of no benefit to us. If you say this, you surely contradict our prayers. ⁵²

XVI. The Pelagians' eighth dictum was that the cause of divine predestination is on our side, namely, merits foreseen and begun by the powers of nature. St. Augustine attributes this error to the Pelagians, saying: He foresaw, therefore, (Pelagius says) who would be holy and spotless through the free choice of their will; and therefore, before the foundation of the world, in his own foreknowledge he chose those whom he foresaw would be such. “He chose them,” he says, “before they existed, predestining as sons those whom he foresaw would be holy and spotless”; he himself did not make them so, nor foresee that he would do so, but foresaw that they would be so.⁵³ And St. Thomas, reporting the same error of the Pelagians, says: There were others, then, who said that merits existing beforehand in this life are the reason and cause of the effect of predestination. For the Pelagians held that the beginning of doing good comes from us, but its completion comes from God; and so it happens that the effect of predestination is given to one person and not another, because one made a beginning by preparing himself and the other did not.⁵⁴ It is true that Pelagius asserted that the effect of predestination is bestowed on the predestined because of a foreseen future good use of free choice arising from the faculty of nature alone, and not from the efficacious help of prevenient grace. Yet in the end he admitted inward teaching and revelation through which God would persuade a person what ought to be done and what ought to be avoided, as was said above.

All these matters will be refuted below, and the mind of the Pelagians will at the same time be made clearer.

XVII. The ninth dictum contains the twelve articles charged against Pelagius at the Synod of Palestine; if he had not anathematized them, he himself would surely have been anathematized. The first is that Adam would have died whether he sinned or did not sin. The second, that Adam's sin harmed Adam alone and not the human race. The third, that newborn infants are in the state in which Adam was before his transgression. The fourth, that neither through Adam's death or transgression does the whole human race die, nor through Christ's resurrection does the whole human race rise again. The fifth, that even unbaptized infants have eternal life. The sixth, that baptized rich people, unless they renounce everything, are not credited with any good they may seem to do and cannot possess the kingdom of God. The seventh, that God's grace and help are not given for each individual act, but consist in free choice or in the law and teaching. The eighth, that God's grace is given according to our merits. The ninth, that people cannot be called children of God unless they have been made entirely without sin. The tenth, that free choice does not exist if it needs God's help, since each person has it in his own will to do something or not to do it. The eleventh, that our victory comes not from God's help but from free choice. The twelfth, that pardon is not given to those who repent according to God's grace and mercy, but according to the merit and labor of those who through penance have become worthy of mercy. St. Augustine reports these errors of Pelagius in Letter 106, where he also shows that such assertions contradict the teaching the Catholic Church has always held, as will become still clearer from the course of this work.

In reply to the first argument, it is answered that Pelagius did indeed admit an inward grace that conferred a certain ability, but denied that it was absolutely necessary for fulfilling the divine commandments. Pelagius's followers, Julian and Celestius, however, as was shown above, conceded that this inward illumination of the intellect and awakening of the will were absolutely necessary for the perfection of a work. Nevertheless, there still remains that in which the Semi-Pelagians, of whom Augustine spoke in ch. 1 of On the Predestination of the Saints, are distinguished from them.

For the Pelagians, as was said above, placed in nature the first beginning of faith and good works, attributing only their completion and perfection to divine grace. But the Semi-Pelagians distinguished between faith and the good works that follow faith, and said that the first beginning of faith comes from us but the beginning of good works comes from grace—which they nevertheless asserted is given to believers on account of the merit of faith. This is clear from St. Augustine in the same book On the Predestination of the Saints, where he expressly shows against the Semi-Pelagians that even the first beginning of the faith by which we are Christians comes from God, not from us.⁵⁵ They also differ in this: the Semi-Pelagians, as Augustine says in ch. 1 of the same book, confessed with the Church of Christ that the human race is born subject to the sin of the first man, and that no one is freed from this evil except through the righteousness of the second man. Pelagius and Celestius, however, stubbornly denied this, as Augustine himself makes clear in the books published against them. In these matters, then, Augustine teaches that the Semi-Pelagians differ greatly from the error of the Pelagians. But this will be discussed more fully in the next disputation, where we shall report the statements of the Semi-Pelagians.⁵⁶

In reply to the second point, the distinction assigned concerning the four stages of Pelagius's heresy must be applied. Against the first stage, the Councils and Fathers determined that grace must be admitted as necessary for salvation, and that nature alone does not suffice to fulfill all God's precepts. Against the second stage of the same heresy, they taught that the help of grace by which God helps us to fulfill his commandments does not consist in the law alone, or in external teaching, or in the example Christ the Lord left us, but that inward grace must be admitted. Against the third stage, they determined that this inward grace is necessary absolutely, not merely for a better state or for acting more easily. Against the fourth, they decreed that inward grace is absolutely necessary, not only to show and teach what should be believed or done, but to grant and help us to do it. St. Prosper calls this grace pre-operating grace;⁵⁷ in common usage it is called efficacious prevenient grace, through which God actively and properly causes us to will and to act piously, and from these points the answer to the confirmation is clear. But there is still an argument: the Councils and Fathers say that Pelagius admitted no true grace. Yet inward grace that illuminates the intellect and awakens the stunned will is true grace. Therefore Pelagius did not admit it.

The reply is that, since Pelagius asserted that grace is given according to our merits, even while conceding an inward grace that illuminates the intellect, awakens the will, and helps the ability itself, he truly admitted no grace. Indeed, even if he had admitted efficacious grace, or grace that helps the willing itself, by saying that grace is given according to our merits he would have destroyed the whole nature of grace; for if it is from works, as the Apostle argues, it is no longer grace.⁵⁸ Hence Augustine says in his book On the Grace of Christ Against Pelagius and Celestius, ch. 31: Whatever he thinks grace to be, he says that it is given to Christians themselves according to their merits. By these words Augustine signifies that any grace Pelagius conceded is destroyed if it is asserted that it is given according to our merits.

XIX. In reply to the third point, it is answered that in the first stage of his heresy Pelagius denied the grace given to us through the ministration of the Spirit; but in the second or third stage he admitted an inward grace by which the intellect is illuminated and the will awakened, as was said above. A second answer is that inward grace by which God shows and reveals what we ought to do, but does not give and help us to do it, pertains to the law and teaching, even if they are inward, as St. Augustine shows in the passages cited above; it does not pertain to the ministration of the Spirit, which Pelagius intended to deny.⁵⁹ For although inward revelation and teaching, which shows what we ought to do and what to avoid, takes place in us through the Holy Spirit, who teaches a person knowledge, nevertheless it is included under a certain general heading, under the letter that kills, not under the Spirit who gives life.⁶⁰ But the grace that helps our weakness and gives strength to the will, so that we do what we have learned must be done, pertains to the ministration of the Spirit. Of it the Apostle says: The Spirit helps our weakness, for we do not know what we ought to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us, that is, makes us pray, as St. Thomas explains,⁶¹ with inexpressible groanings.⁶² By these words he plainly indicates that the grace which not only teaches what we ought to ask for or do, but also grants that we ask and do, pertains to the ministration of the Spirit. Pelagius always denied this grace, as was said above. Therefore, when Augustine says that Pelagius denied the grace given to us through the ministration of the Holy Spirit, he is speaking of the grace by which God not only shows what we ought to do, but also gives and helps us to do it. This explanation follows from the very context, especially from those words of Augustine cited in the third argument, in which he asserts that Pelagius thought people are saved with help, not through any ministration of power, but by the powers of their own will. If these words are joined to those of St. Augustine also cited in the same argument—namely, that which pertains through the ministration of the Spirit to conquering desires and temptations—it will be clear that grace given through the ministration of the Spirit means the same as grace that supplies strength to conquer desires and temptations. But illumination, or teaching alone, even when inward, and the awakening of a stunned will, which Pelagius admitted, do not give the will strength to fulfill the divine commandments, because they move it only on the part of the object, by proposing and teaching what it ought to do. Hence they do not pertain to the grace given through the ministration of the Spirit. This can be explained by a very apt example. If someone were asleep and also infirm, with no feet, and thus had absolutely no power to walk, and were in great danger from which he could escape only by fleeing, then simply waking him by another person and warning him of the danger so that he might flee and run from imminent death would supply him no strength to flee; with respect to the power of walking, he would remain just as unable to run as if he had not been awakened from sleep and taught about the danger. We must think proportionately about the inward illumination and awakening on the part of the object that Pelagius admitted. This is what St. Augustine meant when he said Pelagius had never conceded a grace by which not only the natural capacity of the will and action, but the will and action themselves, are helped by the ministration of the Holy Spirit. From these words it is quite clear that Pelagius did not deny every kind of grace, but the grace given to us so that we do the good we know:

XX. But there is an argument against this solution. It follows that habitual grace, and likewise the habit of charity, does not pertain to the grace given through the ministration of the Spirit, but to the law and teaching. The consequence is proved as follows: through such habits God does not cause us to act, nor does he work so that we act, since a habit does not determine a power to act. Therefore, if only the grace by which God gives and causes us to act pertains to the ministration of the Spirit, the habits of grace and charity will pertain to the law and teaching, and not to the grace given through the ministration of the Spirit.

The consequence is denied. For through grace and charity the Holy Spirit dwells in us, according to what Christ the Lord says through John: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.⁶³ Although through habitual grace alone, or through the habit of charity, God does not cause us to act, nevertheless he causes us to have spiritual life and grants a sufficient efficient principle of supernatural operation. For through habitual grace he makes us children of God, and through habitual charity he makes us lovers of God; therefore they pertain to the grace given through the ministration of the Spirit.⁶⁴ But the illumination of the intellect and the awakening of the will that the Pelagians admitted accomplish none of these things, nor do they give the will strength, as will be clear in Disputation 75; hence the cases are not similar.

Second, I answer that although habits of grace and charity do not determine a person to act piously, nevertheless, in the very infusion of grace and charity, God moves that person's free choice with efficacious help, so that the person consents and freely cooperates with God, disposing himself by his own act toward his justification, as St. Thomas teaches in Prima Secundae, q. 113, art. 8. Hence habitual grace and charity do not pertain to the oldness of the letter, or to the law and teaching, but to the life-giving⁶⁵ and renewing Spirit.

In reply to the confirmation, I answer: I conclude that the confirmation of itself establishes effectively that Pelagius's opinion involves a contradiction in what he says: since he asserted that grace is given according to our merits, he destroyed the true nature of grace, which, as was said above, he placed in the illumination of the intellect and the inward awakening of the will.⁶⁶ St. Augustine noted this or a similar contradiction in Pelagius's writings, in book On the Grace of Christ, ch. 37, when he says: That letter, certainly, namely the letter to Demetrias, I read, and it had persuaded me that he confessed this grace at issue, although in many places of that little work he seemed to contradict himself. And in ch. 31 of the same book he says: Whatever grace he thinks it to be, he says that it is given to Christians themselves according to their merits. And below: It is clear that he says grace is given according to merits, whatever it may be or whatever he means by it, although he does not express it openly. It is as if he said more plainly: whatever grace Pelagius proposes, he ultimately destroys it when he asserts that it is given according to our merits.

XXI. In reply to the fourth point, it is answered that Pelagius never denied that, for acts of the natural order, God, as author of nature, must exercise his influence together with us when we wish to act. He denied only the necessity of God's help by which God works so that we may work, because he thought the freedom of choice would be destroyed if a person could do nothing unless God moved him beforehand and acted beforehand.⁶⁷ For Pelagius knew very well that if God's help and concurrence were posterior in the order of nature to the determination of created free choice—in such a way, namely, that this causal proposition were true: “Because a person acts, God cooperates”—the freedom of that free choice would not be harmed. From the words of St. Jerome cited above, it is concluded only that Pelagius denied the necessity for our acts of the help by which God works in us and with us so that we may act. This is clearly gathered from the very context, especially the words cited in the sixth dictum: for the Pelagians were calumniating Jerome and Augustine because they said that all our good works must be referred to God as their first author and source, on whom they first and principally depend, and because they preached that a person can do nothing unless God completes his gifts in him. This is clear from those words of the Pelagians reported by St. Jerome: Why do you thrust yourself in again, so that I can do nothing unless you complete your gifts in me? By these words he was trying to remove that help of God from consideration by which God completes the operative power of created free choice, moving and applying it to the exercise of the act; this will be treated expressly in Disputation 18 and the four that follow. The words of St. Jerome in the same letter also indicate this, when he says: They place grace, namely, the Pelagians, in such a way that we do not rely on his help and are not guided by it in each act. And again: Do you think an injury is done to you and the freedom of choice destroyed if you always have recourse to God as author, depend on his will, and say, “My eyes are always toward the Lord, for he will draw my feet out of the snare”?⁶⁸ Hence you even dare to say with reckless tongue that each person is ruled by his own choice. If he is ruled by his own choice, where is God's help? If he does not need Christ as guide, how does Jeremiah write, “A person's way is not in himself, and a man's steps are directed by the Lord”?⁶⁹⁷⁰

From these points it is clear that Pelagius did not deny that the simultaneous concurrence of the First Cause is necessary for the things we do, but only denied the necessity of God's prior help for each of our acts, namely, God's direction and governance—the very thing the Church asks for when it says: Deign, Lord God, King of heaven and earth, to direct and sanctify, rule and govern today our hearts and bodies, our senses, words, and acts in your law and in the works of your commandments, so that here and forever, with your help, we may merit to be always safe and free. For he thought that free choice was injured if it were ruled and governed not by itself but by the Lord.

Hence many learned men, most deeply versed in the teaching of St. Augustine—including Gaspar Casalius of Coimbra, who attended the sacred Council of Trent, in book 1 of On the Fourfold Justice, ch. 36—explicitly admit that Pelagius never denied God's general influx. Casalius's words are these: Pelagius did not deny general influx. A little further below: Pelagius did indeed confess the grace of creation: among human beings, human nature, human will, and the general influx of God common to all agents. And a little later: Did he perhaps deny that general influx is necessary for human beings to act well?

This has not yet been learned, nor is it believed of him himself; for he could not have thought so unless he had first been foolish. How can a secondary cause act without the concurrence of the first cause?⁷¹ Even granting, but not conceding, that Pelagius did not admit God's general concurrence, there can nevertheless be no doubt that he admitted God's subsequent concurrence, or help, after the determination of the created will, as is clear from the passages of St. Augustine cited in n. 11 of this disputation. Hence, in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, ch. 32, Augustine clearly presupposes that the Pelagians thought that this was said for this reason: “It is not of him who wills or of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy”; because it comes from both, that is, from the human will and God's mercy, and so forth. It is as if one were to say: the human will alone does not suffice unless God's mercy is also present. And in the same place the holy Doctor argues that something more must be attributed to grace. This will be treated in Disputation 97, especially n. 6, where we shall examine St. Augustine's words more fully.

What grace the Semi-Pelagians admitted as necessary for salvation, and in what respect their view agreed with the Pelagian error or departed from it.

I. The common error of the Semi-Pelagians, as some more recent theologians have rightly observed, consists in this: although they acknowledged against Pelagius that God’s grace was necessary for performing works of holiness, meriting glory, and obtaining the fitting disposition for the remission of sin, they nevertheless reserved some beginning of salvation to free choice, so that a person’s own salvation would lie in his power. They therefore said that it was necessary for a person to begin by some good movement, which God would afterward advance and perfect. In this good movement they thus placed the first cause of salvation on our side, and said that it was the merit of every supernatural grace. What merit they meant will become clear below. They also asserted that faith, at least as regards its beginning, was not God’s gift but was in us from ourselves, and that on its account God granted the other gifts necessary for salvation. This is clear from the letters of Prosper and Hilary to St. Augustine and from Augustine himself, in On the Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance. In reply to Prosper’s and Hilary’s letters, he proves in detail, with the clearest testimonies of sacred Scripture, that not only perfect faith but even faith begun, and every beginning of it, comes from God and from the help of prevenient grace. But, to turn to particulars and explain how far the people of Marseilles went in professing grace, and what grace beyond that St. Augustine insisted must necessarily be acknowledged, it must be observed that the leader of the Semi-Pelagians was Faustus, bishop of Riez. Maxentius reports and refutes his error in his reply to Pope Hormisdas’s letter, where he declares Faustus’s books heretical and sharply reproves those who defend them as Catholic—especially a certain African bishop called Possessor.¹ In chapter Sancta Romana Ecclesia, Distinction 15, Pope Gelasius counts among the apocrypha the works of Faustus of Riez in Gaul. Hence Peter the Deacon, in Fulgentius’s On the Incarnation and Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, chapter 8 at the end, says: Having been instructed in the teaching of all these holy Fathers, we anathematize Pelagius and Celestius, and also Julian Edanensis and those who share his way of thinking; especially the books of Faustus, bishop of Gaul, who came from the monastery of Lérins, which were undoubtedly written against the doctrine of predestination. In these books, coming into conflict not only with the teaching of these holy Fathers (that is, Augustine and his disciples) but also with the Apostle’s own contrary assertion, he subordinates the help of grace to human labor.² Hence those who count Faustus among the Fathers are not to be heard, since he must be counted not among the Fathers but among the enemies of Christ’s grace. Faustus set out his view concerning the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice in two books On Free Choice, which he published and which are found in the Library of the Holy Fathers; anyone who wishes can read his view explained there at greater length.³

II.

Cassian also presents in his writings, especially throughout Conference 13, the view of these same Semi-Pelagians and sets out many of their statements. St. Prosper reports and refutes his teaching in the book he composed Against the Collator. There, with very many testimonies of Scripture, very firm and very penetrating arguments, and very elegant words, he shows how Cassian and the other remnants of the Pelagian heresy, while loudly proclaiming that they were far removed from Pelagius’s error, ultimately fell into it. Cassian acquired the name “Collator” from the Conferences of the Fathers that he wrote. We must therefore draw from the books of Faustus of Riez and Cassian what they and the Semi-Pelagians themselves thought, gather from the writings of Prosper and Maxentius the true sense in which their doctrine was condemned, and finally turn to the holy Father Augustine, who by divine inspiration rather than human effort penetrated, exposed, attacked, and overcame the errors of both Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, and labored greatly to extirpate this destructive heresy. Thus, writing to Innocent: It is not, then, he says, a single Pelagius—who may already have been corrected, and would that this were so—but so many others who argue noisily, dragging along weak and unlearned souls as though they had been defeated, while wearing down by their contentiousness those who are firm and steadfast in the faith, that everything everywhere is now filled with them.⁴ To proceed clearly and distinctly, we must first collect from Faustus’s books the statements in which he disclosed his mind; then we shall collect Cassian’s statements from his writings as well, so that at last it may become clear in what the Semi-Pelagians agreed among themselves and with Pelagius, and in what one differed from another, or even from their leader Pelagius.

Faustus’s error concerning the natural capacity of free choice and the necessity of grace is explained.

As Sixtus Senensis noted⁵, Faustus wrote books On Free Choice against the teaching of St. Augustine, with Augustine’s name suppressed;⁶ Peter the Deacon also teaches this clearly in the passage cited above. First, to appear far removed from Pelagius’s error, he rebuked that man’s blasphemous opinion that human nature alone suffices for attaining salvation: I believe, he says, that the freedom of choice by itself could not suffice without the support of grace, even before its privilege was violated by transgression. How, then, can it now suffice by itself, when its presumption is addressed with the words: “Without me you can do nothing”?⁷ And when the divine word is directed against its self-confidence: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain”?⁸ What is denied to pride without grace is granted to humility with grace.⁹ Hence Maxentius, observing Faustus’s craftiness in his reply to Hormisdas’s letter, says: For while shrewdly refuting the view of that same Pelagius and reproaching him, as it were, for having wholly denied Christ’s grace, and also refuting those who acknowledge with the Apostle that God’s grace is given to people without any preceding merits, Faustus himself, as though he were a most wise and prudent new apostle of a new perversity, attempts to teach that God’s grace is given according to the merit of faith and labor, so that God’s grace is no longer grace.¹⁰

IIII. Second, he says that not everything is to be attributed to grace, but something must be left to human effort. For he maintained that the gift of grace must be subordinated to human exertion and labor, and that it is granted by God to those who ask, seek, and desire. Faustus’s words are: Here, then, two errors contend with one another: one advocates following grace alone, the other labor alone, each straying from the path and measure of truth. They differ in kind but are alike in impiety; with different aims, they hiss with the spirit of one serpent. One—the preacher of grace alone—at first conceals its poison beneath the appearance of piety; the other—the advocate of labor—immediately reveals its swelling pride by its shameless arrogance. This profession of labor alone is detestable by its very name; that other is all the more to be feared beneath its religious guise.¹¹ Near the end of the same chapter he adds: Rightly did the divine word display the force of its authority, or reproof, against this presumptuous arrogance.¹² “No one,” he says, “comes to me unless the Father draws him.”¹³ And again: “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.”¹⁴ Whoever has established his salvation in his own will and power with Pelagius will rightly judge this to have been said of himself. But it need not be directed against someone who does not presume on labor alone, but recognizes that he must implore God’s daily mercy and abiding grace for his efforts, and beseeches the Lord’s help with constant prayer. In chapters 4 and 5 he attacks those who maintain that everything, they say, belongs to grace alone; while he himself admits that grace is necessary for all, but only so that we judge that the exertion of human diligence must in every way be joined to it. He teaches the same in chapters 6 and 10. These words show that Faustus thought the efforts of nature precede prevenient grace, and that by them free choice implores, asks, and desires God’s continual grace. This is also clear from canon 6 of the Council of Orange, where this error of Faustus and other Semi-Pelagians is condemned: If anyone says that divine mercy is bestowed on us when we believe, will, desire, and so forth, and knock, without the grace of God—but does not say that mercy is bestowed so that we may believe, will, or be able to do all these things as we ought—or subordinates the help of grace to human humility or obedience, and does not confess that it is the gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he resists the Apostle who says, ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ and, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’¹⁵

V. Third, he says that grace and free choice are joined together in matters pertaining to salvation, and that grace is a companion, not a forerunner, of human merits.¹⁶ Faustus says this in the cited Book 1, chapter 5, where, explaining Romans 4, If Abraham was justified by works, he has glory, but not before God, and 1 Corinthians 3, Each will receive his own reward according to his labor, he says: According to the Catholic rule, works of the Law that are done according to the letter are set aside, while those things are affirmed that are to be done after grace, with grace accompanying. By these words he admits grace as a companion; and in chapter 18 he admits cooperating grace. But Faustus explains this statement specifically in chapter 17 of the same book, in these words: And thus these two are joined together: the power of the one who draws and the disposition of the one who obeys. It is as when a sick man tries to rise, but his strength does not follow his mind, and so he begs another to extend a hand. The will cries out, for weakness knows not how to lift itself by itself. Thus the Lord invites the willing, draws the desiring, and raises the one who strives. In Book 2, chapter 4, explaining 2 Timothy 2¹⁷, The laboring farmer ought to receive some of the fruits; See, he says, how divine and human things are joined in a wondrous exchange: labor belongs to obedience, but the fruit of labor belongs to grace. Hence Maxentius, reporting Faustus’s error in his reply to Pope Hormisdas’s letter, says: Since no one obeys or labors unless willing, and no one is willing unless he knows what it is fitting for him to do, Faustus, after knowledge and will—or obedience—joins the help of grace to human labor, so that grace and human labor together may complete the remaining works. He asserts that the capacity for this labor is naturally present in everyone, not through that same grace; and he claims that he can defend this view.¹⁸ St. Prosper also attributes this third statement to the remnants of the Pelagian heresy when, recalling them in his letter to Augustine, he says: They do not consider that they subject the grace of God—which they wish to be the companion, not the forerunner, of human merits—to those very acts of will which, according to their fantasy, they do not deny were preceded by grace. To understand this statement, it should be observed that when Faustus says grace is the companion, not the forerunner, of human merits, he is plainly speaking of efficacious grace, not of grace that arouses and enlightens. For he admits that the latter precedes meritorious work and other works of piety, as will be clear from the next statement.¹⁹ I say “works of piety,” because, like the other Semi-Pelagians, he attributed faith to the powers of nature, as is clear from Augustine’s On the Predestination of the Saints and from what we shall add in statement 12: they acknowledged that, by the merit of this faith, free choice obtained the prior helps of grace. What merit they meant will be explained below.

VI. Fourth, he says that prevenient grace is required for meritorious works leading to eternal life and for human salvation. St. Augustine calls it “help without which the thing is not done” in On Correction and Grace, chapter 12. This is clear: in the cited Book 1, chapter 1, Faustus says: I believe that freedom of choice by itself could not suffice without the support of grace, even before its privilege was violated by transgression. How can it now suffice by itself, when its arrogance is addressed with the words, “Without me you can do nothing,”²⁰ and the divine word is directed against its presumption: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain”?²¹ What is denied to pride without grace is granted to humility with grace. And in chapter 11 he adds: Whoever presumes to claim for himself either the beginning or the end of a work is rightly told: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”²² In chapter 14, throughout, he teaches the same, saying among other things: The Prophet asserts the capacity of one’s own will when he says of himself, “I inclined my heart to do your ordinances”;²³ yet he understands that nothing is to be presumed from his own powers alone, since he cries out to God, “Incline,” he says, “my heart to your testimonies, and not to covetousness.”²⁴ That he places this grace in the enlightenment of the intellect and the stirring of the will will become clear in the fifth statement. Hence St. Augustine, speaking of the Semi-Pelagians and attributing this fourth statement to them, says: These brothers of ours, for whom your pious Charity is concerned, have come to believe with the Church of Christ that the human race is born liable to the sin of the first man, and that no one is freed from this evil except through the justice of the second man. They have also come to acknowledge that human wills are preceded by the grace of God, and to agree that no one is sufficient of himself for any good work, whether to begin it or to complete it. These positions, then, which they have reached and retained, distinguish them greatly from the error of the Pelagians.²⁵ St. Prosper also noted this in his letter to Augustine, saying: Some of them, however, depart so little from the paths of the Pelagians that, although compelled to acknowledge the grace of Christ, which precedes all human merits, lest it be called grace in vain if it is rendered for merits, etc.²⁶ These words make it quite clear that the Semi-Pelagians admitted some prevenient grace as necessary not only for completing good works but also for beginning them. It is true that they posited no grace as necessary for faith, since they thought faith was not God’s gift but was in us from ourselves, as will become clear below:

VII. Fifth, he says that the grace which precedes human wills is that by which the intellect is enlightened by God and the will is stirred; and on account of this enlightenment he admits that everything must be attributed to grace. But because, he says, everything must be referred to the author of grace, we read: He who teaches man knowledge; or, The Lord enlightens the blind; and again, Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death; and, Blessed is the man whom you instruct, Lord, and whom you teach from your law. He also says: What is it to draw, if not to preach, to stir by the consolations of Scripture²⁷, to deter by rebukes, to set before us what is to be desired, to threaten what is to be feared, to warn of judgment, and to promise a reward? Hear the Lord drawing not with harsh bonds but with hands and inviting with the arms of love, as the Prophet says: ‘I drew them with the cords of charity’; and, ‘We run after you, drawn by the fragrance of your perfumes.’²⁸ Therefore he says, ‘Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you,’²⁹ so that no one can excuse himself as excluded when he is proved to have been invited.³⁰ Thus in chapter 11 of that same first book he teaches that both the beginning and the end of a good work are to be attributed to God, because he himself begins it by enlightening the intellect and stirring the will. Explaining Psalm 126, Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain, he says: Yet even while the servant must labor through all this, even to enduring every evil and losing his life, the result of his labor must always be referred to the Lord. Whoever presumes to claim for himself either the beginning or the end of a work is rightly told: ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.’³¹ In Book 2, chapter 6, explaining Romans 9, Not of works, but of him who calls, he says: When you hear ‘of him who calls,’ understand one who invites, not one who compels: that is, one who moves efficaciously. For he thought this could not happen without coercing the will. Since he had said above that grace and free choice, joined together, complete our salvation, lest anyone think this teaching prejudices divine grace, he adds the following statement.

VIII. The sixth statement is that we must assign the first place to grace alone in the work of our salvation. He says this in Book 1, chapter 6, where, explaining 1 Corinthians 15, By the grace of God I am what I am, etc. he says: In pious submission I have assigned the first place to grace alone; the teacher of obedience has assigned all the intermediate steps to labor. And in chapter 9 he says: In saying these things, we do not make labor equal to grace, but place grace altogether above it, beyond comparison. Hence Maxentius: But the grace, he says, to which Faustus assigns first place here is not that grace which comes through the Holy Spirit, so that we give assent and become obedient when the word of God thunders outwardly. Rather, he says it is the preaching of the divine words: that is, it belongs to grace that the divine words are preached to us, but it belongs to us to assent to that preaching.³²

IX. Seventh, he says that God waits for our will, for us to wish to be cleansed and to run. In the end of Book 1, chapter 7, Faith, he says, he expects from little ones; from those established in the faith he also requires works. And in chapter 10 If, he says, the will of the one who runs is not to be awaited, why then is it said, ‘I therefore run in such a way, not as into uncertainty’?³³ And again, ‘I have finished the race, I have kept the faith’?³⁴ In chapter 11: Just as the devotion of unwearied service is to be expected from a person, so the perfection of completed work is to be credited to the Lord. In chapter 19 he adds: Moreover, by reason of justice he does not accomplish the result by himself, because he waits for the will of the one who is to be cleansed. And in Book 2, On Free Choice, chapter 10: You impose the burden of condemnation on a person against his will, when he shows a remedy of satisfaction and expects diligent service from him.³⁵ In what sense Faustus understood God to await our will for us to wish to be cleansed will appear in Disputation 95.

X. Eighth, he admits that a companion grace is necessary for salvation, describing it under various names: sometimes he calls it cooperating grace, sometimes the help of grace. Thus in Book 1, On Free Choice, chapter 5, he says: According to the Catholic rule, works of the Law that are done according to the letter are set aside, while those things are affirmed that are to be done after grace, with grace accompanying. In chapter 11 he says: God promised the heavenly kingdom to those who keep the divine commandments through the duties of laborious service, with cooperating grace. In chapter 13: For when a person has begun through grace to be a vessel of election and honor, he must be vigilant so that the honor he has received may be preserved by divine cooperation. A little farther down: And whenever a person, with grace helping, turns toward better things after rejecting worse ones, each time he is made a vessel of honor from a vessel of dishonor. Just before that he had said: Let us show that it is possible to pass from a vessel of dishonor to a vessel of honor through God’s help and one’s own effort. At the end of Book 2, chapter 4, he concludes: But you, do not begrudge divine goodness if I have performed a work well with his help, or even if I have lost what I received.³⁶ And in chapter 10, explaining Romans 9, not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, etc. Here, he says, he plainly marks out and reproves the person who thinks he is sufficient for himself alone, without the hand of one who helps. Near the end he says: Rather, with cooperating help,³⁷ let him also be worthy through his own work, and blessed with a good conscience.

XI. Ninth, he says that it belongs to God that we are called, but to a person that he obeys, seeks, asks, and knocks. Explaining Hebrews 11, He is the rewarder of those who seek him; How well, he says, he has joined the Lord’s office and the servant’s, saying, ‘He is the rewarder of those who seek him.’ For just as the giving of reward belongs to God, so the devotion of seeking belongs to a person.³⁸ Near the end of chapter 10 he says: Those who pray and keep watch are aided by the kindness of mercy, which is bestowed on those who knock more on account of devotion than predestination. He also says: For just as it is his own fault that he avoids the eyes of a merciful Father, so it is his own devotion that, deliberating and rising through the good implanted within him, he returns to his father’s embrace.³⁹ Elsewhere he teaches that seeds of good will are implanted in a person, proving it from the words, If you are willing, the commandments will preserve you.⁴⁰⁴¹ In chapter 16 he says: At whatever time someone has sought God, he has found him; and whoever seems not to have found him did not seek him. In chapter 17 he adds: Thus the Lord invites the willing, draws the desiring, and raises the one who strives. And so, just as being drawn is shown to belong to grace, following is shown to belong to obedience. He plainly intends that our following should belong only to us, not to divine grace except insofar as grace has invited us. A little later he says: But the one whom you see drawing also requires in every way that the commandments be kept, so that through a certain handle of the will the one who is called may be grasped and be able to be drawn. If you think he draws the unwilling, you impose the burden of injustice on heavenly justice. In chapter 19: Just as it belongs to God to summon and exhort, so it has been reserved to human obedience to follow.⁴² In Book 2, chapter 28, explaining Mark 10, What do you want me to do for you? and John 5, Do you want to be made well?, he says: You see that the gift of salvation is granted only after the desire of the will is first questioned. Even when someone comes to baptism, the will of the person approaching is first examined, so that the grace of the one who regenerates may follow. And in the case of Cornelius the Centurion, because his will preceded grace, grace also came before regeneration.⁴³ A little later: It belongs to God’s goodness that a person is called; it belongs to his own will that he promptly obeys. Explaining Matthew 7, Seek, and you will find, in chapter 9, he says: When the human mind opens its eyes in order to see, the light it seeks at once presents itself to the one who desires it. Explaining Psalm 69, O God, come to my aid, in chapter 10, he says: The very word ‘aid’ requires the service of one who labors. Thus ‘aid’ indicates two things: one who works and one who cooperates; one who asks and one who promises; one who knocks and one who opens; one who seeks and one who rewards. This alone is ours: since we are not capable on account of our weakness, let us at least find favor through our persistence in seeking and knocking. A little later: Unless the devotion of obedience has come first, the offering of grace becomes worthless; and it is a source of shame to the one who rewards if an idle person is honored and an ungrateful one rewarded.

XII. Tenth, he says that a person can believe by the capacity of nature, so that faith is in us and from ourselves, while its perfection comes from God. Explaining The elder shall serve the younger; In the elder, he says, the arrogance of the Jews is rejected; in the younger, the faith of the Gentiles is chosen.⁴⁴ In chapter 7, explaining Ephesians 2, You have been saved by grace through faith, he says: The time of grace, in which we were redeemed, did not wait for human merits; it did not seek works at all. God was content with the devotion of our faith alone, according to the Apostle’s words: ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’⁴⁵ At the end of the same chapter Faith, he says, he expects from little ones; from those established in the faith he also requires works, but in such a way that he increases the disposition to believe in those who are making progress and stands by those who labor as their daily helper. He attributes this same completion of virtue to grace in Book 1, chapter 11, saying: Just as the devotion of unwearied service is to be expected from a person, so the perfection of completed work is to be credited to God. At the end of Book 2, chapter 6: You see that the good of believing is not a new privilege but an old one: from the very beginnings of the world’s formation the human mind was endowed by its supreme creator with faith as well as understanding and reason. In chapter 8 he says: Why is unbelief reproached, unless because the capacity to believe was readily available? The principle of free choice makes the believer worthy of reward and the unbeliever worthy of condemnation. In his reply to Hormisdas’s letter, Maxentius attributes this error to Faustus and adduces Faustus’s words from Book 1, chapter 15. There Faustus argues against those who say that the gift of believing is not general but particular, and speaks as follows: But you say, he says, that it is not given to everyone, that the capacity to believe is a personal gift, and that only those to whom God has specially given the gift of believing have the power to believe. That is not so. The Lord does not yet⁴⁶ require it even of unbelievers; you demonstrate that it has been implanted in everyone. Who lacks the capacity to believe even by the law of nature, since even demons believe and tremble?⁴⁷ By these words Faustus proves that faith is in us and from us, since demons believe and tremble without any help of grace whatsoever. But it is clear that this proof is empty, because, as St. Thomas teaches, the faith of demons is not praiseworthy faith but is compelled by the evidence of signs; nor does it rest on divine revelation as the formal reason for believing through a pious disposition of the will.⁴⁸ Hence it is not true faith, as Christian faith is, whose beginning, whatever it may be, must be attributed to divine grace, as will become clear in Disputation 49.

XIII. Eleventh, he posits certain seeds of good will in nature, saying: Among these matters, we must diligently ask the heretics whether a person cannot do good, or is unwilling to do so, when the seeds of good will have been implanted in a person. He clearly assigns this, saying: ‘If you are willing to keep the commandments, they will preserve you.’⁴⁹⁵⁰ A little later: We therefore see that the consent of the human mind can pass both toward the good and toward the contrary. He also says: Just as he gave every person a hand, an eye, and a step, so likewise he granted every person a will, so that he might turn it in either direction. Justice, then, is not a personal gift in a person but God’s general and public gift, the way to attain salvation.⁵¹ Nevertheless, he teaches that these seeds of good will, which he places in nature, are brought to perfection and completion through God’s grace, as is clear from the passages cited in the preceding statement.

XIIII. Twelfth, he says that God grants his grace and mercy to one who does what lies within him by the powers of nature—believing, asking, seeking, knocking, and obeying the divine commandments. This is clearly gathered from what he says in Book 1, chapter 15. Explaining Romans 9, I will have mercy on whom I will, he says: This saying is to be understood in this way: ‘I will have mercy on whom I will,’ that is, on the one whom I recognize as just, whose ready faith I see, whom I perceive obeying my commandments, and whom I have found to do my will. In chapter 16: At whatever time someone has sought God, he has found him; and whoever seems not to have found him did not seek him. In Book 2, chapter 8, he says: In the case of Cornelius the Centurion, because his will preceded grace, grace thus also preceded regeneration.⁵² In chapter 19, explaining Matthew 7, Seek, and you will find, he says: When the human mind has opened its eyes to see, the light it seeks at once presents itself to the one who desires it.

XV. He moderates this assertion, however, by saying that human labor and good works which precede the helps of grace do not merit that same grace. Thus in Book 1, chapter 17, he says: But before all else, let us flee the arrogance of labor and claim nothing for ourselves on the score of its merits, lest we seem, with deadly insistence⁵³ and presumption, to imitate the Pharisee. For although he spoke the truth without hesitation when he prayed, ‘I fast twice a week; I give tithes of everything I possess,’⁵⁴ he emptied⁵⁵ the truth of its force because he mixed vanity with truth. It is therefore not the activity but the haughtiness of heart that must be avoided.⁵⁶⁵⁷ Cassian applies the same qualification, as will become clear below, numbers 26 and 28.

XVI. Thirteenth, he says that God predestined or reprobated no one before foreknowledge of the good or evil use of created free choice; otherwise a fatal necessity would be introduced, freedom of choice removed, and God would be unjust. Faustus remains constant in this assertion. He establishes it and often repeats it as the chief foundation of his view. For in Book 1, On Grace and the Choice of the Human Mind, chapter 4 at the end, he says: Just as an enemy might suddenly appear under the displayed guise of a pretended citizen, or as the deceitful cunning of an enemy might transform itself into an angel of light, so beneath the appearance of piety the evil of paganism—and within the name of grace a hidden fatal decree—lay concealed. If, then, as they claim, one person has been assigned to life and another to destruction, then, as one of the saints said, we are born not to be judged but already judged. Nor can any fairness of judgment stand according to this view. For if God gave nothing to his servant, what does he demand from the servant? In chapter 9: Nor does predestination draw in one direction when the choice of either side is offered. In chapter 10, explaining Then he will repay each according to his works,⁵⁸ he says: Observe that when he says ‘according to his works,’ the giver of grace places human salvation not in the predestination of the maker but in the activity of the servant. In chapter 11 he adds: When the destroyer of free choice declares that everything has been established and defined by predestination in either direction, he also empties even the highest remedies of repentance through a conception of reckless impiety. At the end of chapter 10, explaining For God is able to establish him,⁵⁹⁶⁰ he says: He plainly shows that a person’s condition can change in different directions, not by God’s determination but by the freedom of choice. In chapter 13, arguing against his own view from I will have mercy on whom I will,⁶¹ from which the predestination or predetermination just mentioned is inferred, he says that this passage is to be understood as: I will have mercy on whom I will, that is, on the one whom I recognize as just. By these words he plainly presupposes foreknowledge of the good use of free choice before the decree by which God determines to save a person. In chapter 16 he adds: If, as impious blasphemy asserts in its madness, some seem to have been ordained to death and others predestined to life, Christ had no reason to come, and had no necessity to die of the kind his goodness found. The new remedy, then, could accomplish nothing if an ancient decree had fixed human affairs before the ages. In Book 2, chapter 2 at the beginning, he says: They understand God’s foreknowledge and predestination wrongly when they assert that the cause of human actions arises from them. A little later: But you turn back and say, ‘Foreknowledge and predestination have fixed and stirred the causes of human actions and merits.’ That is not so; rather, the order of foreknowledge is derived from the origin of the human will. A few lines later: But you still say that human works and wills begin at the nod and impulse of heavenly foreknowledge. That is not so. Rather, understand this: God’s foreknowledge takes its beginning from the material of human actions. What God must determine and ordain about us with respect to the future consists in a person’s progress and failure. In chapter 3, after many words in which he teaches that foreknowledge of future consent precedes predestination, he concludes: And so, unless foreknowledge has first examined the matter, predestination decides nothing. In chapter 6, explaining So that God’s purpose according to election might stand—not from works but from him who calls, etc.⁶², he calls the opinion of those who say that God elects one person and reprobates another in such a way that there is no consideration of labor or devotion between two lost people a pagan impiety. A little later, speaking of the difference between the elect and the reprobate, he says: Yet amid this diversity of classes, many are chosen from among the reprobate Jews, and many are reprobated from among the elect Gentiles, so that you may understand that the just judge observes merits, not decrees, in either people.

XVII. But you say: “Although they had done nothing good or evil, they were already assigned to predetermined positions.” What is surprising, if he marked out the end of those whose actions he foresaw? Thus, just as it was clear that they had determined the course of their life according to their own choice, so they are foreknown by God’s power and ordained by his justice. All this is foretold about them, not decreed.⁶³ At the end of chapter 7 of the same book he concludes: Therefore the general judgment excludes the special decree you assert. Hence St. Prosper attributes this opinion to the Semi-Pelagians in his letter to Augustine, saying: For this is their definition and profession: Every person sinned when Adam sinned, and no one is saved by his own works but by the grace of God in rebirth. Yet the reconciliation offered in the sacrament of the Blood of Christ is set before all people without exception, so that whoever wishes to approach faith and baptism may be saved. God knew before the foundation of the world who would believe and who would remain in that faith in which, by God’s grace, they would thereafter be helped⁶⁴; he predestined to his kingdom those whom he foresaw would, though called freely, prove worthy of election and depart this life with a good end. A little later: Accordingly, all diligence is removed and the virtues are abolished, if God’s decree precedes human wills, and under the name of predestination a kind of fatal necessity is introduced, or the Lord is called the creator of different natures, if no one can be other than he was made to be.

Cassian’s error concerning the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice is brought to light.

XVIII. BEFORE we set out Cassian’s statements, we must note that in Conference 13 of Abbot Cheremon he disclosed that same Abbot’s mind concerning grace and free choice. Since Cassian does not reject Cheremon’s view, he seems to follow it; for this reason St. Prosper attacks him vigorously in the book he composed Against the Collator and proves with the clearest arguments, drawn from sacred Scripture and Augustine’s writings, that he does not depart from the paths of the Pelagians. Hence in Distinction 15, chapter Sancta Romana, Pope Gelasius counts among the apocrypha John Cassian’s book called The Shepherd. The Louvain Doctors, who are deeply learned in Augustine’s teaching, also appended certain notes and a censure of various statements of Cassian at the end of the Antwerp edition of 1578.

Cassian’s first statement, then, is that a person in fallen nature has a natural judgment for recognizing good and evil, and a natural capacity to embrace either one. His words are: One must not believe that God made a person such that he would never wish or be able to do good. Otherwise he did not grant him free choice, if he granted him the will and ability to do evil alone, but did not grant him by himself either to will or to be able to do good.⁶⁵ A little later he proves that the human race did not lose knowledge of the good after Adam’s transgression, citing Romans 2: For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, etc. He says: Therefore, after his transgression Adam conceived a knowledge of evil which he had not had, but he did not lose the knowledge of the good which he had received. Finally, the Apostle’s sentence most clearly shows that the human race did not lose knowledge of the good after the transgression: ‘For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires.’⁶⁶ A little farther down he adds: Finally, to show that the capacity exists in them, rebuking the Pharisees: Why, he says, do you not also judge for yourselves what is right?⁶⁷ He would certainly not have said this to them unless he knew that by natural judgment they could discern what is just. Hence we must be careful not to refer all the merits of the saints to God in such a way that we attribute to human nature nothing except what is evil and perverse. A few lines later he says: Free choice always remains in a person, by which he can either neglect or love the grace of God.

XIX. Second, he says that a person naturally has certain seeds of virtue, which nevertheless cannot reach perfection without grace: There can therefore, he says, be no doubt that seeds of virtue are naturally present in every soul, implanted by the Creator’s kindness; but unless these are stirred by God’s help, they cannot reach the increase that brings perfection, because, according to the Apostle, ‘Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.’⁶⁸⁶⁹⁷⁰ And in chapter 8: When God has seen in us the beginning of a good will, he immediately enlightens, strengthens, and urges it toward salvation, granting increase to that which he himself either planted or saw emerge through our effort.

XX. Third, he says that a person can have charity through the sole capacity of free choice. This assertion is gathered from what he says in Conference 13, chapter 14, explaining Deuteronomy 13, The Lord your God is testing you, so that it may be made clear whether you love him with all your heart and all your soul, or not.⁷¹ He says: But the Lord’s justice would not have permitted them to be tested unless he knew that an equal power of resistance was present in them, by which they could be judged guilty or worthy of praise with equitable judgment on either score. The same is gathered from chapter 10, where he admits that seeds of virtue are naturally present in every soul, among which he also includes charity, since he speaks absolutely of virtues. Hence St. Prosper attributes this statement to Cassian, saying: According to him, free choice has such integrity or capacity that it possesses charity—the foremost of all virtues—not as a gift from God but from the will alone.⁷² This will be treated in Disputation 51.

XXI. Fourth, he says that a person in fallen nature has sufficient strength to resist even very severe temptations and overcome every difficulty. He says this in Conference 13, chapter 14, where, speaking of Job’s temptations, which were extremely severe, he says: But since after the conflict the slanderous enemy does not dare to repeat any such complaint, he confesses that he was overcome not by God’s strength but by Job’s. Although we must believe that God’s grace was not wholly absent from him—for it granted the tempter as much power to tempt as it knew Job had strength to resist—it did not protect him from the enemy’s attack in such a way as to leave no room for human virtue.⁷³ A few lines later: Why, then, would it be necessary for those to be tempted whom the Lord knows to be so weak and fragile that they cannot resist the tempter by their own virtue? The Lord’s justice would certainly not have permitted them to be tempted unless he knew that an equal power of resistance was present in them, by which they could be judged guilty or worthy of praise with equitable judgment on either score. In Conference 7, chapter 7, when Germanus says, Resisting them, (namely, the dreadful temptations of adversaries) we would believe impossible, especially for this fragile flesh, unless we were encouraged to this belief by your statements, as by heavenly oracles: Cassian replies in chapter 8 of the same conference: Accordingly, just as there is in them that abundance of instigation, so too the power of resisting or the freedom to yield has been granted to us. Hence, in chapter 14 he explains God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted beyond what you are able as referring to the power to resist temptations by the capacity of nature. He says: God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to endure it.⁷⁴ When he says, ‘Let whoever stands see that he does not fall,’⁷⁵ he makes the freedom of choice vigilant; he knew that, once grace had been received, it could either stand through willing effort or fall through negligence. A little later: God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted beyond what you are able—he certainly does not pray that the Lord may never permit them to be tempted, but they will be tempted only up to what they are able to endure. The former shows the capacity of human choice; the latter shows the grace of the Godhead in moderating the endurance of temptations.

XXI.⁷⁶ Fifth, he says that God awaits our efforts and sometimes precedes us.⁷⁷ Cassian sets out the first part of this statement in so many words in Conference 13, chapter 13, where he says: Thus the grace of God always cooperates with our free choice toward the good and helps, protects, and defends it in all things, so that at times it even demands or awaits from it certain efforts of good will, lest he seem to bestow his gifts on one wholly asleep or dissolved in idle indolence, as though looking for occasions when, after rousing human sluggishness from its torpor, the generosity of his munificence might not appear unreasonable. And in chapter 12 he says: He waits for us, as it is said through the Prophet Isaiah: ‘Therefore the Lord waits, that he may have mercy on us.’⁷⁸

As for God sometimes preceding us, he affirms this in the same chapter 12, saying: The mercy of the Lord therefore precedes a person’s will, of which it is said, ‘My God, his mercy will precede me.’⁷⁹ And again, when the Lord withdraws and in a certain way holds back beneficially in order to test our choice, our will precedes him, as it is said, ‘My prayer will precede you in the morning.’⁸⁰ In chapter 17 he teaches that God sometimes incites the course of certain willing and thirsting people to greater fervor, but sometimes compels even the unwilling and resistant. He repeats the same in chapter 18, where he says: Some he receives when willing and running, but others, unwilling and resisting, he drags along and compels to a good will.

XXIII. Sixth, he says that not everything is to be attributed to grace in such a way that no praise or effort is left to free choice. For he says: It would be a matter of no praise or merit if Christ accomplished in someone what he himself had bestowed; otherwise he would have said, ‘I did not give so great a faith in Israel.’⁸¹ St. Prosper also attributes this assertion to Cassian, saying: He holds an impious view who thinks the person to whom God has given nothing is more blessed than the person to whom he has given everything.⁸² This will be treated in Disputation 63, no. 6; Disputation 97, no. 7; and Disputation 100.

XXIIII. Seventh, he says that a person can by natural capacity seek a physician and desire health: For, he says, a person does not enjoy health simply by willing it, nor is he freed from the disease of illness at the wish of his own choice. What does it profit him to have desired the grace of health, unless the Lord, who grants the use of life itself, also imparts the strength of well-being?⁸³ St. Prosper attacks these words, saying: You therefore teach that a person cannot obtain health by himself,⁸⁴ but that he has from himself the desire for health and comes to the physician solely of his own will; you do not say that it is also the physician’s doing that he comes. This statement will be attacked in Disputation 55.

XXV. Eighth, he says that grace is given to a person who strives by natural powers to do what lies within him, and that by this grace God directs the good efforts of nature, strengthens them, and stirs the will toward salvation. But lest he seem to agree with Pelagius, he qualifies this assertion by saying that such efforts are not meritorious of grace and are not always necessary. He affirms that grace is given to a person striving by the powers of nature in Conference 13, chapter 8, where he says: When God sees in us a certain beginning of good will, he immediately enlightens, strengthens, and urges it toward salvation, granting increase to that which he himself either planted or saw emerge through our effort. And in chapter 11: For when God sees that we are turning our will toward good, he comes to meet us, directs us, and strengthens us; at the sound of your cry, as soon as he hears it, he will answer you.⁸⁵

XXVI. He asserts that those efforts are not meritorious of grace in chapter 16 of the same Conference, immediately at the beginning, saying: Let no one suppose that we have said these things to establish that the sum of salvation lies under the control of our faith, according to the profane opinion of certain people who, assigning everything to free choice, determine that God’s grace is dispensed according to each person’s merit. And in chapter 13, after saying that God sometimes demands or awaits certain efforts of good will, he adds: Nevertheless, the grace of God always remains free, since with immeasurable generosity he bestows so great a glory of immortality and so great gifts of eternal blessedness in return for certain small and meager efforts. A little later: However strenuously human frailty may have labored, it cannot be equal to the reward to come; nor does it so diminish divine grace by its labors that grace does not always remain free.

XXVII. He affirms that those efforts are not always necessary in the cited chapter 13, saying: And thus the grace of God always cooperates with our free choice toward the good and in all things helps, protects, and defends it, so that at times it even demands or awaits from it certain efforts of good will. “At times,” he says, not always. And in chapter 17: By these examples that we have brought forward from the Gospel records, we can most clearly observe that God provides for the salvation of the human race in diverse and countless ways and by inscrutable paths: sometimes he invites the course of certain willing and thirsting people to greater fervor, but sometimes he compels even the unwilling and resistant. At one time he helps fulfill what he sees we have rightly desired; at another he also inspires the beginnings of a holy desire, or grants the beginning of a good work or perseverance. By saying, sometimes he invites the course of certain willing and thirsting people to greater fervor, but sometimes he compels the unwilling, he sufficiently indicates that prior efforts of good will are not always necessary for a person to receive the help of grace.

XXVIII Ninth, he says that prevenient grace depends on the works of nature and that this causal relation is real: because a person offers the beginning of good will, God has mercy on him. This is clear from Conference 13, chapter 1, at the beginning, where he says: These things are thus, in a certain way, mixed and confused without distinction, so that there is much debate among many people over which depends on which—that is, whether God has mercy on us because we have offered the beginning of good will, or whether, because God has mercy, we obtain the beginning of good will. For many, believing each of these points and asserting them all the more strongly, have become entangled in errors that contradict one another. Throughout that same Conference he teaches that at times God has mercy on us because we offer the beginning of good will, and at other times we obtain the beginning of good will because God has mercy. He plainly indicates that the help of prevenient grace is given on account of that good use of our will. The same may be gathered from the same Conference, chapter 9, where he understands the Apostle’s words God will repay each according to his works⁸⁶ as referring to works of nature that precede grace. Hence St. Prosper attributes this assertion to Cassian, saying: How do you fail to notice that you fall into that condemned opinion, and whether you wish it or not are proved to say that God’s grace is given according to our merits, when you assert that some good work must first come from people themselves, on account of which they obtain grace?⁸⁷ Cassian qualifies this statement, as he does the preceding one, by saying that grace is not given because those works are merits, but as though they were merely an occasion. This is clear from Book 12 of the Institutes, chapter 14, where he says: For he is ready, (that is, God) to bestow all these things, when only the occasion of good will has been offered to him by us. By these words he excludes from the works of nature every merit, both condign and congruous, since he says that those works are only an occasion upon which God grants the prior helps of prevenient grace. And in the same chapter he expressly excludes condign merit, for among other things he says: For we say, according to the Savior’s saying, that it is indeed given to those who ask, opened to those who knock, and found by those who seek; but our asking, knocking, and seeking are not condign, unless God’s mercy grants what we ask. Hilary, in his letter to Augustine, seems to have understood the error of the Semi-Pelagians in this sense, when he reports their assertion: Nor is grace denied if such a will is said to precede it, one that merely seeks the physician but is not yet itself capable of anything. The Council of Orange speaks in the same sense in canon 6: If anyone says that mercy is divinely bestowed on us when we believe, will, desire, and knock without God’s grace. “Mercy,” it says, for the people of Marseilles acknowledged that the helps of prevenient assisting grace are given from mercy, rather than from a debt of justice, to those who ask, seek, and knock through the capacity of nature, although God bestowed them on the occasion of these efforts of nature.

Some more recent theologians, among those who deny that God by actual assisting grace premoves, applies, or efficaciously predetermines the created will to consent, acknowledge that this was the same sense held by the Semi-Pelagians. They confirm it by the authority of the holy Fathers, especially Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 2, who says: See whether anything is being done now except that grace is given in some way according to our merits, and so grace is no longer grace. They emphasize the phrase “in some way,” since it extends merit to every possible kind of merit.

XXIX. Finally, he says that God’s predestination is general with respect to everyone and not gratuitous with respect to some. This is clear from Conference 13, chapter 7, where he says: When its kindness has seen even the smallest spark of good will shine out—or one that it itself has struck from the hard flint of our heart—it cherishes and rekindles it; strengthening it with its inspiration, it wills all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.⁸⁸ A little later: For if he does not will that one of the little ones should perish, how can he, without grave sacrilege, be thought to will not that all universally, but only some, be saved for the sake of all? Other matters relating to Cassian’s errors will be discussed below in the particular controversies. For now, this general account of the error of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians is enough. From it anyone can easily gather how the Semi-Pelagians differ from the Pelagians or agree with them. This one point must be noted at the close of this disputation: Faustus and Cassian, like Pelagius as was said above, admitted prevenient grace of whatever sort or kind, yet in practice denied it, since they asserted that it is given to us according to the merit of faith. Hence Maxentius, speaking against Faustus, who had promised in his book to prove against Pelagius that grace is not given according to our merits, says: But afterward, forgetting his promise, he is shown to empty grace altogether and more fully.

What the Manichaeans of old, and the Lutherans and Calvinists of our day, thought about the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice.

I. To explain this difficulty, and to keep Catholic doctrine from being confused with the error of the Manichaeans, Lutherans, or Calvinists, but to make clear the dogma for which these heretics were condemned by the holy Council of Trent, we must observe that, as St. Thomas noted, many heretics, while wishing to avoid certain errors, fell into contrary errors.¹ Thus Arius, while wishing to avoid Sabellius’s error of confusing the persons of the Holy Trinity, fell into the contrary error of dividing the divine essence. Similarly Eutyches, while wishing to avoid Nestorius’s error of dividing the person of God and man in Christ, established the contrary error, confessing that there was one nature of God and man. And when some wish to avoid Origen’s error—that all punishments after death are purgatorial—they fall into the contrary error of saying that no punishment after death is purgatorial. In like manner the Pelagians, to persuade simple people of their destructive dogmas, pretended to depart from the error of the Manichaeans, as if it were enough for a Catholic to attack one ancient heresy without also taking care to avoid every other extreme and to cling to Catholic truth, which lies in the middle. So, too, the Lutherans and Calvinists, wishing to depart from Pelagius’s heresy—that grace is given according to our merits and that a person can perform works of piety by the natural power of free choice—denied, with the Manichaeans, the freedom of that created choice and consequently removed all merit, proclaiming that a person can do nothing freely and that free choice is an empty name, a title without substance. The Council of Sens, held against Luther, also noted this in these words: Luther fell into the error of the Manichaeans by avoiding Pelagius too anxiously and scrupulously. For, fearing to exalt free choice too much with Pelagius, he attributed every good work in a person to God and divine grace, and nothing at all to free choice. Thus, removing free choice altogether, Luther became a Manichaean while fleeing from being a Pelagian. Yet Luther ought to have known from the Apostle that divine grace is so necessary for acting well that, with grace, free choice nevertheless performs a good work.² Therefore, just as Luther, wishing to avoid Pelagius, removed free choice, so Pelagius, wishing to establish free choice against the Manichaeans, left no place for the grace of Christ. Hence St. Augustine, replying to a certain letter of Julian and other Pelagians who, under the pretext of defending freedom of choice, attacked the grace of Christ with hostility, Why is it necessary, he says, to refute even those things that do not contain the treacherous poisons of their doctrine, but only seem to call to their aid, or in support of the Catholic faith against the impiety of the Manichaeans (as they call it), the confession of the Eastern bishops? They strive for nothing else than that, with the dreadful heresy held up as a charge, whose opponents they pretend to be, they may hide as enemies of grace beneath praise of nature.³⁴ Who has ever raised a question against them on this point? Or which Catholics are displeased with them because they condemn those whom the Apostle foretold would depart from the faith, having a seared conscience, forbidding marriage and abstaining from foods they consider unclean, though they do not believe that all things were created by God?⁵ Who ever compelled them to deny that every creature of God is good and that there is no substance which the supreme God did not make, except God himself, who was made by no one? It is not these things in them, which are agreed to be Catholic, that are reproved and condemned. The Catholic faith detests the excessive, foolish, and harmful impiety of the Manichaeans, and so do all heretics who are not Manichaeans. Thus these Pelagians do one thing well: they anathematize the Manichaeans and oppose their errors. But they do two evil things for which they too must be anathematized: one, that they accuse Catholics of being Manichaeans; the other, that they themselves introduce a new heresy. For people are not therefore sound in the faith because they do not suffer from the Manichaean disease. Disease is not of one kind, either in bodies or in minds. Just as a physician of the body does not at once pronounce a patient free from danger of death because he has denied that he is dropsical, if he has found him afflicted with another deadly disease, so the truth does not congratulate these people for not being Manichaeans if they rave in another kind of perversity. Therefore it is one thing that we anathematize along with them, and another that we anathematize in them. We detest along with them what rightly displeases them too, but in such a way that we detest in them the things for which they themselves rightly displease us. And a little later: Let the Pelagians cease to object to Catholics what they are not, and cease to wish to be considered lovable merely because they oppose the hateful error of the Manichaeans; let them rather recognize that they are deservedly hateful because they do not turn away from their own error. Two errors can be contrary to each other, but both must be detested because both are contrary to the truth.⁶ For if the Pelagians are to be loved because they hate the Manichaeans, the Manichaeans too must be loved because they hate the Pelagians. But may it never be that the Catholic Mother, on account of hatred for one side, chooses to love the other, when she warns us—and, with the Lord’s help, must do so—to avoid both and desires to heal both. So that it may become clearer than light how sound Catholic doctrine proceeds between two extreme errors—those of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians on one side, and those of the Manichaeans, Lutherans, and Calvinists on the other—the reader, I think, will welcome the statements of the Manichaeans and other heretics who adhered to them or held their heresy, following the errors of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians that we noted in the preceding disputation.

III.

The Manichaeans, as St. Augustine says, arose from a certain Persian called Manin. Although he too began to be called by the name of his insane doctrine—for before that he was called Urbinus—his disciples in Greece, avoiding the name of insanity, as though more learned and more deceitful than he, doubled the letter n and called him Manichaeus, as though he were pouring forth manna, instead of Manicheus, that is, ‘insane.’⁷ Writing against Faustus: You swear, he says, by your lord Manichaeus, who was called Manes in his native language. But to avoid the name of insanity among the Greeks, as though you had changed and lengthened the name, you added a kind of fusion, so that you might be more greatly freed. One of you explained to me why he was called Manichaeus: namely, so that in Greek he might seem to pour forth manna, since in Greek χεῖ means ‘to pour.’ I do not know what you have done, except that you seem to us to dream insanity even more plainly. For you did not add one letter at the beginning of the name so that Manes would be recognized as ‘manna’; you added two syllables at the end, not calling him Manes but Manichaeus, as though nothing else came to sound through his long and empty speeches than the pouring forth of insanity.⁸

IV.

These men, besides very many other fables that do not pertain to the present question and that St. Augustine also recounts at length under heresy 46, asserted many erroneous dogmas that agree with the Pelagians and others that paved the way for the Lutherans and Calvinists.

First, Manichaeus set up two principles, different and opposed to one another, both eternal and coeternal—that is, existing always—and, following certain other ancient heretics, he held that there were two natures and substances, namely good and evil. He asserted according to his dogmas that these were at war and mixed together, that the good was purged of the evil, and that the good which could not be purged was condemned to eternity with the evil. He tells many fables, all of which it would take too long to weave into this work. ⁹

Second, they held that sinners are evil by nature and produced by an evil principle, and that they are not evil by the freedom of their own choice. Augustine reports this in these words: That discussion, namely, On Free Choice, was undertaken because of those who deny that the origin of evil is derived from the freedom of the will and intend to blame the Creator of all natures, if indeed that is so. In this way they wish, according to the error of their impiety—for they are Manichaeans—to introduce a certain unchangeable nature of evil, coeternal with God. To oppose this error, while he was still living at Rome, St. Augustine wrote three books On Free Choice, as he himself attests in Book 1 of the Retractions, chapter 9. ¹⁰

Third, as the same saint reports, the Manichaeans said: The carnal desire by which the flesh lusts against the spirit is not an infirmity present in us from the nature corrupted in the first man, but they say that it is a contrary substance, so inherent in us that when we are freed and cleansed, it is separated from us and itself lives immortally in its own nature. ¹¹

Fourth, they assert that baptism in water brings no one any salvation, and they think none of those whom they deceive should be baptized. ¹²

V.

Fifth, they said that an evil person cannot become good, nor can a good person become evil by his own freedom. Jerome reports this, recalling that the Manichaeans, among other heretics, asserted: Human virtue and knowledge can attain perfection—and I do not say likeness, but equality with God—so that they claim that when they have ascended to the summit of perfection, they cannot sin even through thought or ignorance. ¹³

Sixth, they say that a human being does not have free choice but does everything by fatal necessity. Jerome reports this in the cited preface, where he says: It is characteristic of the Manichaeans to condemn human nature, take away free choice, and remove God’s help. Augustine reports the same in his work Against Fortunatus the Manichaean; so do Chrysostom, Homily 45 on John, and Socrates, Book 1, chapter 17. These are the points relevant to our purpose, which, together with very many others, St. Augustine also gathers into one place, comparing the Manichaeans with the Pelagians and showing that the Catholic Church refutes both and opposes their errors and inventions; for he says: ¹⁴

VI.

The Manichaeans say that the good God is not the Creator of all natures. The Pelagians say that God is not the cleanser, savior, and liberator of people of every age. The Catholic faith rebukes both: against the Manichaeans it defends God’s creation, so that no creature is denied to have been established by him; against the Pelagians it insists that human nature, lost in every age, be sought out. The Manichaeans blame the desire of the flesh not as an accidental vice but as a nature that has been evil from eternity. The Pelagians praise it as no vice but a natural good. The Catholic faith rebukes both: it tells the Manichaeans that it is not nature but vice; it tells the Pelagians that it is not from the Father but from the world, so that both may allow it to be healed like an illness—one ceasing to believe it incurable, the other ceasing to proclaim it praiseworthy. The Manichaeans deny that the beginning of evil in a good person came from free choice. The Pelagians say that even an evil person has free choice sufficient to do a good commandment. The Catholic faith rebukes both: to the Manichaeans it says, ‘God made man upright’;¹⁵ to the Pelagians it says, ‘If the Son sets you free, you will be truly free.’¹⁶ The Manichaeans say that the soul, a fragment of God, has sin from its mixture with an evil nature. The Pelagians say that a just soul, though not a fragment but a creature of God, has no sin even in this corruptible life. The Catholic faith rebukes both: to the Manichaeans it says, ‘Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.’¹⁷ This would not be said to a person who by nature could not act, unless sin were vice and not nature. To the Pelagians it says, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’¹⁸ Manichaeans and Pelagians contend with these contrary diseases: they have different wills but similar vanity, separated by differing opinions but close in their perverse minds. Indeed, they attack Christ’s grace together, nullify his baptism together, and dishonor his flesh together, though in different ways and for different reasons. The Manichaeans say that help is owed by the merits of good nature; the Pelagians say it is owed by the merits of a good will. The former say, ‘God owes this to the labors of his members’; the latter say, ‘He owes it to the virtues of his servants.’ Therefore for both, the reward is not credited according to grace but according to debt. The Manichaeans profanely contend that the laver of regeneration—that is, water itself—is superfluous and does no good. The Pelagians assert that what is said to expiate sins in holy baptism does not help infants, since they have no sin. In baptizing little children, then, as far as the remission of sins is concerned, the Manichaeans destroy the visible element, while the Pelagians destroy even the invisible sacrament. The Manichaeans dishonor Christ’s flesh by blaspheming the Virgin’s childbirth; the Pelagians do so by making the flesh of those to be redeemed equal to the flesh of the Redeemer. For Christ was born not in sinful flesh, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, because the flesh of other people is born sinful. The Manichaeans, then, detesting all flesh, take away from Christ’s flesh its evident reality; the Pelagians, asserting that no sinful flesh is born, take away from Christ’s flesh its proper dignity. Elsewhere, continuing the same comparison, after listing five dogmas asserted by the Pelagians, he adds: But since in these five matters I have set forth—where they seek hiding places and weave their accusations—they are exposed and refuted by divine teachings, they have devised the hateful name of the Manichaeans to frighten the uninformed, as many as they can, so that they will not lend their ears to the truth against their most perverse dogmas.¹⁹ For the Manichaeans blasphemously condemn the first three of these five, saying that neither human creation, nor marriage, nor the Law was established by the highest and true God. But they do not accept what the truth says: that sin began from free choice, and that every evil, whether of an angel or a human being, came from it. For, straying very far from God, they preferred to believe that the nature of evil is always evil and coeternal with God. They also attack the holy patriarchs and prophets with as many curses as they can. Behold the means by which these new heretics think that, by casting the name of the Manichaeans as an accusation, they can evade the force of truth. But they do not escape it, for the truth pursues and overthrows both the Manichaeans and the Pelagians. A person, when born, rebukes the Manichaean and praises the Creator insofar as he is something good, in that he is human. But insofar as he bears original sin, he rebukes Pelagius and has need of a Savior. For the very claim that this nature must be healed strikes back at both: it would need no medicine if it were sound, which is against the Pelagian; nor could it be healed at all if it were an eternal and unchangeable evil, which is against the Manichaean. Likewise, when we say that the desire of the flesh is not to be attributed to marriage, which we praise as established by the Lord, our view opposes both the Pelagians, who list it among goods, and the Manichaeans, who attribute it to an evil nature, whereas it is an accidental evil of our nature—not to be separated by God’s distinction but to be healed by God’s mercy. Likewise, when we say that the holy, just, and good Law was established not to justify the impious but to convict the proud of transgression, our view opposes the Manichaeans, since the Apostle praises the Law, and the Pelagians, since according to the Apostle no one is justified by the Law.²⁰ Thus, for those to be justified whom the letter kills—that is, whom the good Law, by commanding, makes guilty through transgression—the Spirit of grace freely gives help. Likewise, our saying that free choice to do evil must be liberated by God’s grace in order to do good opposes the Pelagians; our saying that evil, which did not exist before, arose from free choice, opposes the Manichaeans. Likewise, our honoring the holy patriarchs and prophets with the praise due to them in God opposes the Manichaeans. But our saying that the Lord’s propitiation was necessary even for them, though they were just and pleasing to God, opposes the Pelagians. The Catholic faith therefore finds both of them, like the other heretics, opposed to it, and refutes both by the authority of divine testimonies and the light of truth.

VII. The Lutherans and Calvinists agree in part with the Manichaeans and in part with the Pelagians, although they differ from both groups in many of their assertions. They agree with the Manichaeans in removing free choice and asserting that the origin of evil proceeds not from the free choice of the will but from God himself. They agree with the Pelagians in accepting the inference: for the latter, on being convinced by it, denied preoperating grace and removed the eternal, absolute, and efficacious decree of the divine will by which God determined all things to be done in time. Thus they followed the same path into contrary and mutually conflicting errors and departed from the Catholic faith. The assertions of the Lutherans and Calvinists in which they agree with the Manichaeans are the following.

ASSERTIONS OF THE LUTHERANS AND CALVINISTS CONCERNING GRACE AND FREE CHOICE.

VIII. BEFORE we report the assertions of the Lutherans, we must note that they often contradict not only Catholic truth but also themselves, now advancing and now denying what they had taught in earlier writings, as Jodocus Coccius demonstrates at great length with many examples in his Catholic Treasury, Book 8, On the Signs of the Church, articles 7 and 8. Philip Melanchthon also frankly admits his own inconsistency on this point, saying: In the Apology we change many things daily, for they must continually be changed and adapted to circumstances.²¹ A theologian should therefore not assume that Luther, Calvin, or their followers wholly retracted or corrected their errors just because they said the opposite elsewhere. Rather, their craftiness should be execrated: to deceive the simple minds of Catholics and capture the sheep of the Lord Christ, they covered themselves with a sheep’s skin and Catholic words, although they were wolves, and most rapacious wolves, as will become clear from what follows.

The first dogma of the Lutherans and Calvinists, then, is that a person does not truly have free choice, but that free choice in him is a title without substance, a thing that exists only in name. The impious Luther asserted this: Free, he says, choice after sin is a thing in name alone, and when a person does what lies within him, he sins mortally. Free choice is a fiction in reality, a title without substance, since no one has it in his power to think anything good or evil; rather, as Wycliffe, condemned at Constance, rightly teaches, everything happens by absolute necessity. The poet also wished this when he said, ‘Let all things happen under a fixed law.’²² Elsewhere he says: It is an error, he says, to say that free choice has activity in a good work when we are speaking of an inward work.²³ For willing—that is, believing, hoping, loving, as we have already said—is a motion, a being carried along, led by the Word of God, and a kind of continual purification and renewal of the mind and understanding from day to day in the knowledge of God, even if that passion is not always equally intense; nevertheless it is always a passion. ‘Behold,’ Jeremiah says, ‘as clay in the potter’s hand, so are you, house of Israel, in my hand.’²⁴ I ask you, what activity does clay have when the potter shapes it? Is it not purely passive? Elsewhere he says: God foreknows nothing contingently; rather, by an immutable, eternal, and infallible will he foresees, proposes, and does all things. From this he infers: God’s foreknowledge therefore directly conflicts with free choice.²⁵ How invalid this inference is, by which Pelagians and Lutherans alike have been deceived, will appear below when we explain the agreement of free choice with God’s absolute decree.²⁶

IX. Calvin agrees with the passages cited above, especially in Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, section 7; his words will be reported at number 17.

There is nevertheless a difference between Luther and Calvin. Luther asserted that free choice has no activity in an inward good work, but cooperates only passively by receiving a motion produced by God alone, as his words quoted above show. Calvin, however, moderated Luther’s error to some extent. He admits that our free choice does not act purely passively, like some lifeless thing, but cooperates actively and by a spontaneous movement in its own operations—though not freely. Hence in Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 5, section 14, Foreign to the question, he says, is that comparison with which he unfairly burdens us. For who is so foolish as to claim that human motion differs in no way from the throwing of a stone? Nor does anything like this follow from our doctrine. We assign to the natural faculties of a human being the powers to approve, reject, will, refuse, strive, and resist: namely, to approve vanity, reject solid goodness, will evil, refuse good, strive toward wickedness, and resist justice.

X. Philip Melanchthon held the same error. In his second edition, on chapter eight of the Epistle to the Romans, while attacking free choice in man, he says: Since our will is so far from being free that it is carried only where it is driven by God, there is no contingency among things, but necessity, according to God’s declaration. And in Book 2 of the Commonplaces, chapter “On Free Choice,” he says: What then, you will ask: is there no contingency in human affairs? Nothing of chance, nothing of fortune? Scripture teaches that all things happen necessarily. Although contingency may seem to you to exist in human affairs, here the judgment of reason must be overruled. And a little later: Who could have concealed Scripture’s teaching on predestination, when Scripture takes away the freedom of our will through the necessity of predestination, etc. If you refer the human will to predestination, there is no freedom in either external or internal works; rather, everything happens according to divine predestination. If you refer the will to external works, some freedom seems to exist by nature’s judgment; but if you refer the will to the affections, there is absolutely no freedom, even by nature’s judgment.

XI. This heresy of Luther and Calvin, which denies free choice, was an old one among many heretics. For, besides the Manichaeans cited above, Simon Magus (as Clement of Rome reports) held that nothing happens by human choice, but everything by fate.²⁷ The Priscillianists (as Pope Leo I and St. Augustine report), following the doctrines of the Manichaeans, asserted that men are bound by the stars of fate.²⁸ Finally, the Albigensians (as St. Antoninus reports) maintained that sin does not belong to free choice.²⁹ John Wycliffe, Trialogue 2, chapter 13: God, he says, necessitates each active creature to each of its acts, and in Dialogue 3, chapter 9: Can a creature impede God’s determination and make the eternal truth proceeding from God’s purpose concern something that will not happen? As if the divine purpose and eternal truth depended on them. And a little later: God’s purpose must necessarily be fulfilled, and thus every future event will happen necessarily. How these heretics, however, drew from this principle—God has predestined, decreed by an efficacious decree, and ordained from eternity all good acts that take place in time, and impels and moves the created will to elicit them—the false and flimsy argument that the will is not truly free in its operations will become clear below.³⁰

XII. A second heresy, akin to the preceding one, held by the Lutherans, asserts that nothing is future contingently, but that everything happens from absolute necessity. This is clear from the passages cited in the preceding number. But it is explicitly followed by Philip Melanchthon, Book 2 of the Commonplaces, chapter “On Free Choice”; Theodore Beza, in the Summary of Christianity, pages 17, 177, and 186, All things, he says, happen so necessarily from God’s immutable decree that, according to it, Judas necessarily betrayed Christ; Herod and Pilate necessarily condemned Christ; the reprobate sin and perish necessarily; Adam necessarily fell, although he was created good for a time, but in such a way that, by God’s inevitable decree, God knowing and ordaining it, he would fall—since he could not fall in that way except by God’s decree, will, and ordination. And in The Eradication of Nestrusius’s Calumnies, answering the first calumny concerning God’s providence: Not only all things, he says, but also each particular thing is done and happens by God’s decree, and by a decree of such a kind that it can in no way fail. If we consider God’s decree, Judas betrayed the Lord necessarily at that very moment. Herod also and Pilate necessarily condemned Christ (as the Apostles say), since they came together to do whatever the Lord’s hand and counsel had determined beforehand should be done.³¹ And in his book On the Secret Predestination of God against Castalio, folio 359: We say that Adam fell indeed of his own accord and by his own fault, yet not by chance, but as God’s determinate plan, providence, and hand had justly determined things should happen.

XIII. Luther’s third heresy asserts that God’s commandments cannot be kept even through grace, but are altogether impossible for man. Luther says so in his Refutation of Latomus’s Argument: So many, he says, testimonies of Scripture prove that the commandment is impossible for us that nothing is clearer. And in his reply to the dialogue of Sylvester Prierias: You do very badly in denying that the Savior commanded impossible things; you do much worse in daring to call this falsehood. In this life we cannot fulfill God’s commandments. Philip Melanchthon, in the first edition, on chapter 4 of the Epistle to the Romans: When the Law commands that God be loved, it commands something just as impossible as if it ordered us to fly across the Caucasus. And Calvin, Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 7: Let it be beyond dispute that fulfillment of the Law is impossible in this flesh. Finally, John Monheim, Dialogue 3: No one, he says, however perfect, can accomplish what the Law commands.

XIV. The fourth heresy of the Lutherans, the most impious and blasphemous of all, asserts that God is the cause and author of sin, and works evil deeds in us just as he works good ones. For Luther speaks as follows: How can a man prepare himself for good, when it is not even in his power to make his ways evil? For God also works evil deeds in the wicked, as Proverbs 16 says: ‘The Lord has made all things for himself, even the wicked for the evil day.’ Who dares deny that even in evil deeds he is driven or compelled to do something other than what he had thought?³² And elsewhere he says: If God foresaw that Judas would be a traitor, Judas necessarily became a traitor; it was not in Judas’s hand, nor in that of any creature, to act otherwise or change his will, although he did it willingly and without compulsion. But willing was his act, which God moved by his omnipotence, just as he does all other things.³³

XV. Calvin followed the same error, in his book against Pighius and Book 3 of the Institutes, chapter 23, sections 7 and 8; Philip Melanchthon, on chapter 8 of Romans in the first edition and on chapter 9 of the same epistle; and Zwingli, in his sermon on providence, chapter 6. Other ancient heretics were infected with this error too, but especially Marcion, who (as Tertullian and Irenaeus report) asserted that God is the cause of evil.³⁴ The Persians likewise (as Agathias reports, Book 2, chapter 12), together with the Manichaeans, posit two first principles: one good and productive of all the best things, and the other wholly opposed to these. Among the ancient philosophers, too, there were authors of this same error. For Chrysippus the Stoic (as Plutarch reports in On the Stoics’ Contradictions) God, he says, works wars and wickedness by inciting and perverting men. Simon Magus (as Vincent of Lérins says) dared to call God the author of our evils, that is, of our crimes, impieties, and misdeeds; for he claims that God creates human nature with his own hands in such a way that, by a certain movement of its own and the impulse of a necessary will, it wants nothing other than to sin.³⁵

XVI. Their fifth heresy asserts that our will, unless bent by God’s grace, is naturally inclined to evil. Thus Calvin, Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, number 8, says: It is by sheer grace that we begin to will the good, since by nature we are wholly inclined toward evil. And in number 9, from Solomon’s words, The Lord inclines our heart toward himself (1 Kings 8), he concludes: This shows the perversity of our heart: by nature it exults in rebellion against the divine Law unless it is bent.

XVII. Their sixth heresy is that God begins and completes a good work in us by moving free choice in such a way that our will does not cooperate freely, but only follows the divine motion by a spontaneous movement. Thus Calvin, Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, section 7, says: But perhaps there will be those who grant that the will, averse to good by its own disposition, is converted by the Lord’s power alone, yet in such a way that, once prepared, it then has its own part in acting, as Augustine teaches: grace precedes every good work, with the will accompanying, not leading, it, following, not preceding. Peter Lombard improperly twists to this purpose what the holy man did not express badly. I, however, contend that both in the Prophet’s words I cited and in other passages two things are clearly signified: the Lord corrects—or rather abolishes—our depraved will and substitutes for it a good will from himself. Insofar as it is preceded by grace, I allow you to call it following; but since it is the Lord’s work once it has been reformed, it is wrongly attributed to man that he obeys prevenient grace with a following will. Therefore Chrysostom was wrong to write that neither grace without the will nor the will without grace can do anything, as if grace did not also work the will itself, as we recently saw from Paul.

XVIII. The seventh heresy of the Lutherans asserts that God’s grace is efficacious of itself in such a way that our will does not cooperate with it freely, but only spontaneously, willingly, and without compulsion. Thus Calvin, Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, number 11: Christ’s saying, ‘Everyone who has heard from my Father comes to me,’³⁶ can be understood in no other way than as teaching that God’s grace is efficacious of itself, as Augustine also agrees. Those who wrote against Calvin understood his words in this way, especially Stapleton in the Catholic Promptuary, Friday of the first week of Lent, number 4, where he says: Grace is not efficacious of itself (as Calvin puts it), working the whole thing alone, with which we do not cooperate freely.³⁷ Hence Calvin himself says in number 12: Once we have been tamed by the Lord’s power into the service of righteousness, we proceed willingly and are inclined to follow the action of grace; for it is most certain that where God’s grace reigns, there is such readiness to obey. He says “proceed willingly,” not “freely,” because he always denied that the will freely follows the motion of efficacious grace. In this Calvin erred, though not in recognizing that prevenient grace is truly efficacious.

These and other fictions and errors of the heretics, by which Calvin separated himself from the unity of the Catholic Church, will be refuted below, especially in Disputation 22, number 31; Disputations 24 and 25; Disputation 97, number 11; Disputation 98, number 10; and Disputation 121, especially number 10. There it will be made clear that God’s eternal decree and the efficacy of divine grace that acts beforehand in no way prejudice the freedom of our free choice, but rather perfect, establish, and strengthen it.

What certain Catholic Doctors think about the natural powers of free choice and its harmony with divine foreknowledge, providence, predestination, and the efficacy of the helps of grace.

Here the account of this same harmony is presented, and the foundations on which they rely, together with the principal assertions they derive from them, are reported.

I. There are four most important foundations by which certain theologians think they have explained exactly and clearly the harmony of free choice with the gifts of grace, divine foreknowledge, providence, predestination, and reprobation; and through that account have opened an easy way by which both Pelagians and Lutherans might reach the unity of the Church and the sincerity of the Faith. They do not doubt that this same harmony would have been approved by Augustine and the other Fathers by unanimous consent, had it been presented and explained to them.

The first and most important foundation is that a certain knowledge must be posited in God, intermediate between purely natural and purely free knowledge.¹ Through it, before any decree of his will predetermining the future act, God knows what a created free choice would do by its innate freedom if it were placed in such circumstances and moved by such an excitation. For they say that three kinds of knowledge must be distinguished in God. One is purely natural knowledge, which therefore could not in any respect have been otherwise in God; through it he knew all things to which divine power extends, whether immediately or through the intervention of secondary causes: both the natures of individuals and their necessary combinations, and also contingent things—not as to whether they would or would not be future in any determinate way, but as things that could indifferently either be or not be, which necessarily belongs to them and therefore also falls under God's natural knowledge. Another is purely free knowledge, by which, after a free act of his will and without any hypothesis or condition, God knew absolutely and determinately, from all the combinations of contingent things, which would in reality be future and which would not. Finally, the third is middle knowledge, by which, from his highest and inscrutable comprehension of each free choice, God saw in his essence what it would do by its innate freedom if it were placed in this or that—or even in infinitely many—orders of things, although it could, if it wished, actually do the opposite. If one asks whether this middle knowledge should be called free or natural, they answer that it partly has the character of natural knowledge, insofar as it precedes a free act of the divine will and it was not in God's power to know something else; and partly has the character of free knowledge, insofar as its being knowledge of one thing rather than another comes from this: that free choice, on the supposition that it were created in one or another order of things, would do one rather than the other, although it could indifferently do either. Therefore it is not wrongly called middle knowledge, though some say it should be reduced to the knowledge of simple intelligence, others to the knowledge of vision, and still others call it conditional knowledge, or knowledge of conditional futures. This will be treated in Disputation 7.

They posit this middle knowledge as the chief foundation of that harmony so that from it, as if from a first root, they may derive the certainty and infallibility of divine providence and predestination with regard to the attainment of their effects. For since they teach that predestination is not certain by the order and causality of the means, and that the helps by which the predestined reach eternal life are not efficacious through the real and intrinsic power they have as coming from God, but are efficacious depending on the free cooperation of created choice with them, if such certainty were not drawn radically from middle foreknowledge, no solid foundation would remain on which the infallibility of predestination could rest. For they think that the predefinitions and predeterminations of the efficacious divine will, and the existence that future contingents have in eternity before they are brought into existence in time—on which Thomists say the aforementioned certainty must be based—are incompatible with freedom. Hence they conclude that without middle knowledge the freedom of our choice cannot remain intact.

II. From this they infer, first, that the knowledge by which God foresees, before he decides to create a will, what it would do on the supposition that it were placed in that order of things depends on the fact that the will itself, by its freedom, would do this or that, and not conversely. Consequently, they affirm that something is future not because God knows it will be future; rather, because it will be future through free choice, it is therefore known by God before it happens. This must be examined in Disputation 6. ²

Second, they infer that the certainty and infallibility of divine foreknowledge with respect to future contingents cannot be drawn from the real existence they have in eternity before they are brought into existence in time, or in any other measure proper to them. For they think that such existence in eternity takes away the freedom of choice, but their arguments will be answered in Disputations 8 and 9. ³

Third, they infer that God does not know future acts of free choice certainly and infallibly by a decree, or by an absolute and efficacious predetermination of his divine will.⁴ For they think that such predetermination, prior to foreknowledge of the future determination of free choice on the supposition that it is placed in such an order of things, greatly prejudices the freedom of choice. This will be treated in Disputations 10 and 11.

Fourth, they infer that the order of causes and means established by divine providence, once middle foreknowledge is set aside, imposes absolutely no necessity on free choice—not only no necessity of the consequent, but not even of the consequence. This will be discussed in Disputations 25, 30, 31, and 32. They teach the same about predestination: namely, that it is not certain with respect to the attainment of its effects by the certainty of the order and causality of the means, but only by the certainty of that middle foreknowledge on which, according to these same authors, the certainty of predestination depends at its root. Some of them do indeed admit that providence and predestination are certain even by the certainty of the order and causality of the means, provided this certainty presupposes the certainty grounded in middle foreknowledge. This will be discussed at greater length in Disputation 41. ⁵

They reason in the same way about the certainty of the predestination of infants. They say that predestined infants attain eternal life not through the certainty of the means and the effect of predestination, which is not in itself certainly future, but through the certainty of divine foreknowledge, by which God, in the depth of his intellect, knew with certainty to be future what is uncertain in itself and can fail to be. Therefore, they say, apart from the certainty of divine foreknowledge there is no certainty in the means or effect of the predestination of infants that they will attain eternal life. This will be treated in Disputation 41.

Fifth, they infer that the good use of free choice, foreknown by God through middle knowledge, is a condition without which the plan of the ordering of means to a supernatural end, pre-existing in the divine mind, would not have the character of predestination with respect to such a person, but would retain the common character of supernatural providence. This will be discussed in Disputations 37 and 38. ⁶

III. The second foundation is that God's general concurrence is not an immediate influx into the secondary cause, nor does it premove or apply that cause to acting; rather, it is an immediate influx with the secondary cause into its action and effect.⁷ They add that the influx into the cause, which Thomists posit so that secondary causes may be applied and moved to act, is fictitious and entirely unnecessary. They extend this teaching to God's general concurrence with free choice in works of the natural order. For they say that just as God's general concurrence with a cause acting through a transitive action—for example, fire producing heat in water—is not God's influx into the fire but into the water, where the effect is received, produced jointly by God and the fire, so God's general concurrence with a cause acting through an immanent action, such as the intellect producing understanding or the will producing an act of willing, is not an influx of God into the cause insofar as it is an agent, as if it acted after first being moved and excited by him. Rather, God acts with the cause insofar as it is an agent upon the cause itself insofar as it is a patient, receiving within itself an effect produced jointly by that cause and God through the partial influx of each. They hold the same about God's general concurrence in supernatural acts. For they assert that there is no immediate concurrence in free choice as a cause, as though, first moved by that concurrence and applied by God to acting, it elicited such acts; instead, there is God's immediate influx into the acts themselves together with free choice and prevenient grace. Their chief reason for being convinced of this is that they think these premotions and applications of secondary causes to their operations greatly prejudice the freedom of our choice. They reason in the same way about the actual help of assisting grace, insofar as it helps and cooperates: they say that there is no immediate influx into free choice as a cause, but an immediate influx together with free choice into its operation. They nevertheless admit that God's concurrence through exciting grace is an influx into free choice as a cause, and gives it strength by which, if it wills, it can perform acts that by its own natural power alone it could not produce.⁸ In this respect they assign two differences between God's general concurrence and the special concurrence of exciting grace. The first is that God's general concurrence in natural acts is not a concurrence of God in free choice as the cause of those acts, as though free choice first received a motion within itself and were thereby applied and made able to exercise causal influence upon the act; rather, it is an immediate influx together with free choice into the act. But the help of prevenient grace, insofar as it is prevenient, is God's influx into free choice: it moves and excites it, and makes it able, so that, moved in this way and already possessing within itself an efficient principle of supernatural acts, it may further produce them by its own influx at the same time. The second difference arises from the first: God's influx with free choice through general concurrence in natural acts precedes the influx of free choice into those same acts neither in time nor in nature; rather, they depend on one another, exist altogether at the same time in reality, and are joined in one and the same action and effect. Prevenient grace, however, insofar as it is prevenient, ordinarily precedes the influx of free choice into a supernatural act, either in time or in nature.

IV. From this second foundation they infer, first, that God's general concurrence is of itself indifferent, so that, according to the differing influx of the secondary cause, an action of one kind rather than another follows. Accordingly, they say that from the varying influx of free choice comes the fact that an act of willing rather than an act of rejecting follows, and that the willing is for an honorable rather than a shameful object. Consequently, they affirm that the actions of free choice, like those of any other secondary cause, do not get from God's general concurrence the fact that they are this or that particular kind of action, nor therefore that they are virtuous or vicious; rather, they get this from free choice itself. ⁹

They speak in the same way about the special help of assisting grace: they think that it is in itself indifferent, or equally disposed to concur with human free choice in works of piety if the person himself wishes to cooperate.

Second, they infer that God, before foreknowing the cooperation that free choice would give on the supposition that it were placed in such an order of things, cannot—without prejudice to the freedom of that choice—truly and efficiently, or physically, predetermine it to any operation, even a supernatural one, either by an extrinsic decree of his will or by some help inhering in free choice. For they think that such predetermination is repugnant to the freedom of choice. I speak with respect to the exercise of the act, since, as we observed above, with respect to the kind of action they admit that the concurrence of free choice is determined through the influx of assisting grace; for from that same influx the consent of free choice gets its supernatural character and the quality required for salvation. ¹⁰

Third, they infer that the free influx, or cooperation, of choice, insofar as it emanates from choice itself, is not efficiently caused by another external cause, even by God, but by choice itself freely determining itself and, according to its innate freedom, flowing jointly with God into this particular act rather than its opposite, although it could indifferently choose either if it wished. ¹¹

Fourth, they infer that the good use of free choice, considered in the way described above, is not to be counted among the effects of predestination, but is to be presupposed for predestination on our part as something God requires from us, so that our works may be free and therefore worthy of praise or blame. ¹²

Fifth, they infer that the help of grace is not efficacious of itself, or by the real power it has as coming from God; consequently, the common division among theologians of grace into efficacious and inefficacious help is to be drawn from the effect, which depends jointly on the freedom of choice, not from some real power present in efficacious help and absent from sufficient, or inefficacious, help. Accordingly, they affirm that sufficient help, whether greater or lesser in itself, is called efficacious when free choice, by its own freedom, converts with it, although it could have failed to convert, since nothing in that help prevented it. Conversely, help is called inefficacious when free choice does not convert with it, although it could have converted if it had wished. ¹³

V. Sixth, they infer that whether the helps of prevenient and assisting grace, which are conferred on wayfarers in the ordinary course, are efficacious or inefficacious for conversion¹⁴ or justification depends on the free consent and cooperation of our choice with them. Therefore it is in our free power either to make them efficacious by consenting and cooperating with them in the acts by which we are disposed for justification, or to make them inefficacious by withholding our consent and cooperation, or even by eliciting a contrary dissent.

Seventh, they infer that all the passages of Scripture and the holy Fathers in which it is asserted that God makes us act, works so that we work, turns our hearts, and the like, insofar as these things are attributed in some way to God alone, are verified only by reason of exciting grace, which moves morally or metaphorically toward consent: by alluring, inviting, or in any other way, even by inwardly persuading a person morally to do good in those circumstances in which God foreknows that the person would consent, on the supposition that he is excited in the way described above. ¹⁵

Eighth, they infer that the actual help by which God moves our will to free acts of the supernatural order is subject to the power of that same will with regard to its use, just as the habits we use are subject to it when we wish, although by divine foreknowledge the future consent of free choice is certain and infallible. ¹⁶

Ninth, they infer that after God has preceded a person with his exciting grace, he waits for the created will to consent. This will be treated expressly in Disputation 95. ¹⁷

Tenth, they infer that the created will is in some way the first root and cause of its own determination, although it cannot bring that about without God's influx and cooperation, as we shall see in Disputation 89. ¹⁸

From the same foundation they infer the third foundation, together with its attendant assertions, which we shall set out at once.

VI.

The third foundation is that God and free choice are partial causes of the same act, even a supernatural one, just as two people pulling a ship are partial causes of that ship's motion. In what sense these same authors understand this will become clear in Disputation 85, where the nature of this foundation will be treated expressly. ¹⁹

From this foundation they infer exactly the same assertions as from the preceding one, and also others that are closely connected with the third foundation. They are as follows.

First, they infer that unequal effort and influx by free choice can result in this: when God gives two people equal help of assisting grace, one of them acts more intensely and disposes himself better for justifying grace than the other; and when he gives them unequal helps, they may act equally, or sometimes the person supported by the lesser help may act more. Their reasoning is that when two partial causes concur in producing one and the same effect, the more intensely or vigorously one of them acts, the more perfect the effect they produce; and if one of them does not act, no effect follows whenever the effect itself depends intrinsically on both. This will be treated in Disputation 62. ²⁰

Second, they infer that, when two people have entirely equal helps—both external and internal—of prevenient grace, it can happen, and in fact will happen, according to the freedom of each, that one is converted, perseveres in grace, and is saved, while the other persists in sin and is condemned, because one wished to cooperate with those same helps and the other did not. This will be discussed at greater length in Disputation 108. ²¹

Third, they infer that although each of these acts of believing, hoping, and loving is a single action, it nevertheless has three parts of one complete cause, from which the whole action proceeds in such a way that it also proceeds as a whole from each of the parts, by the partiality (as they call it) of a cause, though in different ways.²² For from God acting through general concurrence alone, it proceeds as from a universal cause; and consequently from him it derives its being an assent of faith or sorrow for sins no more than its being the opposite act or an act of any other faculty. But from the influx of free choice, together with the necessary knowledge and other things needed for the act to be produced in its substance, it derives, as from a particular cause, that in its substance it is rather an assent of faith or sorrow for sins than some other, different act. From prevenient grace, however—or from God insofar as through it, as through his instrument, he acts together with free choice in the same act—it derives its being a supernatural act, specifically distinct from the purely natural act of believing or grieving over sins that free choice would elicit by its own powers alone if prevenient grace did not act together with it.

VII. Fourth, they infer that a supernatural habit of faith need not be posited on the ground that the intellect might assent easily despite its hardness, or assent discerningly despite its errors, nor that the act of assent might be certain and firm with a certainty and firmness on the part of the believer. For, they say, a heretic can assent more firmly in that way not only to the articles of faith but also to his own errors than many of the faithful assent through infused faith to Catholic truths. Rather, such a habit must be posited because, for these acts to be elicited in a way suited to a supernatural end and as required for salvation, they must be elicited either through the inspiration and particular help of the Holy Spirit or through the concurrence of a supernatural habit. ²³

From this they also infer, fifth, that free choice, with only God's general concurrence, can elicit an assent of faith as regards only the substance of the act, that is, a purely natural assent: an assent by which one assents to all the mysteries of faith as revealed by God, and does so because they have been revealed by God, so that by such assent the precept of faith is fulfilled and the sin of unbelief avoided. This will be treated in Disputation 49, especially no. 19. ²⁴

Sixth, they infer that by the natural powers of free choice alone and God's general concurrence, a person can elicit an absolute, purely natural act of love of God above all things, which is in no way sufficient for justification; and, by the same reasoning, an absolute resolution to keep all the commandments in general, especially when all occasions and difficulties are absent. This will be treated in Disputation 31. ²⁵

Seventh, they infer that with only God's general concurrence a person can, in view of divine goodness, elicit an act of natural contrition with an absolute resolution not to sin mortally again. They say the same of attrition: the faithful sinner grieves over all the sins he has committed because of the punishments of hell or the shamefulness of sin, with hope of pardon and an absolute resolution not to sin mortally again. ²⁶

Eighth, they infer that in fallen nature a person can, with only God's general concurrence, resist any temptation, however grave, at every moment of time. For they pose the question whether, so long as the judgment of reason is not overwhelmed, the same free choice retains, with only God's general concurrence, the freedom at every moment not to consent to any grave temptation and to overcome any great difficulty that must be overcome in that instant alone in order to observe the natural law. They answer affirmatively. ^{27 28}

From this, as a ninth consequence, they affirm that there is no particular morally good work that is purely natural which a person in fallen nature cannot perform with only God's general concurrence. They give this reason: if a person can do what is most difficult, such as undergo death rather than tell a lie, then all the more can he do the other things, in which the difficulty is far less. ²⁹

Tenth, they infer that with only God's general concurrence and without any other gift or help of grace, a person can perform a morally good work that is suited to his natural end and, in comparison with that end, is truly good and a work of true virtue. ³⁰

VIII. The fourth foundation is that God has established a certain law: whoever does all that lies within him by the powers of nature alone is given helps of prevenient grace by which he may carry it out as required for salvation. From this they infer the following. ³¹

First, they infer that whenever free choice, by its natural powers, tries or is ready to try all that it can do of itself, both in learning and embracing what faith teaches and in grieving for sins and seeking justification, God confers prevenient grace and helps by which it may do these things as required for salvation³²—not because that effort makes it worthy of such helps or merits them in any way, but because Christ obtained this for us by his merits. Among the laws that Christ and the eternal Father established concerning the helps and gifts Christ merited for us, to be conferred entirely gratuitously, one law—and one especially consonant with reason—was that whenever we tried by our natural powers to do what lies within us, helps of grace would be at hand to enable us to do those things as required for salvation. In this way, while we are on the way, our salvation would always lie in the hand of our free choice, and it would be our own fault if we did not turn to God.

Second, they infer that just as God is always at hand to free choice through general concurrence, so that it may naturally will or reject as it pleases, he is likewise at hand through sufficient grace whenever it wishes, by its natural powers, to undertake some work pertaining to justification, so that it may perform it as required for salvation. They say that God the Father established the aforesaid law with the Son chiefly for this reason: otherwise, they think, the assertion that man has been placed by God in the hand of his own counsel could not be maintained, nor could the assertion that salvation has been placed within the power of his choice, unless by doing all that lies within him through the powers of nature alone he could obtain the helps of prevenient grace, aided by which he would be able to attain eternal life. ³³

They infer other propositions, which for now we deliberately omit, both because they are reducible to the preceding ones and because they will be presented below when they are to be discussed.

IX. From these four foundations, together with their appended assertions, they think the agreement of free choice with divine foreknowledge, providence, and predestination, as well as with the efficacy of the helps of grace, is made intelligible and easy; and that all the arguments by which the Pelagians and their remnants tried to eliminate the necessity and efficacy of grace, while the Lutherans and Calvinists tried to eliminate freedom of choice, are easily dissolved. Both sides alike relied on the erroneous principle that the efficacy of grace cannot coexist with freedom of choice, and consequently that one of two things must be chosen: either to deny the efficacy of grace or, if it is admitted, to eliminate freedom of choice. For when the Pelagians object that, given predestination as taught by St Augustine, it follows that a predestined person must necessarily be saved and a reprobate cannot be saved but must necessarily be damned whatever he does, and that this plunges people into despair and makes prayers and exhortations useless, they appeal to middle knowledge, explained in the first foundation, and to its appended propositions. They argue that it does not follow that a predestined person must necessarily be saved or a reprobate necessarily damned unless middle knowledge is presupposed, together with the supposition that the former will cooperate with the helps of grace or the latter will dissent. Since this supposition follows upon the free concurrence of the created will, it does not eliminate but rather presupposes its free use. They answer in the same way the arguments by which the necessity of grace and its efficacy are attacked by those same Pelagians, who proclaim that they cannot coexist with the freedom we experience.

For they say that the efficacy of grace presupposes middle knowledge of the future cooperation of free choice on the hypothesis that it would be excited by such grace in such circumstances. Consequently, by that same grace our will is not predetermined to consent to the divine call, and thus remains free to consent or dissent, as will be said in Disputations 7 and 110.

X. By these same foundations they try to answer the principal arguments by which the Lutherans and Calvinists try to eliminate freedom of choice. When they argue that a person has no free choice because he can act only as God wills and when God wills, the authors reply that a person is truly free and has free choice in his acts: God never wills by an absolute and efficacious will that a person perform a particular act unless middle knowledge is presupposed, by which God foresaw that, from his innate freedom, the person would cooperate and will such an object on the hypothesis that he were placed in such circumstances and excited and moved by such helps, which do not predetermine his will to either alternative, as is clear from what was said under the first and second foundations. Therefore, if a person placed by God in those circumstances consents, he will consent freely; if he dissents, as he truly can, he will dissent freely. When heretics again attack freedom of choice on the ground of the necessity of the helps of grace—because a person, especially in fallen nature, cannot perform any work of piety or merit eternal life unless God in his mercy excites and helps him with a special help, and therefore such a work is not within his power to perform whenever he wishes but only when God wishes to help him—they reply, on the basis of what was said under the third and fourth foundations, that by the powers of nature a person can perform any good work, even of faith, hope, and charity, with respect to its substance. If a person does all that lies within him by his own powers, producing those works, or any one of them, in whatever way he can, God will, by a certain law, freely give him helps of exciting and assisting grace by which that work may be performed as required for salvation. Consequently, the same work truly lies within the free power of the person. But if he is unwilling to do what lies within him, he also freely omits that supernatural work, because he was unwilling to produce it with respect to the substance of the act.

XI. ³⁴ In the same way they answer arguments drawn from the infallibility of divine foreknowledge, providence, and predestination, by which the Lutherans and Calvinists attack the same freedom of choice, as will become clear below in the proper places. For they say that the infallibility of future contingents does not conflict with the freedom of choice by which a person can truly produce or not produce them. They give this reason: as is clear from the first proposition appended to the first foundation, something is going to happen through free choice not because God foresaw that it would happen; rather, conversely, because it was going to happen through the free determination of created choice, it is foreseen by God before it happens. Therefore God's foreknowledge imposes no necessity to act or not to act on that choice. Likewise, they say, divine providence and predestination impose no necessity on free choice to act. To defend this, they appeal to the second and third foundations stated above: namely, God's actual concurrence, by which he moves free choice to attain the end established by divine providence or predestination, is not an immediate influx into choice itself as a cause, nor does it predetermine choice to act. Rather, it is an influx that is indifferent in itself and acts immediately together with free choice upon its operation, so that God and free choice concur together in producing one and the same effect as two partial causes, in the way that two people pulling a ship concur in the ship's motion. Hence, they judge, future events that truly are contingent have no necessity other than that which is drawn from the middle knowledge established for the first foundation, or which presupposes that same middle knowledge and originates radically from it, as will be made clear in Disputations 25 and 41.

XII. This much is most certain (and the authors with whom we must dispute do not deny it): if the four aforesaid foundations do not stand, what has been built upon them must collapse, and another way must be sought and established against the Pelagians and Lutherans for reconciling free choice with grace—namely, the way founded on the omnipotence and efficacy of the divine will, which, before any foreknowledge of the future cooperation of our will, predetermines all the good free acts that occur in time, as will be made clear in Disputation 121. But if those same foundations, together with their appended assertions, are true, the account of reconciling freedom of choice with divine foreknowledge, providence, and predestination that rests on them must be considered legitimate and highly suited to refuting the errors of the Pelagians and Lutherans; through it, an easy path should be considered opened by which both sides may return to the unity of the Church and the sincerity of the faith. Whether the former way or rather this latter one securely attains the end intended by the Catholic authors of both opinions, the pious and prudent reader will readily gather from the course of this work, if he reads attentively and weighs carefully the passages of Sacred Scripture, the supreme pontiffs, the councils, and the holy Fathers, especially St Augustine, St Prosper, and St Thomas, which we shall adduce in confirmation of our teaching.

How much authority the opinion of St. Augustine has concerning predestination, and grace; and whether it is permissible to depart from it.

I.

There have been some who, wishing to weaken St. Augustine’s authority concerning predestination and grace, have said that his teaching on this matter is that of one particular Doctor, from which one may therefore depart. They add that they greatly admire his teaching in all other matters, accept it, and gladly hear it; yet they claim that the doctrine he follows concerning the predestination and grace of Christ is not suited to resist the heretics of our time, nor consonant with the Greek Fathers who lived before Augustine. This objection was once advanced by the Semi-Pelagians against the teaching of that same holy Doctor, as St. Prosper reports in these words:¹ To him (namely Augustine), amid so many triumphs in battle, amid so many crowns of victory, shining for the illumination of the Church and the glory of Christ, by whom he himself was illumined, some of our own people (and this is all the more grievous because it is they themselves) oppose him with secret but not unknown whisperings. Whenever they find certain ears susceptible and receptive to their harm, they defame his writings in which the Pelagian error is attacked, saying that he utterly removes free choice and preaches fatal necessity under the name of grace. They add that he wants us to believe in two masses and two natures of the human race, so that impiety of the pagans and Manichaeans may be attributed to a man of such great piety.² And St. Hilary says: But I certainly must not keep silent, (he says), about this: they say that they admire your Holiness in all your actions and words, except for this.³ St. Fulgentius also noted the same thing in these words: You know that even in the past some Gauls objected to that most luminous work of St. Augustine, which he wrote On the Predestination of the Saints. They judged that Blessed Augustine, in asserting divine predestination, said that sinners were predestined not only to judgment but also to sin. Because he was overtaken by an early death before he could answer them, Prosper, a learned and holy man, rightly defended him in a faithful and ample discourse.⁴ In defense of that same holy Doctor, St. Prosper brought forth very many golden words in different places. I have decided to gather them together, so that everyone may see how great the authority of St. Augustine is in the doctrine of grace and predestination.

II. In the cited letter to Rufinus, he speaks of St. Augustine as follows: When the judgments of the Eastern bishops, the authority of the Apostolic See, and the vigilance of the African councils had detected the wiles by which the sons of darkness sought to transform themselves into the likeness of the sons of light, Blessed Augustine too—up to this time a most distinguished portion of the Lord’s priests—overthrew them copiously and beautifully in many disputations in his books. Among the many gifts of God with which the Spirit of truth filled him most abundantly, he also had, through God’s love, this power of knowledge and wisdom: to wage war with the invincible sword of the word not only against this heresy, still palpitating in its mutilated remnants, but against many heresies that had come before.⁵⁶ A little later he concludes: But you, my dearest and most venerable brother, if you truly desire to be instructed in these questions, as you ought to desire, devote yourself to learning the disputations of Blessed Augustine himself, so that in defining God’s grace you may attain the most refined and salutary understanding of the evangelical and apostolic teaching.⁷ Elsewhere he says: Some have thought to criticize the teaching that Bishop Augustine of blessed memory asserted in apostolic fashion and committed to writing for many years against the Pelagians, enemies of Christ’s grace and deceivers concerning free choice—either because they did not understand it or because they did not wish it to be understood. They offered those guided by their judgment what they called a shortcut to knowledge: they published brief chapter headings listing what they claimed to have found condemnable in the books of that man, so that by such a contrivance they might secure both the detestation of the man they attacked and turn the frightened reader’s attention away from what they had defamed.⁸ Therefore, lest anyone rashly accept this persuasion and think that the Catholic Doctor’s writings contain the meaning that his unjust accusers display, to each chapter they marked with a heading I answer with a brief and unqualified profession, departing in no respect from the course of the definitions contained in the disputations of that holy man. Thus even a reader of modest diligence may readily see how unjustly the memory of the Catholic preacher is assailed by reproaches, and into what sin those fall who, moved by another’s prompting, are quicker to blame a writer of celebrated name than to know him. Before his prose work Against the Ungrateful, he also composed certain verses in defense of Augustine and praise of his teaching. In them he shows that it is sound and that his opponents attack it irrationally.

III. Nor was Prosper alone: several Supreme Pontiffs also approved the teaching of that same Augustine and declared it Catholic.⁹ For Pope Celestine: Augustine, (he says), we have always held, a man of holy memory, in our communion because of his life and merits; no rumor of sinister suspicion has ever touched him. We remember that he was once a man of such great learning that even my predecessors counted him among the best teachers. All therefore rightly thought well of him in common, since everywhere he was beloved and honored by all. Hence we must resist such men as we see growing in wickedness. Religious souls must not suffer this; when they are afflicted, we too ought to be distressed, since they are our members. Yet the promised blessedness awaits those who are found to endure persecution for the sake of righteousness, and the following passage declares what the Lord promises them in the future. The cause is not that of those involved alone; the universal Church is assailed by any such novelty, let us understand that the very things displeasing to us displease you as well. We shall be able to prove this only if, once the wicked have been silenced, complaint about this matter ceases henceforth.¹⁰ Immediately afterward, restraining the insolence of those who barked against St. Augustine’s teaching, he adds: Because some who boast of the Catholic name linger in the condemned opinions of heretics, whether through wickedness or ignorance, they presume to oppose the most pious disputants. Although they do not hesitate to anathematize Pelagius and Caelestius, they nonetheless revile our teachers as though they had gone beyond what is necessary. They claim that they follow and approve only those things which the most sacred See of the blessed Apostle Peter decreed and taught against the enemies of God’s grace through the ministry of its bishops. It was necessary to investigate carefully what the rulers of the Roman Church judged concerning the heresy that arose in their times, and what they decreed should be thought concerning God’s grace against the most harmful defenders of free choice.¹¹

IV. What Celestine said in defense and commendation of St. Augustine’s teaching ought surely to have sufficed to prevent the Massilians, who had not yet attained perfect knowledge, from rising against the doctrine of a most excellent master and Doctor of the Church. Yet, because remnants of the Pelagian heresy in Gaul contended that although the Supreme Pontiff had commended St. Augustine’s teaching, he had not specifically approved the books On the Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance—in which, answering the letters of Prosper and Hilary addressed to him, Augustine confirmed his doctrine of gratuitous predestination with the clearest testimonies of sacred Scripture and attacked and defeated the Semi-Pelagian error—after Celestine’s time, while the faction of the Gauls had not yet quieted, St. Leo I wrote to Nicetas, Bishop of Aquileia. He again condemned the followers of the Pelagian heresy who attacked St. Augustine’s teaching, saying among other things: Your Charity must therefore take care and provide with great diligence that through such men scandals long extinguished are not revived and that no shoot of the same evil grows in your province from a doctrine once cut down; lest not only it grow from its roots, but also infect the offspring of Holy Church with the poison of its stench. Those who wish to be seen as corrected must clear themselves of every suspicion and prove by obeying us that they are ours. If any of them should refuse to comply with salutary precepts, whether cleric or layman, let him be expelled from the fellowship of the Church, lest a destroyer of his own soul plot against another’s salvation.¹² Leo therefore transcribed certain chapters from St. Augustine’s books on grace and free choice word for word, approved and defined them, and sent them to the Council of Orange, so that the bishops of that council might sign and receive them, as they did.¹³

V. Later, Pope Gelasius wrote several decretal letters in detestation of the Pelagian heresy and of those in Gaul who had attacked St. Augustine’s teaching.¹⁴ In particular, in Letter 3, addressed to Honorius, he says: The mournful, dreadful, and scarcely credible report has so overwhelmed us as to confuse, wound, and afflict our mind. For we have been told that in the regions of Dalmatia some have sown the tares of a renewed Pelagian plague, and that their blasphemy has so prevailed there that they deceive simple people by insinuating a deadly madness. This error is impious indeed, and all the more pernicious in its theft because it is more cunning in its deception through a color of plausibility. With the Lord’s help, the pure truth of the Catholic faith is at hand, the concordant judgment drawn from all the Fathers, to expose the subtle poison of deadly perversity¹⁵ and supply, from the remedy prepared from the Scriptures, medicine for the salvation of the human race. Let it therefore in no way trouble hearts not yet abounding in discernment of these matters, until both the hidden wound becomes apparent and the unique salvation shines forth; for with whatever art of deception the spirit of perdition arms itself, it is both exposed and slain by the holy sword of the ruling Spirit.

And a little later: Is it permissible for us to undo what the venerable Fathers condemned and to reopen the impious doctrines they cut down? Why, then, do we take such great care lest the ruin of any heresy once overthrown be brought back for examination? If we strive to restore matters that our ancestors knew, discussed, and refuted long ago, are we not (God forbid—and the Catholic Church will never endure this) setting an example for all the adversaries of truth to rise against us? Where is what is written, ‘You shall not move the boundaries your fathers set,’¹⁶ and, ‘Ask your fathers, and they will tell you; your elders, and they will explain it to you’?¹⁷¹⁸ Why, then, do we reach beyond what our ancestors defined? Or why should it not suffice us, if in our ignorance we wish to learn what the Orthodox Fathers and elders ordained about each matter—what must be avoided and what must be adapted to Catholic truth? Why are these things not approved by their decrees? Are we wiser than they, or can we stand with firm stability if we undermine what they established?¹⁹ Or perhaps you do not know that this heresy of which we speak was long ago struck down by the Apostolic See in continuous and unceasing judgments through Innocent of blessed memory, then Zosimus, Boniface, Celestine, Sixtus, and Leo;²⁰²¹ and that it was condemned not only by the laws of the Catholic Church but also by the ordinances of the Roman emperors, so that its followers were allowed no place to live anywhere in the world? All this is shown both by the Church’s records in the several regions, which attest to their perversion, and by public decrees. Behold how Catholic ears of all sorts hear this doctrine, entertain questions, handle its snares, and patiently admit its blasphemies! If only they would study the books and replies of our ancestors against them, they would see in every way that absolutely nothing raised by these men has not already been shattered by those Fathers in magnificent truth.

In another letter to the same Honorius, Gelasius urges him to be vigilant lest the Pelagian heresy, which Augustine crushed, sprout again.²² In Letter 5 to all the bishops throughout Picenum, refuting the three chief tenets of the Pelagian heresy, he says: What would such pontiffs do if (God forbid) some new and previously unknown plague broke out, or sacrilegious utterances of blasphemy were produced by men endowed with keener intellects and crafty notions, or cunning through some expertise in secular learning, when they neither recall nor reject the worn-out inventions of so ancient an error, refuted both by the earlier teachers of the Churches and in our own age, and do not spurn them when put forward by the unlearned and foolish?

Near the end of the same letter, commending St. Jerome, Augustine, and their teaching in particular, he adds: A still greater crime is growing: under the eyes and in the presence of the priests, a dying fly, destroying the sweet-smelling oil (as it is written),²³ would try to tear at Jerome and Augustine of blessed memory, those lights of the Church’s teachers. Finally, the same Gelasius, in the decree on apocryphal writings issued with seventy bishops, expressly approved the works of Blessed Augustine, Prosper, and Hilary,²⁴ and among the apocryphal books that are not to be received he condemned the works of Cassian, a priest of Gaul, and the works of Faustus, Bishop of Riez, which are known to have been written against St. Augustine’s teaching.²⁵ Finally, John II, in a letter to certain noble Roman senators, commending St. Augustine’s teaching, says: St. Augustine, whose teaching the Roman Church follows and preserves according to the statutes of my predecessors.²⁶

Thus, as certain grave authorities have noted, the Apostolic See issued its judgment not only once, but a second and third time, against the remnants of the Pelagians, in favor of the defenders of grace and predestination, which Augustine drew from sacred Scripture. His teaching should therefore now be called not the opinion of one particular Doctor, but the faith of the Catholic Church.

V. From all this one may infer how careful a theologian ought to be not to attempt to introduce anything new, but to follow, explain, and defend the ancient teaching received from the holy Fathers. Bishop Capreolus of Africa, in the name of the other African bishops, likewise admonishes us in these words in a letter to the most blessed Fathers of the Council of Ephesus, which that council received and approved: Therefore, venerable brothers, I wish to ask your Holiness again and again: with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, whom we do not doubt will be present in your hearts in everything you undertake, may you, armed with the strength of ancient authority, root out new doctrines—doctrines hitherto unfamiliar to Christian ears. Resist all new errors with holy constancy and courage, lest the authority of the Apostolic See and the united severity of the priests, under some pretext of dispute, appear to have allowed those doctrines long ago overcome by the Church, now sprouting again, to revive a doctrine long since proscribed.²⁷ If some new controversy should arise, it ought to be submitted in due time to examination, so that what is rightly said may be confirmed, or what deserves condemnation rejected.²⁸ Hence the Apostle also says: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.²⁹ He introduced nothing on his own authority, but handed on what he had received and preached what he had learned from the Lord. He urges Timothy to teach the same, saying: O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding profane novelties of words and the oppositions of falsely named knowledge, which some professing have fallen away from the faith. Vincent of Lérins observes here: He did not say, ‘Avoid antiquities’; he did not say, ‘Avoid old things.’ Rather, he plainly showed what must be followed in their place. For if novelty must be avoided, antiquity must be held; and if novelty is profane, old tradition is sacred.³⁰ The Apostle teaches us to avoid not only new doctrines but also novelties of words, so that we may all think and speak the same thing, with no schisms or disputes among us. For he says: I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing and that there be no schisms among you, but that you be perfected in the same mind and in the same judgment.³¹ He does not say only that you should think or believe the same thing, but that you all say the same thing, so that just as all the children of the Church agree in the same mind and Catholic judgment, they may also use the same words, as far as possible, to explain and defend it. For us, therefore, (as Tertullian says), it is permissible to introduce nothing on our own authority, nor to choose anything that someone else has introduced on his own authority. We have as our authors the Lord’s Apostles, who themselves chose to introduce nothing on their own authority, but faithfully handed on to the nations the teaching they had received from Christ.³² Therefore, even if an angel from heaven were to preach a different gospel, we would call him anathema.³³

HOW MUCH AUTHORITY the teaching of St. Thomas has, especially concerning predestination and grace.

VI. St. Augustine, the holy Father, compared the sacred teaching and unshaken truth and strength of the Catholic Church to an island, saying: Why is the Church an island? Because it is barked at by the waves of every temptation. But although an island can be battered by waves crashing all around it, it cannot be broken; rather, it breaks the waves that come against it more than it is broken by them. So too, the churches of God springing up throughout the whole world have endured persecutions from the unbelievers roaring on every side, and behold, the islands stand, and the sea is now calm.³⁴³⁵ What of Simon Magus? What of Arius, Sabellius, Pelagius and Caelestius, and the other heretics? Were they not the waves of a raging sea, spewing out their confusions, persecuting the truth, and raising their voices against the Catholic faith? The rivers have lifted up, O Lord (says the Prophet), the rivers have lifted up their voice, the rivers have lifted up their waves; from the voices of many waters. Wonderful are the swellings of the sea: Yet they could not prevail against the island of the Church, because the Lord is wonderful on high,³⁶ and because your testimonies have been made exceedingly credible, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.³⁷ Thus the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas conformed his teaching in every respect to that of the Catholic Church. Though many have attacked it, it has never been overcome; it has always remained the same and, like an island battered by rising waves, has grown stronger and brighter. It could never be broken by its attackers, nor will it be, but will remain firm to the end of the age. According to some reports, at the University of Paris many Parisian theologians rose up against the holy Doctor soon after his death. Envious of the authority of his teaching, they condemned many of his propositions as erroneous. As a result, the Bishop of Paris rashly issued a sentence of excommunication against the followers of those propositions. But these waves soon broke. For in the year of our Lord 1325, Stephen, then bishop there, together with all the Doctors of Theology, the Church, and the University—seventy-two in number—held a long consultation about St. Thomas’s propositions and examined them with great care. They judged every one of them to be Catholic and spoke these words in praise of the holy Doctor’s teaching: St. Thomas was a shining light of the universal Church, a radiant jewel among clerics, a fountain of Doctors, the brightest mirror of our University of Paris, and a distinguished, gleaming lamp by which all who walk the paths of true life and holy doctrine see the light. He shone like a splendid morning star, bright with the clarity of his life, the renown of his fame, and the brilliance of his knowledge. A little later those Doctors decree that St. Thomas, by God’s grace, thought, taught, or wrote nothing contrary to sound faith or good morals.³⁸

In a sermon in praise of St. Thomas that begins Behold, one greater than Solomon is here, Innocent VI commends his teaching in these words: Above all other teaching (except the Canonical Scriptures), this Doctor’s teaching has precision of words, a fitting manner of expression, and truth of conclusions. Thus no one who has held it is found to have strayed from the path of truth, while whoever has attacked it has always been suspected of departing from the truth. ³⁹

VII. John XXII, who enrolled Blessed Thomas in the catalogue of the saints, also spoke these words about him in the bull of his canonization: St. Thomas wrote the elementary arts, natural and moral philosophy, commentaries on both Testaments, and many other works for the praise of God and the exaltation of the faith, with clarity and learning,⁴⁰ not without a special infusion from God.⁴¹

In a certain sermon he preached on the firmness of this same holy Doctor’s teaching, taking as his theme the words of Psalm 4, Know that the Lord has made his holy one wonderful, he asserted that after the Apostles and the first holy Doctors, St. Thomas had illuminated the Church more than all others by his teaching.

As John Gerson reports, at the very canonization of the holy Doctor, that same John XXII said these or similar words in a full consistory of cardinals in praise of his teaching: Even if St. Thomas had shone with no miracles during his life or at his death, his teaching alone would have sufficed for him to be enrolled among the saints. For as many articles as he wrote, so many miracles did the Lord perform through him: each one is a miracle. ^{42 43}

Clement VI, in a certain bull issued at Avignon on February 5 in the second year of his pontificate, also commends the same teaching of St. Thomas, calling it unique and saying that the universal Church gathers the most abundant fruits of spiritual plenty from it and is refreshed and nourished by its fragrance.⁴⁴ This bull is also cited by Master Castillo.⁴⁵

VIII. Urban VI, in a bull to the Archbishop and Doctors of the University of Toulouse, issued at Montefiascone on August 30 in the sixth year of his pontificate, commends and approves all the works and writings of the Doctor. He also urges all the Doctors and Masters of that university to defend and teach his doctrine. For he says: Considering how greatly God endowed St. Thomas with knowledge, and how he illumined the Order of Preachers and the universal Church, we wish and by the tenor of these presents enjoin upon you that you follow the teaching of the said Blessed Thomas as true and Catholic, and strive with all your strength to extend it. ⁴⁶

Pius V, who designated St. Thomas the fifth Doctor of the Church, says in a certain bull issued in Rome on April 11, 1567:⁴⁷ St. Thomas illumined the universal Church by his teaching, destroyed innumerable heresies, and the heresies that arose after his death were overthrown by the teaching of this same holy Doctor.

Whose articles were transcribed more than once or twice in the sacred Council of Trent, and were drawn up and arranged as canons to be believed by all the faithful.

Finally, Clement VIII, in a special bull by which he granted St. Thomas to the city of Naples as its Patron and Protector, called him an interpreter of the divine will, and rightly so. For in his writings, with great depth and clarity, he explained more fully than all the other Doctors what pleases God and what displeases him.

The words of Isaiah certainly apply to him: The Lord has given me a learned tongue, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.⁴⁸ And, let our enemies be the judges, Theodore Beza, a Calvinist, affirmed that St. Thomas was the foremost of all scholastic theologians.⁴⁹ It is also reported that a certain heretic said: Let the writings of St. Thomas be removed, and I will not refuse to enter into a contest with all the other Doctors. A faithful witness, though one of his own school, is Ferrariensis. Wishing to explain the abundant fruit he drew every day from continually reading St. Thomas, he says: May I perish if I have ever read even a page he neglected that did not draw me into admiration of him. I have never met Thomas Aquinas without leaving more learned and more devoted to him.⁵⁰

IX.

But if men do not accept human testimony, behold the testimony of God, which is greater. For as the holy Doctor was praying in Naples, an image of the Crucified spoke to him: You have written well of me, Thomas. What reward, then, will you receive for your labor? The saint replied: Lord, none other than you. ⁵¹

In this work, therefore, I shall discuss, with as much brevity and clarity as I can, and with God’s help, above all those matters that concern the true understanding of the teaching of Saints Augustine and Thomas on the divine helps of grace and their efficacy. I shall do so in defense of those same saints, noting what agrees with the ancient doctrine and resolving the arguments of their adversaries. Together with Lord Cajetan I wish everyone to be convinced of this one point, and I solemnly entreat them: I intend in no way to oppose persons, but only opinions insofar as they disagree. ⁵²

The First Book Ends.

IN WHICH THE SUBJECT IS GOD’S KNOWLEDGE WITH RESPECT TO FUTURE CONTINGENTS, ESPECIALLY THOSE THAT DEPEND ON A CREATED WILL.

Having established these matters, which seemed to belong to the preliminary questions, we must treat of God’s knowledge, which, in the order of reason, is presupposed to the gratuitous act of the divine will by which he loved and chose his elect, or follows upon the free decree of that same will. Concerning this, twelve matters are to be examined.

I. Whether God’s knowledge is sufficiently divided into the knowledge of simple understanding and the knowledge of vision.

II. Whether it is sufficiently divided into natural knowledge and free knowledge. Or whether, in God, besides knowledge that is merely natural and merely free, middle knowledge must be posited with respect to conditional future things, especially those that depend on a created will.

III. Whether all future things are actually present in eternity according to their proper existences, before they exist in their own measure.

IV. Whether God knows future contingents certainly and infallibly because of the real presence they have in eternity before they are brought forth in their being in time.

V. Whether he knows future contingents with certain knowledge in the decree, or in the predetermination, of his divine will.

VI. Whether God infallibly knows future sins in some decree of his will.

VII. Whether God certainly knows future contingents as they are in their proximate causes, especially when the causes are free.

VIII. Whether future contingents have determinate truth before every decree of the divine will, by reason of which they can be certainly known by God as future before that same decree.

IX. Whether God certainly knows future contingents in their ideas before his decree.

X. Whether there is in God, antecedently to the decree of the divine will, a conjectural knowledge of future contingents.

XI. Whether this causal proposition is true: “Because God knew that this contingent thing would be future, therefore it is future”; or, conversely, whether God knows things to be future because they are future.

XII. Whether God produces things outside himself immediately through his knowledge, or through his intellect and will; or whether, besides intellect and will, a third executive power must be posited in him, through which things are produced immediately.

Whether the knowledge of God is suitably divided into the knowledge of simple understanding and the knowledge of vision.

I. The first opinion is Gregory’s, in 1. d. 26. q. 1, where he does not admit in God knowledge of simple understanding, but only knowledge of vision; and by this knowledge, he says, God knows all possible things that will never be. Master Zumel seems to hold the same opinion, 1. p. q. 14. art. 5. disp. 1, in the response to the first argument. In its favor,

First, Gregory argues as follows. That cognition between which and the object nothing intervenes is intuitive; but nothing intervenes between God’s knowledge and any object known by him; therefore all God’s cognition is intuitive, and consequently there will be no knowledge of simple understanding in him, which is manifestly abstractive. The minor premise is proved: nothing intervenes between God and creatures; therefore neither does anything intervene between God’s knowledge and creatures, for God’s knowledge is the divine being itself.

Second, divine knowledge is the principle by which all things are known most perfectly; therefore it is intuitive. The consequence is clear, for intuitive knowledge is the most perfect of all.

Third, creatures do not terminate divine cognition in themselves, but in the divine essence, which is the immediate object of God’s knowledge. Therefore they terminate divine knowledge in the same way, whether they exist in themselves or not. Therefore, for God’s knowledge with respect to creatures to be intuitive, they need not actually exist in themselves; consequently, God’s knowledge by which he knows possible creatures will be intuitive, or knowledge of vision. Therefore there is no knowledge of simple understanding in him.

This is confirmed: otherwise God would not have intuitive cognition of future things, especially contingents, except when they actually exist in themselves—which is contrary to St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 14. art. 9.. The consequence is proved as follows: future things do not yet exist; therefore, if the knowledge by which God knows possibles is not intuitive because they do not exist, knowledge of future things likewise will not be intuitive, because they do not exist.

Fourth, Master Zumel argues as follows. For intuitive awareness of an object, it is not necessary for it to be known as existing in itself; it is sufficient for it to be known in another object known intuitively, in which that thing is represented and contained eminently and virtually, much better than in itself. But all created and creatable things, even if they are never to be produced, are contained representatively and eminently in the divine essence, as in an object previously known intuitively; therefore God knows all things, even possibles, intuitively. Therefore there is no abstractive knowledge in God.

Fifth, if a twofold knowledge were to be distinguished in God, namely, knowledge of simple understanding and knowledge of vision, it would follow that God’s knowledge ought to be signified in the plural, not the singular. The consequence is proved thus: ideas are named in the plural in God because they are many; likewise, the reasons of things are called plural in God because they are many. Power, however, is named in the singular because it is one. Therefore, if there are many knowledges in God, knowledge should be named in the plural, like ideas. Yet this is contrary to the common opinion of theologians and to St. Thomas, 1. d. 36. q. 2. art. 2. ad 4.

II. The second opinion is held by those who think that a third member must be added to the aforesaid division. For they say that, in the divine intellect, according to our way of understanding, a threefold knowledge is found: the first is knowledge of simple understanding, the second knowledge of approval, and the third knowledge of vision. Durandus holds this, in 1. d. 36. q. 1, as does Asturicensis, in his Relection on the Grace of Christ, q. 6. dub. 1. p. 617. In favor of this opinion,

Sixth, an argument is made from the authority of St. Thomas, q. 3. de verit. art. 3. ad 8, where he expressly posits these three members and says that knowledge of approval adds to simple knowledge an ordering of the will toward producing the things known; knowledge of vision, however, adds the existence of things. And in 1. p. q. 14. art. 8, he says that God’s knowledge, which is the cause of things, is customarily called knowledge of approval.

Seventh, knowledge of approval and knowledge of vision have distinct objects; therefore they are distinguished as two knowledges, at least eminently, and consequently there is a threefold knowledge in God. The antecedent is proved. Knowledge of approval is directed toward good things that will have being in some division of time; for it cannot be directed toward evil things, since God does not approve but reproves them, according to the saying, The impious man and his impiety are hateful to the Lord.¹ Knowledge of vision, however, is directed toward all things that have being in some division of time, whether good or evil, including moral evil. Therefore.

Eighth, knowledge of approval is the cause of things, as will be clear below; knowledge of vision, however, is not the cause of things, since it presupposes their existence as its object and consequently presupposes that the things have been produced. Therefore knowledge of approval is distinct from knowledge of vision, and consequently a threefold knowledge must be posited in God.

This is confirmed: knowledge of approval is practical in God; knowledge of vision, however, is not practical, properly speaking. Otherwise God would be the cause of sins, since he knows them through knowledge of vision. Therefore knowledge of vision is distinct from knowledge of approval.

III. The third opinion affirms that between knowledge that is merely natural, or knowledge of simple understanding, and knowledge that is merely free, which is knowledge of vision, a certain middle knowledge must be posited. Some call it conditional knowledge, or knowledge of conditional future things; however, it will be treated in the following disputation.

The fourth opinion, which is more common among Thomists and, in our judgment, is explicitly St. Thomas’s, consists in two propositions.

For the explanation of this, note that, as St. Thomas teaches, q. 2. de ver. art. 9. ad 2, knowledge of simple awareness and knowledge of vision imply no difference in God on the part of the knowledge, but only on the part of the thing known; for knowledge in God is called knowledge of vision by likeness to bodily sight, which beholds things placed outside itself. Hence God is said to know through knowledge of vision only those things that are outside him: things that are present, past, or future. But knowledge of simple awareness also extends to things that neither are, nor will be, nor have been, and God does not know the one class differently from the other. Therefore, although God knows his essence, existence, all the attributes, and the divine persons intuitively, and in a general sense such cognition, insofar as it terminates in what is formally in God, could be called knowledge of vision, nevertheless, when St. Thomas and the Scholastic Doctors divide divine knowledge into knowledge of simple understanding and knowledge of vision, they speak of God’s knowledge in relation to its secondary objects, namely, in relation to creatures.

IIII. Note secondly that things that are, were, or will be in some division of time can be considered in two ways. First, according to the quiddity of existence itself and of all accidents. Second, insofar as they exercise the act of existence in some division of time. According to these two distinct considerations, they can pertain to distinct knowledge in God. For if they are considered insofar as, in exercised act, they have or will have actual existence in some division of time, they are known by God through knowledge of vision. But if they are considered according to their quiddity, they are known by God through knowledge of simple understanding. St. Thomas teaches this in 3. sent. ad Annib. d. 14. q. unic. art. 2. in corp., where he says: In the Word, or in God, a twofold cognition is distinguished: one called knowledge of vision, by which God sees as present all things that are, will be, and have been; the other is called knowledge of simple understanding, by which he knows not only those things but also all things he can make. He says the same in q. 2. de verit. art. 8. in corp. ad 2. By these words he plainly supposes that God also knows through knowledge of simple awareness things that are, were, or will be; this must be understood according to their quiddity, for insofar as they exercise the act of existence, they are known through knowledge of vision. This is proved because (as all Thomists teach, 1. p. q. 34. art. 3) the divine Word proceeds not only from knowledge of the divine essence, all its attributes, the persons, and all possible creatures, but also from knowledge of creatures that will have being in some division of time, since it proceeds from comprehensive knowledge of the divine essence and from the most perfect knowledge that can belong to God. Therefore the Father knew all creatures through knowledge of simple understanding, or natural knowledge—not only possible creatures, but also those to be produced, though considered according to their quiddity. The consequence is clear: before the production of the Word, there could not be in God free knowledge of creatures, which is called knowledge of vision, because, as St. Thomas teaches, 1. p. q. 33. art. 3. ad 1, things that signify a relation in God to existing creatures, such as knowledge of vision, presuppose the notional acts and the produced persons. Further, knowledge of vision presupposes a free decree of the divine will, but before the production of the divine persons there was no free decree of his will in God; therefore, before the production of the divine persons, knowledge of vision with respect to creatures is not understood to be in God. Since, then, the productive cognition of the Word extends to all creatures, it follows that God knew, through natural knowledge or knowledge of simple understanding, all creatures existing in some division of time according to their quiddity.

V. First conclusion. God’s knowledge is sufficiently divided into knowledge of simple understanding and knowledge of vision. First, this is proved because St. Thomas divides God’s knowledge in this way in many places, especially 1. p. q. 14. ar. 9.; 3. p. q. 10. ar. 2. ad 2 and ar. 3. in fi. corp.; q. 13. ar. 1. ad 2; 1. con. Gentes. c. 66 and 69; ad 11 quodl. 3. art. 3. in corp.; de verit. q. 8. ar. 4 and q. 20. ar. 4; 1. d. 38. q. 1. ar. 4; 3. d. 14. q. 1. ar. 2. q. 2; and 4. d. 49. q. 2. ar. 5.

Second, between being and nonbeing there is no middle, since they are contradictorily opposed; therefore neither is there a middle between the object of knowledge of vision and that of simple understanding. The consequence is clear: the object of knowledge of vision is a being actually existing in some measure or in some division of time; the object of knowledge of simple understanding, however, is a nonbeing, or what does not exist in any division of time. Therefore there is no middle knowledge between knowledge of vision and knowledge of simple understanding. For it is impossible that there be a middle knowledge without a middle object, since knowledge is specified by its object.

This is confirmed: as St. Thomas teaches in the places cited above, through knowledge of vision God knows all beings that have being in some division of time, whether present, past, or future, for all these are present to God in eternity. Through knowledge of simple understanding, however, he knows things that have no being, nor will have any, in any division of time or in any measure. Therefore, through this twofold knowledge, God sufficiently knows all knowable things. The consequence is proved because, as was said, there is no other middle object between what exists and what does not exist.

Third, this is proved as follows. In us there is no middle awareness between intuitive and abstractive awareness; all our awareness is sufficiently divided into intuitive awareness, which is of a present thing, and abstractive awareness, which is of an absent thing. Therefore, similarly, in God knowledge is sufficiently divided into knowledge of vision, which terminates in things existing in eternity, and knowledge of simple understanding, which terminates secondarily in possible things and in others that do not exist in eternity and will not have being in any measure.

Fourth, as theologians commonly teach, 3. p. q. 10. arts. 2 and 3, Christ’s soul sees in the Word all things that God knows by knowledge of vision. Therefore, if by knowledge of vision God knows not only things actually existing in some division of time but also all possibles, it would follow that Christ’s soul would see all things God can make, and thus would comprehend God’s power and knowledge, which is contrary to St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 12. ar. 7. and 3. p. q. 10. cited above. Therefore only a twofold knowledge is to be distinguished in God, namely, knowledge of simple understanding and knowledge of vision.

VI. Second conclusion. Knowledge of approval is not distinct from knowledge of vision, not only on the part of the knower, but also on the part of the object known.

First, this is proved because St. Thomas sometimes divides God’s knowledge into knowledge of vision and simple understanding, as in the places cited above, but sometimes divides it into knowledge of approval and simple understanding, as in q. 7. de verit. art. 8. in corp. He therefore holds that knowledge of vision and knowledge of approval are not distinguished within the genus of knowledge.

Second, by the very fact that God has determined by an efficacious will that something will be future, it becomes present to him in eternity, even if it is future with respect to our time. Therefore he knows it by knowledge of vision, or intuitive knowledge. The consequence is clear: for cognition to be intuitive, it is sufficient and necessary that it terminate in an object existing in the measure by which the cognition itself is measured. Since, then, God’s knowledge of approval is measured by eternity, in which all future things actually exist according to their proper existences, it follows that, on the part of the object known, God’s knowledge of approval that regards future things is knowledge of vision.

Third, as St. Thomas teaches, q. 3. de verit. art. 3. ad 8, the ordering of the will toward producing the things known, which knowledge of approval adds to knowledge of simple understanding, lies outside the genus of cognition. Therefore it cannot be a per se difference dividing God’s knowledge and contracting it, even according to our way of understanding, to a particular species. The consequence is clear: a difference that divides a genus per se must add something contained under that genus. If an argument is made against this reasoning—namely, that it would follow that knowledge of vision is also not distinguished in God from knowledge of simple understanding, because the actual existence of things, which knowledge of vision adds to knowledge of simple understanding, lies outside the genus of cognition, as St. Thomas expressly teaches in the same response ad 8; hence knowledge concerning a rose does not vary, whether or not the rose exists—the reply is that, as St. Thomas teaches, q. 2. de verit. art. 9. ad 2, knowledge of simple understanding and knowledge of vision are not distinguished in God on the part of the knower, but only on the part of the thing known. For knowledge in God is called knowledge of vision by likeness to bodily sight, which beholds things placed outside itself; but knowledge of simple awareness is of things that neither are, nor have been, nor will be. Thus God’s knowledge is suitably divided, on the part of the object known, into knowledge of vision and knowledge of simple understanding. The reply, therefore, is that the argument only concludes that these two members do not divide God’s knowledge on the part of the knower, but on the part of the object known.

VII. To the first argument², it is replied that for knowledge of vision³ it is not sufficient that nothing intervene between it and the object known; rather, it is required that it terminate in an object actually existing in the measure by which the knowledge itself is measured.

To the second, it is replied that divine knowledge, insofar as it is considered on the part of the knower, or of the knowledge itself, is a most sufficient principle for knowing all creatures intuitively; but because of the object known, which does not actually exist in any measure, it follows that cognition of such an object is not intuitive.

To the third, it is replied that, on the part of the knower, God knows all creatures only in himself, because he knows them through his essence and not through their own proper and adequate species, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. p. q. 14. arts. 5 and 6. ad 3, and q. 2. de verit. art. 2. ad 2. But on the part of the object known, he knows creatures not only in himself but also in themselves, as St. Thomas teaches, 1. p. q. 20. ar. 2. ad 2. Hence creatures stand differently in relation to God’s knowledge when they exist and when they do not actually exist.

To the confirmation, those authors who deny that future things actually exist in eternity according to their proper existences consequently say that God has no intuitive knowledge of creatures except when they actually exist in their own measure. But this opinion will be refuted in disputation 8, where we shall show that all future things actually exist in eternity according to their proper existences. The reply to the argument, therefore, is that for a cognition to be intuitive it is sufficient that it terminate in an object existing in relation to the measure by which the cognition itself is measured. Thus, for God to know future contingents intuitively, it is sufficient that they actually exist in eternity, by which divine cognition is measured. Since, then, things that are merely possible and will never be have no existence in their own measure or in the measure of eternity, they are not known intuitively by God, but by knowledge of simple understanding. By this same reply we answer the fourth argument, denying the antecedent.

To the fifth, with St. Thomas, in 1. sent. d. 36. q. 2. art. 2. ad 4, it is replied that the divine essence is one and most simple, whereas relations to creatures are many. Therefore what names only the divine essence cannot be signified in the plural. Such is knowledge, which pertains more to the knower, as his perfection. A reason, however, pertains more to things; an idea has an intermediate character, because it signifies the divine essence and the character of being imitated, which is according to relations to creatures. Hence both reasons and ideas can be signified plurally in God, but knowledge cannot, just as divine power cannot.

VIII. To the sixth argument for the second opinion, it is replied from what has been said: although knowledge of approval signifies a relation and ordering of the will toward producing the things known in their proper measure, those things are nevertheless present to God in eternity from eternity. Hence the object of knowledge of approval is truly known by God through knowledge of vision, and consequently these are not distinguished in the account of knowledge on the part of the object known.

To the seventh, it is replied that knowledge of vision, even in relation to evil things, has the character of practical knowledge—not by positively causing evils insofar as they are evils, but by permitting or preventing them;⁴ hence St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 14. ar. 16. in corp., says that evils, although they are not things God can bring about, nevertheless fall under his practical cognition, just as good things do, insofar as he permits, prevents, and orders them; just as illnesses fall under the physician’s practical knowledge insofar as he treats them by his art. Therefore we must say that, although God does not approve evils by knowledge of approval, he does approve their permission.

A second reply is that, although God does not approve evils absolutely speaking, he nevertheless approves and wills every account of good found in evils; for every good by participation, insofar as it is good, is caused by God and consequently willed by him, as will be clear below:⁵ for how would anything exist unless he himself had willed it?

To the eighth argument, it is replied that knowledge of vision does not presuppose the existence of things in their proper measure, but causes them, although in eternity the knowledge of vision and the existences of the things to be produced are simultaneous, as was said.

To the confirmation, the reply is by what has been said to the seventh argument.

Whether the knowledge of God is adequately divided into merely natural knowledge and merely free knowledge, or whether, besides both, middle knowledge must be posited in God with respect to conditionals about future things dependent on the human will.

I. Since the chief foundation of those who do not admit the efficacy of the predetermining help of grace consists in a certain middle knowledge that they posit in God, from which they derive the infallibility of the future consent of free choice and the certainty of predestination as regards the attainment of its effects, it is necessary, for a full understanding of what must be said about the efficacy of the helps of divine grace, to examine more closely whether such knowledge is possible and, consequently, whether it exists in God.

To make the title of the question clear, we must note that the issue here is not the name “middle knowledge,” but the reality signified by that name.¹ This must be observed on account of those who call this knowledge now knowledge of vision, now knowledge of simple understanding, now middle knowledge, now conditional knowledge, and now knowledge of conditionals about contingent future things dependent on the created will—things that in fact are not future absolutely, but would nevertheless be future if this or that condition were posited—confusing all these terms, although in reality they are not the same. For it is most certain that God knows certainly and infallibly not only what is future absolutely, but also what truly would be future by a decree of the divine will if this or that condition were posited. The controversy, then, is whether, before every decree of his will predetermining Peter’s consent as future absolutely, or on the hypothesis that he were placed in such and such circumstances, God knows with certainty in the particular case whether Peter will consent once that condition is posited or will instead dissent. The same difficulty applies to all other similar conditionals. For if it were the case that, before every free decree of the divine will, the propositions just mentioned had a determinate truth or a determinate falsity, it could not be denied that God foreknows this certainly and infallibly, since his knowledge is infinite and extends to every knowable object. But if it is said that it is not certain toward which side Peter’s will would incline in a determinate way once that condition were posited, but only that it could incline either way if it wished, then it must consequently be said that, before the aforesaid decree of his will, God does not know with certainty and infallibly whether Peter, once that condition had been fulfilled, would in the particular case consent or dissent; rather, he knows only what Peter could do.

Accordingly, some theologians teach that the aforesaid middle knowledge must be posited in God before the decree of the divine will, as was seen in Disputation 4, nos. 1 and 2. Others regard this opinion as so certain that they assert it was handed down in the sacred writings, recognized by the holy Fathers and the ancient Scholastic doctors, and hence must be taught by all who think rightly about divine things. They add that now scarcely anyone dares deny that this knowledge exists in God. But this disputation’s course of argument will demonstrate how groundlessly these claims are made. They prove their opinion by the following arguments.

First, they argue from many testimonies of Sacred Scripture, from which they think it can be inferred that the aforesaid middle knowledge, or knowledge of conditionals about future things, exists in God before the decree of the divine will. The first testimony is found at 1 Reg. 23, where David consulted the Lord whether Saul would come if he remained in the city of Keilah, and whether, if he himself remained and Saul came and besieged the city, the people of Keilah would hand him over. God answered both questions: “Saul will come, and these men will hand you over.” On hearing this, David fled; neither did Saul come nor did the people of Keilah hand David over. The whole truth of that revelation, therefore, lay in those conditionals: “If you wait, Saul will come”; “if Saul comes, they will hand you over.” Therefore God infallibly knows conditionals about future things. But he does not know them through natural knowledge, since this concerns only necessary and possible things; nor through free knowledge, since this concerns only things existing at some division of time or at some higher measure. Therefore they are known through middle, or conditional, knowledge.²

The second testimony is Matthew 11: Woe to you, Chorazin; woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes,³ where the Lord Christ revealed this conditional future: “If the miracles done in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have converted.” Therefore the Lord Christ knew these conditional future things with certain knowledge, although in reality they were not future. Therefore conditional, or middle, knowledge must necessarily be posited in God.

The third testimony is found at Matthew 24: Unless those days had been shortened, no flesh would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect they will be shortened.⁴ Therefore Christ knew with certainty this conditional future: if the persecution of Antichrist lasted for a notably longer time, the elect who would then exist would fall away and be damned. Therefore the conclusion follows.

The fourth testimony is Wisdom 4: He was taken away lest wickedness should alter his understanding, and lest deceit should beguile his soul.⁵ These words include a certain conditional future known by God, namely: if this elect person is not now taken from life, he will later fall into sin and be damned. Yet that future is conditional. Therefore the conclusion follows.

A fifth testimony is found in Isa. 1: Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been like Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah.⁶ In these words is included this conditional future known to God: if a remnant, that is, some just people in Israel, did not remain, they would be utterly destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah.

A sixth testimony is read in Luke 16: If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe if someone should rise from the dead.⁷ Behold, it is shown that this conditional future is certainly known to God: if someone should rise from the dead and preach to them, they will not believe. Similarly, in Ezekiel 3 the Lord said to the Prophet: You are not sent to a people of profound speech and an unknown tongue; and if you were sent to them, they would hear you.⁸ There it was revealed as certain that, if Ezekiel were sent to a people of an unknown tongue, they would hear him.

A seventh testimony is drawn from 4 Kings 13,⁹ where Elisha said to Joash, king of Israel: If you had struck five times, or six times, or even seven times—that is, had struck the ground—you would have struck Syria to utter destruction. Here a conditional future is manifestly revealed as certain on the hypothesis that the king would have struck the ground with his staff five, six, or seven times. But all these conditional futures are known by God through middle knowledge, since they cannot pertain to the knowledge of simple understanding, which is only of possibles, nor to the knowledge of vision, whose objects are only things actually existing. Therefore middle knowledge must necessarily be posited in God.

II. Second, they prove this by the authority of the holy Fathers, who seem to attribute this middle knowledge of conditional futures to God, especially St. John Chrysostom, Homily 31 on Matthew, where he says: Just as he then approached and called others when he knew they would obey, so too he called Matthew at the time when, subdued by the report of the miracles, he saw that he would not resist. For this reason he also caught Paul after the resurrection: for he who searches hearts and sees the secrets of minds did not fail to know when each person was ready to obey. Therefore he did not call Paul immediately at the beginning, when he was more obdurate, but after a thousand miracles and a remarkable and widely spread reputation had already made him more disposed to obey.¹⁰ And in Homily 65 he asks why Christ the Lord did not call Paul earlier, and answers: because he foresaw that Paul would resist the call; and he says the same about the thief. Chrysostom’s words are these: But why, he says, did he not bring them all in at once? He would indeed have wished to bring them all in from the beginning; but if they did not all obey at the same time, this difference arose from the will of those called. Therefore some are called in the morning, others at the third hour, others at the sixth, others at the ninth, others at the eleventh, because they would then obey, as Paul also plainly indicated when he said: “When, however, it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb.” When, then, did God will it? Certainly when he was going to obey. For God had wished it from his earliest infancy as well; but because he knew that Paul would resist, he willed it then, when he knew the call would penetrate his mind. So too, when he later called the thief, he could have called him earlier, but the man, had he been called, would not have obeyed.¹¹¹²

They say that St. Augustine likewise establishes this same middle knowledge in God, in his book On Six Questions of the Pagans, q. 2, where he says: Christ then willed to appear to human beings and preach his teaching among them, when and where he knew there would be people who would believe in him; for he foresaw that at those times and in those places there would be such people at his preaching as there were—not all, indeed, but many—during his bodily presence, who nevertheless did not wish to believe in him, even when he raised the dead.¹³ And in q. 2 To Simplicianus he says: He whom he has mercy on, he calls in the way he knows will be fitting for that person, so that he will not reject the one calling.¹⁴ In these words he teaches clearly enough that God has certain knowledge of this conditional future: if I call this person at such a time with such a call, he will consent; but if I call him at another time with the same call, he will not consent. Again, in bk. On Correction and Grace, ch. 12, speaking of the foreknowledge by which God foresaw that the first parent, placed in paradise, would sin, he says: God foresaw what that man would do unjustly, yet he foresaw it without then compelling him, while at the same time knowing what he himself would do justly with respect to him. And in On Nature and Grace, ch. 26, discussing how God permits the fall of a predestined person because he knows that the person will become more cautious, he says: This the proud mind does not understand, but the Lord is great, and persuades as he knows how.¹⁵

The same is proved from St. Ambrose, commenting on Rom. 9, who says: Those are called according to the purpose whom God foresaw would, as believers, become fit for him, so that they were known before they believed.¹⁶ They draw the same conclusion from St. Gregory, Moralia, bk. 23, ch. 23, where he speaks thus: God sometimes presses his own with scourges and burdens, because by his pure power he foresees that, if they remained in tranquility, unable to bear the enemy’s temptations, they would lie prostrate, wounded in mind.¹⁷ He therefore holds that God has foreknowledge of this conditional future: if the just remained in tranquility, they would succumb to the enemy’s temptations.

Finally, they think this same middle foreknowledge was handed down by St. Thomas, 3 p., q. 1, art. 5, ad 2, and q. 24, On Truth, art. 14, in the body of the article, when he says: All external motions, however, are governed by divine providence, insofar as he judges that someone is to be roused to good by these or those actions.¹⁸ And in Against the Gentiles I, chs. 66, 67, and 68, he says that God knows future things in their causes. From these words of the holy Fathers they wish to infer that middle knowledge, explained above, must altogether be posited in God before the free decree of his will.

In confirmation of this same teaching, they adduce almost innumerable other testimonies of the ancient Fathers and Scholastics, who unanimously teach that God foresaw that our first parents would consent to sin if they were tempted by the serpent, and also knew the way in which he was to bring them a remedy; and that, knowing this beforehand, he created them. They say the same about other contingent conditional futures of this kind. Therefore.

III. Third, they prove the same opinion and the necessity of this conditional knowledge from the perfection of divine providence and its effects. For this kind of knowledge is most useful for prudently applying means proportionate to the intended end. This can be conjectured from human affairs: if I wish to persuade another of something, then, in order to do so prudently, it greatly helps to know at what time and under what circumstances that person is usually better disposed, what things usually affect him more, and the other circumstances of this sort. And if one could foresee exactly what he would do when entreated in this or that way, such knowledge would be most useful for determining what one ought to do and for applying suitable means. But one must posit in God whatever can contribute to the most perfect prudence and providence. Therefore this knowledge is most necessary to God, and therefore it must be posited in him before every decree of his will.

First, this is confirmed because God does not have an efficacious decree to do something unless he foreknows the way in which he can carry it out, and unless he first knows the means by which he will attain what he intends. But God knows these means through middle, or conditional, knowledge, by which he knew that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have done penance if the miracles that were done among the Jews had been done among them. Therefore such knowledge must be posited in God.

Second, the same antecedent is confirmed and explained. No one prudently makes a decision about an end unless he first knows suitable and proportionate means by which he will attain that end; otherwise his providence would be ridiculous, like that of the man of whom it is said in Luke 14: Which of you, wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and consider whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise they will say, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.”¹⁹ Therefore, before God perfectly decrees to bring the elect to eternal life, he foreknows the means by which, if they are bestowed on them, they will effectively attain it. Therefore God certainly knows this conditional future: if I give Paul such help of grace, he will be justified and saved. But God has not only those means which he bestows on the predestined so that they may be saved; he also has almost infinitely many others which, if he bestowed them on those same people or on others, they too would be saved. Therefore, before the decree of his will, he certainly knows the conditional futures that would obtain if such means were applied.

IIII. Fourth, an argument is made. Through theological knowledge we know many conditional futures that would in fact obtain if this or that condition were applied. Such is the example given by St. Thomas, 3 p., q. 1, art. 2: if Adam had not sinned, the Son of God would not have become incarnate; and 1 p., q. 97: if man had persevered in the state of innocence, he would have been immortal. Therefore an infallible knowledge of every conditional future must also be posited in God. But this is middle knowledge. Therefore.

Fifth, after God has decreed to create Peter and to permit him, placed in this order of things, to sin, he foreknows absolutely that Peter will sin. Therefore, before he decides to create him and place him in that order of things, he foreknows that if Peter were created and placed in it, he would sin; and the same applies to other cases. Therefore in God there is knowledge of all conditional futures, which is also called by another name “middle knowledge.”

Sixth, there is a middle between what is absolutely future and what is possibly future, namely, what would be future if this or that condition were posited. Therefore, between purely natural knowledge, by which God knows all possibles, and purely free knowledge, by which he knows all things existing in some division of time, there is middle knowledge, by which he knows all conditional futures.

Seventh, every conditional future is knowable in itself; therefore it is the object of some knowledge. For knowledge and the knowable, being correlatives, are said of one another convertibly. Therefore such knowledge will be in God, since the knowledge of God, being infinite, in fact extends to every knowable thing and to every kind of being, whether it is being in act or in potency, as St. Thomas expressly teaches, 1 p., q. 14, arts. 5 and 9. But that knowledge is middle, or conditional, knowledge. Therefore.²⁰

This is confirmed. Before every decree of the divine will, these two propositions are contradictories: “If Peter is created and placed in this order of things, he will sin”; “If Peter is created and placed in this order of things, he will not sin.” Therefore one of them is true. The inference is evident, since, as Aristotle teaches in the book On Interpretation, of two contradictories one must be true and the other false. Therefore a true conditional about the future is certainly known by God. For God certainly knows every truth, as was said above. Therefore, before every decree of his will, God knows conditional futures of this kind.

V. Eighth, with this middle knowledge posited, the freedom of our free choice is easily and clearly reconciled with divine foreknowledge, providence, and predestination, and a way is opened by which Pelagians and Lutherans may return to the unity of the Catholic Church. Without it, however, it is scarcely intelligible how the freedom of our free choice coheres with those three. Therefore middle knowledge must necessarily be posited in God.

Ninth. For, as the authors of the contrary opinion admit, the motion of prevenient grace that is efficacious is efficacious of itself, as it comes from God antecedently to the free consent of our free choice. Therefore, before decreeing to give such a motion, God knows with certainty that, if he grants it to some person, it will infallibly obtain its effect. But the knowledge by which God knows this is middle, or conditional, knowledge, since it concerns a conditional future. Therefore middle knowledge is truly given in God, between knowledge that is merely natural and knowledge that is merely free.

VI. Tenth, there is an argument that some magnify and consider probative: knowledge of conditional future things that will never occur, but would nevertheless be future if this or that condition were posited, presupposes no actual decree of the divine will, but rather wholly precedes it. For in God there can be no actual free decree without some real effect produced at some division of time by that same decree. But no effect was, is, or will be produced in the conditional future contingents that would be future if the condition were fulfilled; for in fact they are not future. For example, no real change has occurred in the Tyrians and Sidonians because they would have done penance if the signs performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been performed among them. Therefore the truth of that conditional proposition and of others like it does not depend on any actual decree existing in God; consequently, such things are infallibly known by God before the aforementioned decree. The major premise is proved: between two absolute extremes, there cannot be a different relative comparison without some real change in one extreme that provides the foundation for the different relative comparison. For two quantities cannot be compared differently with one another unless one of them changes. But, by willing something freely through an actual decree, God is related to it differently than if he had not had such a decree. Therefore this different relation must be founded on a real change in the other extreme. But it cannot be founded on a real change belonging to God, since God is wholly immutable. Therefore it must necessarily be founded on a real change in the creature; consequently, every free decree of God posits some real change in things.

First, they confirm the same major premise. Every actual free decree existing in God connotes something that could have failed to exist; otherwise God’s decree would not have been free but necessary. But what it connotes cannot be something intrinsic to God himself, for all things that exist formally and intrinsically in him are uncreated and consequently absolutely necessary. Therefore it connotes something existing in a creature that could have failed to exist. Therefore it always entails a real change in a creature.

Second, they confirm this same point by the authority of St. Augustine, On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 8, near the end, where he says: Why did God not snatch them away before they sinned? Was it because he²¹ could not, or because he did not know that their evils were future? To say either of these is most perverse or insane. There he clearly teaches that God knows conditional future things. Likewise, in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 8, he says: If he had wished to teach the word of the Cross to those for whom it is foolishness, without doubt they too would come. There Augustine treats of a conditional contingent that is certainly future, as those words indicate: Without doubt they would come. He also treats of a contingent having this truth as a conditional future before the decree of the divine will, as these words indicate: If he had wished to teach. For the truth of any conditional proposition obtains before the positing of its condition, since a conditional proposition posits nothing as actual. Finally, St. Augustine is cited to establish the same middle knowledge in On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 14, where he says: From this it is evident that some have, in their very natural disposition, a divine gift of understanding, by which they are moved to faith if they hear words suited to their minds or see signs.

Third, they confirm the same point as follows. The truth of a conditional proposition does not require that the inference be valid; therefore, even if no divine decree precedes it, by reason of which the consequence is infallible, an intelligible truth in conditional future things will still be preserved. The antecedent is proved from 3 Kings, chapter 12: If today you will obey this people, yield to their request, and speak gentle words, they will be your servants all their days.²² For those who gave this counsel thought that they were speaking truth and giving good counsel; yet there was no necessity of the consequence between the king’s gentleness and the people’s obedience. Therefore the conclusion follows.

On the contrary, as will be clear below, neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas nor any of the other ancient Doctors ever mentions this middle knowledge, between knowledge that is merely natural and knowledge that is merely free—not only as to the name “middle knowledge,” but even as to the very thing signified by this name. Nor is there any necessity or compelling reason for positing such knowledge in God. Therefore the conclusion follows.

VII. To understand this difficulty, we must assume that a conditional proposition can be taken in two ways. First, in the sense of an inference, so that the particle “if” is taken inferentially. In that case, for the truth of a conditional proposition it is sufficient and necessary that the inference be valid, even if both the consequent and the antecedent are impossible. Thus, in the proposition “If a stone were a human being, a stone would be a rational animal,” the proposition is true because the inference is valid, although both consequent and antecedent are impossible, since a conditional proposition posits nothing as actual. St. Thomas expressly teaches this, 1. p. q. 25. ar. 3. ad 2, q. 44. art. 1. ad 2, and q. 1. de potentia. art. 6. ad 3. In a second way, the conjunction “if” can be taken to signify a concomitance of the antecedent with the consequent of the conditional proposition, founded not on the validity of the inference in itself, but on some promise or intention of a person, or another cause, by which, if the antecedent were posited as actual, the consequent would also be posited. Such are these conditional propositions: “If you had come to your friend’s house yesterday, you would have dined with him”; “If you intercede for me with the king, I will give you a horse.” Some invent a third interpretation of the conditional future, in which the particle “if” is taken according to a certain unrelated denomination or concomitance, as in this proposition: “If there is rain in Rome tomorrow, Peter will dispute in Spain.”

Second, we must assume from the principles of dialectic that every inferential conditional proposition, if true, is necessary, and, if false, is impossible. The reason is that the truth of an inferential conditional consists in the validity of the inference; but an inference that is once valid and formal is always valid, and one that is invalid is always invalid. Therefore a true conditional is necessary, and a false one is impossible. Hence no conditional is contingent.²³ Alphonsus Mendoza holds the contrary of this principle in his Quodlibets, q. 7. ad 4. But our opinion is expressly that of St. Thomas, Opusculum 48, Treatise on Propositions, chapter 14, where he says that it is certain that this conditional—“If a human being is white, a human being is musical”—is false, because “musical” does not necessarily follow from “white.” From this the holy Doctor concludes that every true conditional is necessary and every false one is impossible, because, as was said, the term of the consequent necessarily follows from the term of the antecedent.²⁴

But if the particle “if” is not taken in the strict sense of a formal inference, but in the second way, insofar as it signifies the concomitance of the consequent with the antecedent, then for a conditional to be true it is sufficient and necessary that the foundation of that concomitance exist in reality and that, if the antecedent were posited as actual, the consequent would be posited as well—even if it were posited freely or contingently, such that it could fail to be posited, namely, because, even if the condition were posited, it could still be impeded by other secondary causes. For example, the promiser must have an intention to give what he promised on condition that the condition be fulfilled, as in the example given: “If you intercede for me with the king, I will give you a horse.”

Third, we must assume that conditional future things (so far as concerns the present point) are of two kinds. Some have a consequent that in fact will be posited as actual by a decree of the divine will, though dependently on the antecedent. Such was the case before Adam’s sin; indeed, from eternity God knew this conditional future: “If Adam sins, the Son of God will assume human flesh.” For by the divine decree that consequent had a concomitance with the antecedent and depended on it: God had decreed to send his Son as a remedy for sin, and not otherwise, as St. Thomas proves, 3. p. q. 1. art. 3. Hence, if sin had not existed, the Incarnation would not have occurred. But just as the Incarnation itself, and foreknowledge of the future Incarnation, presupposes God’s decree willing the Incarnation, so proportionally Adam’s future sin, and foreknowledge of it antecedent in the order of reason to the decree of the Incarnation, presupposes in God another decree, by which he determined to permit the first parent’s sin and to concur as the first and universal cause in its positive act, with respect to all its being, because, as Augustine says: Nothing happens unless the Almighty wills it to happen, either by permitting it to happen or by doing it himself.²⁵ Other conditional propositions, however, are those whose conditions will in fact never be fulfilled, and thus they will never be posited as actual; they would nevertheless be posited if the condition had been fulfilled, as is clear in the examples given above concerning the Tyrians and Sidonians and the men of Keilah.

Fourth, note that a decree to do something is twofold. One is absolute, as when someone determines without any condition firmly to fast on the following day. The other is a conditional decree, which can occur in two ways. First, on the part of the object willed, as when someone says, “Therefore, I wish to give alms to a poor person if he asks.” Second, a decree can be conditional on the part of the act of the will itself: as when the will truly has no determinate act concerning some object, but would have had one if this or that occasion had presented itself.²⁶

VIII. Finally, we must note that a decree to do something is twofold: one is formal and explicit, such as the decree by which God decreed from eternity to create the world at the beginning of time, and the decree by which he determined to bring his elect to glory; the other is a virtual, or implicit, decree, namely one included by virtue of another decree. Thus a sinner who, despite the commandment, wills to eat meat on Friday virtually wills to commit an offense against God. As to the absolute reality they imply, these decrees in God are identified with the divine Essence itself; but in reason they are distinguished by different relations, or relations of reason, to various objects. With respect to conditional future things that will at some time be actualized, a decree preceded them in God by which he determined that the condition be fulfilled if it is good, or decreed to permit it if it is evil, and by which he predetermined that, once the condition was fulfilled, the consequent of the same conditional would be actualized if it is good. Thus both antecedent and consequent, as well as the actual connection between them, are referred back to the divine will as their first cause, according to all the entity and goodness they possess. With respect also to conditional future things that will never be actualized, though they would be if the condition were fulfilled, a conditional decree is presupposed in God on the side of the object willed: by it he determined that the consequent would occur if the condition expressed in the antecedent of the future conditional were fulfilled. But because by an absolute and efficacious will he decreed that the consequent would not be future, by that same efficacious will he also determined that the condition of that same conditional not be actualized.²⁷ A clear example is the people of Tyre and Sidon, who, according to the Lord’s word, would have repented if the signs and mighty works done in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done among them. But because God, by his hidden yet just judgment, decreed by an absolute will not to convert the people of Tyre and Sidon, but to leave them in the mass of perdition, he also determined that those signs and mighty works not be done among them, although, if they had been done, they would without doubt have believed. Hence St. Augustine, explaining this same passage, says: ²⁸ Therefore the eyes of the Tyrians and Sidonians were not so blinded, nor their heart so hardened, for they would have believed if they had seen signs such as these people saw. But it did not benefit them that they could believe, because they were not predestined by him whose judgments are inscrutable and whose ways are unsearchable; nor would it have harmed these people that they could not believe, if they had been predestined, so that God might illumine them while blind and might will to take away their heart of stone from them when hardened. And a little later: For they hear these things and do them to whom it has been given; but those to whom it has not been given do not do them, whether they hear them or not. Behold how Saint Augustine refers the determinate truth of that future to God’s free decree to give faith itself or a pious action. From this it is manifestly inferred that the truth of that conditional future—if signs such as those the Lord Christ worked among the Jews had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have converted—does not precede the decree of the divine will, but rather follows it and presupposes it. The same must be said of other similar conditional future things that are revealed in the sacred Scriptures or asserted by the holy Doctors to be future if this or that condition were actualized. This point must be observed above all, since some seek to enlist the passages of Scripture cited above and the testimonies of the holy Fathers to prove that middle knowledge, or knowledge of contingent conditional future things, must be posited in God as preceding every decree of the divine will, as is clear from the arguments made above. These foundations having been laid, the following conclusions settle the present controversy.

IX. First conclusion. All contingent conditional future things in which the particle “if” is taken inferentially, in the strict sense of consequence, are known by God through merely natural knowledge, which is knowledge of simple understanding, provided that the inference is valid and formal. Examples are these conditional future statements: “If God had wished to create another world, he would have created it”; “if Peter is predestined, he will be saved.” This conclusion must be conceded by all theologians, and its reason is evident. For God knows by his merely natural knowledge every truth or necessary inference; but every conditional proposition that is a valid and formal inference contains a necessary inference, however free and contingent its consequent may be. Therefore it is known by God through merely natural knowledge. The major premise is clear, because every necessary proposition is of eternal truth; therefore its truth does not presuppose a free act of the divine will, but precedes it; therefore it is known through merely natural knowledge, which precedes such a decree. The minor is proved as follows: as was shown in the third foundation, every true conditional is a necessary consequence; and for the truth of a conditional it is sufficient, and required, that it be a valid inference.

From this it follows that if an inferential conditional is an invalid inference, it will be false and hence will not be knowable, even by God himself. For what does not exist and has no foundation of truth is not knowable, much less can it be an object of knowledge.

X. Second conclusion. Conditional futures in which the word “if” is not taken inferentially, in the strict sense of a formal consequence, but concomitantly, in the second meaning explained in the first foundation—if they are taken as prior to every decree of the divine will predetermining that something of this kind be future once the condition is fulfilled—do not fall under knowledge as futures in any way, nor, as such, are they infallibly knowable even by God; rather, they are known only as things that can happen. ²⁹ For example, God certainly and infallibly knows that if he were now to create other angels in habitual grace and decree by an absolute and efficacious will that they persevere in grace, so it would happen, and in fact they would persevere; for he knows the power and omnipotence of his divine will, by which he does whatever he wills. Nevertheless, if such a decree is excluded, it is not knowable what those angels, if they were created in grace, would determinately do by their innate freedom; nor is it knowable by infallible knowledge, even to God, whether, in the particular case, those angels would persevere or consent to sin. Rather, only what they could do in such a case is knowable. The same must be said proportionately of other similar conditional futures that depend on a created will. This conclusion is directly opposed to the advocates of middle knowledge.

It is proved as follows: this is the express teaching of St. Augustine. For in Epistle 105 to Sixtus, explaining the words of John 6, For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who would believe, and who would betray him, he says: Lest anyone suppose that believers pertain to his foreknowledge in the same way as unbelievers—that is, that faith itself was not given to them from above, but only their will was foreknown—he immediately added and said: “And he said: Therefore I told you that no one can come to me unless it has been given to him by my Father.” By these words he teaches clearly enough that, before the decree of his will by which he decides to give faith to believers, God does not foreknow who will believe in him. He confirms the same point in On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 17: This, he says, is the unchangeable truth of predestination and grace. For what does the Apostle say: “As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world”? ³⁰ If this was certainly said because God foreknew that they would believe, and not because he himself was going to make them believers, the Son speaks against this foreknowledge when he says: “You did not choose me, but I chose you”; whereas God rather foreknew that they would choose him, so that they might merit being chosen by him. They were therefore chosen before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his own future works; but they were chosen out of the world by that calling through which God fulfilled what he predestined. And a little later: He foreknew, then, says the Pelagian, who would be holy and immaculate through the choice of free will, and therefore he chose them before the foundation of the world in that very foreknowledge by which he foresaw that they would be such. He chose them, then, he says, before they existed, predestining as sons those whom he foresaw would be holy and immaculate; certainly, he himself did not make them; nor did he foreknow that he would make them, but that they would become so. And when explaining the words of Wisdom 4, He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding, he says that this was said with regard to the dangers of this life, not with regard to the foreknowledge of God; for God foresaw, he says, what was going to happen, not what was not going to happen. ³¹ And in another place, arguing against those who said that God permitted many infants to die in original sin because he foresaw that they would be wicked if they lived, he says: Foreknowledge itself is altogether emptied of meaning if what is foreknown will not happen. For how can something that will not happen be said to be foreknown as future? ³² By these words he teaches plainly that it is not knowable, before the decree of the divine will, what those infants would have done if they had lived longer. Therefore, according to Augustine, before the decree of the divine will it is not knowable, even to God, what a person would do if placed amid these or those circumstances, with sufficient helps that do not predetermine his will to one side.

They reply that in the cited places St. Augustine is arguing against the error of those who said that God punishes or confers grace on account of the works a person would do if this or that happened, even if in fact he would never do them; and they say Augustine never denied that this kind of knowledge is in God. Had he held that view, they say, he ought to have stated it there, since no easier way could refute such an error. But this solution is insufficient. For in the words quoted St. Augustine clearly enough denies that God knows those conditional futures, because in reality, before the decree of the divine will, they were not future, even if that condition were fulfilled.

Moreover, an argument is made against the same solution. Although St. Augustine principally intends in those passages to argue against the error of the Semipelagians, who said that infants dying in this life without baptism are condemned on account of an actual sin they would have committed had they lived, nevertheless he attacks this view because in reality, before every decree of the divine will, it is not knowable to God as future that, if that infant had lived, he would have sinned mortally. He gives as the reason that God does not know as future what in reality was not going to happen, even if that condition were posited. For from the fact that the infant had lived, it does not follow that he would have sinned: by divine grace he could have been preserved from every mortal sin.

Moreover, the same second solution can be challenged, because the Massilians established this foreknowledge of the future cooperation of free choice, prior to the free decree of God who predestines, as a foundation for proving that there is a cause of predestination on the part of the good use of free choice foreknown by God, as is clear from Saint Prosper’s letter to Augustine, where he says: ³³ But they subject God’s election to all manner of fabricated merits to such an extent that, because past deeds are absent, they invent future deeds that will not occur; and thus, by a new kind of absurdity among them, both things not to be done are foreknown, and things foreknown are not done. Saint Hilary also mentions this very point, saying: ³⁴ But when they are asked why the Gospel is or is not preached to some people or in some place, or is preached now though at some time it was not preached to nearly everyone, as it is now to certain nations, they say that this is by divine foreknowledge: the truth was or is announced at that time, in that place, and to those people when and where it was known that it would be believed. And they claim to prove this not only by the testimonies of other Catholics, but also by an earlier discussion of Your Holiness. For in favor of their teaching the Massilians cited the passage from Augustine’s book On Six Questions of the Pagans introduced above, claiming that they proved such foreknowledge from it. The Arians likewise made use of the same foreknowledge to substantiate their error, as is clear from the letter of Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, to Alexander, bishop of Constantinople, which is found in the Nicene Council. ³⁵ In contending against the Catholic Church that the Lord Christ was not the Son of God by nature but had been chosen by grace alone for that dignity and excellence, when they were asked why Saint Peter, or Paul, or others had not been made sons of God in the way they contended the Lord Christ had been, they assigned the reason for the difference to foreknowledge of the future good use of free choice. Alexander’s words are: And when the following statement is brought up against them, “But they themselves rejected me,” which plainly conflicts with the nature of the Savior, who is immutable by nature, then, having cast off all piety and reverence toward God, they say: “Because God, by his foreknowledge and foresight, had known beforehand that he would in no way reject him, he therefore chose him from among all.” For they say that he had no prerogative by nature or anything beyond the other sons—for they affirm that no one is a son of God by nature, nor that anyone is joined to him by any peculiar relation—but that, since he was mutable by nature and did not turn aside to vice because of³⁶ his singular diligence and zeal in properly ordering his life and conduct, God chose him. Thus, if Paul or Peter had applied themselves with the same earnestness, they too would have been sons of God in the same way as he was. And to confirm their mad and pestilential teaching, they also do violence to Scripture itself, twisting to their own purpose the statement about Christ handed down in the Psalms, which runs thus: “You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” ³⁷ Thus far Alexander. Since, then, these fictions of heretics are refuted most effectively if we assert that foreknowledge of the future cooperation and good use of free choice—even future on the hypothesis that a person were placed in such circumstances—does not precede but necessarily presupposes God’s free decree, it follows that such foreknowledge must not be posited in God prior to this decree.

Some respond that just as heretics abuse Sacred Scripture to establish their errors, yet Scripture must not on that account be denied, so too they abuse middle foreknowledge to confirm their errors, yet such foreknowledge must not on that account be rejected, although those who have used it wrongly rightly deserve censure.

This response, however, has no small difficulty, which consists in the following. For once it is admitted that such foreknowledge precedes, in the order of reason, the free decree of the divine will, it seems to follow that there is a cause of predestination on the part of the good use of free choice foreknown by God as future on the hypothesis that a person were placed in such circumstances. This appears to be implied by those words of Prosper, who says of the Massilians: ³⁸ For this is their definition and profession: that indeed every human being sinned when Adam sinned, and that no one is saved by his own works but by the grace of God through regeneration; yet the propitiation that is in the sacrament of the Blood of Christ is offered without exception to all human beings, so that whoever wishes to approach faith and baptism may be saved.

Those who are going to believe, and who are going to remain in that faith which thereafter is to be assisted by God’s grace, God foreknew before the foundation of the world; and he predestined to his kingdom those whom, called gratuitously, he foresaw would become worthy of election and would depart this life with a good end. And therefore every person is admonished to believe and to act according to the divine teachings, so that no one may despair of attaining eternal life, since a reward is prepared for willing devotion. St. Augustine, in his replies to Prosper and Hilary, teaches very often that the foreknowledge by which God foreknew the future good use of free choice does not precede the decree of God predestining in the order of reason, but follows upon it, as is clear from the passages of his cited above, nos. 10 and 11. Therefore this is a sign that Saints Prosper, Hilary, and Augustine held that foreknowledge itself of the good use, or cooperation, of free choice, even future on the supposition that it were placed in such circumstances, does not precede in the order of reason, but follows upon the decree of God predestining; so as to avoid assigning a cause of predestination³⁹ on the part of that same good use foreknown by God. Otherwise, if the aforementioned supposition were posited as actual, the good use of free choice would only be foreknown, and not predestined, by God; consequently, as St. Prosper argues against Collator, God would have to be called not our savior but a witness and observer of that same good use of free choice. Maxentius also uses this argument against Faustus when he says:⁴⁰ But if, as this man wishes, only the preaching that took place through Jesus Christ is to be believed to be God’s grace, then the same God and our Lord Jesus Christ (which God forbid) must be believed to be not a savior but merely a preacher.

Moreover, the same conclusion is proved by the authority of St. Thomas, who sufficiently divided God’s knowledge into natural knowledge, which he calls knowledge of simple understanding, and free knowledge, which is knowledge of vision, as is clear in 1. p. q. 14. art. 9; 3. p. q. 10. art. 2. ad 2 and art. 3. at the end of the body; q. 13. art. 1. ad 2; 1. con. Gen., and many other places cited in the preceding disputation, no. 5, when we treated of knowledge of simple understanding and of vision. Therefore he acknowledged no middle knowledge between the two.

XII. Second, this is proved by reason. Before every decree of his will, God does not know how many human beings or angels he would produce if he created another world. Therefore, likewise, before that same decree he does not know how many acts, or what kind of acts, each human being would produce if he were created and placed in such an order of things. Some proponents of middle knowledge grant the antecedent. The consequence is proved because just as everything God operates immediately through himself outside himself depends intrinsically on the decree of his will, so too whatever God operates through a secondary cause, and whatever the secondary cause itself does, depends intrinsically on the decree of the divine will, since his causality and providence extend to every particular being.⁴¹

Some reply by denying the consequence, and assign a reason for the difference: although God comprehends his own free choice, he does not comprehend it with a certain most eminent and highest comprehension, since his comprehension does not exceed his free choice but is equal to it, because each has infinite being. But God comprehends created free choice with a most eminent comprehension, because he infinitely exceeds it. To see into which direction a free thing will incline, however, its being comprehended is not enough, nor is any comprehension greater than the thing comprehended; rather, a highest and most eminent comprehension is necessary. For the same reason, they say, a human being and an angel do not know, before the free determination of their wills, in which direction they ought to incline, because the intellect in them does not infinitely surpass their essence and will in that manner.

But this solution does not seem satisfactory, because God comprehends his own free will no less perfectly than he comprehends ours. For the distinction they assign between an eminent and a less eminent comprehension pertains to the knower, not to the object known. For by either comprehension, if it is comprehensive, the object is known insofar as it is knowable, so that nothing in it, actually or potentially, escapes the knower’s awareness. Therefore, just as before the free determination of the divine will it is not knowable, even to God, how many angels or human beings he himself would produce if he created another world, so also before the determination of that same will it will not be knowable how many acts, or what kind of acts, a created will would produce on the supposition that it were created or placed in such an order of things. A human being or an angel does not know with infallible knowledge, before the free determination of their wills, in which direction they will incline, because, apart from divine revelation, they are ignorant of the counsel of God’s absolute will and of what in particular he has preordained and decreed concerning the future acts of those same wills. Hence, if God revealed this to someone, that person would without doubt know certainly and infallibly, before the determination of his will, in which direction he would incline. For example, if God had revealed to Paul that from eternity he had decreed efficaciously to convert him on the following day, then before the determination of his will Paul would know with certainty that on the following day he would consent to God calling him, because he knows with certainty that no one can resist God’s will, as it is said in Esther 13 and Romans 9.

Some, recognizing the force of this argument, try to satisfy it in another way. They say that the explanation of the difference must be given not on the side of the cognitive power, but on the side of the knowable object. According to them, the point is this: a proposition in which some free decree is attributed to God, such as his willing to create the world, does not have a determinate truth prior in the order of reason to the point at which God is understood actually to have that decree in his eternity. Therefore it is not presented to the divine knowledge as something to be presented, but as something already presented. The case is different with created wills, and therefore in them there is room for knowing futures, whether absolute or conditional, before they actually exist in themselves, though not in the free decree of God’s will.

XIII. This solution seems less than sufficient, because our argument does not concern a decree that actually is, or will be, in God, but a decree to create so many angels or human beings, which would be in God on the hypothesis that he wished to produce another world. For although this decree cannot be presented to the divine knowledge as something to be presented at some future time, it can nevertheless be presented to it as possible, with respect to its determination to create these or those creatures. For if God had wished to create another world, he would without doubt have decreed from eternity to produce these or those creatures in a determinate number. Our argument concerns this decree, which would be in God from eternity given that hypothesis. On that supposition, the argument proceeds as follows. The proposition “God would create so many angels if he were to produce another world” does not have a determinate truth before every decree of the divine will determining the future angels on the hypothesis that he wished to create another world. Therefore, in the same way, this proposition—“If Peter is placed in such circumstances, he will consent”—does not have a determinate truth before a decree of the divine will decreeing that this consent will be future on the hypothesis that Peter were created or placed in those circumstances. Therefore, in this respect the same reasoning applies in both cases.

This is confirmed, since, as Aristotle teaches in bk. 1 of On Interpretation, ch. 8, and as will be shown in disputation 13, propositions about a future contingent do not in themselves have a determinate truth, nor are they determinately false; otherwise contingency would be removed, since a contingent thing, precisely as contingent, is altogether indifferent to either alternative. Therefore, before a decree of the divine will predetermining the will to one side of the contradiction, it is not knowable what, in the particular case, a person will do, or what he would do if placed in such circumstances, but only what he could do. The inference is evident, since nothing is knowable unless it is determinately true. Therefore, if before a decree of the divine will it is not determinately true that Peter will consent if he is placed in such circumstances, this will not be knowable even to God. ⁴²

They reply that Aristotle’s statement is false, and give this reason: a cause is not said to act or to be going to act contingently because it is not going to act determinately, but because it is going to act in such a way that it could fail to act. And when it is objected that if the same proposition is determinately true, then it is necessarily true, and therefore what it states as future is necessarily future, so that the contingency of things would be removed, they reply that it follows only that, if propositions about a future contingent are once supposed true, what they signify must at some time be future by the necessity of the consequence and on a supposition, not absolutely; for it was not absolutely necessary that those propositions be true. Nevertheless, given that they are true, they cannot fail to be verified at the time for which they are supposed to be true. Thus contingency is not removed, since a necessity on a supposition consequent upon the cause of a thing is no obstacle either to freedom or to contingency.

This solution seems to beg the question. For we contend that before a decree of the divine will predetermining contingent causes to act contingently in their particular actions, there is no greater reason why a will placed in such circumstances will perform this particular act rather than its opposite, since, even when placed in those circumstances, it remains altogether indifferent to either alternative. This will be treated expressly in disputation 13; there we will show that propositions about the future do not have a determinate truth or falsity before the free decree of the divine will. Nor is it enough to reply that before a decree of the divine will the proposition “Peter, if placed in such circumstances, will consent” is determinately true, because a created will has this proper feature: by its innate freedom it can determine itself, when placed in those circumstances, to either side, and it does so because that is what it pleases. Yet, if it wished, it could fail to determine itself to that side of the contradiction and determine itself to the opposite. This reply, I say, is invalid. For although the will is a proximate cause that moves itself and determines itself to a particular operation, it cannot nevertheless be the first root simply, or the first cause, of its own determination. For a determinate act does not proceed from a contingent cause, insofar as it is contingent, unless it is determined to that act by something else, as St. Thomas proves from the Commentator, Physics 2, text 48. ⁴³ The reason is that a contingent thing, precisely as contingent, is altogether indifferent to either alternative. Therefore another prior cause must necessarily be assigned, on account of which a created will, if placed in these or those circumstances, will determinately will this object proportionate to it rather than the opposite. But no other prior cause can be assigned except the divine will. Therefore, before a decree of that will, it is not knowable what a contingent and free secondary cause will do in particular on the hypothesis that it is placed in these or those circumstances. ⁴⁴

XIV. The advocates of middle knowledge try to dissolve this argument. For they say that it comes from the object being suitably presented to the will and accommodated to the constitution and inclination of this individual that the will will consent to an object presented in this way rather than dissent from it. For example, someone may be inclined to eat food prepared in a certain way. If another person offers him food suited to his appetite while he is hungry, it is certain that he will eat it in order to preserve his life; yet he would not eat it if it were prepared differently and offered at a time when he had no inclination to eat, especially no inclination for that food, but would instead be provoked to nausea by any food offered to him.

XV. This solution can nevertheless easily be challenged. Although a suitable object, proposed to the will as fitting, determines it as to specification—that is, if the will proceeds to act through that presentation of a fitting object, such an act will be the pursuit of that same object, since the will rejects nothing presented to it as good and fitting—it is nevertheless impossible for any particular good, however fittingly presented and in due circumstances, to determine the will as to the exercise of its act. The reason is the one St. Thomas gives, 1. p. q. 105. art. 4. in corp.: For something cannot sufficiently move a mobile thing unless the active power of the mover exceeds, or at least equals, the passive power of the mobile thing. But the passive power of the will extends to the good in general, for its object is the universal good, just as the intellect’s object is universal being; whereas every created good is a particular good. God alone, however, is the universal good. Hence he alone fulfills the will and sufficiently moves it as its object.⁴⁵ From this principle, in the same work, 1. p. q. 106. art. 2, he concludes: An angel does not sufficiently move another’s will, either as an object or by showing an object; rather, he inclines it as something lovable and as one who manifests certain created goods ordered to God’s goodness. In this way he can incline it to the love of a creature or of God, by way of one who persuades. He teaches the same in q. 111. art. 2. Indeed, even the universal good, which is God, however fittingly it is presented to a human will while the person is on the way, cannot, as an object, move it efficaciously as to the exercise of its act; it can do so only in the homeland. First, because only in the homeland, where the blessed gaze clearly upon God’s essence, is God himself presented to the will as universally good under every consideration; nor can he be represented to those who see him under any aspect of evil. Hence the will cannot fail to love him. But while on the way, God can be represented to the will as bringing the evil of punishment or as prohibiting some pleasurable good toward which the will is inclined; likewise, ceasing from actually loving him can be represented to it as a good, and therefore the will can fail to love him. St. Thomas touches on this reason, 1. 2. q. 10. art. 2. in corp. and 1. p. q. 106. art. 2. in corp. Second, as long as a human being is on the way, he can refrain from thinking about any object, whether it is a particular or a universal good, and consequently can refrain from willing it. This too is St. Thomas’s reason, in the cited 1. 2. Therefore it follows that the first root and cause determining the will to the exercise of an act and to the pursuit of any good presented to it is God alone, and his efficacious decree; he alone can change the will he created, according to Proverbs 21: The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; like streams of water, he will turn it wherever he wishes. Therefore, before God’s decree it is not knowable what, in particular, a created will would do if it were created or placed in these or those circumstances, but only what it could do.⁴⁶

XVI. Third, our conclusion is proved principally as follows: there appears to be no necessity or utility in positing in God, before the decree of his will, foreknowledge of the cooperation and good use of free choice that would occur on a hypothesis; therefore it must not be posited before that decree, but after it. The antecedent is proved thus. If there were such a necessity or utility, it would be chiefly for reconciling freedom of choice with the infallibility of divine providence and predestination, and with the efficacy of the helps of grace. But it is not necessary for this, since these things cohere very well with one another without it, as will be clear in Disputation 121; nor is it useful or apt for achieving this reconciliation. For it does not resolve the difficulties they seek to avoid in that reconciliation; rather, it runs into them all the more. For if such foreknowledge is posited antecedently to God’s decree predestining the good use of free choice as future absolutely or on a hypothesis, it seems to follow that this good use of choice must ultimately be reduced to something natural—namely, a celestial constellation, an individual temperament, or some property of this free choice—which is not in a person’s power. On account of this natural feature, the call in the same circumstances is asserted to be so congruous and suited to this will that, if it is moved beforehand by that call, it will infallibly give its consent.⁴⁷ I prove this as follows. That Peter, for example, will consent rather than dissent when an object is proposed to him, if he is placed in such and such circumstances, cannot be referred to any decree of the divine will predetermining that a person consent if placed in those same circumstances, because the object of middle knowledge and middle knowledge itself precede every divine decree. Nor can it be reduced to the help of grace itself: for, as is presupposed, that help does not move the will efficaciously toward either side, but leaves it altogether indifferent to opposites. Yet in a cause altogether indifferent, insofar as it is indifferent—that is, not efficaciously inclined toward either side—a determinate effect cannot be known certainly and infallibly, as was said above. Nor can it be reduced to the free will itself, placed under that help and in those circumstances, for the same reason: for the will, placed under the same help and in the same circumstances, still remains undetermined and altogether indifferent to opposites. Nor can it be reduced to the object proposed to the will, because, as is clear from the premises, no object moves the will of a wayfarer efficaciously with respect to the exercise of an act. Nor can it be reduced to some prior free act of the will, for let us suppose that this is the first free act. Nothing, then, remains to which the aforesaid consent of free choice in such circumstances can ultimately be reduced except the natural temperament or property of this individual, or some other natural cause. Yet this must in no way be conceded, for it would follow that the will of this person, placed in such circumstances, is determined by nature, or naturally, to one thing; and that is a grave difficulty.

If it is said that the will itself has this power of itself, namely, that it can determine itself and does determine itself toward whichever side it pleases, the same difficulty arises against this. For although the nature of the will consists in a faculty for either alternative, it does not have, nor can it have by its nature, the ability to determine itself to consent to this particular object proposed to it rather than to dissent from it; otherwise it would be determined by nature to one thing, at least when placed in such circumstances. Since all these difficulties are easily avoided if we say that foreknowledge of the good use of free choice, even on the hypothesis that a person were placed in such circumstances, does not precede the free decree of the divine will in the order of reason but follows it—and that the creature derives all its freedom from that decree—it follows that such foreknowledge of the future good use of free choice must not be posited in God before that decree, even on a hypothesis.

This is confirmed: for, as some advocates of middle knowledge admit, if God knew before the determination of his will how many angels he would produce on the hypothesis that he wished to create another world, he would not be free in producing them, because their production would then be determined by nature and in itself. Therefore it seems that, by the same reasoning, Peter’s future consent would not be free but necessary if, before every decree of the divine and human will, God knew certainly and infallibly that Peter would consent on the hypothesis that he were placed in such circumstances—especially since it is not within Peter’s power to remove or posit that condition and supposition, once that supposition is posited, they say it is infallible that he will consent. For they very often presuppose as certain this foundation—which we do not admit—namely, that an act which follows necessarily from some supposition antecedent to the consent of a created will is simply necessary and not free whenever it is not within the power of that same will to remove or posit the supposition. Therefore they do not escape by means of middle knowledge the difficulty of reconciling free choice with divine grace and predestination, which they intend to resolve; rather, they seem to entangle it further and make it more difficult. The force of this argument will become clearer from what will be said in Disputation 13.

Fourth, our conclusion is proved by deriving another inadmissible consequence. For, if this middle foreknowledge is posited, the efficacy of grace seems to be weakened, and a ground or at least a necessary condition of predestination is assigned on our part. Therefore it must not be admitted. As to its first part, the antecedent will be clear in disputations 73, 90, and 91. The second part is proved as follows. Conditional, or middle, foreknowledge does not pertain intrinsically to predestination, but is presupposed to it, as the authors of the contrary opinion admit. Therefore the object of that same knowledge does not pertain intrinsically to predestination itself, nor is it a part or effect of it. Therefore, before the decree to predestine Peter to grace and glory, it is necessarily presupposed, on Peter’s part, that by his innate freedom he will consent to God calling him, on the supposition that he is placed in such circumstances and given such helps that do not efficaciously apply his will to consent. For this is the object of middle knowledge. Therefore it is prior in the order of reason that Peter, placed in those same circumstances and given those same helps, will consent by his innate freedom than that he be understood to be predestined. Consequently, Peter’s predestination would depend on his future cooperation, foreknown by God through middle knowledge, as a necessary condition for God’s predestination of Peter, or for the efficacious decree to predestine Peter. Therefore a ground or condition can be assigned on our part, necessarily presupposed, by which the order of means to a supernatural end—through which God determines to help this or that person—would have the character of predestination, or retain only the character of common supernatural providence. For if Peter in fact will consent by his innate freedom, with such helps of grace reaching him, and persevere to the end, he will remain predestined; but if he will not consent with those same helps, he will not remain predestined, but will be reprobate.

This is confirmed. Precisely because, before every decree of the divine will, it is supposed that Peter will consent by his innate freedom to God calling him, on the supposition that he is placed in such an order of things, given that supposition and with everything else excluded, Peter’s cooperation would in fact occur. Consequently, such cooperation would be exempted from predestination and divine causality; and thus something that contributes greatly to attaining eternal life—such as the aforesaid cooperation of free choice—would be attributed to nature, by reason of its innate freedom, and would not be an effect of predestination but rather a necessary condition for it.

The authors of the contrary opinion try to overcome the force of this argument with two replies. The first is an argument from an inadmissible consequence: they say that the same argument could be made against us, who admit this foreknowledge of a conditional future in the predetermining help. For before God predestines a person through such helps, he foreknows that the same person will merit glory if such predetermining helps are given to him; nevertheless, it does not follow that God predestines the person because of such merits, but rather predestines him through such merits. Therefore neither does that follow on the contrary opinion, since for the force of the inference it makes little difference whether that foreknowledge is in the cause or in the very truth of the future event. But this reply first presupposes something we do not admit: namely, that the aforesaid middle knowledge exists in God in the predetermining help. For the foreknowledge of this conditional future—“If God were to move Peter to conversion by a predetermining help, he would be converted”—which we assert to be in God, is purely natural and is founded on the omnipotence of the divine will, which, as Scripture teaches, no one can resist.⁴⁸ But the middle foreknowledge we oppose is not purely natural; it is partly natural and partly free, and rests on the free cooperation of the human being, which is said to be future before every decree of the divine will, on the supposition that the person is placed in such circumstances. Hence, in our opinion, the cooperation of free choice that God foreknows as future on the supposition that he himself wills efficaciously to convert Peter, or to premove him by a predetermining help, once that supposition is posited as actual, is ultimately reduced to divine predestination as its per se efficient cause. Hence it cannot be a cause or ground of predestination, or a necessary condition for it. But according to the opinion we oppose, the free cooperation of free choice said to be future on the supposition that it is placed in such circumstances would not be an effect of predestination; nor would the cooperation of our free choice be reduced to God as its prior efficient cause, but would be founded on the innate freedom of free choice. Hence, since such cooperation is a necessary condition without which the order of means to a supernatural end preexisting in the divine mind would not have the character of predestination, but would retain the character of common supernatural providence in relation to that person, it follows that, if middle knowledge is posited, a cause, ground, or necessary condition of predestination is assigned on our part. This will be treated expressly in disputations 36, 37, and 38.

The second solution is this: the aforesaid knowledge of the cooperation of free choice that would occur on a hypothesis, which is posited prior to predestination, is not a necessary condition on the human side, but on God’s side. That is, it is not necessary because it applies or presents to the divine will some consideration on the human side that moves God, by way of a merit of the human being, to predestine him. For in a thing that neither exists nor is known as going to exist at some time, no such motivating consideration can be founded. Rather, it is necessary only so that this object may be presented to God as predefinable, as infallibly future, and so that it may have the character of an efficacious means in God’s mind, so that it may be chosen under that character, or even intended as a proximate end. Hence it does not follow that there is in that object another moving reason besides the final one, which is not incompatible with predestination. For God predestines a person not because he has or will have merits, but so that he may have them and be holy, in keeping with the words: He predestined us to be holy.

But this solution does not remove the force of the argument. For although the foreknowledge of the cooperation of free choice belongs on God’s side, the cooperation of free choice itself, which is asserted to occur on the hypothesis, belongs on the human side. Hence, if on the human side a ground or condition is assigned without which the ordering of means to an end would not have the character of predestination but would retain only the character of common supernatural providence, a ground for predestination is indeed assigned on the human side. Nor is it enough to say that this cooperation, future on the hypothesis, does not apply or present to the divine will any consideration on the human side that moves God by way of merit to predestine that person. For we contend not only that this reason for predestination on the human side must be excluded, but also that reason which is in fact a condition without which the ordering of means to the supernatural end, preexisting in the divine mind, would not have the character of predestination but would retain the character of common providence. Otherwise, as will become clear in disputation 37, predestination, formally speaking in its character as predestination, would depend on the free cooperation of free choice.

Nor is it an obstacle that a thing which does not exist and is not known as going to exist at some time cannot be a cause or a condition without which predestination would not obtain. For once it is asserted that, before every decree of the divine will, it is certain that Peter, by his innate freedom, will consent to the divine call and persevere to the end, on the hypothesis that⁴⁹ he is placed in such circumstances, then, with that hypothesis posited in reality—as it is posited in the case of all the predestined who are or have been, and will be posited in the case of those who are to be born—the cooperation of free choice persevering to the end would in fact be a condition without which predestination would not obtain. Consequently, it would not have the character of a final cause of that predestination, since such a cause is an effect of predestination.

XVII. Fifth, this is proved as follows: the object of middle knowledge is not knowable; therefore, with respect to it, there cannot be true knowledge. The antecedent is proved because something is knowable only if it is necessary by some necessity; but before every decree of the divine will, it is not necessary by any necessity, not even by the necessity of the consequence, that Peter, placed in such circumstances and with such helps that do not efficaciously apply his will to conversion, infallibly be converted. Therefore it is not knowable even to God that he will be converted. The minor premise is proved: it is impossible for an effect to follow necessarily, by the necessity of the consequence or the necessity of infallibility, from a cause liable to fail and to be impeded by the concurrence of other causes, unless that cause is determined to that effect by another, superior cause that cannot fail or be impeded by other causes. But God does not determine causes liable to fail to particular effects except by a decree of his will. Therefore, before such a decree, it is not necessary by the necessity of the consequence, or by the necessity of infallibility, that a created will—which is by its nature liable to fail and to be impeded—will consent to the object presented to it if it is placed in such circumstances.⁵⁰

This argument is confirmed by the authority of St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 14. ar. 13. in the body of the article, where he says: A contingent thing as it is in its cause is considered as future and as contingent, not yet determined to one outcome, because a contingent cause must be related to opposites; and thus a contingent thing is not subjected with certainty to any knowledge. Hence whoever knows a contingent effect only in its cause has no more than conjectural knowledge of it.⁵¹ He teaches the same in q. 57, art. 3; q. 88, art. 3, in the body; art. 4, in the body; and q. 16, On Evil, art. 7.

XVIII. Sixth, it is proved as follows: it is impossible for an effect to exist or be understood as future in some case except dependently on its efficient cause. But the decree of the divine will is the first and most universal efficient cause, on which effects depend more than on their proximate cause, as is said in the book On Causes, proposition 1. Therefore, before a decree of the divine will, nothing will be or would be future, whatever condition is posited; and consequently, before that same decree, it is not knowable that, if Peter’s will is placed in such circumstances, it will consent to the object presented to it.⁵²

This is confirmed first. An absolute decree of God stands in relation to an absolute future just as a conditional decree stands in relation to a conditional future. But it is contradictory for something to be absolutely future unless an absolute decree of God deciding that it come to be precedes it, as Augustine says in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, ch. 95. Therefore it is likewise contradictory for something to be conditionally future unless a decree of God deciding that it come to be if the condition is fulfilled precedes it. Therefore, before such a decree, it is not knowable that Peter will consent on the hypothesis that he is placed in these or those circumstances.

This is confirmed a second time. A conditional future, once its condition is fulfilled, passes into an absolute future. Therefore, if before a decree of his will God knows certainly and infallibly that, if Peter is placed in such circumstances, he will consent to such an object presented to him, then, once that condition is fulfilled and before God decrees anything about the future act, he will know that act as an absolute future. And thus in that case something would be absolutely future independently of the decree of the divine will, which is incompatible with the perfection of divine causality.

They reply that both the conditional and the absolute future, in order to be posited in being, depend intrinsically on the decree of the divine will as their efficient cause, by which a thing is principally brought into being. They say, however, that when the secondary cause is free, God does not have an absolute decree to produce a free effect with it unless he presupposes foreknowledge that, if the secondary cause is placed in such circumstances, it will, by its innate freedom, contribute its own free influx, without which a free act cannot be produced. Hence, precisely by God’s fulfilling the condition through a decree of his will and placing the created will in circumstances in which he foreknows it will contribute its influx to free consent, he consequently wills at the same time to concur with it as a universal cause, from whose influx the effects of a free secondary cause, like those of any other cause, principally depend. According to these authors, therefore, before God decides to create a human being in such circumstances and before he decrees anything in particular concerning that person’s free acts, he foreknows certainly and infallibly that, if that person’s will is placed in such circumstances, it will by its own free influx determine itself to consent to the object presented to it. Then God, by his free and efficacious decree, places that person in those circumstances with that object presented, and consequently wills at the same time to act together with the will determining itself, and produces a free effect with it. Thus the effect depends principally on the decree of the divine will and does not proceed from the secondary cause alone. But if the created will were going to dissent in those circumstances, as it could, God likewise, by the very fact that he wills to place it in those circumstances, decrees to produce dissent with it. They say the same about other conditional futures which in fact will not be brought into being, but, as they claim, would be if the condition were fulfilled.⁵³

XIX. Nevertheless, this solution brings with it many difficulties and inconveniences, which will be treated expressly below. For an argument is made against it. First, even if we grant that it saves the operation of the secondary cause as depending on the decree as its efficient cause of the divine will—a point to be discussed elsewhere—it does not save the claim that the influx of the created will itself, by which it contributes to a free act, depends on that same decree as its efficient cause. This is shown as follows. Every efficient cause must precede its effect; but the decree of the divine will does not precede the future free influx of the created will once the condition is fulfilled. For, according to the authors of the opposing opinion, God does not decide that the will will contribute and cooperate before he foresees that by its innate freedom it will cooperate on the hypothesis that it is placed in such circumstances. Therefore, formally speaking, that influx, insofar as it is the influx of the created will, does not depend on God as its efficient cause, but on the created will alone. Thus, with respect to it, the created will would be the first cause simply, which is impossible, as St. Thomas proves in Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 2, art. 2, in the body; and we will show the same in disputation 25.⁵⁴

Second, it would follow that this causal proposition must be granted: “Because the created will wills to contribute to this act in particular, God contributes to the same act in particular”⁵⁵; and thus the human will and operation would be prior, while the divine will and operation would be posterior and would be the attendant of that same created will. Consequently, the creature would act and God would cooperate with it. It would also follow that God’s influx is determined to this act by the influx of the created will, and that the divine will and its help are subordinated to the human will. All of this seems greatly to detract from the causality of the first cause and from the efficacy of the helps of divine grace, as will become clear in Disputations 18, 23, 86, 97, and the two following ones.

Finally, the argument made above presses against this teaching, and it is necessary and useful to repeat it often, lest it be thought trivial, as Prosper says, if it is not frequently argued:⁵⁶ for a determinate act does not proceed from an indifferent cause insofar as it is indifferent. But before a decree of the divine will, the created will, placed in any circumstances whatsoever, is altogether indifferent to opposites. Therefore, before that same decree, it cannot be certain with infallible certainty that the will will determinately produce consent rather than dissent, or vice versa.

XX. There is no need to dispute here about unrelated conditional propositions, whose consequent has no connection with the antecedent even by a decree of the divine will, but is altogether accidentally joined to that antecedent; for these will be treated specially in Disputation 13. This one point must be established with certainty: if they are considered as conditional propositions, they have no truth. For it is necessarily required for a conditional proposition to be true that the consequent follow from the antecedent if the antecedent is posited as obtaining. But when the consequent is altogether unrelated to the antecedent, as in this proposition, “If Peter will debate tomorrow in Spain, there will be heavy rain in Rome,” the antecedent in no way entails the consequent. Hence, even if both are posited as obtaining together, the conditional is not true, although both the antecedent and the consequent are true as simple propositions.⁵⁷

Third conclusion. No other middle knowledge is to be posited between God’s purely natural and purely free knowledge. This conclusion remains sufficiently proved from the foregoing, and will become clearer from what is to be said in disputation 37.

To the first argument, it is answered that the conditional propositions discussed in the cited passages of Scripture are not known by God, nor knowable as future, prior to a conditional decree of the divine will, but as following upon it. Hence there is no middle knowledge of them, since middle knowledge precedes every decree of that same divine will, as was said.

XXI. Specifically, as to the first passage cited from 1 Kings, ch. 23, it is answered that by those words the Lord wished to indicate to David the certain danger threatening him from the proximate cause if he remained in Keilah and Saul came there. For the Lord knew that the people of Keilah were firmly resolved to hand David over. Hence the phrase “they will hand you over” is to be understood in this way: they have the will to hand you over. So explains the interlinear Gloss, which has very great authority; its author was Anselm of Laon, a most learned man.⁵⁸ Likewise, the phrase “Saul will come down” is to be understood conditionally, that is, if you remain in that city, Saul will come down. This explanation is gathered from the very context, where it is said that Saul did not come to that city because David had departed from it. We therefore grant that this conditional is true and consequently known to God: “If you wait, Saul will come; if Saul comes, the people of Keilah will hand you over,” even though neither the antecedent nor the consequent was posited as obtaining. For a conditional does not posit anything as obtaining; its truth requires only that the inference be valid, so that if the antecedent is posited as obtaining, the consequent must infallibly be posited as well. Thus this conditional is true: “If a stone is a human being, a stone is a rational animal,” although both antecedent and consequent are impossible. Yet God did not know the truth of the conditional “If Saul comes, they will hand you over” through middle knowledge, because he did not know it prior to every decree of his will, but in the decree by which he decided to permit David to be handed over and to concur in the handing-over itself insofar as it was an action, unless David’s flight had prevented it. But because God had decided by an absolute and efficacious will that David would not be handed over, David was warned to flee. Hence God knew these conditional futures by free knowledge.⁵⁹ When it is argued that free knowledge concerns only things existing in some division of time, the assumption is denied. For it is enough for free knowledge to concern things existing in some division of time, or things that would exist by a special decree of God if this or that condition were applied. For just as absolute futures are objects of free knowledge because they presuppose an absolute decree of the divine will, both on the side of the act of willing and on the side of the object willed, so too conditional futures of the kind discussed in the cited passage pertain to free knowledge because they presuppose a conditional decree on the side of the object willed, by which God decides to posit the consequent as obtaining if the antecedent is posited. Hence, by virtue of the decree explained above, that consequence was infallible: “If you wait, Saul will come; if Saul comes, the people of Keilah will hand you over.”⁶⁰

XXII. But an argument is made against this. It follows that this conditional future is known by God through free knowledge, namely, “If God had wished to create another world, he would have created it.” The consequent is false; therefore, so is the antecedent reasoning. The inference is proved as follows: this future too presupposes a conditional decree in the antecedent, expressed by the words “if God had wished.”

It is answered that God knows this conditional through natural knowledge, and not through free knowledge, because the infallibility of that inference is not founded on some free decree existing in God, but on the omnipotence of the divine will, which belongs to God by nature. For from the fact that he is omnipotent, and no one can resist his will, it follows evidently that whatever he had wished to do, he would have done. But the connection of the consequent with the antecedent in the conditional propositions discussed in the cited passage from 1 Kings is not founded immediately on something that belongs to God by nature, but on his free decree explained above. Hence the cases are not alike.

XXIII. To the second testimony, from the authority of Matthew 11, we acknowledge that Christ the Lord knew with certain and infallible knowledge this conditional future: if the signs and wonders that were performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have been converted. This would not have been because of those miracles and external signs alone. For, as even the authors of the contrary opinion admit, it pertains to the Pelagian heresy to say that internal help from divine grace is not required for conversion, but that external signs and wonders, by which the preaching of the Gospel is confirmed, are sufficient; for all these pertain to the law and teaching. They would therefore have been converted by the efficacious help of prevenient divine grace, which God mercifully determined to give them if those wondrous signs and miracles had been performed among them. Hence the truth of that conditional future does not precede that decree of the divine will, but rather follows upon it. Consequently, it is not known by God through middle knowledge, but through free knowledge, as was said above.⁶¹ This reply has strong support in St. Augustine, On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 10, where, asking why Christ did not perform those signs in Tyre and Sidon, since they would have believed if the signs had been done, he replies that this must be referred to the divine will and the inscrutable judgments of God. In the following chapter 14 he confirms the same point, saying: The eyes of the Tyrians and Sidonians were not so blinded, nor their heart so hardened, that they would not have believed if they had seen signs such as these people saw. But it did not benefit them that they were able to believe, because they were not predestined by him whose judgments are inscrutable and whose ways are unsearchable; nor would it have harmed these people that they were unable to believe, if they had been predestined, so that God would illumine their blind eyes and wished to take away their heart of stone from those hardened. And after this he adds: For those to whom it has been given hear these things and do them; but those to whom it has not been given do not do them, whether they hear or do not hear. “To you,” he says, “it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” One of these belongs to the mercy, the other to the judgment of him to whom our soul says: “I will sing of mercy and judgment to you, O Lord.”⁶²⁶³ By these words Augustine teaches most clearly that it proceeds from the divine will and mercy, which grants the good will, that these people believe when they hear and see the signs. Therefore, if the Tyrians and Sidonians had believed upon seeing those signs and wonders, they would have believed by God’s grace and will, which grants belief itself; consequently, that conditional future follows upon the decree of the divine will.

XXIIII. But you will say: why, then, are the Jews reproached, if they too would have believed had God given them efficacious help and willed to convert them?

It is replied that they are rightly reproached because they placed greater obstacles in the way of grace and proved more unworthy, being hardened by their own malice. Such hardening was not found in the Tyrians and Sidonians. For although the Tyrians and Jews could not by their own powers attain the help of grace or prepare themselves to receive it, they could nevertheless impede themselves more or less, so that it would not be given to them by God, according to Hosea 13: Your destruction, O Israel, is from yourself; only in me is your help.⁶⁴⁶⁵ St. Thomas treats this at length, Against the Gentiles, book 3, chapters 149 and 160.

To the third testimony, from Matthew 24, the first reply is that it was said with reference to the dangers of this life, not to foreknowledge, as Augustine says in explaining the authority from Wisdom 4, as will be clear immediately.

A second reply is that, in the decree by which God determined to confer on the elect efficacious help to overcome only this or that temptation—which he decreed to permit them to undergo, and not other temptations that could have occurred but did not—God knew with certainty and infallibly that, if they had experienced other, more severe temptations, they would have succumbed to them. And because by God’s mercy they had been separated by predestination from the mass of perdition, he therefore prevented them from being touched by those temptations. Hence God knew this not through middle knowledge but through free knowledge.

By this we also answer the other testimony from Wisdom, chapter 4. Let St. Augustine be consulted, On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 14, where he says: This is the whole reason why it was said—whoever said it—“He was snatched away lest malice change his understanding.” For it was said with reference to the dangers of this life, not to God’s foreknowledge: God foreknew what was going to be, not what was not going to be. That is, that he was going to grant him an untimely death, so that the person might be removed from the uncertainty of temptations, not that he would sin, since he would not remain in temptation.⁶⁶ By these words he signifies that God did not know as future the sin of the one who was snatched away, because in truth it did not have the character of something future in the divine decree or permission. He also confirms this in the words cited above from On the Soul and Its Origin, chapter 12. A second reply is that, in the decree by which God determined to confer on that person the gift of perseverance up to a certain appointed moment, he knew that if the person had lived longer, left to his own nature, he would have been overcome by the force of temptations and sinned.

XXV. To the fifth testimony from Isaiah, chapter 1, we answer in the same way: God knew by natural knowledge that unless, through the Apostles and other preachers of the Gospel, or immediately by himself, he made the mysteries of faith known to those Israelites who were saved, they would have perished altogether. We likewise know by natural knowledge that unless God preserved the world, it would at once be reduced to nothing, since it cannot subsist without his preservation. The reason is that no one can believe the mysteries of faith unless they are proposed by another, in accord with the saying: How will they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?⁶⁷ Therefore, by the seed in the passage from Isaiah cited here, the Lord Christ is understood, of whom it is written in Galatians 3: In your seed, which is Christ. The Apostles are also understood, in accord with Isaiah 61: These are the seed whom the Lord has blessed.⁶⁸ Second, one may say that just as, in the decree by which he determined to convert Paul through Stephen’s prayers and not otherwise, God knew by free knowledge this truth—that if Stephen had not prayed, the Church would not have had Paul the Apostle—so too, in the decree by which he determined to save believers through the preaching of Christ and the Apostles, he knew that unless that small seed had been left to the Jewish people—that is, the Apostles—the same people would have been destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. For a negative is known by God through its positive, as Saint Thomas teaches. 1. p. q. 14. ar. 10. Hence God did not know that conditional by middle knowledge, but by merely free knowledge.

XXVI. To the sixth testimony from Luke, chapter 16, we answer in the same way: in the decree by which God determined by an absolute will not to confer efficacious help on the rich man’s brothers so that they might be converted, he knew that they would not believe even if someone rose from the dead.⁶⁹ To the other testimony from Ezekiel, chapter 3, we answer that this way of speaking is a phrase of Sacred Scripture, which people commonly also use when, reproaching a friend for his hardness, they say: “If I had begged this with so many entreaties of a stone or of an enemy, he would have done it.” For Scripture often adapts itself to the common manner of human speech.

To the seventh testimony from 4 Kings, chapter 13, we answer that God had decreed to destroy Syria entirely, on the condition that the king strike the ground five or six, or even seven, times without interruption, as the Gloss teaches on the same passage. Hence that conditional was known by God in the aforesaid decree of his will; accordingly, he knew it not through middle knowledge but through free knowledge.

To the second argument from the authority of the holy Fathers who wrote before the Pelagian error, we answer that they taught little about divine grace and chiefly sought to establish those things that seemed necessary for refuting the error of the Manichaeans, who denied free choice. Hence Saint Augustine says in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 14: Why, then, is it necessary for us to scrutinize the little works of those who, before this heresy arose, had no need to engage with this question, which is difficult to resolve? They would certainly have done so if they had been compelled to answer such people. Consequently, they briefly touched on what they thought about God’s grace in certain passages of their writings and in passing, while they devoted themselves to the matters they were disputing against other enemies of the Church.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, they never taught that middle knowledge which we oppose. And to the words cited from Saint Chrysostom we answer that it is most true that God knew with certainty and infallibly that Matthew would consent, and likewise Paul, if they were called at the time when they were called. Yet he knew this because from eternity he determined and decreed in his predestination to convert them at that time and not earlier. Thus he foreknew such conditional future things, and others like them, by free knowledge, not by middle knowledge.

XXVII. We apply the same solution to the words cited from Saint Augustine’s On Six Questions of the Pagans, question 2; the same Doctor also expressly teaches it in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 9, where he explains at length what he had said in the aforesaid book and turns against those who charged him with teaching that knowledge which precedes the decree of the divine will. For he says: Did I perhaps intend to say this about Christ’s foreknowledge, without prejudice to God’s hidden plan and other causes, because it seemed sufficient for refuting the unbelief of the pagans who had raised this question? For what is truer than that Christ foreknew who would believe in him, when they would believe, and in what places? But whether, once Christ had been preached to them, they would have faith of themselves or receive it as God’s gift—that is, whether God merely foreknew them or also predestined them—I did not then think it necessary to ask and discuss. Accordingly, what I said—that Christ then willed to appear to human beings and his doctrine to be preached among them when and where he knew there would be people who would believe in him—could also have been said in this way: Christ then willed to appear to human beings and his doctrine to be preached among them when and where he knew there would be people who had been chosen in him before the foundation of the world. But because saying it in this way would have made the reader attentive to questions that, now that the Pelagian error has prompted us, must be discussed more fully and laboriously, it seemed to me that what was then sufficient should be said briefly—except, as I have said, for the depth of God’s wisdom and knowledge, and without prejudice to other causes, which I thought should not be discussed then but later, at a more suitable time.⁷¹ Saint Thomas pursues this solution in 3 p., q. 1, a. 5, ad 2.

XXVIII. To the other passage from Augustine, Questions to Simplicianus, q. 2, it is answered that when he says that God “calls him in the way he knows will be fitting for him, so that he will not reject the one calling,” he wished to signify nothing other than that God is not ignorant of the power and energy of his grace, by which he secretly calls some people in such a way that, by calling them, he converts them and makes them obedient; and for this reason he sees that those called in this way will follow, because by calling them he will bring it about that they follow. Thus he knows his gifts and benefits by which he has deigned to free us, as Augustine himself admits in the cited On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 9, a point he repeats in the following ch. 10 when he says: For by predestination God foreknew those things that he himself was going to do; hence it was said, “He made the things that are to be.” And in ch. 22: They were therefore chosen before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his own future works. And in ch. 19: When, therefore, he predestined us, he foreknew his own work, he who makes us holy and immaculate. And in On the Gift of Perseverance, ch. 14: Will anyone dare to say that God did not foreknow to whom he was going to give the gift of believing, or whom he was going to give to his Son so that he would lose none of them? If he foreknew these things, he certainly foreknew the benefits by which he deigns to free us.⁷² He repeats the same in the same book, chs. 17, 18, 21, and 24.

To the authority from On Correction and Grace, ch. 12, it is answered that, as will become clear in disputation 11, in the decree by which God decided to permit the sin of the first parent placed in paradise and to concur in its positive action insofar as it was an action, God knew that he would sin if placed in paradise. Hence he knew this through free knowledge and not through middle knowledge. The same answer is given to the other passage from On Nature and Grace, ch. 26: God wished through the fall of the predestined person, which he permits, to make that person more cautious; therefore, through free knowledge he knows this conditional future: if he sins, he will thereafter become more cautious.⁷³

By these answers the objections from St. Ambrose, St. Gregory, St. Thomas, and the other saints and Scholastic Doctors are met. For St. Thomas in particular very often attacks that middle knowledge, though under another name, as is clear from the passages cited above.

XXIX. To the third argument it is answered that middle knowledge is not only useless for the perfection of divine providence, but also impossible in itself, as was shown above.⁷⁴ As to the objection, it is answered that human providence and will are not efficacious for moving another’s will and bringing about whatever one wishes. For it is said in Wisdom 9: The thoughts of mortals are fearful, and our providence is uncertain. Hence, to persuade another prudently of what one intends, one must observe the circumstances and wait for a time when the other is more disposed. But this reasoning does not apply to the divine will, which is most efficacious and has done all things whatsoever it willed in heaven and on earth. Thus St. Prosper, Against the Ungrateful, ch. 15, says: But when the Almighty saves a person with grace, grace itself completes its work. It always has time to perform what it wills to be done; no dispositions delay it, nor is it suspended in doubt by any causes. Nor does it carry out by the care and service of a minister what it alone can do, or entrust to a servant the function of acting.

To the first confirmation it is answered that, prior in the order of reason to having an efficacious decree to do something, God, he foreknows by his natural knowledge his omnipotence and the efficacy of his divine will and motion. For by that knowledge, and not by middle knowledge, he knows that if he wills to convert a person and give him efficacious help, he will convert him, as was said above. The second confirmation is answered in the same way.

To the fourth argument it is answered that the conditional future “If Adam had not sinned, the Son of God would not have become incarnate” is true and known to God in the decree of his divine will by which he decided to become incarnate on the supposition of the sin of the first parent, and not otherwise, as is clear from St. Thomas in the cited third part.⁷⁵ Hence God knew it through free knowledge. The same must be said of that conditional future, “If man had persevered in the state of innocence, he would have been immortal,” for its truth is founded on the decree of the will by which God decided to preserve man from death for as long as the state of innocence lasted. But other conditional propositions whose consequent has no infallible connection with the antecedent either by the nature of the thing or by a decree of the divine will are not true, and consequently are not knowable even by God, as was explained above.

XXX. To the fifth argument it is answered that, as will become clear in disputation 11, after the decree of the divine will by which God decided to permit Peter, placed in such circumstances, to sin, and to concur in the act of sin insofar as it is an action, he foreknew absolutely that Peter would sin. Likewise, before he decided to create Peter and place him in the aforesaid circumstances, he foreknew certainly and infallibly that if Peter were placed in those same circumstances, and God permitted Peter’s sin and decreed to concur in the act of sin insofar as it is a positive action, Peter would sin. But this conditional is not an object of middle knowledge, nor is it known by God through that knowledge, but through purely natural knowledge, or the knowledge of simple understanding; for every possible thing would be future if God had willed:

To the sixth argument, the antecedent is denied. In proof of it, the reply is that all possibles would be future on the supposition that God willed to bring them about, if they are good, or to permit them, if they are evil.⁷⁶ Hence something’s being future on the supposition that God willed to bring it about does not remove the aforesaid object from the account of the possible; therefore it is known through natural knowledge. But if the antecedent is not supposed to include a divine decree, at least a conditional one,⁷⁷ by which God decreed that something of this kind occur if that condition is posited as actual, nothing would be future by force of that supposition. For an effect cannot be understood as future in any way antecedently to the decree of the first cause, as was said above. Thus that conditional proposition would not be true, and consequently it would not even be knowable by God.

What was said already makes clear, in reply to the seventh argument, how conditional future things are not knowable in the sense posited by the proponents of middle knowledge: for in reality they would not be future if that condition were posited, unless a decree of the divine will were supposed in that condition, without which decree, whether absolute or conditional, no conditional future exists at all. Hence we, in denying and opposing middle knowledge, do not deny that God has knowledge of conditional future things, but only of those things that, since they will in no way be future even on a supposition, are said to be conditional futures.

In reply to the confirmation, it is said that for those two propositions to be contradictories, the negation must precede the copula “if” in the negative proposition. Then, before every decree of the divine will decreeing a future act, the affirmative proposition is false, since it is a bad inference. For the truth of a conditional proposition requires that the inference be good; consequently the negative conditional is true, for it has this sense: “It does not follow that, if Peter is placed in such an order of things, he will sin.” This sense is true, since the will, even when placed in those circumstances before the decree of the divine will, is wholly indifferent to producing an act of sin or an act of the contrary virtue.

XXXI. A second reply is that when propositions concern contingent matter, it is not necessary that, of two contradictories, one be determinately true in itself and the other determinately false;⁷⁸ it is sufficient that, if one is true, the other be false, so that it is impossible for both to be true together or false together. And because sinning or not sinning belongs contingently to Peter, the proposition “Peter, placed in such circumstances, will sin” is not more true in itself than its opposite.

To the eighth argument, the antecedent is denied. It can more truly be said that this concord of free choice with divine grace and predestination through middle knowledge gives rise to very many difficulties concerning the freedom of free choice, the efficacy of the helps of grace, and divine causality, providence, and gratuitous predestination,⁷⁹ as is clear from what has been said and will become still clearer from what is to be said below.

XXXII. To the ninth argument, it is replied that, since efficacious help is an effect of the divine will decreeing that a person be converted, his conversion has an infallible connection with that same help, just as it does with the absolute will of God, who wills that the person whose heart he moves be converted.⁸⁰ For St. Thomas says: It is impossible for both of these to be true at once: that the Holy Spirit wills to move someone to an act of charity and that the person himself loses charity by sinning.⁸¹ And again he says that if it is God’s intention in moving that the person whose heart he moves should attain grace, he infallibly attains it, according to John 6: “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”⁸² Hence, before the absolute decree of his will, God knows certainly and infallibly that if he had given efficacious help to Judas, he would have been converted. But God does not know this conditional proposition through middle knowledge, but through purely natural knowledge, by which he comprehends the omnipotence of his will and the intrinsic power of efficacious help, as was said above and will become clearer from what is to be said in disputation 25.

To the tenth argument, it is replied that it not only fails to demonstrate what it intends, but does not even make it probable. For the principle assumed in the major premise is gratuitous and manifestly false, even on the opinion of those who defend middle knowledge. They themselves admit that God decreed to concur with the created will in free acts by an indifferent general concurrence, if the will itself should wish to exert its influence. Yet this decree does not necessarily posit a real change in anything: for, on their opinion, God has this decree even with respect to those who do nothing, in whom no real change is made by that decree. In proof of the argument, the reply is that when God’s decree is absolute on the part of the object willed, a real change in a creature results from it at some time; but when it is conditional on the part of the object willed, it need not entail a real change in a creature. It is sufficient that, by force of that decree, the creature would be changed differently if the condition were fulfilled. This real change, which would be future if the condition were fulfilled, is also sufficient for the divine will to be related differently to creatures after that actual decree than before it. This is especially so because the relation of reason involved in God’s actual decree in relation to the objects willed secondarily, as objects, is not a categorical relation but a transcendental one; nor is it a real relation but a relation of reason, even on the part of creatures when creatures do not exist but would exist if the condition were fulfilled.

A second reply is that it is not necessary even in God’s decree that is absolute on the part of the object willed that it always entail a real change in a creature at some time. For the decree by which God wills, through his natural law, to bind a rational creature under pain of mortal sin is absolute on the part of the object willed; yet no real change in that creature results from this decree.

XXXIII By this we also answer the first confirmation: when God’s actual decree is absolute on the part of the object willed, it connotes something existing in a creature at some time that could fail to exist. But when the decree is conditional on the part of the object willed, it only connotes something that would exist in a creature by force of that decree if the condition were fulfilled, but which could nevertheless fail to exist. For when the condition was fulfilled, it would be produced by God, not with absolute necessity, but only with necessity on the supposition of the immutability of the divine decree, as will be said below.

To the second confirmation, it is replied that the passage of Augustine from On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 8, is not relevant to the present point. For there he speaks expressly about things that truly were future, namely the future sins of those who were not snatched away while they were in grace. These sins were indeed known with certainty and infallibly by God as future before they occurred, but they were not known before the actual decree of the divine will, as the objector claims; rather, they were known after the decree by which God determined to permit those future sins and to concur with the very act of sin insofar as it is an action, in the manner to be explained in disputation 25. It is most perverse and insane to say of these future things that God did not know them before they occurred, just as it is most perverse and insane to say that God could not have prevented them. But of the other conditional future things, which are at issue in the present controversy, it is said not perversely and insanely, but most rightly and truly, that before the decree of the divine will they are not knowable as determinate future things, even on the supposition that the created will were placed in such circumstances; they are knowable only as things that can come to be, as was said above. If it is said that St. Augustine teaches not only that God knew future sins, but also this conditional future: “If these people live longer, they will sin,” the reply is that God knew that conditional proposition too, but after the actual decree of his will, as was said.

Likewise, the passage cited from chapter 8 of On the Predestination of the Saints is not relevant. For in the very condition expressed in the antecedent—namely, “if he had wished to teach them”—a conditional will of God is included on the part of the act of willing, so that the sense is: “If God had willed efficaciously to draw them to himself, they too would certainly have come.” God certainly knows this conditional proposition through purely natural knowledge, by which he knows the efficacy and omnipotence of his will, just as he knows with certainty that if he had willed to create another world, he would have created it. No theologian denies that God has infallible knowledge of these and similar conditional propositions that are simply necessary, because, as St. Thomas teaches, their consequent follows infallibly, or with necessity of the consequence, from the antecedent if it is posited as actual.⁸³ The other passage of Augustine, from chapter 14 of On the Gift of Perseverance, has already been answered above.

To the third confirmation, it is replied that, as was said above from St. Thomas, for a conditional proposition to be true it is necessarily required that, if the antecedent is posited, the consequent also be infallibly posited as actual. In reply to the objection, it is said that this counsel signifies that the king’s kindness has great force for morally attracting and drawing the people to his service and obedience. Those who gave the counsel spoke truly, because this is what usually happens morally. In fact, however, that conditional proposition does not have infallible truth antecedently to the decree by which God determined to make the people his servants through the king’s kindness. For, setting aside such a decree, it can sometimes happen that the condition is posited and that the people are ungrateful and rebel against the king. The same must be said proportionally about other similar consultations and counsels.

Whether all future things are actually present in eternity according to the proper existences they will have in their own measure.

I. This is the chief difficulty among those that help clarify the certainty of divine foreknowledge in relation to contingent future things. For if it is once established that all contingent future things exist actually from eternity in the measure of eternity—not merely in known and objective being, but also according to their proper and actual existences—a simple path is opened for explaining the infallibility of that same divine knowledge. There are, then, two opposing opinions on this point. The first is that of many theologians who assert that things are not present to God in eternity in real being and according to their proper existences except when they actually possess them in their own immediate measure. Scotus followed this opinion in Book I, distinction 39, as did his disciples. Aureolus holds the same, as cited by Capreolus; Durandus in the same book, distinction 38, question 3; Gabriel, Ockham, and Palatius there as well. Many more recent theologians defend the same opinion, contending that Saint Thomas also held it. The arguments that convince them are as follows.

First, they argue from passages of Scripture in which it is said that God alone is from eternity, whereas all other things were produced by him in time, as is clear from Genesis 1: In the beginning God created heaven and earth, and Psalm 89: Before the mountains were made, and the earth and the world were formed, from age to age you are God. These passages and similar ones must be understood in their proper sense. Therefore, properly speaking, no created thing has from eternity, in eternity itself, its own actual existence; rather, from eternity it is present to God only in known being, or objective being.

Second, they argue from the authorities of Saint Thomas, in which he grants only a real presence in eternity from eternity according to objective being. For in Summa theologiae I, q. 14, a. 13, he says that future things in time are present to God from eternity, because his gaze is directed from eternity over all things insofar as they are in their presentness. In I–II, q. 91, a. 1, ad 1, he says that things which do not exist in themselves exist with God insofar as they are known and preordained by him. He teaches the same in Summa contra Gentiles I, ch. 66, argument 6. Again, in Summa theologiae I, q. 8, a. 3, he says that God is present to all things and all things are present before his sight because he beholds all things. There Saint Thomas posits no other presence of things in relation to God before they exist than objective presence alone.

Third, future things do not exist in eternity from eternity; therefore, they do not coexist with God in eternity. The consequence is clear, since to coexist with something is to exist at the same time as it. The antecedent is proved as follows. All created things begin to exist in eternity: for they begin to exist in themselves according to their proper measure and, consequently, begin to exist in any higher measure as well. Therefore they do not exist in eternity from eternity.

First confirmation. If things existed in eternity from eternity, it would follow that they were not created by God. This is proved as follows: since creation is the production of the whole of being from nothing, true creation requires that a thing have being after nonbeing. But what exists in eternity from eternity does not have being after nonbeing. Therefore.

Second confirmation. For in the Nicene Council, in the Creed, that impious statement of Arius is condemned: concerning the Son of God, he asserted that “there was when he was not” and that he had a beginning like creatures. But if the opinion asserting that all created things existed in eternity from eternity were true, there would be no difference, as regards eternity itself, between the generation of the Word and the production of creatures according to their proper existences. Therefore.

Fourth, it would follow from the opposing opinion that two contradictories were true in eternity. The proof is manifest. “Peter is white” and “Peter is not white” are contradictories. But these would both be true if future things existed in eternity from eternity. The minor premise is proved as follows. Suppose Peter is white today and black tomorrow. The affirmative is true, since it is now verified in our time that Peter is white; he is therefore also white in the measure of eternity. The negative, however, is proved thus: tomorrow Peter will truly not be white. But according to the opposing opinion, future things exist in eternity according to their proper existences; therefore the statement “Peter is not white” will also be true from eternity in eternity. Thus he will at once be white and not white in eternity.

Fifth, it is impossible for the same thing to be produced twice. But if things existed in eternity before existing in their proper measure, the same thing would be produced twice in reality. Therefore. The minor premise is proved as follows: if Antichrist coexists with God from eternity in eternity itself, then he has already been produced in eternity; for otherwise he could not exist, since he does not have being from himself but from another. Yet Antichrist truly is future; therefore he will have to be produced again, and so the same thing would be produced twice.

Sixth, creatures that are future in our time do not coexist with an angel in the measure of the aevum; therefore neither do they coexist with God in the measure of eternity. The antecedent is proved as follows: otherwise an angel would naturally know all contingent future things before they were produced, because they would be present to it and would coexist with it in the measure of the aevum, by which the angel is measured. The consequence is proved as follows: the aevum is a measure higher than our time, just as eternity is. Therefore, if contingent future things exist in eternity because it is a higher measure, they also exist in the measure of the aevum before they are produced in time.

This is confirmed: God has certain knowledge of future contingents because they coexist with him in the measure of eternity according to that real being which they will have in time. But future contingents also coexist with an angel in the measure of aevity, since that measure is above our time and is unchangeable and wholly simultaneous. Therefore an angel too will have certain knowledge of future contingents.

A seventh argument is made. It is impossible for something to exist in a higher measure according to its real being unless it first exists in a lower measure according to that same real being. Therefore it is contradictory that something have its own existence in eternity unless it has it in its own measure. But future things do not exist in their own measure; therefore neither do they exist in the measure of eternity. The antecedent is proved as follows: things are related to a higher measure only through an intermediate lower measure. Therefore, just as it is contradictory that something be under the heavens as under an inadequate and higher measure unless it exists in some lower place proper and adequate to it, so too it is contradictory that something exist really in eternity before it has being in its own measure.

An eighth argument is made. If things already have being and their own existence in eternity, it follows that no freedom of choice or contingency of things remains. But this must not be said. Therefore. The inference is proved: if things exist in eternity, then all future things have already been produced with all the circumstances they will have in our time. Therefore it will not now be in the power of free choice to do something, or to do it in another way than it was done in eternity. Therefore no freedom remains.

This is confirmed. A future contingent and free thing is in eternity only by the same being that it will have in time. But if it had being in time before it was brought about by free choice, it would be neither contingent nor free. Therefore, likewise, it will not be contingent or free if it has being in eternity before it is produced in time by free choice.

II. The second opinion, opposed to the preceding one, is followed by Capreolus, Sentences I, dist. 36, q. un., art. 1, and dist. 38, q. un., art. 2; Ferrari, Against the Gentiles I, chs. 66 and 67; Giles in Sentences I, dist. 38, q. 1; Cajetan, 1 p., q. 14, art. 13; and all Thomists. It is also the express teaching of St. Thomas, as will become clear below. For its explanation, some points must be presupposed.

First, note that when we say “a future thing is,” or “exists in eternity according to its own existence,” the adverb “now” included in the verb “is” does not denote the now of our time. The sense is not that future things exist in eternity within the measure by which we are measured according to the successive being that this measure has. Rather, “now” signifies only the now of eternity, which is unchangeable and wholly simultaneous.¹

Second, note that eternity is related to our time as a common measure to a particular one.² There is something similar in natural things. For just as the heavens, considered as a place, are related to this hall and to everything contained in it as a common and universal measure to a particular one, so proportionately eternity is related to aevity and to our time. Hence, just as everything contained in this hall is contained under the heavens, and not conversely, so whatever is contained in our time is contained in eternity, and not conversely.

Third, from Ferrari, cited ch. 66, § “It must be considered,” note that, as Aristotle teaches in Physics 4, text 114, two things measured by some duration are said to coexist with one another in one way, and the durations themselves are said to coexist in another way.³ For things measured by a duration are said to coexist with one another when both coexist in the same present measure. Thus two individuals are said to coexist on this day because, in relation to the measure of this day, they have being together. But two measures are said to coexist because one is contained in the other, as the present day coexists with the month of March and the year 1610 because it is contained in them. Therefore, for future things to coexist with God in eternity, it is sufficient and required that God and future things have being together in that measure of eternity by which God is measured, even though eternity is the proper and adequate measure of God, but a common and inadequate measure of other things.

III. Our conclusion, then, is this: future things are present to God in eternity not only according to objective being, or being as known, but also according to the real presence and actuality they will have in our time.⁴ This conclusion is opposed to the authors of the first opinion, but it is asserted by St. Thomas in the cited art. 13 and in Against the Gentiles I, ch. 66, argument 6, where he says that God knows all contingent things not only as they are in their causes, but also as each of them is actually in itself. And in 1 p., q. 14, art. 13, in the body, he says that all things that exist in time are present to God from eternity, not only because he has the ideas of things present to him, as some say, but because his vision is from eternity directed upon all things insofar as they are in their own presentiality.

The authors of the opposing opinion reply that St. Thomas is speaking only of objective presentiality, and not of real presentiality, which is according to a thing’s own being and its own existence.

But this explanation seems to conflict with St. Thomas’s words. For what is present only objectively does not yet have being in itself, or at least is not present insofar as it has being in itself. But St. Thomas plainly says that a future thing is present to God insofar as it actually has being in itself, in relation to the measure of eternity. Therefore. I add that St. Thomas expressly says that future things are said to be present to God in eternity not only because God has the accounts of things present to himself, which pertains to objective presence, but also because each of them has being in eternity, which is wholly simultaneous. And in the cited 1. con. Gen. c. 66, he adds that whatever exists in any part of time coexists with eternity, as though present to it, even if it is past or future with respect to another part of time. He teaches the same in q. 2. de verit. art. 12. in corp.; 1. p. q. 57. art. 3; q. 86. art. 4; and 22. q. 171. art. 6. ad 1 and 2. These passages must necessarily be consulted. St. Thomas explains this teaching further in 1. d. 38. q. 1. art. 5. in corp., where he says: God knows from eternity not only that he knows the causes of things, which is to be in his knowledge; he also sees from eternity, in one intuition, each of the times, and that such a thing exists at this time and is absent at this time.⁵ By these words he plainly acknowledges that future things have presence not only objectively in relation to the divine intuition, but also according to the real presence they will have in their proper measure.

IV. This opinion is proved first from Sacred Scripture, in which our conclusion is indicated not obscurely, especially in Job 14, where it is said: The number of his months is with you. Explaining this passage, St. Gregory says: Because even things that pass away stand with almighty God, he declared that the number of our months is with him.⁶ But months include future and past times; therefore these stand present with God. Likewise, Hebrews 1 says of the divine Word: Through whom he also made the ages. Among the ages some things are past and some future, but all are said to have been made by God, because in eternity all things are present. Isaiah 45 likewise says of God that he made the things to come,⁷ that is, the things that are future; here future things themselves are said to have been made by God because in his eternity all things are present as made, and nothing is future or past with respect to him, although something is said to be past in relation to one part of our time and future in relation to another. Finally, for this opinion note the passage of the Apostle in Romans 4, where it is said of Abraham: I have made you the father of many nations before God, who calls the things that are not as though they are.⁸ By saying “before God”, he explains what he had said in the past tense, “I have made you.” For although that was future, since it was present to God in eternity he said, “I have made you”; and he adds the reason when he says: “who calls the things that are not as though they are.” It is as if he said: for this reason he speaks of the future in the manner of the present, because future things are present to God in eternity, and he sees in the same way the things to be done in our time as those that have been done or are being done. St. Ambrose and many other holy Doctors explain this passage of the Apostle in this way.

Second, this is proved by the authority of the saints, first from St. Augustine, On the Trinity, book 4, chapter 17, where he says: With God, past and future things stand. And in book 5, chapter 16, he says: With God (he says) neither have past things passed away, and future things have already come to pass. He says the same in book 15, chapter 7. But especially notable for proving the same point is a passage of that same St. Augustine in Soliloquies, chapter 26, where he says: Before I was born, I, the son of your handmaid, O Lord, my hope from my mother’s breasts, you foresaw and prepared for me the paths on which I would walk and come to the glory of your house. Before you formed me in the womb, you knew me; and before I came forth from the womb, you preordained whatever pleased you concerning me. What things, and of what kind, are written about me in your book, in the secrecy of your council, I do not know, and therefore I greatly fear; but you know, because what I await through the succession of days and temporal events, from here to a thousand years of this temporal existence, is already accomplished in the sight of your eternity, and what will be future is already accomplished. These words cannot be explained as referring only to objective presence, for future things, if they were present in eternity only objectively, would not be said to have already been accomplished in that same eternity. Jerome also holds this, in his commentary on Ephesians 1, as do Ambrose in the passage cited above and in book 8 of On the Faith to Gratian, chapter 7; Gregory, in his homily for the Sunday of the Passion; Anselm, On the Fall of the Devil, chapters 18 and 20, and On the Harmony of Foreknowledge and Predestination, chapter 1; Isidore, On the Supreme Good, book 2, chapter 6; the gloss on Psalm 89; and St. Prosper, On the Call of All Nations, book 1, chapter 24.

Third, this is proved by reason. God has clear and distinct intuitive cognition of all future contingents; therefore all those things are present in eternity according to their proper existence, and not merely in objective being, or in the being of what is known. The consequence is clear: intuitive cognition is of a present thing insofar as it is present according to its proper existence. The antecedent is proved as follows: God’s cognition of future contingents is most perfect; therefore it is intuitive. Otherwise God’s cognition would change when future things were brought into being, for he would begin to know intuitively what he had previously known abstractively.

It is proved fourth by Ferrari’s argument from the passage cited above. Either Adam and Antichrist coexist with God in the now of eternity according to their own real existences, or they do not. But Adam coexists with God as past, and Antichrist as future. If the first is granted, we have what we intend. If the second is granted, it follows that there is future and past in eternity. For something is called past or future in relation to a duration only if that duration has past and future parts in itself, as is clear in our time. For if there were only one indivisible instant in it, nothing would be past or future in relation to it. But the past and future are incompatible with eternity, as St. Thomas teaches, 1. p. q. 10. ar. 4. and 5. For eternity is indivisible and wholly simultaneous. Therefore.

V. It is proved fifth. Whatever at some time coexists with eternity always coexists with it, since eternity is wholly simultaneous, as was said. But when Antichrist is born, it will be true to say that Antichrist coexists with God in eternity according to his real being. Therefore he has this coexistence in eternity from eternity. The minor premise is granted by the authors of the opposing opinion, and the inference is proved because eternity has no succession.

To this argument someone replies by distinguishing the major proposition. If it is understood of the whole of eternity, insofar as eternity is a certain simple thing made up of no parts, then, he says, the proposition is true: for since eternity in reality lacks parts in itself, it cannot happen that something coexists with eternity and does not coexist with the whole of eternity, according to the reality of eternity itself. But if it is understood of eternity as a whole insofar as eternity can terminate our different concepts, by which it is truly affirmed that eternity itself exists, then the proposition is false.

But this solution does not remove the force of the argument. For let us set aside our concepts and speak of existence itself on the side of reality. For, as this author admits, whatever once exists on the side of reality in eternity coexists with the whole of eternity. Therefore it is the case on the side of reality that Antichrist has actual existence from eternity throughout eternity itself.

Finally, this teaching is proved and explained by some examples. The first example is the one St. Thomas uses in the cited art. 13, ad 3. God’s relation to future contingents is like that of someone standing on a high lookout, from which he sees the whole road and those passing along it. For although one person walks after another and the later person does not see the earlier one, the person on the lookout sees them all together and has them present to him. Therefore in the same way God has all things, past and future, present to him in the lookout of eternity, although the future things follow upon the past. The second example is from the same St. Thomas, Against the Gentiles I, ch. 66, argument 6, where he compares eternity to a center. For just as an indivisible center is present to every designated point on the circumference and to all the lines drawn from that circumference to the center, so eternity, since it is indivisible, is present to all things existing at any difference of time and has them all present to it. The third example is used by St. Anselm in On the Harmony of God’s Foreknowledge and Predestination, ch. 1, where he says that, just as the same now of time, being indivisible, reaches all divisible places and all the things located in them, however far apart they may be, and any duration, however divisible, so likewise eternity, although indivisible and wholly simultaneous, can be present to many divisible durations separated from one another. The fourth example is taken from the rational soul, which is indivisible and yet is present at once, wholly, in several divisible parts of the body separated from one another. All these points will become clearer from the solutions to the arguments.

VI. To the first argument drawn from the passages set out at the beginning, it is answered that the cited passages of Scripture and similar ones teach only that creatures were not from eternity in their own measure, nor did they have being in themselves from eternity in their own measure; only God is from eternity in his own measure, which is eternity. Nevertheless, it remains true that all things to be produced in time, and likewise past things, are present in eternity according to their own existences, as is clear from what was said.

To the second argument from the authorities of St. Thomas, it is answered that the holy Doctor indeed admits that future contingents are objectively present to God in eternity, but in those places he does not deny that they are present according to their own existences. Rather, he expressly asserts this in other places cited above in support of our opinion, and in Quodlibet 12, art. 3, ad 3.

To the third argument the antecedent is denied. In answer to the proof, it is said that for future things to coexist with God in eternity, they need not first exist in their own measure. The reason is that the existence they have in eternity does not depend on the future existence they have insofar as they are future, since eternity is an infinite and unlimited measure in which God can consequently behold the existences of all things before they exist in their own measure. Hence, although future things begin to exist in their own measure, they do not begin to exist in eternity, since eternity has no before and after, being indivisible and wholly simultaneous. Thus we cannot mark in eternity one instant at which a thing is not, and another at which it begins to be, or at which it first is.

But there is an argument against this. At this instant of our time it is true to say, “Now Antichrist coexists with God in eternity.” Therefore the existence of things in eternity depends on the existence they have in their own measure. Therefore it is contradictory for the proposition “Antichrist exists in eternity” to be true in the measure of eternity without also being true in our time and at every instant of it.

With Ferrari, Against the Gentiles I, chs. 49 and 66, it is answered that the proposition “At this instant of our time, future things are present in eternity” has two senses. The first is that the determination “at this instant,” or “in this time of ours,” indicates the measure of the truth of that statement. In this sense the proposition is most true: for it is now true to say that Antichrist is present to God in the measure of eternity; the same statement was true yesterday, and will be true at every future instant. The second sense is that the determination “in this time” indicates not the measure of the truth of the proposition, but the measure of the actual existence of Antichrist or some other future thing. In that case the proposition is false. For its sense would be that in this present instant all future things are in themselves and are seen by God in eternity itself as coexisting with him and having being in their own measure. Cajetan follows this same teaching in the cited art. 13. For he observes that things’ being present in eternity can be understood in two ways. First, the coexistence of temporal things in eternity might be measured by every instant of our time; this sense is false and is not intended by St. Thomas. Second, temporal things might be present to God in eternity itself at every now of eternity; St. Thomas is to be understood in this sense. Since eternity itself comprehends all times, it is therefore verified at every instant of our time that all temporal things are present to God in eternity.

To the first confirmation, it is answered from what was said that creation, properly and absolutely speaking, regards the proper measure in which things are produced from nonbeing into being. The reason is that in time there is before and after, so that in it we can mark one instant at which a thing is not and another at which it begins to be. This has no place in eternity, since eternity is indivisible and wholly simultaneous.

It is answered a second way that, as St. Augustine says in the passages cited above, and as can be gathered from the cited passage in Isaiah, ch. 45, things that are future are said to have been made with God, since in relation to him nothing is future. Nevertheless, one must observe that by the same action by which future things will come to be in time, they are said to have been made in eternity, because a future action is always present in the measure of eternity.

To the second confirmation, it is answered from what was said that the difference established by the Council between the Son of God and creatures in opposition to Arius consists in this: the Son of God did not begin to be in his proper measure, nor did he have being after nonbeing; creatures, however, began to be in their proper measure, since in time they were produced by God from nonbeing into being. Hence this inference is invalid: “Antichrist exists in eternity; therefore Antichrist exists.” For we are arguing affirmatively from what is less restricted to what is more restricted, or from the broader to the nonbroader. Thus it does not follow, “Peter exists, or existed, or will exist; therefore Peter exists.” In the same way it does not follow, “Peter exists in eternity; therefore Peter exists.” For in order to exist in eternity it is enough that Peter have being at some difference of our time, whether in the present, past, or future time. But for the proposition “Peter exists” to be verified, he must exist in his proper measure.

VII. As to the fourth argument, Cajetan, 1 p., q. 14, art. 13, Master Bañez, in q. 10, art. 1, in reply to the last argument, and several other Thomists do not consider it inadmissible that two contradictories be true in the measure of eternity. Their reason is that, according to the opinion of all theologians, that indivisible instant of eternity, although formally indivisible, nevertheless by its eminence contains virtually the succession and different instants of our time. Hence in that measure of eternity one of the contradictories is verified by its relation to one instant of our time, and the other likewise by its relation to another extrinsic instant.

But this solution is open to an objection. For if contradictories are truly contradictories, they must be taken in relation to the same instant. For contradiction is the affirmation and negation of the same thing of the same subject, in the same respect. Therefore it is contradictory for two contradictories to be true, even in eternity.

So, in reply to the argument, those contradictories are not true even in eternity;⁹ for the negative is false. Its sense is that Peter is not white at the instant of eternity insofar as that instant corresponds to every instant of our time; but this sense is false. And if the argument is made, “For Peter is black at the instant of eternity; therefore he is not white at the instant of eternity,” the consequence is denied. For the affirmative is verified if he is black at some instant of our time; but for the negative “Peter is not white in eternity” to be verified, it is required that he not be white at the instant of eternity insofar as it corresponds to every instant of our time. But if one proposition is taken of the instant of eternity insofar as it corresponds to one instant of our time, while the other is taken of the instant of eternity insofar as it corresponds extrinsically to another instant of our time, then they are not contradictories. So too, in relation to our time, these are not contradictories: “Peter is white now”; “Peter will not be white tomorrow.” For both can be true together, or false together.

To the fifth argument, it is denied that future things are produced twice. In reply to the proof, Antichrist is produced only once in time, but his production, which is called future in relation to this day, is present in relation to eternity. For, as was said, eternity coexists as present with our whole time, since it admits no succession.

VIII. To the sixth argument, we answer with Cajetan, cited at article 13 in his solution to Scotus’s third argument, that the angel’s cognition by which it knows contingent future things is not measured by the aevum.¹⁰ The reason is that the actual representation of singular contingent things, which occurs through species given to the angel, is not measured by the aevum, but comes anew when future things are brought into being. It does not follow, therefore, that an angel knows contingent future things before they are brought into being.

But an argument is made against this solution. For that cognition of future things is measured at least by an angelic instant, which is indivisible and wholly simultaneous. Therefore future things can have coexistence in relation to that angelic instant before they exist in their proper measure, and hence an angel will be able to know future things before they exist.

We answer that although an angelic instant admits no variation or succession in the substance of the operation it measures, it does admit them with respect to certain accidents, as Saint Thomas teaches in Quodlibet 9, a. 8, and Ferrariensis in Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 100, as does Master Báñez in Summa theologiae I, q. 63, a. 6, at the end. Eternity, however, admits absolutely no variation, just as God himself does not. Hence God, without any succession, simultaneously beholds all things insofar as they are present in eternity; an angel, by contrast, knows contingent future things successively, when they exist in their proper measure. There is also another difference: although an angelic instant is a more perfect measure, it is not a measure higher than the measure of our time, nor does it contain that measure, as eternity contains all other measures. Therefore it does not follow that contingent future things coexist with an angel in relation to the angel’s own measure, as they coexist with God in relation to the measure of eternity. This also makes the reply to the confirmation clear.

To the seventh argument, we answer that when a higher measure is finite and limited, nothing exists in the higher and inadequate measure unless it first exists in its own lower and adequate measure, as occurs in the example given in the argument. But when the higher measure is infinite and unlimited, as eternity is, something may well exist according to real existence in the higher measure before it exists in its own lower and adequate measure.¹¹ The reason is that an infinite measure can admit no succession or mutability in itself; hence, in a more eminent way, it contains in a single instant whatever is contained successively in lower measures.

To the final argument, we answer that, on the supposition that God sees presently in eternity some act of our free choice as future at a certain time, it cannot at the same time be true that the act does not occur. Absolutely speaking, however, and in relation to its proximate cause, which is liable to fail, it can fail to occur. Hence, when it is produced by the will in time, it is produced freely and contingently, for the freedom and contingency of things are formally drawn from their relation to their proximate cause. If the argument proved anything, it would also prove that God’s foreknowledge removes the freedom and contingency of things. For, on the supposition that God has foreknown something as future, it is impossible, in the composite sense, that it not be future. This solution is confirmed: for, on the supposition that I see Peter speaking, it is impossible that he not be speaking, yet he speaks freely and contingently. Therefore, in the same way, although God presently sees all future acts of free choice, they are nevertheless produced freely and contingently in their own time. Therefore the existence of things in eternity does not impede their contingency.

To the confirmation we answer that the very same being a contingent future thing has in time it also has in the eternal now. In relation to our time that being is future, but in relation to eternity it is present. Hence, although it is present in eternity, it will nevertheless occur contingently in its own time. And when the argument is made, “If a future thing had being in time before it was produced by its free and contingent cause, freedom with respect to that act would be removed; therefore it is removed as well if it has being in eternity before it is produced in time by its contingent cause,” we answer by denying the consequence. For if a contingent future thing had being in time before it was produced by free choice, free choice would be wholly passive in relation to that act, as Luther said, since it would merely receive an action produced by another and not by itself; hence, in relation to that thing, it would not be a free cause. But this does not follow from the fact that contingent and free future things have being in eternity before they are produced in time. For just as God beholds in his eternity our free act, which will be future at a certain time, so too he beholds in that same eternity the free cause of that act freely producing it, although in relation to our time that production is future.

IX. Nevertheless, one difficult argument remains to be resolved. It would follow from our opinion that there is in actuality an infinite multitude actually present in some duration; the consequent is impossible. Therefore.¹² The consequence is proved as follows: all the future acts of cognition of the blessed are infinite. Therefore, if all of them are actually present to God in the measure of eternity according to their proper existences, there will be an actually infinite multitude in relation to some duration. The minor premise is proved as follows: an actually infinite multitude cannot exist in a limited duration of time, because every multitude consisting of all its parts is proportionable to the species of number and consequently is finite, just as every species of number is finite, since it is specified by its last unit. But this argument also applies to a multitude existing in eternity. Therefore it is impossible for any actually infinite multitude to exist in eternity.

We answer this argument that an infinity can exist in eternity,¹³ because those things are not present to one another, although they are present in eternity. Thus Adam and Antichrist are present to God in eternity and coexist in eternity itself, yet they are not present to one another, since in relation to their proper measure Adam is past and Antichrist is future. The impossibility of an actual infinite applies only to things that are present to one another, for then infinitely many things would be mutually present, and there would be an actual multitude of coexisting things not proportionable to the species of number, which is a contradiction.

But an argument is made against this: things identical with one third thing are identical with one another; therefore, things present to one third thing are present to one another. But Adam, Antichrist, and all the future thoughts are actually present to one third thing, namely eternity. Therefore they are present to one another; consequently, all future thoughts will be actually present to one another, and thus there will be an actual infinite in things mutually present. We answer that the assumed major premise is true only of things identical with one third thing both in reality and in reason¹⁴, but not of those things which, although really identified with one third thing, nevertheless differ from it in reason, as is clear in divine things. For the Father and the Son are really the same as the divine Essence, and yet they are personally distinct from one another: the Father is not the Son. Likewise, action and passion are identified with motion, yet they are distinguished from one another. In proportionate fashion, we say in the present case that although the existence of Antichrist and that of Adam are present in eternity, they are nevertheless not present to one another, since presence to one another is derived from relation to their proper measure, in relation to which they do not coexist. Therefore it does not follow that there is an actually infinite number of things mutually present.