De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

Name: De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate
Author: Diego Álvarez

De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate, ac legitima eius cum efficacia eorundem auxiliorum concordia

First published 1610

Diego Álvarez’s twelve-book treatise on divine grace and human free choice. This edition contains Book I: the prooemium and five preliminary disputations on Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian teaching, Manichaean and Reformation positions, Catholic theologians, and the authority of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Latin from the Rome 1610 edition, with a new English translation.

This work is being completed — add a section.

Disputatio VII: Whether God certainly and infallibly knows future contingents in the predetermination of secondary causes, especially when the secondary causes are free.

Whether God certainly and infallibly knows future contingents in the predetermination of secondary causes, especially when the secondary causes are free.

I. Those authors who deny that God efficaciously predetermined such future contingents by his eternal decree antecedently to his foreknowledge of the free cooperation of free choice that would occur on the supposition that it were placed in such circumstances defend the negative position. We shall present their arguments in disputations 22 and 23.

Moreover, this opinion is also proved as follows. It often happens that secondary causes are determined to produce some effect and yet in fact do not produce it, as is clear in the case of Hezekiah, to whom Isaiah 38 said: Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not live. For in that case the natural causes of death were already determined, and yet death did not then follow. Therefore an effect to come cannot be certainly known in determined causes.

A second argument: the first free act of both human beings and angels follows infallibly upon their determinate and natural judgment, by which they judge that such an object is to be pursued; for this judgment must be natural and not free. Otherwise the act of the will that follows that judgment would not be the first free act, but would presuppose another free act on the part of the intellect, and so there would be an infinite regress. But the future free act cannot be certainly known in such a judgment; therefore future contingents cannot be certainly known in determined causes. The minor premise is proved: otherwise every angel would, by the power of his nature, know all the first free acts of other angels and human beings. For he naturally knows all the natural acts of others and everything pertaining to the order of nature; therefore he knows that natural judgment from which the first free act follows infallibly. Therefore, if future contingent and free acts could be certainly known in the determination of secondary causes, it would follow that an angel who naturally knows that natural judgment would also know the first free act of any other angel or human being—which no one grants.

St. Thomas holds the contrary opinion in the places cited in the preceding disputation, conclusion 1. The Thomists generally follow him, as do other theologians who teach that God predetermines all secondary causes to their operations.

II. Our conclusion, then, is this: God certainly knows all future contingents, including free ones, in the determination of secondary causes that are not to be impeded by the concurrence of other causes.¹ That is, precisely because God knows the determination of the secondary cause and the concurrence of all the other causes by which the contingent effect will not be impeded, he certainly knows that effect to be future.

This conclusion is proved. An effect is known with certainty in a cause that is necessary without qualification because such a cause has an infallible ordering to that effect, as we know infallibly that every human being is capable of laughter because he is rational. But a contingent cause that is completely determined and not to be impeded, however free it may be and capable of not acting, will in fact operate infallibly and produce its effect. Therefore its effect, contingently future, can also be known with certainty in such a cause.

III. Second, this is proved as follows. In the absolute and efficacious decree of his will, God certainly knows future contingents, including free ones, as was shown in the preceding disputation. Therefore he also knows them in the complete determination of secondary causes that are not to be impeded. The consequence is clear: in the very motion by which God determines secondary causes to their contingent and free effects there is God’s intention, which cannot fail, as St. Thomas teaches, p. 2. q. 112. art. 3. in corp., and 2. 2. q. 24. art. 11. in corp.

IIII. To the first argument, it is replied that although the natural causes of Hezekiah’s death were determined, they were impeded by a special dispensation of God, so that Hezekiah’s death would not then follow from them. Hence his death could not be certainly known in those causes.

To the second, it is replied that the first act of the will follows infallibly upon the first command, which is not wholly a natural act but is free in some respect, at least as to exercise. For this, note that an act can be free in two ways.² First, because it is expressly willed as an object; in this sense the first act of command is not free, otherwise there would be an infinite regress, as the argument proves. In a second way, an act can be called free because it concerns an object to which the power eliciting that act is not naturally determined. In this sense the first command is a free act as to exercise, because the intellect is not naturally determined to that particular object with which the first command is concerned. Hence one angel cannot naturally know the first act of command of other angels or human beings, nor the first free act that follows upon such a command.

A second reply is that the first act of the will must concern the good in general, to which the will is naturally determined as to specification. For, as weighty authorities teach, the will cannot will some particular good unless it has first had an act concerning the good in general.³ Hence an angel, by the power of his nature, can know with certainty that the first act the human will produces will be an appetite or volition of the good in general. Yet he cannot know at what time it will produce such an act, because, although that act is necessary as to specification, it has some freedom as to exercise.⁴

↑ Top of work

Book One

Prooemium: division of the whole work

Disputatio I: Whether the Pelagians ever admitted that any inward grace, or any supernatural help from God, is divinely given for salvation or for fulfilling the precepts of the law

Disputatio II: What grace the Semi-Pelagians admitted as necessary for salvation, and where their view agrees with or departs from the error of the Pelagians

Disputatio III: What the Manichaeans formerly held, and the Lutherans and Calvinists hold in our time, about the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice

Disputatio IV: What certain Catholic Doctors hold about the natural powers of free choice and its concord with divine foreknowledge, providence, predestination, and the efficacy of the helps of grace

Disputatio V: How much authority Saint Augustine’s teaching has concerning predestination and grace, and whether it is permissible to depart from it

Book Two

Introduction

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

Disputatio II: Whether the knowledge of God is sufficiently divided into knowledge that is merely natural and knowledge that is merely free; or whether, besides both, middle knowledge must be posited in God with respect to conditional future things that depend on the human will.

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

Disputatio IV: Whether God certainly knows future contingents because of their real presence in eternity before they come to be, and whether an existence of this kind contributes anything to the certainty and infallibility of the divine knowledge.

Disputatio V: Whether God certainly and infallibly knows all future contingents in the decree, or predetermination, of his divine will.

Disputatio VI: Whether God certainly and infallibly knows future sins in some decree of his divine will.

Disputatio VII: Whether God certainly and infallibly knows future contingents in the predetermination of secondary causes, especially when the secondary causes are free.

Disputatio VIII: Whether, setting aside every predetermination of the divine will and existence in eternity, another ground for the certainty of divine knowledge can be assigned, namely, on the part of the truth of the object.

Disputatio IX: Whether God certainly knows future contingents before the decree of his will, as future, in their ideas.

Disputatio X: Whether there is in God a conjectural knowledge of what, in particular, a created will will do if placed in such circumstances.

Disputatio XI: Whether this causal proposition is true: “Because this is future, it is foreknown by God”; or, conversely: “Because God foreknows something to be future, therefore it is future.”

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

Book Three

Introduction

Disputatio I: Whether God’s actual motion, which all secondary causes need in order to produce their effect or operation, is an immediate influx into the secondary cause itself; or whether instead it is only an immediate influx, together with the secondary cause, into its effect.

Disputatio II: What that prior motion is by which God moves and applies secondary causes to act.

Disputatio III: Whether God’s general concurrence, by which he helps secondary causes constituted in first act through supernatural forms to produce supernatural acts, is supernatural; or whether it is of the same order as general concurrence with merely natural acts.

Disputatio IV: Whether God’s general concurrence, especially with respect to acts that depend on created free choice, is indifferent of itself.

Disputatio V: Whether, by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will, God truly predetermines as an efficient cause all secondary causes, both natural and free, to their operations after the manner of a physical cause, while preserving their nature and freedom.

Disputatio VI: Whether, by a prior motion inhering in the created will, God moves, applies, or predetermines it after the manner of a physical cause to all its good acts in particular, while preserving its freedom.

Disputatio VII: Whether, by a prior motion, God truly premoves as an efficient cause free choice after the manner of a physical cause to the act of sin, insofar as it is an act and insofar as it is a being.

Disputatio VIII: Whether all contingent and free acts predetermined by God necessarily occur with the necessity of infallibility, or with necessity on the supposition of the predetermination of the divine will.

Disputatio IX: Whether the first root of contingency is the efficacy, or omnipotence, of the divine will.

Disputatio X: Whether any effect can be called formally contingent in relation to God’s causality, especially when it is produced immediately by him.

Book Four

Introduction

Disputatio I: Whether God has providence not only over all genera and species, but also over all individuals in particular, according to all circumstances of place, time, etc.

Disputatio II: Whether the evils of punishment are willed by an absolute and efficacious will, and predetermined in particular, through divine providence, or are only permitted.

Disputatio III: Whether the nature of divine providence includes not only the ordering of means to an end, but also the attainment of the end intended by God.

Disputatio IV: Whether contingent and free secondary causes can withdraw themselves from, or depart from, the order assigned to them by divine providence.

Disputatio V: Whether created free choice can resist almighty God, or strive against the order of divine providence.

Book Five

Introduction

Disputatio I: Whether all the explanations that St. Augustine gives of those words of the Apostle, “God wills all human beings to be saved,” are legitimate.

Disputatio II: What God's antecedent will is, what his consequent will is, and whether antecedent will formally entails some conditional act or wish in God.

Disputatio III: What predestination is, and in which act it formally consists: an act of the will, or rather an act of the intellect.

Disputatio IV: Whether the good use of the aids of grace, insofar as it proceeds from free will, is an effect of predestination.

Disputatio V: Whether the good use of free will, proceeding from the aid of grace, is a cause, reason, or necessary condition of predestination in adults.

Disputatio VI: Whether the predestination of infants depended on, and presupposed, foreknowledge of the good use of the free will of their parents or of others through whom they came to the grace of baptism.

Disputatio VII: Whether the foreseen merits of Christ are the cause of our predestination with respect to its entire effect.

Disputatio VIII: Whether the grace of the state of innocence was conferred on Adam through the merits of Christ.

Disputatio IX: Whether predestination, with respect to the attainment of its effects, is certain and infallible with the certainty of the order and causality of the means.

Disputatio X: Whether anyone, apart from divine revelation, can know with infallible certainty that he or another is among the predestined, or infer this from certain signs.

Disputatio XI: Whether, at least among the faithful, there are more elect than reprobate.

Book Six

Introduction

Disputatio I: Whether the children of Adam contract original sin through seminal propagation, such that it truly and properly has the character of guilt in them.

Disputatio II: Whether through original sin man was only deprived of original justice and supernatural gifts, or also wounded in his natural powers.

Disputatio III: What wounds man incurs through original or actual sin.

Disputatio IV: Whether free will in fallen nature, apart from the aids of grace, has the same natural powers for good that it would have had if it had been created in a state of pure nature.

Disputatio V: Whether man can, by the powers of nature alone and without the aid of grace, know every truth pertaining to the natural order.

Disputatio VI: Whether man can, by the powers of nature alone, assent to all the supernatural mysteries proposed and explained to him as revealed by God, with assent that is certain and firm on the believer’s part.

Disputatio VII: Whether, without the aid of grace, man in fallen nature can perform a moral act that is truly good in relation to the ultimate natural end and is an act of true virtue.

Disputatio VIII: Whether man in fallen nature can, by the powers of nature alone together with God’s general concurrence, elicit an absolute, purely natural act of loving God above all things, with an absolute resolve to please him in everything.

Disputatio IX: Whether free will, with general concurrence alone, can elicit attrition or contrition with respect to the substance of the act alone.

Disputatio X: Whether man can, by the natural powers of free will, restore the good connatural to him that he lost through sin.

Disputatio XI: Whether fallen man can, without the aid of grace, keep all the commandments and resist, at every moment, all the temptations he encounters, even the gravest, which must be overcome to keep the natural law.

Book Seven

Introduction

Disputatio I: Whether man can, without the aid of grace, dispose himself at least remotely to obtain grace by asking, seeking, knocking, and so forth.

Disputatio II: Whether those who do all that lies in their power by nature alone receive from God, infallibly and according to a fixed law, the aids of prevenient grace by which they carry it out as required for salvation.

Disputatio III: Whether greater effort of free choice obtains greater or more intense aids of rousing and prevenient grace.

Disputatio IV: Whether someone who does all that lies in his power with the earlier aids of prevenient grace receives subsequent aids infallibly and according to a fixed law.

Disputatio V: Whether someone who does all that lies in his power with efficacious aid, that is, who elicits an act of charity and contrition, receives justifying grace infallibly and according to a fixed law.

Disputatio VI: Whether acts of charity equal to the preexisting habit, or even less intense acts, obtain an increase of habitual grace, charity, and essential glory infallibly and according to a fixed law.

Disputatio VII: Whether deadened merits obtain for the penitent, infallibly and according to an established law, greater habitual grace and a right to more intense essential glory.

Disputatio VIII: Whether greater effort or influence of free choice, with equal aid of assisting grace, obtains for one person greater justifying grace than for another.

Disputatio IX: Whether a naturally more perfect intellect, with equal light of glory, produces a more intense act of beatific vision than another.

Disputatio X: Whether the beatific vision, insofar as it is formally a vital act, is efficiently caused by the light of glory as the principle by which it is produced, or by the intellect alone according to its innate power.

Disputatio XI: Whether acts of believing, hoping, and loving God as the author of grace are supernatural in substance and in the being of nature, or only in their manner and in the moral order.

Disputatio XII: Whether the final disposition to habitual grace proceeds by way of efficient causation from grace itself, or from actual aid alone, that is, from the will elevated by that aid.