De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

IN WHICH THE SUBJECT IS GOD’S GENERAL CONCURRENCE WITH ACTS, ESPECIALLY THOSE OF THE NATURAL ORDER, AND THE DIVINE PREDEFINITIONS.

Next we must treat of God’s general concurrence and of the divine will by which he concurs with all the effects of secondary causes, moving them so that they act in conformity with their own nature. And first, so that we may begin with the more universal matters, in accordance with Aristotle’s teachings, we must discuss God’s general concurrence in relation to acts, including free acts of the natural order, so that afterward we may proceed to those of the supernatural order. Concerning general concurrence in the natural order, ten matters are to be examined.

I. Whether God’s general concurrence is an immediate influx into the secondary cause, or whether instead it is only an immediate influx, together with the secondary cause, into its effect.

II. Whether God’s general concurrence, which premoves secondary causes, is a quality or a motion inhering in those causes and produced by God alone.

III. Whether it has the same formal character in relation to all acts, both natural and supernatural.

IIII. Whether it is indifferent of itself.

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

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

VII. Whether he premoves that same will to the act of sin, insofar as it is an act and a certain positive being.

VIII. Whether all acts, including free acts, predefined and predetermined by God, necessarily occur with necessity on the supposition of the divine predetermination, and whether with this necessity the freedom of that same free choice remains unimpaired,

Here it is explained what this necessity on a supposition is, and of what kind.

IX. Whether the first root of contingency is the efficacy and omnipotence of the divine will, or its freedom, such that if God acted by necessity of nature, no effect would be contingent.

X. Whether any effect can be called formally contingent in relation to divine causality.

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.

I. The meaning of the question is whether, when a secondary cause has by reason of its own form a permanent power proportionate to some effect, a prior motion of God received in that cause is also necessary in order for it actually to produce its operation; or whether a simultaneous concurrence, likewise influencing the effect together with the secondary causes themselves, is sufficient.

Some theologians think that God’s prior concurrence or influx is not necessary, but that simultaneous concurrence is sufficient. They prove this opinion as follows.

First. God’s actual motion and concurrence contribute nothing to the will by which it is helped, inclined, or strengthened for acting. Therefore it is not an influx into the will as a cause, but an influx together with it into its effect. The antecedent is proved as follows: through this motion the will is not constituted in first act, but in second act, since the motion presupposes in the will everything necessary for acting on the part of first act.

This is confirmed. Concurrences must not be multiplied without necessity. But when a secondary cause is sufficiently constituted in first act by a permanent form sufficient in its kind for it to act, God’s simultaneous concurrence is enough. Therefore another prior concurrence of God is posited as necessary to no purpose.

Second, it is argued that only instruments need to be moved and applied to acting by a prior motion of a superior agent, as is clear in the case of a saw and a paintbrush. This arises because an instrument by itself and by the power of its own form does not have power to produce the effect of the principal agent. But secondary causes have by themselves and by reason of their own form the power to produce effects proportionate to them, because they are principal causes with respect to such effects. Therefore they do not require any prior motion of God in order to act.

Third. Natural causes are determined to one outcome by their own form, just as fire is naturally determined by heat to heat things. Therefore at least they do not need a prior motion of God to produce a determinate action or a determinate effect.

Fourth. The external powers are moved by the will to their operations, as the power of sight is moved to seeing; yet through such motion the will produces nothing in the power of sight that is prior to and distinct from the act of seeing. Rather, through a certain sympathy and subordination the act of seeing follows upon the motion of the will. Therefore, similarly, because causes are subordinate to God, he can move them to their operations without causing in them anything prior to those same operations.

Fifth. God produces the effect of a secondary cause immediately, with immediacy of power and immediacy of supposit. Therefore he does not influence the cause itself by moving it, but immediately influences the effect together with it. The consequence is proved as follows: otherwise God would produce the effect through the secondary cause, mediately rather than immediately.

Sixth. If a prior influx of God into the cause were necessary for every action of the natural order, two great inadmissible consequences would follow. The first is that a created will, when it is not acting concerning objects proportionate to it and presented to it, would have no sufficient principle for willing them and could not truly act concerning them; therefore it would not be blameworthy if it did not act. This is proved as follows: when the will is not actually acting, it does not have that prior influx of God which, according to the contrary opinion, is necessary for acting, and it is not in the will’s power to have such an influx. For those things that precede every free consent of the will cannot be in its power. Therefore whenever the will does not act, it truly cannot act.

The second inadmissible consequence would be that God premoves by a prior influx and draws the will to an act of sin to which evil is intrinsically joined, such as an act of hatred of God. Thus God would make the will produce that sinful act, and consequently God would perform evil works no less than good ones. Yet this is contrary to the definition of the Council of Trent: If anyone says that it is not in a person’s power to make his ways evil, but that God works evil deeds just as he works good ones, not merely permissively but properly and per se, so that Judas’s betrayal is his own work no less than Paul’s calling: let him be anathema.¹

Seventh. By such a prior motion of God the freedom of the will is taken away as to its use. Therefore not only is God’s prior concurrence or influx unnecessary for free operations, but it is also incompatible with them. The antecedent is proved. It belongs to the account of a free cause that, with all the requirements on the part of the active principle and what precedes the act posited, it can act or not act, and act in this way or in the opposite way. But once that influx of God into the cause is posited, the will cannot fail to perform the act to which he moves it. Therefore it does not remain free as to exercise in relation to that act.

This is confirmed. Indifference, or indetermination, belongs to the account of a free power, for a free power, as such, is not determined to one outcome. But by God’s prior motion the indifference of our will is removed, since such motion efficaciously predetermines it to one outcome, as the authors of the contrary opinion admit. Therefore this kind of prior motion is not to be posited.

Eighth. It cannot be explained, or even understood, what this prior motion is or what it posits in the will. Therefore it must not be admitted. The antecedent is proved as follows: whatever exists subjectively in the will or in any other power is either a habit, a disposition, or a second act of that power. But God’s prior motion is neither a habit nor a disposition, for otherwise it would be a quality, the contrary of which St. Thomas teaches, 1. 2. q. 110. art. 2. in corp. Nor is it a second act, because a second act of the will depends on the will itself as its efficient cause, since it is its proper operation. But God’s prior influx does not depend on our will as its efficient cause, since it precedes every free concurrence of the will. For this reason it is called a prior influx into the cause. Therefore.

This is confirmed. The prior influx is caused by God alone as an efficient cause, while our will is passive. Therefore it does not depend on our will as its efficient cause. Hence it is not really identical with its operation, for the operation of the will depends on that same will as its efficient cause.

II. The Thomists commonly hold the contrary opinion, and without doubt it is expressly taught by Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas in the places cited below. Since among secondary causes some are natural and necessary, others free and contingent, and among these some pertain to the order of nature and others to the order of grace, each of them must be treated in its proper order. With respect, then, to natural causes, let the following be stated.

III. First conclusion. For natural secondary causes to produce their operations, a prior influx of God into the causes themselves is necessary, by which they are moved and applied to acting.² I affirm that this conclusion is most certain, and I consider the contrary opinion improbable and contrary to the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas, as will be clear below. The same conclusion is laid down in the Roman Catechism, issued by decree of the sacred Council of Trent and by order of Pius V, Part 1, on the first article of the Creed, no. 22. Its words are: Moreover, God not only protects and governs all things that exist by his providence, but also impels those things that are moved and act in any way, by an interior power, to movement and action, in such a way that, although he does not impede the efficacy of secondary causes, he nevertheless precedes it, since his most hidden power pertains to each thing. And, as the Wise Man testifies: “It reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly.”³ Hence the Apostle said, when he was announcing to the Athenians the God whom they worshiped without knowing him:⁴ “He is not far from each one of us; for in him we live and move and are.” Here it teaches most clearly that God moves and impels secondary causes to act not only by simultaneous but also by prior influx, and does so by an interior power—that is, by something received intimately in the secondary cause itself, by which its active power is completed and reduced to act. It gathers this teaching from St. Paul the Apostle, who says: In him we live and move and are. Aristotle teaches the same opinion in Physics 8. When explaining the subordination and dependence that proximate agents have on the first unmoved mover and on his motion, he teaches that among movers some are moved by another, as proximate movers are; another is a mover that is not moved, namely, the first mover, who is God. He immediately adds that the first mover moves more than the lower movers, and assigns two reasons for this. One is that the first mover moves the subsequent movers, whereas the subsequent movers do not move the first. The other is that the first mover can move without the subsequent movers, since it does not depend on them; but subsequent movers cannot move unless the first mover moves, because they depend on him. Aristotle’s words are these: Therefore we say that both the first and the last of the movers move, but the first does so more, for it moves the last. But the last does not move the first, and without the first the last will not move; the first, however, moves without the last, just as a stick will not move unless it is moved by a human being.⁵ He therefore holds that just as a stick will not move water unless it is moved by the hand and applied to move the water, so a secondary cause will not move or produce any effect unless it is moved by the first cause. Therefore the contrary opinion is contrary to Aristotle.

The same point is confirmed. From the commonly accepted principle that everything moved is moved by another, Aristotle, Physics 7, chapter 1 and 8, chapter 5, concludes that we must arrive at one first mover that moves all agents and is not moved by another, lest there be an infinite regress.

IIII. In reply to this argument, some theologians explain Aristotle in two ways. First, they explain him as speaking of prior motion in a broad sense, by which secondary causes are brought into being and conserved by the first cause.⁶ For by this motion secondary causes must first be moved by God so that they can move, because unless they were brought into being and conserved by the first cause, they could not move or do anything.

Second, they reply that a secondary cause is said to act as moved by the first because it is constituted as an agent in second act through the cooperation of the first cause. But both explanations are arbitrary and contrary to the context of Aristotle.

V. I argue against the first explanation as follows: as is clear from the example of a stick that Aristotle uses there, he intends to prove that what a secondary cause receives from the first is not only the being it has, nor only its conservation, but also an actual motion distinct from the permanent being of the cause itself. For a stick receives from the mover both its actual power and the actual motion by which it moves a stone. St. Thomas teaches the same, q. 3. de potentia art. 7, whose words we shall cite immediately.

Moreover, even when secondary causes are not acting, they are conserved by God in their being. Therefore the prior motion of which Aristotle speaks there is not only that by which secondary causes are brought into being or conserved in their being, but another by which they are moved to their operations. For upon the actual motion of the first agent it follows that the secondary agent moves,

VI. An argument is made against the second explanation. If that explanation means that the first agent, by its influx, constitutes the proximate cause in second act, so that it truly reduces it from first act to second by efficient causation and makes it employ its own proper influx and act, then we have what we seek. For such reduction precedes the influx of the secondary cause in the order of causality, just as a cause precedes its effect. But if it means only that the first cause concurs with the second in its operation by simultaneous concurrence, it does not preserve the claim that the secondary agent is moved to act by the first agent. For when two people pull a ship, each influencing the effect together with the other, one does not move the other, because he does not make the other exert his influence or concur; rather, both influence the effect together. Moreover, it does not seem to preserve the claim that the first agent, namely God, properly causes, as an efficient cause, every actuality and every real formality found in the secondary cause. For according to this explanation, that actual application and influx of the secondary cause, insofar as it is application and influx, does not result from the efficient causation of the first agent or from his operation. This will be treated in disputation 86.

This is also proved from the same Aristotle, On Causes, propositions 1 and 16, where he teaches that divine power is the power of all causes, because it joins secondary causes to their effects. St. Thomas teaches this too, 1. p. q. 36. ar. 3. and q. 3. de potentia, art. 7.

VII. Second, this is proved by the authority of St. Thomas, who in 1. 2. qq. 109, 110, and 111, in almost every article, teaches that, in addition to the permanent form that secondary causes have and its conservation, it is necessary that God, as universal agent, move secondary causes themselves to their operations, that is, so that they act.⁷ But especially noteworthy are the words he has in art. 1 of the same q. 109. For he says: We see in bodily things that for motion there is required not only the form itself, which is the principle of motion or action, but also the motion of the first mover. The first mover in the order of bodily things is the heavenly body. Hence, however perfect the heat of fire may be, it would not alter anything unless by the motion of a heavenly body. But it is clear that just as all bodily motions are reduced to the motion of a heavenly body as their first bodily mover, so all motions, both bodily and spiritual, are reduced to the first mover simply, who is God. Therefore, however perfect a bodily or spiritual nature is posited to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless it is moved by God.

VIII. He repeats the same in art. 9 of that same question, in the body, where he teaches generally that no created thing can proceed to any act whatsoever except by the power of divine motion. These two passages cannot be explained as speaking of simultaneous motion, since they manifestly speak of motion prior to and preceding the influx of the secondary cause. For St. Thomas says that by that motion of God the secondary cause itself receives power to act. But this active power precedes the operation of the secondary cause in the order of nature.

IX. He teaches this very point more expressly in 2. sent. d. 37. q. 2. art. 2. His words are to be cited and examined below, no. 13, and disputation 24, no. 17,⁸ and q. 3. de potentia, art. 7. in corp., where he expressly demonstrates that God works in nature and in the will when they act, and does this in several ways. First, because he gave natural things powers by which they can act. Second, insofar as he conserves the natural power in being. Third, insofar as he moves it to act; by this (he says) we do not mean the bestowal or conservation of active power, but the application of the power to action, just as a human being is the cause of a knife’s cutting by the very fact that he applies the knife’s edge to cut, moving it.⁹ He immediately proves this, adding these words: And because a lower natural agent acts only when moved, since such lower bodies are things that alter and are altered, whereas the heaven alters but is not altered, and yet is not a mover unless moved, and this does not cease until we arrive at God, it necessarily follows that God is the cause of the action of every natural thing, as mover and as that which applies its power to acting. Fourth, God is called the cause of the action of a natural thing as the principal agent is the cause of the action of an instrument. In all these four ways St. Thomas teaches that God is the cause of every action of secondary causes. In the reply to the seventh objection of the same article, he teaches that when God moves a secondary cause to act, he confers something on it by which it acts actually, and he says: That which he confers is a certain intention of the first agent, having incomplete being in the way colors are in the air and the power of an art in the artisan’s instrument.

X. Convinced by this passage of St. Thomas, one of the followers of the contrary opinion candidly admits that St. Thomas held this opinion in the cited question On Power, but nevertheless changed it in 1. p. q. 105. arts. 4 and 5. For, when treating expressly there of the same question, he does not mention the intention of the first agent, nor does he posit as necessary the incomplete being he had posited in q. 3. de potentia. But anyone who sincerely considers St. Thomas’s words will see plainly that this reply is insufficient. For in the body of the same article of q. 105, he says: The first agent moves the second to acting. And immediately he adds: God moves things to act, as it were applying the forms and powers of things to their operation, just as an artisan applies an axe to cutting.¹⁰ Here the word “as it were” is not a diminishing expression, as some wish, any more than in John’s words: We saw his glory, a glory as of the only-begotten from the Father.¹¹ Hence, in the reply to objection 3 of the same article, he says absolutely that God applies things to acting. And in the same 1. p. q. 2. art. 3. in corp. he teaches the same more clearly when he says: Second movers move only insofar as they are moved by the first mover, just as a stick moves only insofar as it is moved by the hand. He teaches the same in 3. cont. Gen. chapter 70, where he says: The operation of a lower agent must be from it not only through its own power, but through the power of higher agents; for it acts by the power of them all. And in chapter 66, argument 4, he says: The completion of the power of a second agent comes from the power of the first agent. How, then, did St. Thomas change his opinion, when in the First Part itself and in Against the Gentiles 3 he always perseveres in the same opinion?

XI. Capreolus defends this opinion with St. Thomas, in 2. d. 1. q. 2. art. 1, where he cites in support the authority of St. Thomas, q. 3. de potentia, cited above.¹² Caietan holds the same, 1. p. q. 45. art. 5. § ad Durandum, where, speaking of the proposition “Every secondary cause is God’s instrument,” he says: Second, it is said that this proposition too is true, as is clear from q. 3. de potentia, art. 7, where it is shown at length that an angel and every secondary cause act only insofar as they are acted upon by God in several ways. Nor is this unreasonable; indeed, every action of a creature must reach God’s effect, because it always reaches being, which no cause gives except by the power of the first cause, as is shown here and in the Third Book against the Gentiles, chapters 64 and 65.¹³ He confirms the same opinion in q. 115 of the same First Part, art. 6. § ad evidentiam, where he says: Lower agents never act together with the heaven unless they are also acted upon by the heaven, because they move only insofar as they are moved; and it is naturally prior for lower bodies to be acted upon and moved by the heaven than for them to act together with it. If, according to Caietan, it is prior for lower agents to be acted upon by the heaven than for them to act, then they need a prior motion in order to act. But this prior motion is an immediate influx into the cause. Therefore. Hence some cite him unjustly in support of the contrary opinion. For although in the same First Part, q. 14. art. 13. § nec sustinendus, he says that a secondary cause does not operate as moved by God by a motion prior to its own action, as water heats when heated by fire, but by a motion cooperating intrinsically in its own action—and he repeats this in q. 19. art. 8. § ad primam autem—he is not contrary to himself or to us. For in those places he intends only to teach that the first cause does not cooperate by a prior motion that reaches the effect of the secondary cause at some prior time or order of nature antecedently to the influx of that same secondary cause. This explanation is gathered from the context itself, for at the end of the same article 8 he says: The assumed proposition is not to be understood as if there were some duration of nature in whose first instant the first cause regards the effect and in the second the secondary cause; for this is a childish interpretation. Rather, it is to be understood with respect to independence and intimacy. Nevertheless, in those same places he plainly admits a prior influx of God into the secondary cause, joining the secondary cause’s power to its effect. For he says that the influx of the first cause is modified in the second and therefore, together with a contingent secondary cause, produces a contingent effect in the manner of that cause. Caietan therefore holds that the influx of the first cause is received first in the secondary cause in the order of nature and modified in it before it produces its effect together with that same secondary cause.

XII. Ferrariensis follows the same opinion, 3. cont. Gen. chapter 70, and says that it is expressly St. Thomas’s opinion in the cited q. 3. de potentia, to which all the Thomists unanimously agree. Master Cabrera follows the same opinion, 3. p. q. 17. art. 4. disp. 2. § 3. no. 113 and following, and says that it is St. Thomas’s opinion and is accepted by all philosophers.

Third, it is proved by a natural argument drawn from q. 3, On the Power of God, cited in the body of its seventh article and in the reply to the seventh argument; Cajetan also touches on it in the cited 1 p., q. 45. For secondary causes produce not only their effect and operation according to species, but also confer on the effect the ultimate actuality and being that it has. For whatever is found in an effect is produced by its efficient cause. But secondary causes cannot confer this ultimate actuality by efficient causation on their effects unless those same causes are completed in their active power through the actual motion of the first agent. ¹⁴ Therefore, they must be moved by him through a prior motion so that they may produce that ultimate actuality. The minor premise is proved as follows: every form and operative power of any created being is an act mixed with potency, and thus does not have in itself as perfect an actuality as an operation has, since an operation is a second act. Therefore, it cannot be the efficient principle of such an operation with respect to its ultimate actuality unless, by a priority of nature, it is first completed in its operative power through the actual motion of the first agent. For an efficient principle must not have less actuality than its effect, since each thing acts insofar as it is actual.

Fourth, it is proved as follows. As St. Thomas expressly shows in Against the Gentiles III, ch. 66, being is the most universal act and the proper effect of God alone. ¹⁵ Hence it is also said in the book On Causes that even an intelligence gives being only insofar as it is divine. Therefore, secondary causes, insofar as, formally speaking, they attain the being of their proper effect, are instruments of God himself. Therefore, by a priority of nature, they must be moved by him before they attain the being of any effect. The inference is clear: for an instrument to attain the effect of the principal agent, it must first be moved by that agent through a prior motion. This conclusion will become clearer from what follows.

XIII. Second conclusion. Free causes, even contingent ones, need a prior influx from God in order to produce their operations. ¹⁶ The conclusion is as certain as the preceding one and is taught by St. Thomas in the cited places and in 1 p., q. 83, art. 1, ad 3, where he says: Free choice is not sufficient for willing anything unless it is moved and helped by God. And in the reply to the third argument he says: God is the first cause moving both natural and voluntary causes. Just as by moving natural causes he does not take away that their acts are natural, so by moving voluntary causes he does not take away that their actions are voluntary; rather, he brings this about in them, for he works in each thing according to its property. And in Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 2, art. 2, ad 2, he says: God gives the agent being, ability, and action, and whatever perfection there is in the agent. In the reply to the third argument he adds: In good acts he gives the agent both things: that it act and that it act well. There he teaches plainly that God first gives influx to free choice as a cause before he gives influx together with it to its effect. For through immediate concurrence with free choice in its effect, or free operation, God does not give the agent the very act of acting; rather, together with free choice determining and contributing its influx, he brings about the free act. Since, therefore, St. Thomas says that God gives influx to the agent for the very act of acting, he holds that by his concurrence God first gives influx to the secondary cause before he gives influx together with that secondary cause to the effect of both. The arguments made for the preceding conclusion prove this conclusion all the more strongly.

Moreover, it is proved by a special argument assigned by St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 19. ar. 3. ad 5. From that which is related to either alternative indifferently, no determinate action follows unless it is moved by something else and inclined to one alternative, as the Commentator says, Physics 2, text 48. ¹⁷ For from that which is in potency and indifferent, precisely as such, no determinate act proceeds: there is no greater reason why this act should proceed than its opposite, since such potency is in itself indifferent to opposites. But a free and contingent cause is indifferent to opposites. Therefore, a determinate operation will not proceed from it unless it is moved by the first agent and determined to one particular operation.

This is confirmed by an argument of the same St. Thomas, 1.2, q. 9, art. 4, in the body, and 1. p. q. 2. ar. 3.. Everything that is sometimes an agent in act and sometimes in potency needs to be moved by some mover that is pure act. But created will is sometimes an agent in act and sometimes in potency. Therefore it needs to be moved by the first act in order to produce its operation.

XIV. Second, this is proved by another argument of Saint Thomas in Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 2, a. 2, in the body. For it seems to follow from the opposing opinion that there are several first principles. This consequence is the error of the Manicheans, as we saw in Disputation 3. Therefore. The consequence is proved as follows: it belongs to the nature of a first principle that it can act without the help of a prior agent and without its influence. Therefore, if the human will produced some action without the prior motion of a prior agent, with respect to that action the created will would be a first principle, simply the first self-mover and the first self-determining cause. The advocates of the opposing opinion try to weaken the force of this argument by saying that the created will does not have the character of a first principle with respect to its operation, because although it can operate without the prior motion of a prior agent, it does not have being from itself and cannot operate without the simultaneous concurrence of the first agent; yet that would be necessary for it to have the character of a first principle. But how ineffective this solution is will become clear in Disputation 24, no. 19; for now it is briefly refuted. For, as Saint Thomas argues in the same cited Sentences II, a. 2, although this reply would avoid the conclusion that the human will, or any secondary cause, is simply the first being, it nevertheless does not seem possible to avoid the conclusion that it would be the first agent if its action were not referred to some prior agent as its cause.

Third, this is proved by another argument, which Saint Thomas develops in the same article 2. What does not have being from itself does not have acting or any influence from itself, but receives all this from another, from whom it has being.¹⁸ Hence, by its decree on the Catholic Faith, the Council of Florence proves that the Son of God has eternally from the Father this very thing, that he breathes forth the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ For the Son has being not from himself but from the Father, by whom he was eternally begotten.²⁰ The very Truth also testifies in the Gospel: My doctrine is not mine, but his who sent me, the Father. ²¹ And again: The Son cannot do anything of himself,²² because, that is, he is not from himself but from the Father. But the created will does not have being from itself, but from God. Therefore it does not have from itself the fact that it actually exerts influence on its operation; rather, it receives this very thing from God. Therefore God influences the will through a prior motion by which the will is moved toward its operation and applied so as to act actually.

Fourth, this is proved by a special argument that applies to every vital operation. Even by absolute power it cannot happen that God produces a created vital action except through a vital power, because such an action cannot be attained or produced by God alone, since it implies an intrinsic order to a vital power. Therefore it is impossible for God’s operation, or concurrence, to influence a vital operation together with a vital cause unless, prior in the order of nature, it influences the vital cause itself through which such a vital operation must be produced.

XV. Third conclusion. Supernatural secondary causes too, already constituted in first act through supernatural habits, must be premoved by God through an actual motion of the supernatural order so that they may produce their supernatural operations. This conclusion is also opposed to certain more recent theologians who assert that supernatural help, or concurrence, agrees with the general concurrence of the natural order in this respect: that by itself and precisely it is not in the cause, but acts with the cause in the effect. Yet our conclusion is expressly taught by Saint Thomas in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 109, aa. 1 and 9, where he clearly speaks of prior motion.²³ Saint Bonaventure holds the same opinion in Sentences II, dist. 26, q. 6, at the words “I answer,” where he explains it with an excellent example. He says that just as light not only works together with the air, illuminating these lower things, but also first acts upon the air itself because of its continuity with its source,²⁴ so too grace not only works together with free choice, but also acts upon free choice and moves it. Capreolus explicitly teaches the same in Sentences II, dist. 28, q. 1, a. 3, ad 12, where he says that this is the express opinion of Saint Augustine. It is proved by the arguments made for the preceding conclusions, which also demonstrate this one.

Furthermore, it is proved by the authority of Celestine I in his letter to the bishops of Gaul, chapter 1, where he says: Thus God works in the hearts of human beings and upon free choice itself, so that holy thought, pious counsel, and every good movement of the will are from God.²⁵ Behold, the Pontiff teaches that God influences free choice, which must be understood as referring to prior motion. By reason of this motion every good movement of a good will is from God and has its first beginning from God, not merely in the genus of moral causality, but also truly by efficient causation.

XVI. Second, it is proved by the authority of Augustine, tome 7, On Correction and Grace, ch. 2, whom Capreolus cites at the place mentioned. There St. Augustine says of the children of God, of whom the Apostle says, They are led by the Spirit of God,²⁶ as follows: Let them understand that if they are children of God, they are led by the Spirit of God so that they do what ought to be done. And when they have done it, let them give thanks to him by whom they are led; for they are led so that they may act, not so that they themselves do nothing.²⁷ Therefore, according to Augustine, by a priority of nature free choice is moved and led by God before it does anything. And in On the Grace of Christ Against Pelagius and Caelestius, ch. 25, explaining the same passage of the Apostle, he says: Surely, in order that they may do what is good, they are led by him who is good. And again, in another place, he says: Do you wish to act by yourself? Do you wish to be moved by yourself?²⁸ etc. It is not those who are led by their own spirit, but all who are led by the Spirit of God who are children of God. Someone will say to me: “Then are we led and do not act?” I answer: “On the contrary, you act and are led; and you act well then if you are led by him. For the Spirit of God, who leads you, is a helper to those who act; the very name ‘helper’ tells you in advance that you yourself also do something. Recognize what you ask for; recognize what you confess when you say: ‘Be my helper; do not abandon me.’”²⁹ You certainly call God your helper. No one is helped if nothing is done by him; for he says: “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” And in Hypognosticon 3, shortly after the beginning, he says: With his most merciful grace, God precedes the free will of a human being who is ignorant and does not yet seek, so that he may make that person know and seek God. By these words St. Augustine plainly teaches our opinion.

XVII. Third, it is proved as follows: otherwise the first beginning of a pious operation would come from us, and thus a human being would be the one who first began a supernatural work and his own determination to that act. The consequent seems contrary to the definition of the Second Council of Orange, as will become clear in disputation 89. For canon 25 says: We also salutarily confess and believe that in every good work we do not begin and are afterward helped by God’s mercy; rather, he himself, with no good merits preceding, inspires in us both faith and love of himself. And at the outset the Council of Sens immediately says: For one who approaches God must first, helped by the gift of divine grace, believe, and then devote himself to good works. In bringing these about, both free choice and grace operate; yet grace operates first and principally. Therefore one who supposes that a human being can act well and attain salvation without grace, or attributes the primacy of a good work to free choice and not to grace, must be considered a Pelagian. ³⁰ The inference is proved as follows: if, after the intellect and will have been constituted in first act by supernatural habits, they no longer need to be moved beforehand by God through a supernatural actual influx, then it is the will that first begins the supernatural act, because by its innate freedom it chose to use the supernatural habit. Thus it would be the first beginning of its own act and would therefore have something of its own in the business of its salvation that it had not received from grace. This is contrary to 1 Cor. 4: For who distinguishes you? What do you have that you did not receive? If it is said that this person has a pious operation from a supernatural habit, though not from the powers of nature, and thus nothing pertaining to salvation is referred to the natural faculty alone, the reply is: a supernatural habit alone does not give the will that it infallibly act, but only that it be able to act supernaturally if it wills. Likewise, God’s simultaneous influx does not cause the will to act by efficient causality, nor make it contribute its influx; it only concurs simultaneously with it in the actual operation if the will itself wishes to act. Therefore the will would have from itself, and not from grace, that it actually acts. But this will be treated more fully in Disputations 88, 96, 97, and 98, while discussing the efficacy of the helps of prevenient grace. Since, therefore, our conclusion has such weighty Doctors and such effective arguments in its favor, some are wrong to contend that this prior motion, which St. Thomas in the cited q. 3, On the Power of God, calls a certain virtue superadded to secondary causes, having incomplete being in the way colors are in the air or the power of an art in the artisan’s instrument, is plainly fictitious, supported by no reason, and needlessly multiplies things.

XVIII. Therefore, to the first argument drawn from the passages set out at the beginning, it is answered that God’s actual motion gives the will and all secondary causes the ultimate completion of first act, as St. Thomas teaches in the places cited above, especially Against the Gentiles III, ch. 66, argument 4, and q. 3, On the Power of God, art. 7, ad 7. It also confers a certain power by which they act toward being and the ultimate actuality of the effect as God’s instrument, as was explained above. When it is argued that such concurrence presupposes in the will whatever is necessary for acting on the side of first act, it is answered that it does presuppose whatever is necessary on the side of first act by way of a potency or operative power; nevertheless, it does not presuppose the application or ultimate completion of first act, but confers that on the will and on every secondary cause, as was said.³¹

The confirmation is already clear from the arguments adduced for the first and second conclusions, which show the necessity of positing a prior influx from God into the cause in addition to simultaneous influx.

To the second argument, it is replied that every secondary cause, insofar as it gives being and ultimate actuality to an effect, is God’s instrument, as was said in no. 12. Although by reason of its own form it has power, after the manner of a habit, to produce its effects, it nevertheless receives the ultimate completion and actuality of that same power from God’s prior motion, as was said.

To the third, it is replied that, as St. Thomas teaches, q. 3. de potentia, art. 7. ad 8, natural causes too presuppose that prior motion of God as necessary, for the reasons given above. For although by their form they are naturally determined to one outcome after the manner of an active power, as fire is determined to heat, nevertheless by way of actual influx they are determined by divine motion so that they actually act and are completed in their operative power, as was said. Hence the fire of the Babylonian furnace did not burn³² the three youths within it, because God did not apply it to burn them.³³

XIX. To the fourth, the consequence is denied. For, with respect to their operations in physical being, the external powers are not essentially subordinated to the will, but only in moral being, which belongs to them by an extrinsic denomination. Moreover, the will is not the first mover simply; but all secondary causes, whether natural or free, are essentially subordinated with respect to their operations in physical being to God himself, as the first agent and mover simply. Hence they must be completed in their operative power by him, as was said. Therefore the cases are dissimilar.

To the fifth argument, it is replied from Caietan’s teaching, 1. p. q. 8. art. 1. notes 2 and 3, that God operates immediately, both with immediacy of power and with immediacy of supposit, in every effect of any created cause, but in different ways. For with immediacy of power he operates immediately in every effect of a secondary cause with respect to everything found in that effect, because the power of the first agent reaches the effect more inwardly and immediately. For it is said in the Book of Causes, proposition 1, that the power of the first cause acts first upon what is caused and enters into it more forcefully. But with immediacy of supposit he produces immediately every effect of a secondary cause, not indeed with respect to everything, but with respect to some things, namely, being and the ultimate actuality found in such an effect. The reason is that, as St. Thomas teaches in the cited 1. p. and q. 3. de potentia art. 7. in corp., created being is the proper effect of God alone, just as to kindle is the proper effect of fire. Hence between the divine supposit operating and the being communicated to the effect there intervenes no other operating supposit that produces such being by its own power. Therefore God produces it immediately, with immediacy of supposit. But with respect to those things in which secondary causes also influence by the power of their own proper forms, Caietan admits that God does not act immediately with immediacy of supposit, since he acts through the supposits of secondary causes, which, as principal secondary agents, produce their own effects. This reply is grounded in St. Thomas, q. 3. de potentia art. 7. in corp. and ad 4.³⁴

XX. To the sixth argument we answer that absolutely no absurdity follows from our opinion. In reply to the first consequence drawn—that otherwise the will could not act when it lacks prior motion, and its failure to act would not be imputed to it as culpable—Saint Augustine answers fully in Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, ch. 5; Against Julian IV, ch. 8; and On Rebuke and Grace, ch. 7; and Saint Thomas in Summa theologiae II–II, q. 2, a. 5, ad 1; I–II, q. 109, a. 8, ad 1; De veritate, q. 14, a. 11, ad 2; and much more fully in Summa contra Gentiles III, chs. 159 and 160. Following his teaching, we answer that the prior influx is not necessary so that the will may be able to perform acts proportionate to it, but so that it may actually act. For being able to act is one thing, and actually acting is another. Hence, from the fact that the will does not have that prior influx from God, it does not follow that it cannot act, but only that in fact it will not act, as Ferrariensis explains very well in Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 155; we will discuss the same point at greater length in Disputation 23, no. 32.³⁵ And when it is argued that this prior motion is not in the power of the created will, especially when the motion is supernatural and directed to a supernatural act, we answer that although this prior motion is not in the will’s power as an efficient cause, since such prior motion is effected by God alone, nevertheless, once that motion is presupposed, its terminus is in our power—namely, the free operation for which such motion is given.³⁶ It is also within the power of our will to impede itself from receiving that motion. Hence, if it does not perform an act that is commanded, this will be imputed to it as culpable, because through its own fault it impeded itself from receiving the efficacious help that was necessary for it actually to perform the act of virtue that is commanded. This is like a case in which God imposed on a person the precept to fly and, for his part, offered him wings and the help necessary to fly, while the person answered by his own free choice: “Lord, I do not wish either to receive wings or to fly.” He would rightly be held guilty and a transgressor of the precept, even if he could not fly without wings, because through his own fault he impeded himself from having them given to him by God. This is Saint Thomas’s solution in the cited Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 159, where he shows that it is reasonable to impute as culpable to a person that he does not turn to God, although he cannot do this without the help of grace. He gives this reason: although that help is not in a person’s power but only in God’s, it is nevertheless in a person’s power to impede himself from having it conferred by God. But we will return below to this solution.³⁷ For now, see Saint Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins II, ch. 21, where he says: The reason human beings are not helped by the grace of God lies in themselves, not in God. And in letter 105 to Sixtus he teaches that those to whom God does not give the help of grace have merited that it not be given to them. Saint Anselm also asserts this of the Devil in On the Fall of the Devil, ch. 3, where he says: This is why God did not grant the Devil grace: because he himself did not wish to receive it and was not ready. Saint Thomas cites and explains this authority in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 112, a. 3, ad 2. The solution to this argument will become clearer in Disputation 22, no. 34.

XXI. As for the other absurdity, from which it is inferred that God would be the cause of sin if he premoves to that action insofar as it is an action, we answer that Saint Augustine was presented with a similar argument by Julian concerning original sin, as Augustine himself reports in Against Julian III, ch. 9. Julian argued as follows to prove that there is no original sin: God is the cause of the creation of the soul and likewise established marriage; he is also the cause of parents begetting offspring. Therefore original sin does not follow from that begetting; otherwise sin would be attributed to God. Saint Augustine answers this argument there, and in On Free Choice II, chs. 19 and 20, where he treats this question of actual sin, and in Against Julian V, ch. 3. Saint Thomas solves the same argument in De malo, q. 3, a. 2; Summa theologiae I–II, q. 79, a. 2; and more fully in Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 2, a. 2, in the body. Following their teaching, we answer that two things are considered in that sinful action. One is the entity of that action, which it has even in the particular case. Under this aspect the action, although otherwise a sin, is referred back to God as its first author. The reason is that, since it is a being, it must by participation be referred back to the first being; otherwise God would not be the first author of every being.³⁸ Under the aspect of being, that action is not evil but good, because every being, insofar as it is a being, is good; consequently, it must be from God who premoves it.³⁹ Second, the action is considered as morally evil and defective, or insofar as it is sin. Under this aspect it is referred only to a deficient cause, namely the created will that chose to act defectively, for sin has an intrinsic order to that will. Hence, absolutely speaking, sin is not from God, either by premoving or by concurring simultaneously. For God is not the cause of sin, although he is the cause of the action that is a sin because of the evil will. Thus Saint Thomas, explaining how one must speak on this subject in the cited Sentences II, dist. 37, says: Any name that signifies deformity together with an act, whether in general or in particular, cannot be said simply to be from God. Hence one cannot say absolutely that sin is from God—for example, homicide or anything of that sort—except with this qualification: insofar as it is an act and insofar as it is a being.

XXII. Ferrari develops this solution very well in Against the Gentiles III, ch. 71, near the end, where from St. Thomas he shows that the first agent can move a cause to perform the entity of an act of sin without acting with respect to its deformity. For the deformity does not follow upon that action insofar as it is an action, but insofar as it expresses a relation to a deficient cause. St. Augustine teaches the same solution at the place mentioned above, as do Capreolus in Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 1, art. 1, conclusion 2, and art. 2, in the reply to the arguments against the second conclusion; Master Cano, On Theological Places 2, ch. 4, ad 7; Soto, On Nature and Grace 1, ch. 18, near the end, where he teaches that theologians admit God is the cause of the entity and action of sin by the kind of efficient causality by which he moves all things beforehand to their natural actions; Master Bañez, 1 p., q. 49, art. 2; and Master Medina, 1.2, q. 109, art. 2. This will be treated more fully in disputation 24. To make the solution to this argument evident, we observe that precisely the same difficulty applies to God’s simultaneous concurrence as to his prior concurrence. Hence, since the authors of the opposing opinion admit that by actual simultaneous concurrence God truly and properly causes in particular that entity and action which is sin, they are likewise bound to answer the proposed difficulty. They too satisfy it by saying that the deformity of sin follows upon the action insofar as it is from a deficient will, but not insofar as it proceeds from God together with the will contributing its influx; hence it must be attributed to the deficient will and not to God. Therefore, the answer they give to an argument concerning God’s simultaneous influx is the same answer we give when they argue against God’s prior concurrence, since the same solution applies to both. This will become clear in disputation 24, nos. 20 and 21.

As to the passage cited from the Council of Trent, it is answered that the heresy of Luther and his followers is condemned there. They asserted that God works evil deeds in us in the same way as good ones. For these heretics held that our will is purely passive with respect to sins and all other acts; or, if it contributes actively, it does so by a spontaneous motion, not a free one. Thus, speaking absolutely, they said sin is God’s work in the same way as a good act; hence they attributed to God both the entity of the sinful action and its deformity and defect, as was shown in disputation 3 and will become clear in disputation 24. How foreign this is to our opinion is evident enough from what has been said. For we, with St. Augustine, attribute to God what is his, namely, the entity of that action; and to the deficient created will we give what is proper to it, namely, the defect of that same action, and sin.

XXIII. The seventh argument together with its confirmation must be answered expressly in disputation 121, where we will explain how the efficacy of the help of grace that works beforehand does not destroy the freedom of our choice, but rather strengthens and perfects it.⁴⁰ For now we say that, as will become clear in Disputations 115 and 116, even at the instant when the will is moved by God with such a prior motion, that same will can fail to act, if it wishes, or perform the opposite act. For God’s prior motion, however efficacious in first act, and even while it is efficacious in second act, does not take away from the will the power and faculty by which it can perform the opposite act or fail to act; rather, it brings about only this: although the will can fail to perform the act to which it is moved, it nevertheless infallibly performs it, and for this reason remains free in the very exercise of the act. The reason is that although freedom is formally in the will, it is radically in the intellect and is founded on the indifference⁴¹ of judgment by which the intellect judges⁴² that the good proposed to the will does not have a necessary or natural connection with the good in general, toward which the will is naturally determined. Since, in this present state, the intellect proposes whatever good it presents to the will with the indifference of this judgment, the will therefore remains free with respect to that object as regards exercise, as St. Thomas explains very well in q. 24, On Truth, art. 1; 1 p., q. 83, art. 1; Against the Gentiles III, ch. 85, argument 4; and q. 3, On Evil, art. 3, in the body. St. Prosper teaches that the actual motion by which God brings it about that the will wills the good is compatible with the power by which the will can determine itself to the opposite act if it wishes, in On the Call of the Gentiles, book 2, chapters 27 and 28, when he says: Those whom God willed to will, did will; to those whom he gives the very willing to obey him, he gives it in such a way that he does not take away even from those who will persevere that mutability by which they can will not to.⁴³ St. Thomas confirms the same in q. 23, On Truth, art. 5, ad 3, saying: Although the nonexistence of an effect of the divine will cannot stand together with the divine will, nevertheless the power to fail to attain the effect stands together with the divine will:⁴⁴ for these are not incompatible:⁴⁵ “God wills this person to be saved,” and “this person can be damned”; nevertheless these are incompatible: “God wills this person to be saved,” and “this person is damned.” And in q. 6, On Truth, art. 3, ad 7, he says: If we speak of a predestined person according to the relation he has to another, namely, to God who predestines him, that order is not compatible with this outcome, namely, that he die in mortal sin, although it is compatible with this power. We likewise say that although these two are incompatible together—“This person is moved efficaciously by God to consent,” and “This person dissents”—nevertheless these two are compossible together: “This person is moved efficaciously by God to consent,” and “This person can dissent if he wishes,” as is clear from the Council of Trent. Hence he always remains free in exercise.⁴⁶

To the confirmation we answer that, as will be clear in Disputations 23, 25, 115, and 116, determination to one thing by necessity—which is otherwise called natural determination—is incompatible with freedom, but determination to one operation according to the mode of the will is not. God’s efficacious premotion does indeed predetermine the will to one side, not by necessity, but according to the will’s proper nature, as Saint Thomas teaches 1. p. quaest. 23. art. 1. ad 1, and in De veritate, q. 25, a. 1, ad 1; Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 90; and Summa theologiae I–II, q. 10, a. 4, in the body. What sort of indifference belongs to the essence of freedom will be explained in Disputations 115 and 116.⁴⁷

The eighth argument asks us to explain another difficult question: namely, what that efficacious premotion is, which we said all secondary causes need in order actually to operate, and what the prior thing is that God effects in the secondary cause antecedently to its operation, whether the cause is natural or free. Since the chief difficulty concerns free and contingent causes, they must be treated especially in the present discussion.

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

I. The first opinion is held by certain Thomists, who assert that the premotion of the first cause received in secondary causes, by which they are moved and applied to act, is a quality, not in the manner of something permanent, but in the manner of a transient disposition accompanying the operation of the secondary cause. Master Cabrera defends this opinion as probable, and the following arguments seem to support it.¹

First, St. Thomas, I–II, q. 109,² art. 9, in the body, proves on this basis that one who has already obtained justifying grace still needs actual help, or divine motion, in order to act rightly, because no created thing can proceed to any act except by the power of divine motion. He says that this motion is general in relation to every secondary cause. Therefore, he holds that such motion is a quality, since he affirms that it gives the secondary cause a power to act. He teaches the same in art. 1 of the same question, in these words: However perfect a corporeal or spiritual nature is supposed to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless it is moved by God. From this testimony, and other passages of the same St. Thomas cited in disputation 18, the argument is drawn: without divine motion a secondary cause cannot act; therefore, by that motion it can. Therefore, such motion gives some power to act. Therefore it is a quality, at least in the manner of something transient.

Second, it is argued that God’s prior motion confers some operative power on secondary causes, since it constitutes them in the ultimate completion of first act. But every operative power, or whatever formally confers operative power, is a quality belonging to the first or second species. Therefore [prior motion is a quality].

This is confirmed. An efficient cause acts insofar as it is actual and falls short of the power to act insofar as it is in potency. Therefore that which formally confers the ultimate actuality for acting gives the efficient cause some power to act and, consequently, is a quality. Since, therefore, God’s actual motion confers actual power to act on secondary causes, it follows that it is a quality.

Third, although a secondary cause is the principal cause of its own operation as regards its species and substance, nevertheless, for it to attain that operation as regards being, or in the character of a being and actuality, it must receive from God, beyond its permanent form, an actual motion, by whose power it concurs in producing the effect insofar as it has being, or ultimate actuality. This is because God alone is the principal cause of a being insofar as it is an actual being, since the most universal effect must be reduced to the most universal cause. Therefore God’s prior motion will be a quality, conferring on the potency an actual power to attain instrumentally its effect insofar as it is a being and an act.

Fourth, the same is proved by a special argument concerning motion to imperfect supernatural acts elicited by rational powers before a habit is infused, such as fear of hell, an imperfect desire to attain salvation, and attrition, which the holy Council of Trent teaches is a gift of God and an impulse of the Holy Spirit, who does not yet dwell in the penitent but moves him; helped by this, the penitent prepares the way for himself to justice.³ For such supernatural acts are elicited by the powers elevated only through special help, or the actual motion of assisting grace, and not through habits or permanent qualities, since, as is presupposed, they do not have infused habits in themselves. Therefore they must be elevated and constituted in first act by some transient quality so that, as a principal cause, they may bring about those same acts. Otherwise the human being would be only God’s instrument with respect to those acts. For that which acts only through the motion of another agent is not a principal but an instrumental cause, just as water heated by fire is only an instrumental cause of heating and heat, because it acts only as moved by fire. Therefore the special help, or motion of God, for the aforesaid imperfect acts will be a quality received in the powers and produced by God alone.

The second opinion asserts the opposite extreme: actual help, or God’s motion, does not imply something received in secondary causes that is prior, even by a priority of nature and causality, to their operations. Rather, it is God himself, or the divine will, insofar as it is ready and disposed to concur simultaneously with secondary causes whenever they act either by a necessity of nature or by their innate freedom when they wish to act. In secondary causes, they say, God’s motion implies or posits only the operation of the cause itself, insofar as it proceeds by efficient causality from God’s simultaneous concurrence. This is like creation, which posits nothing distinct from the substance in a creature, but is the creature itself insofar as it proceeds from God as its efficient cause. This opinion is proved by the following arguments.

Fifth, it is argued that if God’s actual help were something prior to the operation of a secondary cause, it would belong to the first or second species of quality. But it belongs to neither of them. For the first and second species of quality posit something intrinsic in the subject that is an active principle of operations. But that prior help is not an intrinsic active principle: for once any intrinsic active principle is posited in us, we still need divine help and God’s concurrence in order to act; but once divine help is posited, a human being does not need another help from God in order to act, since otherwise there would be an infinite regress. Therefore God’s help is not an intrinsic active principle of the operation.

Sixth, no active power or quality is determined to one numerically individual effect; rather, it can produce several, as is clear by considering all the active powers we experience. But God’s actual help is determined to one numerically individual effect and one operation, for it passes together with the operation. Therefore it is not a quality or active power.

Seventh, the essential subordination to God’s most efficacious will alone is sufficient for free choice to produce supernatural acts, especially if it has been constituted in first act by supernatural habits. Therefore another actual help, which would be a quality or active power, is posited superfluously as necessary. The antecedent is proved: Christ’s humanity, without any created active principle, elicits an infinitely meritorious operation solely through its subordination to the Word to whom it is united. For that infinity does not come from any created principle. Therefore it comes solely from subordination to the Word, to whom it is hypostatically united. Therefore, similarly, our free choice will be able to elicit a supernatural operation solely through subordination to God, without another help that is an active power.

Eighth, God’s actual help, or influx, by which he helps a human being to elicit a free act, is nothing other than the free act itself insofar as it proceeds from God’s influx and is in the process of being brought about by God. Therefore it is not an active power. The inference is clear, since every operation is really distinct from an active power; for an action is not the active principle of an action. The antecedent is proved: the actual influx of free choice, by which it concurs in the same free act, is nothing other than the free operation itself insofar as it proceeds from our free choice as its efficient cause. Therefore, similarly, the motion by which God moves the will to a free act will really be the free act itself insofar as it is in the process of being brought about by God.

This is confirmed. In natural things, motion to whiteness is whiteness itself in the process of coming to be, because, as Aristotle says, motion is not apart from the things toward which there is motion. Therefore God’s actual motion by which he moves the will to a free act will be the free act itself in the process of being brought about by God.

III. The third opinion asserts that the actual help or motion by which God moves and applies secondary causes to act is something received in the secondary causes themselves, prior by a priority of nature to their acting. If one asks what it is, they answer that it really is the operation of the secondary cause itself insofar as it proceeds from God, who applies it and moves it beforehand efficaciously to act. From this they infer that the efficacious premotion, or predetermination, by which God predetermines the will to a free action, is not really distinct from the actual determination by which the will determines itself through its operation, but is the very same thing. For since the will formally determines itself by eliciting a free act, that same act, insofar as it proceeds from God moving it beforehand, is called God’s predetermination; but insofar as it proceeds from the will cooperating at the same time, though posterior by nature, it is called the will’s determination. They prove this with some arguments drawn from those given at the beginning.

Moreover, the will’s determination is posited in that passage by which the will passes from potency to act and from first act to second act. This happens only through an action proceeding from the will itself, when it already begins to act and operate. God, together with it, contributes through that actual motion, prior by nature and initiating; for this reason he is said properly to move the will beforehand as an efficient cause and to predetermine it. Therefore God’s predetermination is not really distinct from the determination of our will.

This is confirmed. On the side of reality, two distinct determinations of the will must not be posited, one of God and the other of the will,⁴ for such multiplication is posited in vain. Therefore, by the same determination by which the will determines itself, it is determined by God as the first deliberator and predefiner.

This opinion differs from the preceding one. Although both assert that God’s general concurrence, or actual help, is not really distinct from the operation of the secondary cause, the authors of the first opinion say that actual help is the operation of the secondary cause itself insofar as it proceeds from God’s influx, not a prior but a simultaneous influx. For they do not wish to admit that, in any priority, even of reason or causality, God physically moves the will to our free act before the influx of created free choice. But the authors of this second opinion say that God’s actual help is really the operation of the secondary cause itself insofar as it proceeds from God’s influx, which moves the secondary cause beforehand and predetermines it to contribute its influx and act, so that it is always preserved that God alone is the one who first begins, as an efficient cause brings it about that we act, and works so that we may act. This opinion will be treated again below, when the efficacy of the help of prevenient grace is discussed.

IIII. The fourth opinion is held by other Thomists, who assert that God’s help, or prior motion by which he moves and applies secondary causes to act, is something in them really distinct from their operations, and is a certain completion of active power “by which it actually acts,” as St. Thomas says.⁵ Since this opinion follows the mind of St. Thomas, some points must be presupposed for its explanation.

First, it must be presupposed that the present difficulty does not concern God’s simultaneous influx or concurrence, by which he acts together with created free choice. For all agree that such concurrence in us is nothing other than the very operation of free choice, insofar as it proceeds efficiently from God, just as creation posits nothing intrinsic in the creature other than the created substance itself, insofar as it proceeds from the Creator. The same must be held of divine concurrence in relation to the effect of any other secondary cause. The question, then, concerns an influx or motion prior to the concurrence of the secondary cause, which is given by way of help and received immediately in the secondary cause prior, in the order of reason and causality, to its own operation.

Second, it must be presupposed that here we can speak either of helps of grace by which God assists a human being already constituted in first act through the supernatural habits of faith, hope, and charity, so as to perform supernatural acts; or of helps given for supernatural acts that precede the infusion of a habit. For some supernatural acts are perfect, such as contrition and acts of charity, which proceed from infused habits; others are imperfect, such as fear of hell, attrition, and other such acts by which a person is remotely prepared for justification. These latter do not proceed from supernatural habits, but from a special impulse of the Holy Spirit, who does not yet dwell within the person but moves the person, as was said above.

Third, it must be presupposed that, since there are two powers in an intellectual nature that can be elevated to supernatural acts, namely intellect and will, the difficulty concerns helps both on the side of the intellect and on the side of the will. The question is whether the help of grace posits something intrinsic not only in the intellect but also in the will, or whether, after the intellect has been perfectly enlightened, the will can immediately elicit consent without another help inhering in that same will as an active principle of consent. But since these matters pertain to the question of the efficacy of grace, they will be discussed below in their proper place. For now, we must treat only God’s general concurrence, whether it pertains to the order of nature or to the order of grace.

V. First conclusion. That which is effected by God in secondary causes so that they may act actually is something having a certain incomplete being, in the way that colors are in the air and the power of an art is in the artisan’s instrument.⁶ As it stands, this conclusion is expressly stated by Saint Thomas in De potentia, q. 3, a. 7, ad 7, where he says: The natural power bestowed on natural things at their institution is in them as a certain form having a settled and firm being in nature. But that which is effected by God in a natural thing so that it may act actually is like a mere intention, having a certain incomplete being in the way that colors are in the air and the power of an art is in the artisan’s instrument. It is proved by his argument. A form and power that remain in natural things, by which they could produce effects proportionate to themselves, could and in fact did get conferred on them at their first institution and creation. Yet no permanent power could be conferred on them by which they might act toward being as an instrument of the first cause, unless they were given the status of a universal principle of being. Thus art could give an axe a sharp edge, as a permanent form in it suited to cutting, but it could not communicate to it the ability to make an artifact without the artisan’s motion. Therefore God’s prior influx, by which secondary causes act actually, is something incomplete and transitory in them, accompanying the operation itself, just as the power by which an instrument moved by the artisan works toward the artifact’s effect.

VI. Second conclusion. This incomplete being prior to the action of a secondary cause is produced in that cause by God alone as its efficient cause and in no way depends by efficient causality on the influx of the secondary cause itself.⁷ This too is Saint Thomas’s conclusion in the cited article 7, ad 3, where he says: In the operation by which God acts, moving nature, nature itself does not act. Therefore he holds that this incomplete being prior to the operation of a secondary cause is produced by God alone as its efficient cause.

It is proved further by a clear argument. For that incomplete being is something prior to the operation, or influx, of the secondary cause and precedes it in the order of causality. Therefore it does not depend on that cause as its efficient cause. The consequence is clear, both because what is prior does not depend on what is posterior and because an effect cannot precede or anticipate its efficient cause; otherwise it would have being before it was produced by its cause.

This is confirmed. For, as was said above and will be clear below, God’s actual help, by which he premoves secondary causes and applies them to acting, gives them the completion of active power so that they may act. Therefore it does not depend by efficient causality on the operation of the secondary cause itself. For the active power of a cause, and its completion, do not depend by efficient causality on the operation of that same cause; otherwise the same thing, under the same aspect, would simultaneously be cause and effect in the same genus of cause with respect to the same thing, which is contradictory.⁸

From this it follows that every secondary cause, in relation to that prior help of God, is passive, whether the secondary cause is natural or free. The reason is that every recipient, insofar as it is a recipient, is passive in relation to the form it receives. Since, then, that prior help is produced by God alone as its efficient cause and is received in the secondary cause before its operation, it follows that the secondary cause itself is passive and not active in relation to it.⁹ Nor does it follow from this that the will, when an adult is justified or when it produces a free act, is purely passive, as Luther asserted. For although it is passive in relation to prior help, it is active and free in relation to the free act to which it is moved, as will be clear below. Hence the Council of Trent, session 6, on justification, canon 4, does not condemn those who say that free choice is passive in relation to divine motion; rather, it condemns those who think that it cannot dissent if it wishes, but is like something lifeless, doing absolutely nothing and remaining purely passive.¹⁰ In these words the Council assumes not obscurely that our free choice is passive in relation to the divine stirring and motion that it receives within itself, as it had said beforehand in chapter 5. Therefore it determines only that free choice is not purely passive, so as to do absolutely nothing like a lifeless thing and not to cooperate at all by freely assenting to God as he stirs and calls. Free choice therefore does something: not by producing, as its efficient cause, the efficacious help, by which God moves it to consent freely, but by freely producing the consent to which God moves free choice through the help of grace.

VII. Third conclusion. Whenever secondary causes, whether of the natural or supernatural order, have, by reason of a form inhering in them, an active power sufficient and proportionate to an effect after the manner of first act, then God’s help, or prior motion, by which God moves and applies those same active powers to acting, is not a quality, but is properly called a motion of power, by which the first and most universal agent brings it about that secondary causes actually act, each according to its own proper mode. This conclusion is expressly stated by St. Thomas, p. 2. q. 110. art. 2, where he asks whether grace is a quality. He replies that habitual grace is a quality, but actual help, by which God moves us to will something, is not a quality but a certain motion of the soul. He proves this as follows: the act of a mover in a mobile thing is the motion of the mobile thing, as is said in 3. phys. text 1.

Moreover, this is proved by reason. Every active quality pertains to the first or second species of quality. But God’s actual help pertains to neither of those species. Therefore it is not a quality. The minor premise is proved: a habit perfects a power as first act, which includes potentiality in relation to actual operation, because a habit does not determine a power to act actually. For it can happen that someone has a habit in himself and does not act. But actual help, which premoves secondary causes to act, does not perfect the power by constituting it in first act; rather, it reduces first act itself to second act. For these two things are incompatible: that a just person be moved efficaciously to love God and yet not love him, as St. Thomas often teaches.¹¹

Second, this is proved as follows. It is impossible for free choice to be determined to one numerically single operation by some act or active quality, for by its nature a habit, as long as it is in wayfarers, can be the principle of different actions. But the aforesaid actual help determines free choice to one numerically single operation, though with the genuine ability to perform the opposite if it wishes, or not to act. Therefore actual help is not a habit or active quality.

Third. Habits are subject to free choice with respect to their use, for we use habits when we wish. But actual help of God, or divine prior motion, is not subject to free choice with respect to its use, as habits are; rather, the help itself subjects the human will and makes it obedient to itself, as will be clear in disputation 87. Therefore [actual help is not a habit or active quality].

Fourth. If a person has any habit or active quality, he still needs help or divine motion in order to act actually, as was shown in the preceding disputation. But if the aforesaid help is posited in a person, he does not need another help by which he is moved and applied to acting; otherwise there would be an infinite regress. For that ultimate help would be a habit or active quality, and consequently it would need another help for acting, and so on without end. Therefore, and so forth.

Fifth. If the help of grace by which God moves us to act were a habit or active quality, it would follow that a just person who does not have such help, or actual divine motion, in himself would truly lack a sufficient principle by which he could act if he wished. For he would lack some active quality by which he would be constituted in first act after the manner of a principle. But the consequence is false and contrary to St. Augustine, who very often teaches that the first parents were granted the help of grace by which they could persevere if they wished;¹² yet they did not receive the help, or actual motion, by which they would persevere and will. The same arguments can easily prove that actual prior help does not pertain to the species of disposition or natural power, especially since this kind of help presupposes a power that it elevates, already constituted in first act.

VIII. Fourth conclusion. Even when the powers have not been constituted by infused habits in a first act proportionate to supernatural actions of fear of hell, attrition, and similar acts that regularly precede the infusion of a habit in time, but are elevated by prevenient grace so as to elicit those same acts, I hold that the actual prior help by which God brings it about that a person produces those acts is not formally a quality, but a powerful motion of God. This is proved by the arguments made for the preceding conclusion, which also appear to prove this one.

It is proved further. The actual prior help by which God moves a power efficaciously to elicit the aforesaid supernatural acts that precede the infusion of a habit in time is of the same nature as the actual help by which God moves efficaciously free choice informed by supernatural habits to supernatural operations. But, as is clear from what was said in the preceding conclusion, this prior help is not a quality. Therefore neither is that help. If someone asks by what the powers are constituted in first act, or in proximate potency to elicit supernatural acts that precede the infusion of a habit in time, we answer that this is a special difficulty to be discussed below when we treat of exciting and sufficient grace.¹³

Fifth conclusion. This prior motion, or actual help, is really distinct from the operation of the secondary cause.¹⁴ This is opposed to the authors of the second opinion. It is proved first as follows. Every efficient cause is really distinct from its effect, for there must be a real distinction between an efficient cause and its effect; otherwise the same thing would be the efficient cause of itself. But that prior motion—or God through that motion—is the efficient cause of free choice and every other secondary cause operating, as will be said below in Disputation 68. Therefore it is really distinct from the operation of that same secondary cause.

It is proved secondly. In the prior order of reason the will first receives in itself God’s prior motion before it produces a free act, as is clear from the premises. Therefore God’s motion cannot be really identical with the free act of that same will. The consequence is proved as follows: the will effects its own free act before it receives or undergoes that act.

It is proved thirdly. That prior motion is a term produced by divine operation alone, as was said above. But the operation and effect of a secondary cause are not something produced by God alone as its efficient cause, but also by the secondary cause. Therefore that motion is not really identical with the operation of the secondary cause or with the term produced through that operation. The consequence is proved as follows: since operations are specified by their terms, wherever operations are really diverse, their terms must also be really distinct.

If an objection is made against this argument—namely, that the effect of the secondary cause is one and the same in reality, yet is produced by diverse operations and influxes, namely, by the operation of God and of the secondary cause, and therefore the diversity of operations does not prove a diversity of effects—we answer that when causes are subordinated, they do not multiply numerically with respect to the effect they produce, for the inferior cause acts in the power of the superior. Hence the same effect, numerically one, can be produced at once by both, as Saint Thomas teaches in De potentia, q. 3, a. 7, ad 3. But what by its nature is produced by God alone as its efficient cause cannot be really identical with what is produced by a secondary cause as its efficient cause.

It is proved fourthly. God cannot by himself immediately attain a free act in some prior order without the created will attaining that act. Therefore efficacious help, or God’s prior motion, is not really the free act itself, insofar as in some prior order it is understood as proceeding from God antecedently to the influx of our free choice. The antecedent is proved as follows: a free act is intrinsically vital. Therefore it implies an intrinsic order to a vital power. Therefore it cannot be understood as proceeding immediately from God, antecedently to the free influx of the vital power, namely free choice, without which it cannot be produced.

This is confirmed first. Otherwise it would follow that in some prior order of reason our free choice is understood to be purely passive in relation to a free act, which nevertheless seems incompatible with its freedom. The consequence is proved as follows: if in that prior order of reason a free act of the will is understood to be effected by God alone, then the will is understood to be purely passive in relation to that free act. Therefore what God does in that prior order of nature is to move the will efficaciously, so that the same will, thus moved, produces its free act. The term of this divine action or motion is that the will be moved so as to move itself, because the operation of the first cause does not attain the effect of the secondary cause unless it modifies itself in the secondary cause according to the mode of that secondary cause. Therefore no duration of nature can be assigned in which, at its first instant, the first cause effects the effect of the secondary cause and, at the second, the secondary cause attains it. This must be treated in Disputations 89 and 98.

This is confirmed secondly. A created free act is intrinsically¹⁵ a contingent action and, consequently, can be impeded by other causes. Therefore, if it is understood to be produced by God alone in some prior order, then in that prior order it must be understood as contingent. Consequently, the contingency and liability to fail of that act would proceed immediately, as from its proximate cause, from God himself or from the divine will. Consequently, God’s will would be contingent and liable to fail, which clearly involves a contradiction, as will be clear in Disputation 27.

IX. To the first argument made at the beginning in favor of the first opinion, we answer that Saint Thomas expressly teaches that divine help by which he moves us to act is not a quality, as is clear from the passage cited for the third conclusion. Hence, to the authorities cited to the contrary, we answer that when Saint Thomas says a secondary cause, however perfect it is supposed to be, cannot act unless it is moved by God, his meaning is not that without God’s actual prior motion the secondary cause lacks a genuine capacity, or active power, in first act. For, as the same holy Doctor teaches in De potentia, q. 3, a. 7, ad 7, natural secondary causes received from God at their creation, through a permanent form, the power by which they could act. Likewise, through infused habits free choice can perform other supernatural actions if it wishes. Rather, Saint Thomas’s meaning is that a secondary cause will never act unless it is moved by God.

For a fuller explanation, it must be observed that in this proposition, “A secondary cause cannot act unless it is moved by God,” the exclusive expression can be taken to modify the verb “can.” In that case the sense is that no secondary cause has in itself a genuine capacity to act unless it is moved by God; this sense is false and was not intended by Saint Thomas or his disciples, as will be said below in Disputation 22, no. 33. Second, the exclusive expression can modify the verb “act.” In that case the sense is that it cannot happen that a secondary cause performs some action and yet is not moved by God. This sense is true and intended by the holy Doctor, as he himself explains in a similar case in De potentia, q. 1, a. 5, ad 1; his words are to be cited in Disputation 22, no. 33. Hence it does not follow that divine help is a quality that confers some power to act in first act.

To the second argument we answer that divine motion, although it is not a quality, can also confer some power to act, not in the mode of a first act, but in the mode of a completion of first act—that is, by bringing it about that first act is reduced to second act.

To the confirmation we answer that it proves only that prior motion is the ultimate completion of first act and is that by which God reduces a power constituted in first act efficaciously and by efficient causality to second act, in the way explained above.

To the third argument we answer that it rather proves that divine motion is not a quality. For if a secondary cause, in relation to producing an effect insofar as it has the character of act or being, is God’s instrument, as some hold, it follows all the more that God’s actual help, in whose power the secondary cause attains the very being of the effect produced, is not a quality received in the secondary cause, but a motion, like the motion received from an artisan in the instrument by which he produces an artifact.

To the fourth we answer that the motion by which God helps free choice before the infusion of a habit, so that it may elicit imperfect supernatural acts, is not, properly speaking, a quality, although it gives powers for acting, as is clear from what was said above. Nor does it follow from this that free choice is not the principal but only the instrumental secondary cause of those same acts, as will be clear in Disputation 68, where that question must be discussed more fully: whether free choice, in relation to the supernatural acts it elicits, is truly a principal cause or only an instrumental one.

To the fifth argument we answer that God’s actual help prior to the operation of a secondary cause is something received in that cause. Yet it is not a quality, but a powerful motion and a certain intermediary between first and second act, as was said.

X. To the sixth we answer that the assumed major premise is true of a quality and active power that has a settled, firm, and permanent being in a subject in the mode of first act. But God’s help is not a permanent quality; it is a motion that passes together with the operation to which it is ordered. Hence through it only a single operation is ever produced.

To the seventh we answer that the major premise must be denied. In reply to the proof, the infinity of the merit of the Lord Christ is an infinity of moral dignity, or in the genus of morals, but not a physical infinity in the aspect of being. Therefore it does not require some intrinsically infinite principle inhering in Christ’s soul from which an infinitely meritorious operation would be elicited. Rather, the infinity of the divine suppositum operating through human nature is sufficient. But supernatural acts are physically and entitatively supernatural; hence the cases are dissimilar.

To the eighth we answer that God’s simultaneous influx, by which he concurs at once with free choice as it determines itself in eliciting a free act, is nothing other than the free act insofar as it proceeds from God. But the help by which God applies and premoves free choice and brings it about that it determines itself is not really the free act itself, but something prior to it, as is clear from the premises.

To the confirmation we answer that motion toward whiteness does not confer any active power or completion of active power on the subject in which it is received, because that subject is purely passive in relation to whiteness. But the prior motion by which God moves and applies free choice so that it determines itself to its acts does confer on it a certain power, or completion of active power, as was said. Hence the cases are dissimilar.

As for the arguments made in favor of the third opinion, the solution is already clear from what was said. We answer specifically, however, that the determination or prior motion of which we speak consists in a certain completion of active power by which God truly brings it about, by efficient causality and efficaciously, that free choice passes from first act to second. It does not formally consist in the very passage that occurs through second act. Hence it does not follow that God’s prior motion to a free act is really the free act itself.

To the confirmation, it should be said that, as was said in the preceding disputation and will be clear in disputation 23, that prior motion, distinct from the operation of the secondary cause, is not posited without necessity, but for the compelling reasons given and to be given in the previously cited places.

By this, the eighth argument of the preceding disputation remains resolved.¹⁶ For we say that between an active power, which has being after the manner of something permanent, and second act there intervenes an actual motion of God, by which the active power is applied and predetermined to acting, as is clear from what has been said above and will become clearer from what will be said in disputation 23, no. 22.

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.

I. Some have said that such concurrence, considered in itself, is not of a different nature from the concurrence by which God concurs with merely natural acts. To explain their opinion, they distinguish three partial causes of the same supernatural acts. From these the whole act emanates as from one complete cause, in such a way that it also emanates as a whole from each of the individual parts, by what they call the partiality of a cause, though in different ways. For they say that from God, influencing through general concurrence alone, it emanates as from a universal cause, from which it therefore has no more that it is an assent of faith or sorrow for sins than that it is an opposite act or an act of any other power. But from the influx of free choice, together with the cognitions and other things necessary for producing the act as to its substance, it has, as from a particular cause, that as to the substance of the act 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 influences together with free choice in the same act, it has that it is a supernatural act specifically distinct from the purely natural act of believing or sorrowing for sins that free choice would elicit at that time by its own powers alone if prevenient grace did not influence together with it. They prove this opinion by all the arguments with which they try to show that grace and free choice are partial causes of supernatural consent, just as two people pulling a ship cause the ship’s movement. But those arguments must be presented and resolved in disputation 85.

Moreover, they prove this as follows: acts of believing, hoping, repenting, and loving do not have from God’s general concurrence, any more than from the influx of free choice, that they are supernatural; rather, they have this from God’s influx through prevenient grace or from the influx of a supernatural habit, by which the acts of free choice are elevated so as to be proportionate to a supernatural end. Therefore general concurrence, which supernatural causes need in order to act, is not supernatural or of a different nature from the concurrence by which God concurs with other secondary causes in producing merely natural effects. The consequence is proved as follows: otherwise acts of free choice would have from God’s general concurrence that they are supernatural, and consequently all acts produced by secondary causes through the same general concurrence would be supernatural. No theologian will admit this.

Second, they argue that otherwise it would follow that the habit of charity or its concurrence would not be sufficient to produce a supernatural act of charity; the same would have to be said of the light of glory with respect to the beatific vision. The proof is that something is said to be sufficient in some genus when nothing else in that same genus is required beyond it. Therefore, if in the genus of supernatural concurrence on God’s part, besides the supernatural concurrence of the habit, another general supernatural concurrence is required, it follows that the concurrence of the habit of charity is not sufficient to produce supernatural acts.

This is confirmed. A supernatural habit and prevenient grace are posited so that the acts of free choice may be supernatural. Therefore, a general concurrence of the supernatural order is established to no purpose for this end, since it is pointless to do through more things what can be done through fewer.

II. Third, it is argued that this is the difference between acquired and infused virtues: acquired virtues provide the ability to act with ease, whereas infused virtues provide simply the ability to act. Therefore a power with a supernatural habit and God’s general concurrence, common to natural causes, will always be able to elicit a supernatural act, setting aside any other concurrence of God in the supernatural order.

Fourth. If the habit of faith preexists in the intellect, it is within the power of free choice to produce or not produce a supernatural act of faith with God’s general concurrence. Therefore another concurrence of the supernatural order is not required for this. Otherwise, even supposing the habit of faith, it would not be in the power of free choice to elicit an act of faith.

This is confirmed. On the contrary opinion, it would follow that a threefold concurrence of God is necessary for every supernatural act. But this must not be said, for it would multiply God’s concurrences without necessity. The consequence is proved as follows: first, God’s concurrence through a supernatural habit or through prevenient grace, which supplies the place of a supernatural habit, is necessary. Likewise, God’s general concurrence of the natural order is necessary, by which God, as the first and most universal cause, concurs with all secondary causes, even natural ones, in their operations. Therefore, if besides this concurrence another concurrence of the supernatural order on God’s part is necessary, it follows that God concurs with a secondary cause by a threefold concurrence in every supernatural operation.

Fifth, an argument is made from the Council of Trent, session 6, on justification, chapter 5 and canon 3, where the same point seems to be indicated. For in relation to such supernatural acts, besides grace that stirs and assists, it says that only the free influx of our free choice together with that same grace is required. Therefore, besides God’s general concurrence, by which he conserves all things in their being, no other concurrence of God in the supernatural order is required for supernatural acts.

If it is said that the help of assisting grace itself is the supernatural concurrence of God generally necessary for all supernatural acts, an argument is made against this.

Sixth, exciting grace and assisting grace are not two distinct graces. For that same grace by which God excites free choice to supernatural acts is called assisting grace if our choice wills to act with it: insofar as it precedes free choice it is called exciting grace; but insofar as it already cooperates with free choice in a supernatural act, it is called assisting and cooperating grace. Therefore, beyond exciting grace and general concurrence, no other special help of assisting grace or supernatural concurrence of God is required.

III. This opinion, however, does not convince us. Therefore one must say that God’s general concurrence by which, together with free choice and other secondary causes, he concurs in supernatural acts is supernatural and of the same order as those acts, and is not of the same character as the general concurrence by which he concurs with natural secondary causes in their operations.¹ This opinion is taught by Master Soto, On Nature and Grace 1, ch. 16, and by Andrés de Vega, On the Council of Trent 6, ch. 6, and the three following chapters. It seems to be the express teaching of St. Thomas, 1.2, q. 109, art. 9, in the body, where he says: A human being needs God’s help for living rightly in two ways. In one way, with respect to some habitual gift by which corrupt human nature is healed and, once healed, elevated to perform works meritorious of eternal life; in another way, a human being needs the help of grace in order to be moved by God to act. There, beyond a habitual gift, he teaches that actual help of divine grace is necessary. But the help of grace is not the general influx of God that is common to natural things; it is a special influx of the supernatural order, although it can be called general within that same supernatural order. Therefore [the general concurrence in supernatural acts is supernatural].

Moreover, it is proved by reason. God, insofar as he is the author of grace, is the ultimate supernatural end of all supernatural actions. Therefore, insofar as he is a supernatural author, he is their first efficient cause. Therefore he concurs in them with a general supernatural concurrence.

Second, the concurrence of the first cause must be proportionate to the form by which the secondary cause acts. But the form by which a secondary cause acts in supernatural acts is supernatural. For natural power—that is, the intellect and will, and the other natural powers—has in itself no proximate active power with respect to supernatural acts. Rather, all its power depends, as on that by which it acts, on a supernatural form, as will become clear in disputation 64. Consequently, the form by which a secondary cause acts in supernatural acts must be supernatural. Therefore, likewise, the concurrence of the first cause must be supernatural.

This is confirmed. For, as was said in disputation 18, God’s general concurrence is an immediate influx into the cause, is received in it, and is modified by God himself according to the condition of that cause, by a priority of nature before he produces the effect together with it. Therefore the same general concurrence with a supernatural secondary cause must also be supernatural. Otherwise God would not modify that same concurrence in the secondary cause or accommodate it to the condition and nature of that cause.

Third, the same point is proved specifically about God’s simultaneous concurrence. The concurrence by which God immediately produces a supernatural operation together with a supernatural secondary cause really is the operation itself insofar as it proceeds from God’s influx. But the operation is supernatural. Therefore God’s immediate influx into that same operation is supernatural.

IIII. If it is said that the operation is not supernatural insofar as it is produced by God’s concurrence or by the influx of free choice, but insofar as it is produced from the influx of a supernatural habit or exciting grace together with the human intellectual or appetitive power, there is an argument against this. Exciting grace without assisting grace does not bring about a free act or attain its supernatural character; it only moves free choice morally from the side of the object, by persuading it, inviting it, and attracting it to pursue the good presented to it by the intellect. A supernatural habit, however, only gives the power the ability to perform supernatural acts; it does not give it the actual performance of them. Therefore, in addition to the habit itself and exciting grace, one must posit on God’s side an actual concurrence of the supernatural order, by which the rational power, elevated by a supernatural habit, is moved efficaciously by God so that it actually performs a supernatural act.

Fourth, the same opinion can be proved by all the arguments by which it will become clear in disputation 88 that one who has infused habits needs, for eliciting a supernatural act, the help not only of exciting but also of assisting grace, superadded to those same infused habits.

V. To the first argument it is answered that a supernatural act of believing, for example, or loving, with all the reality and supernatural character it has, is produced by the efficient causality of free choice, a supernatural habit, and God, or his supernatural help.² It is produced by free choice elevated by the habit, as by the proximate cause or principle which acts; by the habit, as by the principle by which it acts; and by God, as by the first supernatural cause, to which free choice, elevated by a supernatural form, is essentially subordinated not only in being but also in acting. One must not admit that God and free choice are partial causes of supernatural consent. For they are truly total causes in their own order, as will become clear in disputation 85.³

To the second argument it is answered that the habit of charity is indeed sufficient for loving God above all things in the sense of being the principle by which free choice is formally constituted in first supernatural act with respect to loving God as the author of grace.⁴ For it gives the will the ability to love God. But for this potency, elevated by a supernatural habit, to be reduced to second act, a general concurrence of the supernatural order from God, or supernatural actual help, is necessarily required, as is clear from what was said above. Nor does it follow from this that all acts produced by secondary causes are supernatural. For God’s general concurrence is not supernatural with respect to every kind of operation, but only those produced by supernatural secondary causes.

To the confirmation it is answered that the supernatural concurrence of God is not posited in vain. For an act of faith or charity, and other acts of this kind, has from it as from the first cause that it exists and is supernatural; but from free choice, elevated by a supernatural habit and preceded by exciting grace, it has this as from its proximate cause, as was said above.

To the third argument it is answered that infused habits in themselves give the power simply the ability to act, but do not give it the actual performance of an act. Otherwise, one who had such habits would always act well, and once justified could not sin or lose grace, which is erroneous. Hence, in addition to the habit, actual help and concurrence of the supernatural order from God are required, by which the power elevated by the habit is moved and determined to act piously. For it is one thing to be able to act, and another actually to act; and more things are required for a person to act actually than are necessary for him to be able to act.

VI. To the fourth argument it is answered that believing itself is indeed in the power of our choice, provided that God supplies a general concurrence of the same order, without which free choice, however perfect its habit of faith, will never act. Nor does it follow that a human being lacks free choice; it follows only that he does not have free choice independently of another and is not the absolutely first free agent. For this belongs only to the free choice of God, as will be said in disputation 117.

To the confirmation it is answered that, on God’s side, a general concurrence of the supernatural order is sufficient for supernatural acts, and that concurrence eminently contains whatever perfection is found in God’s general concurrence insofar as he is the author of nature. Hence it does not follow that threefold concurrence from God is necessary for every supernatural act. See what was said about this solution in disputation 18.

To the fifth argument it is answered that, in the cited passages, the Council of Trent teaches that, in addition to exciting grace, assisting grace is necessary for conversion. Under this it includes God’s actual concurrence of the supernatural order, by which God immediately gives influx to free choice, moving it and applying it efficaciously to act piously, as was said in disputation 18 and will become clearer in disputation 23.

To the sixth it is answered that exciting and assisting grace are not the same help of grace, but distinct, as will become clear below.⁵

Whether God’s general concurrence, especially with respect to acts dependent on created free choice, is in itself indifferent.

I. Some more recent theologians hold the affirmative position, asserting that God’s general concurrence is God’s eternal will by which he determines to be present in this way to all secondary causes, such that whenever secondary causes cooperate, either by natural necessity or spontaneously and freely, an influx of this sort would continually follow from the determination of the free divine will, just as if he himself were to influence them by a necessity of nature. From this they infer that God’s general concurrence is indifferent in itself, so that different actions and effects result according to the diversity of the cooperating secondary cause. Some explain this opinion by asserting that God wills not absolutely, but as it were conditionally: that this act be performed by a created will if that will itself determines to elicit it, and that, under the same condition, God wills to influence and concur in the same act, while nevertheless awaiting the influx of the created will. By the force of this divine will, they say, divine omnipotence remains applied to influence an act of the human will in such a way that, when the human will influences it, God also influences it without any new act of God’s will or any new application of his power, as it were by a certain necessity arising from his will, which is efficacious and unchangeable with respect to what and how it wills. In this way, as it were indifferently and generally, God applies and offers his power to the human will, ready to concur with it in the act that the will itself effects. From this they infer that the concurrence of secondary causes determines the general concurrence of the first cause both to the species of the act in the order of nature and to the goodness or malice it has in the moral order. For they say that, since God’s general concurrence is not God’s concurrence in the secondary cause but in the action of that cause itself, and is in itself indifferent so that, according to the diversity of the secondary cause’s influx, this action rather than another of a different species follows—for it does not determine the influx of the secondary cause, but is determined by it to a species of action—when free choice concurs with it, the varying influx of free choice brings about that willing rather than not willing follows, and that willing a virtuous rather than a base object follows. Thus the actions of free choice, as well as those of any secondary cause, do not derive from God’s general concurrence the fact that they are this or that particular kind of action, and hence neither that they are virtuous or vicious; they derive this from free choice itself.

II. They prove this opinion first as follows. This way for the first cause to concur is possible, since no repugnance or contradiction can be conceived in it, much less found. Since the divine will is omnipotent to do what and how it wills, and can will anything that involves no contradiction, it follows that God can concur with secondary causes in the way explained.

This is confirmed and illustrated by examples. The sun by its nature is, as it were, generally set forth to concur with each of the secondary causes that depend on it, according to each one’s capacity. Therefore, in the same way, God can by his will apply and offer his efficacy, or power, to the human will in the aforesaid seemingly indifferent and general manner, ready to concur with it in the act that it effects. Likewise, one person can in this way offer his help for anything another chooses. Therefore God, who is omnipotent, will be able to offer his concurrence, or help, in that manner, with its imperfections excluded.

This is confirmed secondly. Since God’s will is infinite and most efficacious, it needs no new act in order actually to concur with secondary causes in time. By the very fact that he has applied his power, it remains continually applied proximately to influencing them. Therefore this way of concurring is possible for God. On the other hand, it is most apt and suited to preserving both aspects of freedom in the human will, namely, with respect to specification and exercise, or with respect to being able to act and being able not to act. For since the power of free choice is, as it were, higher and more eminent than other natural agents, so that its use is not restricted or confined to one thing by the divine concurrence, this concurrence must be given with the same eminence, abstraction, and universality. For if it is determined to one side, the will will necessarily be bound to that side by a necessity arising not from itself but from something antecedent. This is a necessity simply speaking and repugnant to freedom, as will be clear in Disputation 23 from Saint Anselm’s teaching. Therefore, and so forth.

Second, they argue as follows. This way of concurring is not only possible and most apt for defending the use of freedom; no other way can be suited to this end. For although God can concur with secondary causes, even free ones, by physically predetermining them, that concurrence, although sufficient for our will to act, would not be sufficient for it to act freely. For this involves a contradiction: that the will act here and now both determined and undetermined, acting indifferently once all the requirements in first act are posited and yet determined by another in first act. Nor would this be to arrange the business of free choice forcefully and gently, but rather to bind it most forcefully and prevent it from remaining free for either alternative, and to draw it to consent by force rather than gentleness. Therefore it must necessarily be established and admitted that God’s general concurrence is in itself indifferent in the manner stated.

III. Third, it is argued that this manner of concurrence is in agreement with Sacred Scripture and the Fathers. Scripture indicates it when it says: God left a human being in the hand of his counsel. I have set before you fire and water; stretch out your hand toward whichever you wish.¹ And again: Your desire shall be under you, and you shall rule over it.² In these and similar passages, since the discussion concerns proximate and moral power, not only the proximate faculty of the power but also the indifferent concurrence of God inwardly, or proposed and offered in first act, is shown most clearly. For if a person truly is left in the hand of his counsel, then a person truly also has in his own hand the concurrence of God necessary for those things about which he can truly deliberate; consequently, God’s concurrence in itself is indifferent with respect to whatever a person chooses to choose by his freedom.

Fourth, an argument is made from the authority of the Scholastics, who attribute to the first cause this manner of concurring with secondary causes by a concurrence indifferent in itself. These include St. Thomas in the places to be cited in disputation 22, no. 3, to prove that by his decree God does not predetermine secondary causes, especially free and contingent ones, to acting. Moreover, in 1. p. q. 14. art. 13 he teaches simply that knowledge of future things in their cause is conjectural; hence, for it to be certain in God, he refers it to their presence in eternity. In p. 2. q. 9. art. 6. ad 3, after saying that a human being determines himself to will through reason, he adds that those who are stirred by God through grace are specially moved by him to will one determinate thing. In this place St. Thomas expressly teaches that God’s general concurrence as first cause does not consist in determining the will to one outcome; rather, God provides of himself an indifferent concurrence in relation to the adequate object of the will, which is the good. That St. Thomas is speaking of general concurrence is clear from these words: Without this universal motion a human being cannot will anything. He therefore holds that this motion, or concurrence, is offered indifferently on God’s part, while through reason and freedom the will is determined with that general concurrence to will some determinate thing. And in the First Part of the Second Part, q. 10. art. 4, he teaches that God accommodates himself to the natures of things, and therefore moves our will, which is indifferent of itself, in such a way that he does not determine it necessarily to one outcome. He repeats the same in Against the Gentiles 3, chapter 90, and q. 5. de verit. art. 5. ad 1. Finally, in q. 3. de potentia, art. 7. ad 13, he says that the determination of the act is left to the power of reason and will. Therefore, according to St. Thomas, God’s general concurrence is indifferent in itself in such a way that by its freedom a person can use it to produce this act or its opposite. He confirms this in q. 5. de verit. art. 9. ad 10 with these words: The action of the first cause is in a certain way determined to this effect by the secondary cause. And in 3. cont. Gent. chapter 66 he says: Secondary causes particularize and determine the action of the first agent. St. Thomas therefore wishes God’s general concurrence to be indifferent in itself and determined by the will itself to this or that particular action, so that the particular action is from God, but is not of this kind because it is from God; rather, it is of this kind because it is from the will or another secondary cause.

IIII. Yet we have never been able to approve this opinion, and it does not seem consonant with the perfection of divine concurrence or with the opinion of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and the ancient Thomists. Hence, to resolve this difficulty, the following conclusions are established.

First conclusion. God’s general concurrence, by which he helps secondary causes to act, is not indifferent in itself, nor is it offered to them by God through a will indifferent of itself in the manner explained above.³ All theologians who teach that God, by a prior motion received in secondary causes, by efficient causality and efficaciously premoves or predetermines them to every action in particular, according to every account of being they have, must consequently admit this conclusion. Their testimonies will be presented in disputations 22, 23, and 24. For it is impossible for a cause to be premoved and efficaciously applied, as to the exercise of its act, to produce some particular action by a concurrence indifferent in itself.

Therefore the conclusion is proved first by an argument taken from St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 19. art. 3. ad 5. For no action follows from what is indifferent to either of two outcomes unless it is inclined or determined to one by something else, as the Commentator says, 2. phys. text 48. Therefore, if God’s general concurrence is indifferent in itself to either of two outcomes, it follows that it is determined to an effect by something else and thus has some prior cause, which is incompatible with the first cause.

This is confirmed. Because of the preceding argument, St. Thomas says in the cited article 3. ad 5: A cause that is contingent of itself must be determined to an effect by something external; but the divine will, which has necessity of itself, determines itself to what it wills, toward which it has a non-necessary relation. By these words he plainly teaches that the divine will, which is the first cause of all things, determines itself to produce all the effects it produces in time, whether immediately through itself or through secondary causes. Therefore God’s general concurrence, which is through the divine will, is not indifferent in itself, but determined, and directed to the determinate effects actually produced in time, in accordance with the nature of each secondary cause.

V. If it is said that God’s general concurrence is determined by the divine will to a particular effect after it is, in some way, limited to that effect by the influx of free choice or of another secondary cause, since through such a secondary cause it produces only such a determinate effect—

An argument is made against this. It would follow that the secondary cause determines the first cause to act and influence this act rather than another. For if the first cause applies its will and concurrence in itself indifferently to producing those acts with secondary causes to which the secondary causes themselves apply, either by natural necessity or by their free will, then the first cause does not determine itself to this particular effect and, consequently, is determined to it by the secondary cause.

It is proved secondly. A way of concurring through a will that is in itself indifferent to producing this or that effect, or its opposite, is very imperfect, since its efficacy depends on the concurrence of a secondary cause. Every dependence implies a certain imperfection and inferiority in the thing that depends, in relation to that on which it depends. Therefore such a way of concurring cannot be attributed to God or befit his will, which is infinite and the most perfect cause.

VI. They answer that these arguments are easily solved. To explain their response, they presuppose that before every free decree of his will God knows through his infinite knowledge not only what all wills can do, but also what they will do if they are brought into existence with this or that help or occasion for willing. This knowledge is usually called knowledge of contingent conditionals, and some call it middle knowledge, between knowledge of simple understanding and knowledge of vision. With this knowledge presupposed in God, they say that God distinctly and definitely assigns each thing to its ends and chooses means suited to the natures of things, the principles of which means exist in the divine intellect. Thus, when God wills a particular act to be produced by a contingent or free cause, foreseeing through middle knowledge that the same created will, from its innate freedom, will perform such an act on the hypothesis that it is placed in such an order of things or in such circumstances and that God’s general concurrence, indifferent in itself, is offered to it, he in fact places it in those same circumstances and grants it his general concurrence for that determinate act; and together with the created will he produces the same act determinately and definitely in the particular and individual case. Second, they presuppose that the determination of the first cause can signify two things. One is that application by which God applied and ordained his omnipotence to help the secondary cause and concur with it. This determination was made by the divine will alone, which could have withheld its concurrence from the secondary cause; freely it determined itself to give or offer it in the particular case, foreseeing where and when it would have an effect. They call this determination ad intra, of which the human will is in no way the cause. The other thing found in this determination is determination ad extra, namely, the determinate created action proceeding from the divine will and from God’s power cooperating with the human will.

They say, then, that as regards the ad intra determination of the divine will included in God’s general concurrence, the divine will alone by its act freely determined itself to a particular effect in the individual case, concurring with secondary causes in the way described; and as regards this determination, God’s general concurrence cannot be determined by the concurrence of a secondary cause. Nevertheless, they judge that as regards the ad extra determination, it is most true that this action of God receives its determination from the proximate cause, or the human will—not because this determination proceeds by efficient causality from that will alone, for that determination is nothing other than the exercise of such an action in such a species, and all this must be done by God, without whom nothing was made;⁴ but because the proximate cause, or the human will, by its influx determines God’s action ad extra to this species, this time, and this individual. This argues no imperfection in God, but rather the greatest perfection, both because this way of determining does not occur through some force or action upon the first cause itself, but only through cooperation with it in this action rather than another, and also because this does not arise from any need in the first cause. For if it wished, it could itself predetermine the cause to the effect, unless it wished that the act be freely performed by a human being; likewise, it could produce the act by itself, unless it wished it to be performed vitally by a human being. All this proceeds from the will of the first cause itself, which established this way of concurring and cooperating in order to preserve intact the rights of human freedom; it willed to cooperate in the action to which the human will would contribute its influx and not in another, and when the will wished, not beforehand.

VII. But this solution can be challenged at the outset, since it rests entirely on that middle knowledge, by all the arguments with which we showed in Disputation 7 that this knowledge does not exist even in God, because there truly is no such knowledge. Moreover, God’s general concurrence is not only an immediate influx with the secondary cause into its effect; it is also an influx into the cause itself, moving and applying it efficaciously to produce a particular effect in the individual case, as was shown above and will be demonstrated fully below.⁵ Therefore it is impossible for God’s concurrence ad extra to be determined to a species of action or to the production of a particular act by the concurrence of the secondary cause. It must also be added that the ad extra determination by which God, insofar as he is a universal cause, applies free choice to produce a particular action in the individual case is not really or formally the free action itself produced by that same free choice, but something prior to it, completing the secondary cause in its operative power, as was shown from the express teaching of Saint Thomas in Disputation 19. Therefore God’s general concurrence cannot be indifferent in itself. Finally, the same solution is challenged because the concurrence of the secondary cause, even insofar as it is formally that cause’s concurrence, proceeds by efficient causality from the operation of the first cause, as will be clear in Disputations 36 and 86. Otherwise something real existing in the nature of things would be withdrawn from the operation and causality of the first agent, which has often been shown to be impossible. Therefore the concurrence of the secondary cause does not determine the operation, or ad extra concurrence, of the first cause to produce a particular action in the individual case; rather, the secondary cause itself is determined by the concurrence of the first cause. The consequence is proved as follows: an effect proceeding from the operation or concurrence of some cause cannot determine that cause and its operation to produce that effect in the particular case, since the determination of a cause to act, as regards the exercise of action, is understood to precede the effect at least in the order of nature, because every effect as such is posterior in time or nature to its efficient cause. As for the claim in the solution we are challenging—namely, that the rights of human freedom cannot be preserved intact unless God’s general concurrence is indifferent in itself—how groundless this is will become clear below.⁶ For now, we say the opposite: the rights of any created free choice, since it depends intrinsically in its being and operation on the decree and operation of the first free cause, which is God, in order to pass into particular operations, require that it be applied efficaciously to them through the prior influx of that same first cause. Unless God premoves it, it will remain altogether unmoved, since it is not simply the first self-mover or the first cause of its own motion, but moves itself freely after first being moved by God.

Third, it is proved specifically that God’s general concurrence cannot be indifferent to good and evil, to an act of virtue and an act of vice. God is supremely good; therefore of himself he does not offer concurrence indifferent to good and evil. Therefore, as far as the divine operation is concerned, his general concurrence always tends determinately toward the good.

This is confirmed. If God’s general concurrence is indifferent to an act of virtue and an act of vice opposed to virtue, it follows that God, with the created will determining itself to sin, concurs in the sin itself, absolutely speaking. The consequence is proved as follows. Whoever voluntarily offers another an indifferent concurrence, open to producing a virtuous work or a sin, according as the other chooses, truly concurs in the sin if he is determined by the other’s will to bring about that same sin. Therefore, if God, for his part, offers a person general concurrence indifferent to virtue and vice, or to moral good and sin, as that person pleases, it follows that God concurs determinately in the sin in its actual exercise, once the created will determines his general concurrence to sin. But this cannot be admitted. Therefore it must be said that, for his part, God concurs determinately only in the good, while created free choice by its own malice concurs in sin, as was explained in Disputation 18 and will be discussed more fully in Disputation 24.

VIII. Fourth, the conclusion is proved from the perfection of divine providence, which requires that God will and predefine determinately all things that occur in time, order them to the end he intends, and move and apply secondary causes to determinate effects. But providence could not accomplish these things if God’s concurrence were indifferent in itself, as is self-evident. Therefore [God’s concurrence is not indifferent in itself].

This is confirmed. For, as will be clear in Disputation 30, not only the ordering of means to an end, but also the infallible attainment of the end intended by God belong to the perfection of divine providence. But if general concurrence were indifferent in itself, or if God did not efficaciously apply secondary causes to their particular operations through that concurrence, divine providence would not infallibly attain the intended end through means predefined and ordered to attain that same end. For these two things could stand together: that God grants his general concurrence for producing some effect, and that the will, by its freedom, does not wish to produce that effect or concur in it. Nor is it sufficient to appeal to middle knowledge, from which, our opponents say, all the certainty and infallibility of divine providence with respect to attaining its effect are drawn. For we have already shown that this knowledge does not exist and consequently cannot be found in God.⁷ Therefore the certainty of divine providence with respect to attaining its intended end cannot be drawn from it.

Fifth, this is proved as follows: otherwise the concurrence and determination of created free choice would be withdrawn from divine providence, and thus God would not have providence over all things in particular, but only in general. This is proved because if God’s general concurrence is indifferent in itself, and likewise God’s will offers that same concurrence to free secondary causes wherever and whenever they themselves wish by their freedom to act, and not beforehand, then by such concurrence God does not truly bring it about by efficient causality that free choice influences this particular operation here and now as an individual act. Consequently, the influx of free choice will be exempt from divine providence. For, as St. Thomas often teaches, divine providence extends only to those things to which divine causality extends.⁸ Therefore, if God does not cause the concurrence of free choice by efficient causality, he will not have providence over it, but only foreknowledge of it in particular. Thus his providence would extend only to contingent and free works in general, insofar, namely, as he gave intellectual creatures free choice, by which they could act whenever it pleased them.

Some try to dissolve this argument in several ways. But all the replies will have to be refuted below, when discussing the perfection of divine providence.⁹

IX. Second conclusion. Not only the concurrence inwardly, but also God’s concurrence outwardly, by which he premoves secondary causes to acting, cannot be determined by the concurrence of secondary causes. Rather, through that same concurrence God efficaciously applies and determines secondary causes themselves to acting. This conclusion follows from the preceding one: for nothing is determined by another unless it is indifferent before being determined. But God’s general concurrence is not indifferent in itself, as was said in the preceding conclusion. Therefore it is not determined by the concurrence of free choice. Rather, on the contrary, free choice, because it is indifferent in itself to acting or not acting, and to producing this or that act, must be inclined through God’s concurrence so that it produces some particular action. This conclusion will be treated more fully in the following three disputations.

To the first argument, it is replied that this way of acting and concurring by a concurrence indifferent in itself is not possible for God, because it seems greatly opposed to the perfection of divine providence and causality, as is clear from what has been said above.

X. To the first confirmation, it is replied that the sun is a finite and limited cause having some potentiality, and a human being likewise, since he is a creature. Therefore such a cause can be determined by the concurrence of another cause to produce this or that individual effect. But God is an infinitely perfect cause and pure act, with no potentiality mixed in. Hence his will, or concurrence, in which the intention of the will and divine power resides, cannot be determined to acting by the concurrence of free choice or of any other secondary cause.

To the second confirmation, it is replied that although the divine will needs no new act in order actually to concur in time with secondary causes to produce their effects, it is nevertheless necessarily required that from eternity he have decreed by an absolute will to produce these or those individual acts through secondary causes and to premove them to produce those same effects at this or that time. By virtue of this eternal decree his will and power remain applied to producing those same effects at a determinate time. Therefore his concurrence is not indifferent in itself, nor is this manner of concurring indifferently suited or accommodated to preserving the freedom of the human will with respect to the exercise of its operation. Rather, if God were to provide his general concurrence in this indifferent way, secondary causes, especially free ones, would produce no operations, as was said.

To the second argument, it is replied by denying that another manner of concurring accommodated to the freedom of our free choice is impossible for God. For, as will be clear in disputations 22 and 23, a manner of concurring by a prior concurrence that determines free choice to acting is possible for God and fitting to the freedom of free choice; indeed, it is necessary so that free choice may proceed to a determinate and free act. How, with this predetermination, there can also remain in the will indifference, or the power to act or not act, which belongs to the intrinsic account of free choice, will be explained expressly in disputations 22, 23, 115, and 116.¹⁰

XI. To the third argument it is answered that the way of God’s concurrence by means of a concurrence indifferent of itself is in no way in conformity with Sacred Scripture or the holy Fathers, nor does it have any foundation in them. As to the passage cited from Ecclesiasticus, ch. 15, it is answered with St. Thomas, 1.p. q.22. art.2. ad 4: in saying that God left man in the hand of his own counsel, man is not excluded from divine providence; rather, it is shown that a determinate operative power directed to one outcome is not prescribed for him, as it is for natural things, which are acted upon, as it were, being directed to an end by another, and do not act by directing themselves to an end as rational creatures do through free choice, by which they deliberate and choose. Hence he says pointedly: “In the hand of his own counsel.” But since the act of free choice itself is reduced to God as its cause, what is done through free choice must be subject to divine providence; for human providence is contained under God’s providence as a particular cause is under a universal cause. Therefore, just as the concurrence of free choice is not excluded from divine providence by the fact that man is placed in the hand of his own counsel, so too it is not excluded from divine causality and predetermination. For since it is a secondary free agent, its determination intrinsically depends on the predetermination of the first free being, who is God. Nor does freedom require that man have God’s prior concurrence in his own hand; it is enough that he have the free act in his power, the act to which God moves him by his general or special concurrence. The same must be said about the cited passage from Genesis, which signifies only that man has free choice and mastery over his act. This is preserved perfectly even if he does not have first and absolute mastery over it, independent of a higher being, as will become clear in disputation 117. A king, likewise, truly has mastery over his kingdom even if he is not its first and absolute lord, since the first dominion over all things belongs to God alone.

XII. To the fourth argument it is answered that St. Thomas expressly teaches our opinion in the cited passages and in others that we will cite in the next three disputations; nowhere does he assert or even lightly hint at the opposing opinion. As to the passage cited from 1 p., q. 14, art. 13, it is answered that there he does not say simply that knowledge of future things in a cause is conjectural, but adds the qualification “in a contingent and indifferent cause,” such as our will. For he is plainly speaking of this cause in the course of the article. But the divine will, or its decree, and likewise the general concurrence by which God moves secondary causes to act, is not a contingent cause or one liable to be impeded by the concurrence of another cause, as will become clear in disputation 27. Hence, in the decree by which from eternity he efficaciously decided to move beforehand in time the secondary causes to these or those contingent effects, he knows infallibly that they will be future, as was shown in disputation 10 from the testimonies of St. Thomas and the most efficacious arguments.

As to the other passage from 1.2, q. 9, it is answered that St. Thomas there intends to teach only that our will is determined by God alone with respect to specification toward the good in general. But with respect to this or that particular good, it is not only predetermined by God; the will itself also determines itself through deliberation and moves itself, as the proximate determiner, under the motion and predetermination of the first mover and first determiner of all things. When he adds, God sometimes moves some people specially to will something determinate that is good, as in those whom he moves through grace, he wished to signify that, beyond the general motion by which God moves and applies all natural causes and predetermines them to their operations in particular—as the holy Doctor himself explains in several places—there is a special motion through the special help of divine grace, by which God moves free choice to a supernatural good, which is truly and simply good.

As to the passage cited from 1.2, q. 10, art. 4; Against the Gentiles III, ch. 90; and q. 5, On Truth, art. 5, it is answered that these passages favor us instead. For when the holy Doctor says that free acts are not determined to one outcome by divine providence in the way things without freedom are, and when he explains that Gregory of Nyssa and Damascene, in saying that God does not predetermine what is within us, are to be understood as meaning that what is within us is not subject to divine determination as though it received necessity from it, he plainly presupposes that God predetermines our free choice to each operation in particular, but not with absolute necessity as he determines natural causes. Rather, he determines it according to the nature of that same free choice, or in the manner of freedom, because he predetermines free choice not only to act but also to act freely, in conformity with its nature, as that same holy Doctor clearly explained in 1 p., q. 19, art. 8.

As to the passage from q. 3, On the Power of God, it is answered by what was and will be said in disputation 117, where it will be explained how the consent of free choice is in its power.

As for what Thomas says in De veritate q. 5, a. 9, ad 10—namely, that the act or action of the first cause is determined by the secondary cause to this effect—we answer that Saint Thomas did not say absolutely that the influx of the first cause is determined to this effect by the concurrence of the secondary cause, but only in a certain way, to suggest that, absolutely speaking and as regards the exercise of the act, the secondary cause is determined to concur by the concurrence of the first cause, as he teaches most clearly in other passages. Nevertheless, the concurrence of the first cause is determined to this species of effect in the secondary cause itself, which receives the influx of the first cause within itself. But this determination is not made by the secondary cause itself, but by God, who modifies his general concurrence in secondary causes, as was said. Thus through this secondary cause, namely fire, he produces only fire, and through a horse he generates only a horse, and so on for each. For this reason, in the same reply ad 10, the holy Doctor said that the effect is more like the secondary cause than the first; the same answer is given to the other passage from Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 66.

XIII. It must consequently be explained whether, through this prior motion received in secondary causes, God physically predetermines those causes antecedently to their operation to act actually, both natural and free causes. For this is the chief question that has given rise to disagreement among Catholic thinkers: some contend that the free use of created will in its actual exercise cannot cohere with this predetermination; others, on the contrary, insist that the prior motion applying the will to one side of the contradiction or contrariety must necessarily be posited so that a cause indifferent in itself may pass into a determinate act, and that this motion not only does not injure created freedom of choice but rather perfects it. Since there are two kinds of predetermination of our will, one purely extrinsic, through the efficacy of the divine will and power, which no creature can resist, and the other intrinsic, which occurs through a prior motion received in the will, whose power and efficacy depend on the efficacy of the divine will, each must be discussed in its proper order. First we must treat extrinsic predetermination, then intrinsic and inhering predetermination, for the second follows from the first. Hence, if God by an absolute and efficacious will physically predetermines our free choice to consent, antecedently to all middle knowledge, intrinsic physical predetermination must consequently be admitted, effected by God through a prior motion received in that same free choice; and if the former does not impede the use of freedom, neither does the latter.¹¹ For, as one of the authors of the opposing opinion rightly teaches, with respect to this point the same reasoning applies to physical predetermination from an extrinsic cause—that is, from an efficacious and absolute decree of the divine will—and to this inherent premotion.

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

I. To make the title of this disputation clear, lest anyone be offended through ignorance of terms and attack the truth itself while inveighing against the term “physical predetermination,” note that just as the Doctors distinguish two kinds of causality and two kinds of cause, so too must two kinds of predetermination of the same cause be distinguished: one moral, the other truly efficient, or physical. For, as St. Thomas teaches, On Evil, q. 3. art. 3. in corp.: A cause that moves something is twofold. Sometimes “cause” means that which disposes, advises, or commands;¹ this is commonly called a moral cause, since it moves only by way of persuasion. Sometimes, however, “cause” means that which perfects, and this is properly and truly called a cause, because a cause is that which is followed by an effect. For the effect immediately follows the action of a perfecting cause, but it does not follow the action of that which disposes, advises, or commands. For persuasion does not compel an unwilling person, as Augustine says in Eighty-Three Questions, question 4. Correspondingly, we distinguish two kinds of predetermination of the will: one merely moral, which occurs through inward persuasion or through external counsel or command.² In this way rhetoricians, by many arguments through which they make the fittingness of an object apparent to the will, incline it and, as it were, predetermine it morally to will or do something. Yet this predetermination cannot be efficacious on its own part, as will be clear below, because inwardly it does not change the will by transferring it from one thing to another, but pertains only to the side of the object. The other is physical predetermination, by which God properly moves the will by efficient causality on the part of its power to will something. This predetermination is called physical, or after the manner of a physical cause, as distinguished from the merely moral kind, but not as distinguished from free predetermination. On this point—

II. Second, it must be noted that an action or predetermination can be called physical in two senses. First, “physical action” or “physical predetermination” can signify the same thing as natural action and natural predetermination, whose consideration belongs to natural philosophy. In this sense no Catholic teaches that God physically predetermines free choice to its operation by his efficacious decree or through some intrinsic help, for this predetermination would undoubtedly remove freedom, as will be clear below.³ In the second sense, physical action and predetermination are taken as distinct from merely moral action and predetermination, which occurs through persuasion alone and the proposal of a suitable object, whether this happens externally or internally. In this usage, a cause of an effect is called physical when it produces the effect through true and real efficient causality and the effect depends on it for its being, whether the cause is natural or free. Theologians use the word “physically,” or “physical action,” in this same sense when they say that Christ’s humanity physically causes our salvation and likewise causes miracles. In this respect its causality differs from the causality by which other saints performed miracles: the other saints caused them only morally, by praying to God to perform them or even by commanding, as Joshua did when he said: Sun, do not move from Gibeon.⁴⁵ But Christ’s humanity caused miracles not only morally but by efficient causality and physically, as an instrument joined to the divinity. This seems to be indicated by the words: He alone does great wonders.⁶ “Alone,” it says. For although other saints performed miracles morally, God alone effected them by efficient causality, properly and physically, as the principal cause, because, as Saint Thomas says in Summa theologiae I, q. 111, a. 2, God alone, who established nature, can change it. Hence Saint Augustine, explaining the aforesaid words of the Psalmist, says: Moses performed wonders, but not alone; Elijah and Elisha performed them, and the Apostles did too, but none of them alone. When they performed them, you performed them with them; when you performed them, they were not with you, because you acted alone. For they were not with you when you performed them, since it was you who made them as well.⁷ Many authors use “physical action” and “physical causality” in this sense, including those who deny that God predetermines the will by efficient causality to a pious operation. Indeed, at the Council of Ephesus, in Anathema 3, the union of the incarnate Word is called a physical union, that is, a true and real union, as distinguished from a union according to dignity or authority. The Council’s words are these: If anyone divides the subsistences in the one Christ after the union of the natures—assigning, of course, his own subsistence to each—and connects the natures only by a bond according to dignity or authority, and not by the union that occurs according to a physical⁸ union, let him be anathema.⁹ Later, in the explanation of that same anathema, the phrase “according to a physical, or natural, union” is explained as follows: “According to a natural union” means “according to a true union.” For Sacred Scripture, divinely inspired, sometimes uses “true” in this way. It says: “We were by nature children of wrath, even as the others,” that is, truly.¹⁰ Saint Cyril confirms the same in the same council. Responding to the Easterners, who did not accept the term “physical union,” asserting that it conflicted with a union of grace, he says: But if we have said “natural union,” Scripture, divinely inspired, has this custom of using this expression. For the divine Paul writes somewhere to certain people: “We were by nature children of wrath, even as the others”; yet no one would say that wrath subsists according to the divine nature, as though sinners were its offspring; otherwise we would altogether and in every way suffer from the error and madness of the Manicheans. Hence “by nature” there means “truly.” Therefore, not confusing the natures or blending them together, as our adversaries say, we call the union natural, but everywhere affirm that from two dissimilar things—the divinity, I mean, and the humanity—one Christ, Son, and Lord came to be. Finally, we say nothing at all about the doctrine of Apollinaris, for once it has been condemned as adulterating the truth, it must be rejected.

From these points it can easily be inferred that the expression “physical premotion” or “physical predetermination” is not new but ancient in the Church, and that the Fathers used it in the same sense in which it is taken in the present disputation. Therefore, when it is asked whether God, by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will, physically predetermines all secondary causes to their operations, the word “physically” is not used specifically to mean natural determination, by which secondary causes are determined to one thing by absolute necessity. Rather, it means determination as abstracting from natural and free determination and as distinguished from merely moral predetermination, which occurs by persuasion and by proposing an object suitably and opportunely, even internally. The question means this: whether, by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will, antecedently to all foreknowledge of the future cooperation of created free choice, even on the hypothesis that it is placed in such circumstances, God predefined and predetermined in particular all future acts, even free ones, and by the same decree physically—that is, truly and by efficient causality—brings it about that secondary causes produce those same acts in time.

III. The first opinion, then, is that of many more recent authors who assert that the indifference and actual use of freedom are no less impeded by physical predetermination through an absolute decree of the divine will, antecedent to all middle knowledge, than by intrinsic predetermination through an inhering premotion. They prove this opinion by the following arguments.

First, by the authority of the saints, who altogether deny that our free choice is predetermined to one thing by the extrinsic will of God. For Saint John Damascene says in On the Orthodox Faith II, ch. 29: Things that are in our power must be assigned not to providence but to our free choice.¹¹ Here “providence” must necessarily be taken to mean God’s absolute predefinition and predetermination. In chapter 30 he adds: It is important to know that God foreknows all things, but does not predefine all things. For he foreknows even those things that lie in our power and choice, but he did not predefine them. Gregory of Nyssa says in On Philosophy VII, ch. 1, and VIII, ch. 4: The things that are in us do not come from providence.¹² This can only be understood to mean that they do not come from God’s will predetermining us to one thing. Theodoret says the same in On the Divine Decrees V, in the chapter on providence.¹³ Saint John Chrysostom says in homily 12 on the Epistle to the Hebrews: It does not precede our wills, lest our choice be harmed.¹⁴ By these words he does not exclude exciting grace, but only God’s antecedent predetermination, which would harm our choice. And Saint Jerome says in Letter 146 to Damasus, on the prodigal son: A human being is so free that he lives not by God’s command but by his own obedience, that is, not by necessity but by will. Here, by “command,” he means God’s will predetermining our free choice to one thing, and he regards a person’s living and acting by God’s command—that is, by an absolute decree of the divine will—as equivalent to acting by necessity. Saint Augustine says in On the Spirit and the Letter, ch. 31: We read, “There is no power except from God”; but we do not read, “There is no will except from God,” and rightly it was not written, because it is not true. He says the same in City of God V, chs. 9 and 10. By these words he intends to deny that our will is from God as predetermining it to one thing, for such predetermination would introduce necessity. In City of God VII he says: God administers the things he created in such a way as to allow them to perform their own movements. And in On Free Choice III, ch. 18, he says: Hold this very briefly: whatever this cause of the will may be, if it cannot be resisted, it is yielded to without sin. Therefore, if God’s efficacious will so precedes us that we cannot resist it, we yield to it without sin and, consequently, without freedom. Finally, Saint Thomas says in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 10, a. 4, that God moves our will, which is indifferent in itself, without determining it necessarily to one thing. He teaches the same in Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 90; De veritate, q. 5, a. 5, ad 1; and Summa theologiae I, q. 23, a. 1, ad 1. Moreover, in De potentia, q. 3, a. 7, ad 13, he says that determination of the act is left to the power of reason and will. Therefore he holds that God does not predetermine our will to those same acts by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will. Certainly, if Saint Thomas had held that God predetermines all our acts in this way by his efficacious will, he would at some point have taught that God knows contingent future things in this predetermination of his will. He would not have had recourse to the presence of things in eternity in order to preserve the contingency of things while safeguarding in God infallible knowledge of contingent future things. We will present below other passages of Saint Thomas that seem to favor this opinion.

Second, the Lutherans and Calvinists did not deny that our will acts physically when it wills; but they said that by a certain physical efficacy it is predetermined by God to will, through the most efficacious will by which he precedes it, and therefore does not remain free in its action. This is what Luther’s statement in Rasense fol. 314 indicates: A human being often proposes many things, compelled by God’s providence. And this statement: We live and act not as we will, but as he wills. Therefore, and so forth.

This is confirmed. The opposing opinion seems, without any compelling authority or necessity, to agree with the heretics of our time on the chief foundation from which they inferred that free choice is a mere name. Therefore it must be altogether rejected.

Third, if for a person to will something in particular it is necessary that from eternity God, by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will, predetermine that person’s free choice to will it determinately, it follows that it is in our power to will nothing except what God wills us to will. If this is so, it further follows that we do not freely will what we will, but do so by absolute necessity, because we cannot act otherwise if God wills us to do it. By the same reasoning, it is also inferred that we do not freely omit the acts that are commanded. For if, for Peter, for example, to perform that act it is necessary that God predetermine his will to that same act, how will Peter be able to perform such an act if God has not predetermined by his absolute and efficacious decree that the act be performed by Peter?

This is confirmed: we can will nothing without this divine predetermination, but it is not in our power, since it in no way begins from us but from God. Therefore, if God applies the determination of his will to one act and not to others, all the others are not in our power; consequently, we do not freely and culpably omit them. For before that determination of God, it was not in our power to bring it about that he predetermine us not to this act, but to another; nor after his determination can we do anything to make God determine us to other acts.

A fourth argument is made. For our will to be free in the actual exercise of an act, it must not only have an intrinsic faculty and power, but also have, either actually or in its own power, all the things necessary for acting. But it is not in the power of our will to have that efficacious decree of God which externally predetermines our free choice to one particular side. Therefore, if that external predetermination is necessary for our will actually to act, it will not be free in exercise.

IIII. Fifth, indifference and indeterminacy belong to the essence of freedom. For a free power is called free because it is indifferent to doing this or that, or even to acting and not acting. But predetermination by which our will is efficaciously predetermined by God’s external will to perform this particular act takes away this indifference from that same will. Therefore, it takes away what belongs to the essence of freedom; therefore it destroys freedom. Such predetermination, then, must not be admitted.

This is confirmed. For the will to be free with respect to some operation, it must determine itself to that operation. For a free operation must proceed from an intrinsic principle that moves and freely determines itself. But if our will, before any act of its own, has already been predetermined by God’s external will to perform some particular act, it cannot determine itself to that same act. For what is already determined does not further determine itself, since every determination necessarily presupposes indetermination in the very power that is determined. Therefore efficacious determination by God’s external will is incompatible with created freedom.

Sixth, it belongs to the character of a free power that, once all the requisites for acting are posited, it can act and not act. But once God’s efficacious decree predetermining our free choice to perform this particular act is posited, the will cannot fail to perform it. For Scripture says: Lord God Almighty, all things are set in your power, and there is none who can resist your will if you have decreed to save Israel.¹⁵ And the Apostle says: For who will resist his will?¹⁶ Therefore it must in no way be asserted that by his efficacious will God predetermines our free choice to will this particular thing.

Seventh, necessity is opposed to freedom; therefore a necessary action is opposed to a free one. But if God predetermines us to act by an efficacious will, each of our operations will be necessary. For if God wills something to happen, it must happen, since his will is most efficacious, in keeping with the Psalm: The Lord has done all things whatsoever he willed in heaven and on earth.¹⁷¹⁸ Therefore no free action remains if efficacious predetermination by God’s absolute will is posited.

If it is said that the argument concludes only that our acts are necessary on a supposition of the divine will, but not absolutely, the following is an argument against this.

An eighth argument. What is necessary on a supposition becomes absolutely necessary¹⁹ with respect to someone when it is not in his power to remove or posit that supposition, from which the act said to be necessary on a supposition necessarily follows. But it is not in the power of the created will to remove or posit that supposition of an efficacious decree of God’s will, which predetermines created free choice to act, since that decree is from God alone and in no way depends on the free operation of our choice, even if that operation is foreknown through middle knowledge. Therefore acts said to be necessary on a supposition of that same divine decree are absolutely and simply necessary. The major premise is proved and explained as follows: if Peter’s death necessarily follows on the supposition of an eclipse, that death is absolutely necessary with respect to Peter, because it is not in his power to remove or prevent the eclipse, from which his death necessarily follows. Likewise, if it necessarily follows from Paul’s crossing the river that he becomes wet, then it will be simply necessary for Peter to become wet if it is not in his power not to cross the river.

This is confirmed, because God has no more efficacious way to impose absolute necessity on the human will than by a decree of his efficacious will that physically predetermines it to one side. Therefore.

V. Ninth argument. A necessity antecedent to the free consent of the created will, or one that proceeds from prior causes, takes away freedom. But the necessity of acting that arises from an absolute and efficacious decree of the divine will, which predetermines created free choice to every action of its own in particular, is a necessity proceeding from prior causes. Therefore—. Blessed Anselm states the major premise in the clearest terms, in book 2 of Why God Became Man, chapter 18, and On the Harmony of Predestination, chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 1 he distinguishes two necessities: one preceding, which makes a thing be, and the other following, which proceeds from the free will. He teaches that this latter necessity is not contrary to freedom, because it does not compel, since it proceeds from freedom itself; but he says that the necessity which precedes a thing is contrary to freedom. Therefore in chapter 2, near the middle, he says that the good things of the predestined do not occur from a necessity that precedes the thing, but from one that follows it. He gives the reason: God brings about this latter necessity not by compelling the will, but by leaving it in its own power. Blessed Anselm therefore holds that the necessity of acting which precedes the consent of our will is contrary to freedom.

This proposition is confirmed first by the authority of St. Thomas, Third Part, q. 46. art. 2, where, explaining different kinds of necessity, he says: In another way, something is said to be necessary from an exterior cause, which, if it is an efficient or moving cause, produces the necessity of compulsion. And in Against the Gentiles 2, chapter 29, he teaches that absolute necessity is that which proceeds from prior causes. For he says: Another mode of necessity is also found, whereby something is said to be necessary absolutely. This necessity depends on causes prior in being, such as essential principles, and on efficient or moving causes. And in book 2 of On Interpretation, lecture 15, at the beginning, he says: We must know that necessity which depends on prior causes is absolute necessity. He proves this afterward concerning each of the causes; and, speaking of the efficient cause, he says: Likewise, what has necessity from an efficient cause is necessary absolutely; but what has necessity from what is posterior in being is necessary on a condition or on a supposition. Applying this teaching to practice, in q. 6. de malo, art. 1. in corp., he teaches that dispositions which are not subject to the will necessitate it, but not those subject to the same will. For he says: If, then, the disposition by which something appears good and fitting to a person is natural and not subject to the will, the will chooses it by natural necessity, just as all human beings naturally desire to be, to live, and to understand. But if the disposition is not natural and is subject to the will—for example, when someone is disposed by a habit or passion so that something appears good or evil to him in this particular case—the will is not moved of necessity, because it can remove this disposition so that something does not appear to it in that way; for instance, when someone calms the anger in himself so as not to judge something as an angry person.

This is confirmed secondly. The love of the blessed toward God is not free as to exercise precisely because, although it arises from a power that is free by its nature and spontaneously loves God, it nevertheless arises necessarily on the supposition antecedent to the consent of the will, namely, on the supposition of the beatific vision, which is not subject to the power of the will. Therefore, similarly, an act that is necessary on the supposition of the divine will will be necessary absolutely and not free, because it follows necessarily from a supposition antecedent to the free consent of the will.

This is confirmed thirdly. The first movements that are aroused in a human being without freedom are not free precisely because they arise necessarily on the supposition of an inadvertence antecedent to the consent of the will. Likewise, things that occur in sleep are not free because they happen necessarily on the supposition of sleep, notwithstanding the indifference that the will has by its nature. Therefore, if our will were to consent necessarily on the supposition of divine predetermination, that necessity would be contrary to the actual exercise of freedom, so that an operation elicited in that way would not be free.

VI. Tenth argument. For the will to be free, it must have dominion over its act, as is clear from St. Thomas in 2. sent. d. 25. q. 2. art. 1, and is gathered from Ecclesiasticus 15: God created the human being from the beginning and left him in the hand of his own counsel, etc. He set before you water and fire; stretch out your hand toward whichever you wish. Before a human being are life and death, good and evil; whatever he chooses will be given to him.²⁰ But if a person were efficaciously predetermined by an extrinsic will of God to one determinate act, he would not have dominion over his act. Therefore he is not predetermined. The minor premise is proved as follows: in the cited place, 2. sent., reply to the first argument, St. Thomas proves that free choice, or free power and dominion over its act, is preserved in God because the determination of the act is not from another but from himself; from this he infers that God is most truly the master of his own work.

VII. The second opinion is held by other theologians, who assert that God, the best and greatest, by his eternal decree and absolute and efficacious will, predetermined all our acts in particular before his foreknowledge of them, independently of all middle knowledge of future free cooperation on the supposition that the will would be placed in such circumstances, without this predetermination in any way harming the freedom of our free choice. This is the express opinion of St. Thomas and all the Thomists. Scotus also holds it, in 1. sent. d. 39. q. un. and Quodlibet²¹ 14. letter S, as do all his disciples, especially Vega, book 2 on the Council of Trent, chapter 17. The holy Fathers who speak on this subject commonly teach the same opinion, as will be clear from the passages to be cited below. Hence, for its explanation, let this be stated.

VIII. First conclusion. By his absolute and efficacious will, God predetermines all acts, including free acts, in particular, earlier in the order of reason than the divine intellect knows those acts to be future, even conditionally—that is, on the supposition that the created will would be placed in such an order of things and in such circumstances. We understand this to concern acts that are not morally evil.²² For what must be held about an act of sin will be discussed expressly in disputation 24. This conclusion is opposed to the authors of the first opinion. Some of them assert that God first wills our morally good works by a conditional will, if we too will them by our freedom, in the way he wills all human beings to be saved if they too will it. But, foreseeing which of these works will be future by our freedom, he takes pleasure in them and wills absolutely that they exist. Our conclusion, however, is taught by all the authors cited in support of the second opinion and by others whom we cited in disputation 18 to confirm the teaching that God’s general concurrence is an immediate influx into the cause.

First, this is proved from Sacred Scripture, where we find that God predefined and predetermined our good works. For Ephesians 2 says: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared so that we might walk in them. Here the verb “prepared” signifies the same as “predetermined.” Hence St. Athanasius, explaining these same words, says: Knowing these things—that is, the good works—God prepared them; they cannot be delayed or omitted but must be carried out, as though they had been divinely preordained, and this through great providence toward us.²³ Consider the word preordained, for it signifies the same as “predetermined.” The Apostle joined both things: God’s predefinition of good works, which he signified by the word prepared, and our freedom, which he added by saying, so that we might walk in them, namely, by our own freedom. And Ephesians 1 says: He works all things according to the counsel of his will—that is, according to the free determination of his will, by which he did all things whatsoever he willed in heaven and on earth.²⁴ For, as St. Thomas teaches, counsel is not found in God insofar as it implies inquiry and deliberation about means, but insofar as it concerns certainty of decision or judgment;²⁵ this agrees with Revelation 4: You created all things, and by your will they existed and were created. And Wisdom 11: How could anything remain unless you had willed it? By these words it is plainly signified that by the eternal decree of the divine will it was predetermined that things which have being at any temporal interval should exist.

IX. The same is proved from Isaiah: The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying: “Surely, as I have thought, so shall it be, and as I have planned in my mind, so shall it come to pass: I will crush the Assyrian in my land and trample him on my mountains; his yoke shall be taken from them, and his burden shall be removed from their shoulder. This is the plan I have devised concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand stretched out over all nations. For the Lord of hosts has decreed it, and who can weaken it? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?”²⁶ An argument is drawn from this testimony. The king of the Assyrians came freely into the land of Israel, and likewise the nations were freely conquered; nevertheless, God had predetermined these things by his eternal decree. Therefore God’s external predetermination stands together with the freedom of created free choice. Moreover, Esther 13 says: Lord, almighty King, all things are placed in your power, and no one can resist your will, if you have decreed to save Israel. Here God’s efficacious decree predetermining the salvation of Israel is joined with the freedom by which Israel was saved.

The same is clear from Luke 22: The Son of Man goes as it has been determined.²⁷ And Acts 4: For in this city, in truth, Herod and Pontius Pilate gathered together against your holy child Jesus to do what your hand and counsel had decreed to take place.²⁸ And chapter 17: Determining the appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling. An argument is drawn from these passages. Christ the Lord freely underwent his Passion and was freely killed by the Jews; otherwise Christ the Lord would have merited nothing by his Passion and death, and the Jews would not have sinned by killing him. Nevertheless, Christ’s Passion was predefined and predetermined by God. Therefore—.

Moreover, Proverbs, ch. 8, says: The will is prepared by the Lord.²⁹ That is, it is predetermined. And ch. 21 says: The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord; like channels of water, he will turn it wherever he wills. There the word “turn” means the same as “incline” and “determine.” As Jansenius noted,³⁰ since the hearts of all human beings are in the hand of the Lord, this is said in particular of the king’s heart because it is especially free and less subject to another’s power, in order to show that through God’s efficacious motion the most perfect freedom of our choice is preserved, such as a king’s freedom is commonly thought to be. By this testimony, St. Thomas proves in Against the Gentiles III, chs. 89 and 90, that God causes the movement of our will, and makes us will and freely will this or that. But he would not do this efficaciously unless he predetermined the will by efficient causality to will this or that, just as streams of water are directed by human agency into various channels, without any violence and with great gentleness.

The same opinion can also be confirmed by all the passages of Scripture in which our good works are said to be prepared and predestined by God. For, as the authors of the opposing opinion admit, “predestine” means the same as “predetermine,” “predefine,” and “ordain beforehand.”³¹ They prove this from Jerome in his earlier commentaries on the words of Ephesians 1, He predestined us to adoption, etc. There he says that “predestine” means predefine. And Augustine, or whoever else was the author of that work, says in Hypognosticon 6: Predestination is so called from foreseeing or ordaining beforehand something future. And below: Foreknowledge predestines what is good,³² that is, it ordains it beforehand, before it exists in reality. Scripture also agrees, they say, not only in Acts 13, where those predestined are called those ordained beforehand to eternal life—Luke says: They believed, all who were ordained beforehand to eternal life³³—but also because where the Latin translator renders it “predestined” in Romans 8 and Ephesians 1, the Greek has προώρισε, from the verb προωρίζω, which means “predefine,” “ordain beforehand,” or “predetermine.” These are the exact words of a certain Doctor from among those who oppose physical predetermination.

Second, it is proved by the authority of the saints, who unanimously assert in explicit or equivalent words that all things done in time were predefined and predetermined by an eternal decree of the divine will.

X. First of all, St. Dionysius, ch. 5 of The Divine Names, title “On Exemplars,” lecture 3 in St. Thomas’s commentary, posits the ideas of things existing in God as predefining and effecting them, in these words: We say that exemplars in God are the substantial and singularly preexisting ideas of existing things, which theology calls predefinitions: divine and good wills that predetermine and effect existing things, according to which the substantial essence predestined and produced all things.³⁴ By these words he establishes and teaches God’s most efficacious physical predefinition with respect to all things that exist. For the predetermination that produces existing things by efficient causality is physical. This is clear because a merely moral predetermination is not properly an efficient cause of existing things, since it is a cause metaphorically, as we said from St. Thomas at the beginning of this question. St. Augustine teaches the same in his commentary on John. For, explaining the words Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son,³⁵ he says: Therefore, when he says, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son,” he shows that every time, and what he would do or permit to be done, and when, had been ordered by him who is not subject to time. For what was to come about in each time has its efficient causes in the wisdom of God, in which there are no times. Therefore, one must not believe that this hour came under the pressure of fate, but rather by God’s ordering. In these words he teaches two things clearly enough. One is that all the good things that occur in time are predetermined and ordered by God, as indicated by the words had been ordered by him and but rather by God’s ordering. The other is that the ordering and predetermination of the divine will is the truly efficient cause of every good action, even a free one, that takes place in time. This is indicated by the words have their efficient causes in the wisdom of God, which are similar to the words of Dionysius in the cited ch. 5 of The Divine Names. St. Augustine added the disjunction “or permit it to be done” on account of sins; for these are not willed by the divine decree, but only permitted, as will be said below. Likewise, in Soliloquies, ch. 24, he says: I cannot will what is good unless you will it. These words cannot be explained as referring to a decree and will of God that presupposes middle knowledge of the determination of free choice that would occur on a hypothesis. Otherwise St. Augustine would not have said, I cannot will what is good unless you will it; rather, one would have to say the opposite: “God cannot will a free good unless I first will it.” Moreover, in the same Soliloquies, ch. 26, he teaches the same opinion in these words, cited in disputation 8, no. 4: Before you formed me in the womb, you knew me; and before I came forth from the womb, you ordained me as it pleased you. The words pleased and ordained signify God’s absolute and efficacious will and predetermination, by which he precedes our wills, disposing and ordaining in them and about them whatever pleases him. He does not at all observe through middle knowledge what this or that person will will by innate freedom. For God knows with certainty that our will will freely will whatever he himself has ordained it freely to will. As will become clear below, our will cannot make God’s will ineffective or prevent an effect predefined by God from occurring in the way God has provided by his efficacious will that it occur, namely, freely and contingently, or even necessarily, according to the condition of the secondary cause. Other passages of St. Augustine confirming the same teaching will be cited below. There is also a strong argument from what followed: he belonged to this opinion. For Faustus of Riez, who, as we said in disputation 2, no. 2, wrote two books on free choice against the teaching of St. Augustine without naming him, vehemently attacks the opinion of those who assert that before foreknowledge of the good or evil use of free choice, God predetermined by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will future human acts, as is clear from what was said in the same disputation 2, no. 16. This is therefore a sign that St. Augustine both recognized and taught this kind of divine predetermination. St. Prosper also teaches it, and his words are to be cited at no. 14.

The same point is proved from Pope Leo, who says: In saving human beings through the Cross of Christ, the will of the Father and the Son was shared, and their plan was shared; nor could what had been mercifully ordered and immutably determined before the ages of eternity be disturbed in any way.³⁶ There the word “determined beforehand” means the same as “predetermined.” And in Sermon 9 he adds: The mystery of the Lord’s Passion, ordained before the ages for the salvation of the human race and announced in every past age through many signs, etc. And in Sermon 16: Since, then, everything that Jewish impiety did against Christ had been foretold so long before that the prophetic discourse seems to speak not so much of future things as of present ones, what else is disclosed to us than the unchangeable order of God’s eternal dispositions, with whom things to be distinguished have already been judged, and future things have already been done? For since divine knowledge precedes the qualities of our actions and the effects of all our wills, how much more are his own works known to God? And it was rightly pleasing that those things be recalled as if already done, which could not possibly fail to happen. In confirmation of this teaching he cites the passage from Acts 4 given above.

In the same way speak very many other holy Fathers, especially St. Athanasius on the second chapter of Ephesians, whose words we cited above.³⁷ Theodoret, on the words of Romans 8, Those whom he predestined, these he also called, says: But he also called those whom he had predestined and foreordained. And on Ephesians 1, at the words He chose us in him, he says: For from the beginning, before the foundation of the world, he foreknew and foreordained the things that pertained to us. A little later he adds: He foreknew us, loved us, and foreordained our prayer, so that we might receive the gift of adoption as sons according to the purpose of his will. St. Anselm teaches the same in his book On the Harmony of Predestination and Free Choice, when he says: For since what God wills cannot fail to be, while he wills that man’s will be compelled by no necessity, nor be prevented from willing or not willing, and wills that the effect follow the will, it is then necessary that the will be free and that what it wills be.³⁸ By these words he traces the infallibility of a voluntary effect, as to its first root, to the absolute and efficacious decree of the divine will, which predetermines future acts, even contingent and free ones. Fulgentius likewise thinks the same in book 1 To Monimus, where he says: For by gratuitous justification he bestows what was prepared, which he had prepared to bestow in eternal predestination.³⁹ But to prepare something by predestination cannot be done without the predetermination of the divine decree. Likewise, Henry, in his homily on John 11, at the words They gathered together, says: Our Redeemer handed himself over to be seized, just as he had foreordained before the ages.⁴⁰ But to foreordain signifies the same as to predetermine by an efficacious decree. Therefore, according to the judgment of these Fathers, it cannot be denied that by an efficacious decree God predetermined from eternity all the good acts that take place in time.

And since St. John of Damascus is cited by some (but without justification) in support of the contrary opinion, in the passage brought forward in the first argument of this dispute, it is necessary to show from his words that he held the eternal predetermination of the divine decree of which we speak, and taught that it had been established in the times of the Apostles by St. Dionysius the Areopagite. For in his first oration On Images he speaks as follows: There are also in God images and exemplars of the things that are to come from him,⁴¹ namely, his eternal counsel, which always remains the same. For God is altogether immutable, in whom there is no change or shadow of alteration. That most excellent Dionysius, by the gift of God, in considering and explaining divine matters, calls these images and exemplars “predefinitions.” For all things preordained by him, and destined to come about without any change, were expressed in his counsel before they came to be, just as one who wishes to build a house first forms its image and shape in his mind and embraces it in thought. By these words he steadfastly teaches the truly efficient, or physical, predetermination of the efficacious decree of the divine will, as he had received it from St. Dionysius, cited above; and he explains it by the example of an artisan who, wishing to build a house, first forms the house in his mind, predetermines and arranges all its parts, and then puts into execution the house he had conceived. So God from eternity preordained all and each of the things that he himself was to make in the whole world.

XI. Third, this is proved by the authority of the Scholastics who follow this doctrine, and first of all by St. Thomas, in his commentary on chapter 5 of Dionysius’s Divine Names, lesson 3. Speaking of the notions of things existing in God, he says: And Sacred Scripture calls such notions predefinitions, or predeterminations. A little later he adds: These predeterminations, or wills, are indeed distinctive of beings and productive of them, since the supersubstantial God predetermined such notions and produced all things. And in Summa theologiae I, q. 19, art. 3, ad 5, after proposing this argument: From what is indifferent to either alternative no action follows unless it is inclined toward one by something else, as the Commentator says in Physics II, text 48. If, then, God’s will is indifferent to either alternative in some cases, it follows that it is determined to an effect by something else, and thus has some prior cause; he answers: A cause that is contingent of itself must be determined to an effect by something external; but the divine will, which has necessity of itself, determines itself to what it wills, toward which it has a non-necessary relation. By these words he plainly teaches that, because the created will is a contingent cause of itself, it must be determined by something and consequently predetermined, in order to produce a determinate effect. In this he establishes the difference between the divine and the human will: the divine will determines itself without being determined by another prior cause, since it is the first determiner simply; the human will, however, does not determine itself unless it is first, in the order of nature, inclined and determined by another prior cause. The reason is that the created will is not the first self-determiner simply, just as it is not the first self-mover. Moreover, in Quodlibet 12, q. 3, art. 4, treating the question whether all things are subject to fate, he says: All things are predetermined and ordered by God’s providence.⁴² In this sense he teaches that it may be granted that all things are subject to fate, in keeping with Boethius’s statement: Fate is an immutable disposition inhering in mutable things. He adds, however, that we should not use this name: For we ought not even to share names with the pagans. Therefore Augustine says: If anyone understands fate in this way, let him hold the opinion but correct his language, and let him not say “fate,” but “God’s providence.” And in Summa theologiae I, q. 116, art. 1, in the body, he says: Things that happen here by chance, whether in natural or human affairs, are traced back to some preordaining cause, which is divine providence. Here the word “preordaining” means the same as “predetermining”; and in the course of the article he plainly teaches that all things that happen here are preordained by God. He teaches the same in articles 3 and 4 of that question. Likewise, in Summa theologiae I, q. 105, art. 1, ad 3, he says: That secondary causes are determined to determinate effects is itself from God. Moreover, in the same first part, q. 25, art. 5, ad 1, he says: It cannot be that God does things which he has not foreknown and preordained himself to do, since God’s doing itself is subject to God’s foreknowledge and preordination. He also intimates this in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 10, art. 4, in the body, when he says: God moves the will in such a way that he does not determine it to one thing by necessity. This signifies that he determines it, not by necessity, but freely, according to the manner of its nature. Otherwise, he would simply have said that he does not determine it to one thing; that, after all, would have been the clearer sense, and he would not have added the words “by necessity.” He teaches the same in Summa theologiae I, q. 23, art. 1, ad 1; De veritate q. 5, art. 5, ad 1; and Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 90, at the end. In these places, explaining a certain statement of Damascene, he says that Damascene did not wish to deny the predetermination of just any of our acts, but only that which is accompanied by the imposition of necessity; thereby plainly indicating that God predetermines our acts, yet without imposing necessity.⁴³ Finally, in De veritate q. 24, art. 14, at the end of the body, he proves that the created will must be determined by God in order to produce a determinate act, because of itself it is indifferently related to many operations.

Some Doctors answer that St. Thomas does not explain whether that preordination and predetermination of God is absolute or understood conditionally—if the created will should wish to cooperate and consent. This answer, however, does not seem to accord with the mind of the holy Doctor. First, because it is clear from the words cited that he speaks of absolute predetermination, especially since he does not admit middle knowledge, as was shown in dispute 7. Second, because determination under a condition is not predetermination, since it does not precede but follows the determination of the created will. Hence some authors of the contrary opinion call it “co-determination”; more accurately, they would have called it “post-determination,” since in truth, according to their view, it follows the determination of the created will in the order of nature, as will be clear in dispute 99. The same is clear from the passages in St. Thomas where he says that if God moves the will toward some act, it is impossible to suppose that the will is not moved toward it, because God’s intention cannot fail.⁴⁴

XII. Scotus teaches the same opinion in Sentences IV, dist. 49, q. 6, § “I say, therefore.” In reply to an argument, he says: It is against the nature of the will to be determined by an inferior cause, because by that very fact it would not be superior; but it is not against its nature to be determined by a superior cause. Gabriel, too, citing Scotus’s opinion in Sentences I, dist. 33, single question, ch. 2, says in accord with it: The divine will, which is the first rule of contingents, determines contingents prior in the order of nature, before the divine intellect understands them to be future. Capreolus teaches the same in Sentences II, dist. 28, q. 1, a. 3, ad Durandus’s argument 12, where he says: God helps a person toward a good act by making the will itself concur partially, so that the will itself, applied and moved instrumentally, as it were, by God, partially co-causes the act in order to co-cause it in this way. Yet in this motion the will is not necessitated; rather, being a free instrument, in whose power it is to follow the agent’s motion, it is helped. There he proves by many testimonies that this is Augustine’s opinion. But whoever efficaciously brings it about that the will exerts its influx and co-causes the act predetermines it to act. Therefore Capreolus holds that God, the best and greatest, by his absolute decree predetermines our will to act while preserving its freedom. Ferrariensis teaches the same doctrine in Summa contra Gentiles III. Explaining the proposition “What is determined by another to something does not have it perfectly in its own power,” he says: Something can be determined by another to an effect and yet have that effect in its own power in the second way explained above, because the first cause moves each secondary cause to its effect according to the condition of that secondary cause. For a cause that cannot fail, it determines to its effect in such a way that it produces it with absolute necessity; but a cause that can fail it determines in such a way that it can nevertheless absolutely fail in producing it.⁴⁵ Ferrariensis immediately adds that an effect is not called contingent in relation to our will as the first root of contingency and freedom, but in relation to divine wisdom and will, as was shown above: namely, insofar as God determined that some things occur necessarily and gave them necessary causes, while other things occur contingently and gave them contingent causes. Some authors of the opposing opinion also take as certain that, according to Saint Thomas in De veritate, q. 22, a. 8, God inclines the will by efficient causality and physically to desire something, determining it to a particular act.

Moreover, Brother John Maria of the Order of Servites, who composed a treatise On the Harmony of Perfect Human Freedom in 1558, distinguishes two kinds of divine determination in his reply to objections, ch. 5, p. 69. He speaks explicitly of antecedent determination: one kind is natural, the other free; and he teaches that the freedom of choice is preserved with the latter.

Fourth, it is proved by an argument from reason. As Saint Thomas shows, 1.p.q.22.art.2. and q. 103, a. 5, God has the most perfect providence over all things that in any way have being. Therefore, by an absolute and efficacious will, he predefined all future things in particular, even contingent and free things, antecedently to his foreknowledge of them. The consequence is clear: conditional predefinition and providence are very imperfect, since they depend on the human will. For if God only predefined that Peter, for example, be converted if he himself wishes, but did not efficaciously predefine that he would wish it, then the willing itself—which is the most perfect among the operations of secondary causes—would be withdrawn from God’s providence, and providence itself, as regards its efficacy, would depend on the human will.

XIV. Fifth, God causes everything that happens in time through a decree of his will, and not otherwise. For Augustine says in Eighty-Three Questions, q. 3: For something to happen by God’s acting is the same as for it to happen by God’s willing.⁴⁶ And on Psalm 144, The Lord is righteous in all his ways, he says: For God, to will is to do, because things have being from his will. Saint Prosper says in On the Calling of All Nations II, ch. 34: Nothing can come to pass otherwise than as disposed by the will of the Almighty. But God’s willing precedes the willing of a secondary cause both in eternity and in causality. Therefore God wills that I will before I in fact will. Therefore I will not will unless God first decrees by his efficacious will that I will. Therefore, through that antecedent decree, which no one can resist, he predetermines the human will to willing.

This is confirmed first. Either God wills that I will something because I am going to will it and God foreknew it, or, conversely, a person wills because God willed and ordained that he should will. The first cannot be said, as will be clear in Disputation 99, both because it involves a contradiction, since a person can will or do nothing without the divine will, to which he is intrinsically subordinated in his operation, in accord with what the Truth says: Without me you can do nothing;⁴⁷ and also because otherwise the divine will would be subordinated to the human will, placed beneath it and made posterior and subordinate to it. This is contrary to the definition of the Council of Orange and to the express teaching of Saint Augustine. Therefore it must be said that I will because God ordained and decreed that I should will. Therefore the divine will predetermines the human will to willing and to willing freely.⁴⁸

This is confirmed a second time. For God’s will to cooperate with the human will, it must be joined with it in willing and causing the same act or effect. But two wills cannot be joined in the causation of the same effect unless either one is presupposed and the other consents to it, with foreknowledge of that will’s causality presupposed, or one moves and determines the other to consent with it. Otherwise, it cannot be understood how two wills agree in willing something, unless perhaps by chance and accident. But the divine will cannot consent to the human will’s willing its act because God foresees the human will determining itself to that act; for it is impossible for the human will to will anything unless God first wills that very thing.⁴⁹ Hence that foreknowledge of God necessarily presupposes God’s will, willing the same thing. Therefore, the divine will cannot consent to the human will on the basis of the presupposition and foreknowledge of that same human will’s cooperation. Therefore, in order that the consent and conjunction of the divine and human wills with respect to the same act not occur by chance, the divine will must, by moving the human will through its efficacy, predetermine it to consent with itself.

This is confirmed a third time. From the contrary opinion it would follow that something real is brought about in time by the human will which God had not previously willed to exist by his absolute will of good pleasure. The proof is this: the determination, or influx, of the created will is something real, proceeding in time from the created will. Therefore, if God did not will antecedently to the determination of that same created will, nor determine that the created will determine itself and freely exert its influence upon its act, then something would already be brought about in time by the created will antecedently to the decree and determination of the divine will. Thus God would not be simply the first and most universal cause of all existing things, which is impossible, as will become clear in dispute 24.

If it is said that God, by his will of good pleasure, willed that the created will produce that act after foreknowing through middle knowledge that it would cooperate on the hypothesis, the argument against this is as follows. According to this solution, the cooperation and determination of free choice, precisely as its determination, would always remain exempt from God’s absolute decree and will of good pleasure, and consequently from his causality; it would only be foreknown, and not willed by God through his absolute will. Yet this must not be said.

XV. Authors of the contrary opinion attempt to dissolve this argument and its confirmations in various ways.

The first solution indeed admits that God predefines all good acts individually, but not that he predetermines the created will to them. To explain this, they observe that, just as Augustine, in On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 10, and On the Gift of Perseverance, ch. 14, distinguished predestination from grace in this respect—that predestination is the preparation of grace, while grace is the gift itself, and consequently predestination is eternal, whereas grace is given in time—so predefinition and physical predetermination are distinguished. For predefinition signifies an inward act of God’s willing, which God establishes in his will, not in order immediately to alter the secondary cause through it, or to determine and draw that cause away from its own proper and connatural manner of acting, but only to have within himself a definite and absolute intention of some end, and by virtue of it to apply means that are suitable and most apt, so that the end infallibly comes about in the way it was predefined.⁵⁰ Predetermination, however, signifies a predefinition of the divine will that issues into an external effect with such and so great an efficacy that it physically determines the human will to its act. They call the former an internal or immanent predefinition, or a predefinition by way of intention; the latter they call an external or transitive predefinition, or a predefinition by way of execution. In other terms, they call the former the predetermination of the divine will alone to will such an act, and the latter the predetermination also of the human will, so that it performs that act. In briefer and simpler terms, they call the former a predefinition, or predefinition in the strict sense, and the latter a predetermination; for by its force of signification the former word denotes only an inward act of the soul, as do “providence” and “predestination,” whereas the latter word can refer more readily to an outward act and effect.⁵¹

XVI. Second, they assume that there is a twofold difference between God’s will that predefines a free act in that prior manner, before its absolute foreknowledge, and God’s will that physically determines free choice to perform such an act. The first difference they assign is this: the former will, which purely predefines the act, has conjoined with it—or rather is at the same time—the will of a means that does not determine free choice, but moves it contingently, insofar as it can, though infallibly by reason of foreknowledge. The latter, predetermining will, however, requires no other means than its own efficacy, by which it carries the will along with itself, determining it. The second difference is that the former will predefines the act with reference to the manner in which a secondary cause operates. Hence its object includes the act as something to be done through the determination of free choice itself, with cooperation and an appropriate aid, in accordance with God’s most wise governance arising from the said foreknowledge. The latter, predetermining will, however, has as its object not only the act but also the manner, that is, physical predetermination through God’s efficacious motion.

Third, from this they infer that a prior predefinition, conceived abstractly insofar as it is considered apart from effecting or applying a suitable means, is not immediately active toward things outside God or applicative of divine power until it is understood as determined to such a means. For although these two are the same in reality, they can nevertheless be distinguished by the intellect. But the other will, the predetermining will, is active in itself, or applies divine power so as to impose force, necessity, or predetermination on the created will.

Fourth and finally, they presuppose that by virtue of that prior predefinition, God’s accompanying concurrence, by which he concurs with the created will in acting, is not changed; rather, the will is only directed and governed so that it infallibly uses that concurrence or accommodates itself to it. But by virtue of the other, physically predetermining will, God’s concurrence must be changed and supplied in such a way that it is rather the concurrence that uses the will than the will that uses it; the will does not accommodate itself to the concurrence, but the concurrence instead compels the will to act together with it, and such concurrence is not indifferent but determined to one outcome.

XVII. With these points presupposed, they answer that just as God causes every good act in particular, so too he predefined our free acts absolutely and in particular, directly and in themselves, by that prior internal predefinition. Nevertheless, this presupposes the knowledge of conditionals by which God knows that free choice, by its own freedom, will consent⁵² on the hypothesis that it is moved in this or that way by God. They explain this solution further in these words. The divine will can be understood, they say, to will to contribute to an act of the human will in two ways. The first is the way explained above: by willing simply and absolutely that such an act be performed by such a will, at such a time and in such a manner. That is, the will in reason precedes absolute foreknowledge of that effect as future and is so efficacious that it powerfully brings it about, either by itself or, to speak in our way, by applying its omnipotence so as to contribute efficaciously, carry along, and determine the human will to contribute at the same time to that same act. This is the way we have thus far opposed. The other way in which this can be understood is this: God wills not absolutely but, as it were, conditionally, that this act be performed by the created will if it determines itself to elicit it; and under the same condition he wills to contribute and concur in that same act, waiting, so to speak, for the influx of the created will. He does not do this because he could not bring about the act in another way, but because he wills to accommodate himself to our will in such a way that he does not harm its freedom. By virtue of this divine will, they say, divine omnipotence thus remains applied to contribute to an act of the human will, so that when the human will contributes its influx, God too contributes, without any new will of God or application of his power, as it were by a certain necessity arising from his will, which is efficacious and immutable with respect to what it wills and the manner in which it wills it.

Since this whole solution is founded on middle knowledge, from which, they say, the infallibility of the future consent or influx of free choice must be derived, it is opposed by the arguments by which we expressly showed in disputation 7 that this knowledge must not be admitted. It will also be opposed below from other principles. But to answer specifically, in their proper order, what this solution presupposes about the four foundations set out, we say that the distinction explained in the first foundation between predefinition and predetermination is arbitrary and has no foundation in the holy Fathers or Scholastic Doctors. Indeed, among them predefinition and predetermination are taken to mean the same thing, as is clear from the testimonies cited above. Therefore, by the same reasoning by which the authors of this solution admit that God by an eternal decree of his will predefines all good acts in particular, they must also admit that God by an efficacious decree predetermined the created will to elicit them. For it is impossible for such acts to be predefined and predetermined by God unless God himself predefined and predetermined that the created will, without whose influx they cannot occur, elicit them.

The first difference assigned in the second foundation between predefinition and predetermination is attacked on the same basis. For just as the infallibility of predetermination cannot be founded on middle knowledge with respect to the attainment of its effects, so neither can the infallibility of divine predefinition, because no such knowledge exists, as is clear from what was said in disputation 7. Therefore it must necessarily be founded on the omnipotence and efficacy of the divine will, by which he did everything he had predefined to happen, and on the efficacy of the helps by which he decided to move the created will efficaciously beforehand in time. Therefore, in this respect, there is no difference between predefinition and predetermination. The second difference is also easily opposed, because both predefinition and predetermination by God’s efficacious will have as their object an act together with a mode suitable to its nature. For he predefined and predetermined that natural causes perform such particular acts naturally, and that free and contingent causes perform such acts freely and contingently, that is, with a free determination of choice. Predetermination through God’s efficacious motion does not remove this determination from us, but rather brings it about in us and together with us, since it does not snatch away the will by necessitating it; instead, it brings it about that the created will contributes its free influx and cooperation while retaining the true power to dissent if it wishes, as will become clear in Disputations 115 and 116.

What is presupposed in the third foundation is opposed by the same reasoning: both divine predefinition and predetermination are active, or operative, with respect to the things that God decided should come to be. And although they bring about in time a physical motion predetermining⁵³ the created will to elicit predefined and predetermined acts, they nevertheless impose no force or absolute necessity of acting on that same will, but only a conditional necessity, or necessity of the consequence, which does not harm freedom, as will become clear in disputation 25.

We say the same about what is presupposed in the fourth foundation. For, as will become clear in disputation 87, in both acts that are predefined and acts that are predetermined, the help of grace is not subject to the power of our choice with respect to its use, as are the habits that we use when we wish. Rather, through efficacious help God subjects the created will and makes it obedient to him, and freely obedient.

As to the causal proposition set out in the first confirmation—“God wills me to will something because I am going to will it”—this solution says many things that require fuller discussion, and these are to be treated expressly in Disputations 99 and 100. What they add in the same solution, namely, that God waits for our will to consent, also requires closer examination, which we reserve for disputation 95.

XVIII. A second solution held by others is that free acts can indeed be predefined by God with respect to their substance, but cannot be predefined with respect to their mode and all the circumstances of place, time, intensity, and so forth. For they think that freedom cannot coexist with predetermination as regards the substance of the act and all its circumstances.⁵⁴ From this they infer that such predetermined acts are not meritorious with respect to the substance of the act, but only with respect to those circumstances as to which they are not predetermined. The following most efficacious arguments are against this solution.

First, Christ the Lord merited through the substance of his Passion and death. For the reward he obtained corresponds to the substance of that same Passion and death, as is clear from Philippians 2: He emptied himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross; for this reason God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name. And Isaiah 53: If he gives his soul for sin, he will see a long-lived seed. And a little later: Because he has labored, he will see and be satisfied. In these passages a great reward is promised not merely for the circumstances but for the very substance of the Passion and death. Yet Christ’s Passion and death were preordained and predefined by God, as is clear from Luke 22: The Son of Man goes, as it has been determined; and Acts 4: Herod and Pontius Pilate gathered against your holy child Jesus to do what your hand and counsel had decreed. Therefore.⁵⁵

This is confirmed, because not only the substance of Christ’s Passion and death, but also all its circumstances were predefined by God’s decree, as St. Thomas proves in 3 p., q. 46, arts. 9 and 10. Indeed, that the time of the Passion was fixed and predetermined is gathered from Daniel 9: Seventy weeks have been shortened, that is, predefined and recorded up to the Passion of Christ, as Theodoret and Lyranus explain at the same passage. Hence Pope Leo, in Sermon 7 on the Lord’s Passion, which begins:⁵⁶

“I know indeed, dearly beloved,” he says: We understand that it was ordered by divine counsel that the sacrilegious leaders of the Jews and the impious priests, who had often sought opportunities to rage against Christ, should receive the power to exercise their fury only at the solemnity of Passover. And a little later: But Jesus, certain of his plan and undaunted in carrying out the Father’s disposition, was completing the Old Testament and instituting the new Passover. Likewise, explaining Matthew 26, Jesus came to the estate called Gethsemane, Lyranus says that it was determined by God that Christ die at that time. The same is proved regarding the circumstance of place from Luke 13: Nevertheless, I must walk today and tomorrow and the next day, because it cannot be that a prophet perish outside Jerusalem. As Theophylact explains, Christ the Lord said this because it had been predefined by God that he die in Jerusalem.⁵⁷ Yet Christ freely suffered and died in that place and at that time, as is clear from Isaiah 53: He was offered because he himself willed it; and John 10: I lay down my life, and I will take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself; and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.⁵⁸ As Chrysostom and Augustine explain,⁵⁹ these words signify that Christ died because he willed to. Therefore these two things stand together: that an act be predefined by God both with respect to its substance and all its circumstances, and that it nevertheless be free.

If it is said that the time and place of Christ’s Passion were predefined by God, but the intensity of the act by which he died and its extension to such persons were not predetermined, and that therefore the Passion could be free in this respect, the reply is: Christ’s Passion as an individual event was predefined by God with a perfect predefinition. Therefore all the circumstances that contribute to its individuation were predetermined by God’s eternal decree. But the intensity of the act and its extension to such persons also contribute to that individuation. Therefore.

Sixth, it is proved that God’s extrinsic predetermination does not alter or overturn the will’s connatural manner of acting; therefore, it does not destroy its freedom.

The antecedent is proved as follows. Freedom remains in the will so long as the intellect represents an object to it as indifferent, judging that the object is not wholly good, nor necessarily joined to goodness in general, toward which the will is naturally determined. But God’s extrinsic predetermination does not cause the intellect to represent the predefined object to the will as wholly good, or as necessarily joined to the good which the will is naturally determined to love. Therefore, it does not alter the will’s connatural manner of acting. All this will become clearer from what will be said in the following dispute, where it will be manifest that the intrinsic predetermination of the created will, made by God through an efficacious aid inhering in it, does not injure its freedom in any way, but rather perfects it.

Second conclusion. Through this extrinsic predetermination of the efficacious decree of the divine will, the freedom of created free choice is not injured but rather perfected. This conclusion will be clear from the solution of the arguments of the contrary opinion and from what we shall set out in the next dispute, conclusion 3, and in dispute 122, no. 20. It remains for us to answer the arguments proposed at the beginning of this dispute against our opinion.

XX. To the first argument, from the authority of Damascene, we answer with St. Thomas that Damascene intends to deny not the predetermination of any of our acts whatsoever, but only that which involves the imposition of necessity, as is found in natural things.⁶⁰ This is clear from what he adds: For he does not will wickedness, nor compel virtue. Hence predetermination made according to the mode of created free choice, through the efficacious and absolute decree of the divine will, is not excluded.⁶¹

Authors of the contrary opinion attack this solution, contending that Damascene and St. Thomas do not admit this extrinsic predetermination of the divine will because it entails antecedent necessity, which is necessity simply speaking. For in Damascene’s authority they examine the particle for, which is causal and not merely limiting or explaining the verb “to preordain”; and they argue as follows. Damascene gives two reasons to prove that God does not preordain those things that lie within our power and choice. The first concerns evil acts: he does not will that vice be committed, and in the case of evil he does not use an argument based on our freedom, but on the deformity of the object itself. The second reason concerns good acts: he does not bring force to bear upon virtue. Here “force” is not taken to mean coercion in the strict sense in which the Scholastics use the word, as opposed to the voluntary; for even if God necessitated our will, he would not thereby coerce it. He therefore takes “force” to mean a necessity repugnant to freedom, and gives this as the reason why God does not predetermine our will. Damascene therefore holds that predetermination entails a necessity contrary to freedom, and from this concludes that God does not predetermine those acts that are within our power. The adversaries say that this is also St. Thomas’s meaning, since he equates this necessity with the necessity of nature: it is necessity simply speaking and equally repugnant to freedom, as he explains more clearly in Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 90.

XXI. This explanation, however, plainly contradicts St. Thomas’s words in which he explains the mind of Damascene. For, as is clear from the passages cited above, the holy Doctor distinguishes two kinds of God’s antecedent predetermination. One is accompanied by the imposition of necessity, and he teaches that Damascene is to be understood as speaking only of this predetermination, since it would take away freedom, as Damascene himself argues. The other is without the imposition of necessity and occurs according to the mode of the free will; St. Thomas allows that through this predetermination God predetermines all free acts that are within our power. For although some necessity does arise in our acts from this predetermination—a necessity that St. Thomas calls the necessity of infallibility, conditional necessity, the necessity of the consequence, or necessity by supposition, which is necessity in a qualified sense and not repugnant to freedom, as will be clear in dispute 25—absolute necessity, which overturns freedom, does not arise. When antecedent necessity is repugnant to freedom will be explained in the answer to the eighth argument. Moreover, St. Damascene explicitly teaches, together with St. Dionysius the Areopagite, that God predetermined all the good things that take place in time by his eternal and immutable decree, as is clear from his words cited in no. 10 of this dispute.

In the same way, with St. Thomas, Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 90, we answer the authority of Gregory of Nyssa: there he explains the words of Nyssa in accordance with what has been said in answer to Damascene. From this the answer to the passage of Theodoret is also clear.

XXII. In answer to the authority of St. John Chrysostom, homily 12 on the Epistle to the Hebrews, some respond that although Chrysostom teaches almost the same things about grace as the other Fathers, nevertheless, just as Augustine, before he was a bishop, was in error through no fault of his own, because the matter had not yet been well examined and considered, and later discussed it more carefully on the occasion of the Pelagians’ controversy—believing that the beginning of faith, that is, the first act of believing, came from us—so Chrysostom, unable to understand how the freedom of our choice could remain intact if God’s grace preceded our choice, supposedly believed that the choice by which we first accept good things and decide to do them comes before God’s grace itself, and that grace follows afterward, by which we are helped and God cooperates with us.⁶² But surely St. Chrysostom was never tainted, even materially, by the Pelagian error, since in very many other passages he thought and wrote rightly about the grace of Christ, especially in his homily On Adam and Eve. There, after adducing many passages of Scripture in confirmation of Catholic teaching, especially John 15: Without me you can do nothing; John 6: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; Matthew 19: Not everyone grasps the word; and Matthew 11: I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones, he adds: But lest anyone say, “Why does God demand of me what I have not received?” he has no excuse, because everyone who receives grace already receives light in that same grace; if he does evil, let him ascribe it to himself, but if he does good, let him ascribe it to God, from whom comes every best gift and every perfect light. A little later he says: Therefore, strengthened by these ecclesiastical rules and teachings drawn from divine authority, with the Lord’s help, we have been so confirmed that we profess God to be the author of all good affections and works, all pursuits, and all virtues by which from the beginning of faith one tends toward God; and we do not doubt that all human merits proceed from his grace, through whom it comes about that we are found both to will and to do something good. By this help and gift of God, free choice is not taken away but liberated, so that what was dark becomes bright, what was crooked becomes straight, what was languid becomes sound, and what was imprudent becomes prudent. For God’s goodness toward us is so great that he wills his own good gifts to be our merits, and for these things he has bestowed he will give eternal rewards. For he works in us so that we both will and do what he wills, and he does not allow the things he gave us to exercise, not neglect, to lie idle in us, so that we may be cooperators with God’s grace; and when we see that these things grow weak in us through our own slackness, we may earnestly return to him who heals all our infirmities and redeems our life from destruction, to whom we say each day: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” But since some claim that the homily On Adam and Eve is not Chrysostom’s, let the theologian read Chrysostom’s own homily 1 on the Epistle to the Ephesians, especially column 2. Explaining the words He chose us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy,⁶³ he says: Thus all things were disposed and predefined according to the divine plan, and this through great providence toward us. In these words he most plainly teaches our opinion about God’s extrinsic predetermination. A little below he says: If we embrace faith in Christ, if we draw near to God, this too is his gift, since he called us, and yet it is ours as well. Behold: Chrysostom refers not only our ability, but also the very acts of believing and acting piously, to God. It is true that St. Chrysostom and the other Fathers who wrote before the Pelagian heresy arose said little about the grace of Christ and taught much in defense of the freedom of choice against the Manichaean heresy.⁶⁴ St. Augustine also observed this when he said: Why, then, need we examine the works of those who, before this heresy arose, had no need to be occupied with this difficult question? They would undoubtedly have done so if they had been compelled to answer such people. Hence it came about that they touched briefly and in passing, in certain places in their writings, on what they thought about God’s grace, but dwelt on the matters they discussed against the Church’s other enemies.⁶⁵ And in book 1 of the Retractations, ch. 9, the same St. Augustine answers certain testimonies taken from his books and wrongly understood by Pelagius, by which he had defended freedom of choice against the Manichaeans before the Pelagian heresy arose. He says: Because God’s grace, which was not then under discussion, is not mentioned in these and similar words of mine, the Pelagians think, or may think, that we held their opinion. But they think so in vain. For it is the will by which one sins and lives rightly, as we argued in those words. Therefore, unless the will itself is freed by God’s grace from the bondage in which it was made a slave to sin, and is helped to overcome vices, mortals cannot live rightly and piously. And unless this divine benefit by which it is freed preceded the will, it would then be given as a reward for its merits and would not be grace, which is given freely. We have dealt sufficiently with this in our other works, refuting these enemies of grace, these new heretics; although even in those books on free choice, which were written not at all against them (for they did not yet exist), but against the Manichaeans, we did not altogether keep silent about this grace, which they seek to take away with their unspeakable impiety.⁶⁶ In the same way, some think, or may think, that Chrysostom held the Pelagians’ opinion in the words cited, because he did not mention grace; but they think so in vain, since elsewhere he thought and wrote most correctly about it. Hence St. Augustine himself, in book 1 Against Julian, ch. 2, clears Chrysostom of suspicion of Pelagian heresy: Do you dare, he says, to set these words of St. John, the bishop, against the statements of so many and such distinguished colleagues, as though they were contrary, and to separate him from their most harmonious fellowship and make him their opponent? Far be it, far be it from us to believe or say such an evil of so great a man. Far be it, I say, that John of Constantinople should oppose, on the baptism of infants and their liberation through Christ from the ancestral bond, so many and such great fellow bishops of his, especially Innocent of Rome, Cyprian of Carthage, Basil of Cappadocia, Gregory Nazianzen, Hilary of Gaul, and Ambrose of Milan.

XXIII. It is answered that, as some learned men have noted, the words cited from Homily 12 on Hebrews are not found in Chrysostom’s Greek originals, at least not in all of them. Rather, they were inserted by the Pelagians of that age to confirm their heresy by Chrysostom’s authority. This is familiar to heretics and has always been their practice, as is clear from the many errors they inserted more than once in the works of Origen and other Fathers, and even in the canonical books, in order to fortify themselves with their authority.

Second, it is answered that St. Chrysostom sometimes extols the powers of our free choice in a remarkable way, speaking as if by hyperbole in the heat of opposing the errors of the Manicheans and pagans, who asserted that a human being is either evil by nature or compelled to sin by the violence of fate.⁶⁷ Hence Jansenius, in Concordia, ch. 59, after citing several Greek authors, especially Chrysostom and Euthymius, observes that unless they are read attentively on this subject under dispute, and devoutly understood and explained, they may provide an occasion for Pelagian error. Therefore, when Chrysostom says that God does not precede our wills lest our free choice be harmed, he is understood to mean that God does not precede them by producing our free act in us without our freely cooperating with him, as the heretics who denied freedom of choice claimed. For if God preceded our wills in this way, he would undoubtedly harm freedom of choice, because a human being would then be purely passive, receiving an act produced by God alone, as Luther dreamed, or producing it by a spontaneous motion but not freely, as Calvin babbled. Chrysostom does not, however, intend to deny God’s external predetermination by which he predetermined all good acts through an absolute and efficacious will, as was shown from his other words cited above. Or one may say that when he says, “He does not precede our wills,” he means that God does not precede them by predetermining them to one outcome by necessity, as he predetermines things that do not have freedom of choice. For just as the authors of the opposing opinion explain Chrysostom as speaking of antecedence that determines, or physically predetermines, so we may explain him as speaking of antecedence that predetermines to one outcome by necessity. St. Thomas explains a similar passage from Damascene in this sense.⁶⁸ Our explanation is gathered from the fact that St. Chrysostom was there speaking against the Manicheans, who, as was shown in disputation 3, no. 3, wished to introduce a nature of good from which good things would necessarily come to be, and a nature of evil from which evil things would necessarily come to be. Against them Chrysostom says, “He does not precede our wills,” namely, by necessitating them, as the Manicheans supposed, lest he destroy our will.

XXIV. To St. Jerome it is answered that it is remarkable that our opponents wish to draw him over to their opinion, since in many places he expressly teaches ours.⁶⁹ For commenting on the Apostle’s words in Eph. 1, Predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, he says: Predestination and purpose are set down together, according to which God works all things according to the counsel of his will. That is, he does all the things he does by counsel and will, because they are full of reason and within the power of the one who acts. For human beings often wish to do many things by counsel, but the effect by no means follows their will; no one, however, can resist God so that he does not do all that he wills. By these words he plainly acknowledges in God an efficacious decree that predetermines the created will efficaciously to its operations. And in his letter to Ctesiphon against the Pelagians he says: As for their shouting up and down that we destroy free choice, let them hear the contrary: those destroy freedom of choice who misuse it against the benefit of the giver. Who destroys choice? The one who always gives thanks to God and refers to the source whatever flows in his little stream, or the one who says, “Leave me, for I am clean; I do not need you”? “For you once gave me freedom of choice so that I might do what I wished. Why do you thrust yourself upon me again so that I can do nothing unless you complete your gifts in me?” And a little later: Do you think you are being wronged and that the freedom of choice is destroyed if you always return to God as its author, if you depend on his will and say, “My eyes are always toward the Lord, for he will pull my feet out of the snare”?⁷⁰ And in bk. 3 Against the Pelagians he says: Do I take away free choice, I who in my whole discussion have done nothing other than preserve the omnipotence of God together with free choice? And a little farther on, explaining John 6, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,⁷¹ he adds: When he says, “No one can,” he breaks the proud freedom of choice; for even if someone wishes to go to Christ, unless what follows happens—“unless my Father draws him”—he desires nothing and strives in vain. By these words he teaches most clearly that all things must be referred to the counsel of the divine will and the power of his will, who has done all things whatsoever he willed in heaven and on earth;⁷² and that through this efficacious will of God the freedom of our choice is in no way destroyed.

XXV. Therefore, when Jerome says that man is so free that he lives not by God's command, but by his own obedience, by God's command he does not mean God's efficacious will, which in some manner predetermines man's free choice to one side, but rather a determination by necessity to one, as God determines natural things, which have no freedom. And when Jerome explains himself by adding, “that is, not by necessity but by will,” he intends only to exclude from human acts absolute necessity, which is necessity simply speaking, not conditional necessity, or necessity by supposition, which is necessity in a qualified sense and does not impede freedom, as will be clear in Disputation 25.

XXVI. To the passages cited from St Augustine, we reply that nothing is clearer in his teaching than that God, by the absolute and efficacious decree of his will, predetermines all things that take place in time, as is evident from the passages cited above and from the Enchiridion to Laurentius, chapter 95, where he says: But our God is in heaven, above in heaven, and on earth; he has done all things whatsoever he willed. This is certainly not true if he willed to do certain things and did not do them, and (what is more unworthy) did not do them because the will of man prevented the omnipotent from bringing about what he willed. Therefore nothing happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen, either by permitting it to happen or by doing it himself.⁷³ And a little later: Unless we believe this, the very beginning of our confession of faith is endangered, by which we profess to believe in God the Father almighty. For he is not truly called almighty for any other reason than that he can do whatever he wills, and the effect of the omnipotent will is not prevented by the will of any creature. And in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 17, he says: They were therefore chosen before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his future acts; but they were chosen from the world by that calling through which God fulfilled what he predestined—that is, what he predetermined; for “predestine” and “predetermine” signify the same thing, as was said above. Augustine teaches this same predetermination unmistakably when he says that God makes willing people out of unwilling ones, and that human wills are more in God's power than in their own, since he turns our hearts toward himself. He repeats all these things frequently, as will be clear from the passages to be cited in the following disputation. They cannot, however, be upheld without an extrinsic determination of the divine will, which predetermines created will to those acts that God wills it to perform. When Augustine therefore says that some will is not from God, he speaks expressly of the evil will by which one sins: for an evil will and an evil action, insofar as they are evil, are not from God, but only from a deficient creature, as will be made clear in Disputation 24. It does not follow from this, however, that God's will does not predetermine ours to all its acts with respect to whatever they possess of being and goodness, though by a predetermination according to the mode of free will, as was said. To the other passage from Book 7 of The City of God, we reply that it is indeed so: God permits free choice and other secondary causes to carry out their own motions; nevertheless, by his eternal and efficacious decree he established that they should do so either naturally, if the causes are natural, or contingently and freely, when the causes are contingent and free.

XXVII. To the passage from Book 3 of On Free Choice, we reply that, as will be clear in Disputation 32, created will cannot absolutely and properly resist the divine will, although, simply speaking, it can do the opposite of what God efficaciously wills it to do. When St Augustine therefore says, “Whatever this cause of the will may be, if it cannot be resisted, yielding to it is without sin,” he speaks of a created cause, which is inferior to our will. If, however, those words are extended also to the First Cause, they must be understood of resistance in the common sense, insofar as it implies the power to do the opposite. The sense is that, whatever the cause that makes a man will, if it cannot be resisted—that is, if a man cannot do the opposite of what that cause inclines him to or moves free choice toward—then yielding to it is without sin. This explanation is gathered from Augustine himself: for in many other passages, to be cited in Disputations 32 and 93, he expressly teaches that the human will cannot resist the divine will, as sacred Scripture also teaches very often, as will be made clear in those same disputations.

XXVIII. Finally, we note that Pelagius gathered a great many testimonies from that same Augustine, by which he tried to confirm his error. St Augustine himself answers them one by one in Book 1 of his Retractations, chapters 9 and 10. I have judged it necessary to cite his words here, since from them the Reader can easily gather his meaning. In the cited chapter 9 he speaks as follows: Therefore, let the new Pelagian heretics, who so assert free choice of the will as to leave no place for God's grace, since they claim that it is given according to our merits, not exalt themselves as though I had pleaded their cause. For in these books I said many things in favor of free choice, as the purpose of that discussion required. In the first book, indeed, I said: “God's justice avenges evil deeds”⁷⁴ and added: “For they would not be justly avenged unless they were done by the will.” Likewise, after showing that the good will itself is so great a good that I rightly ranked it above all bodily and external goods, I said: “Do you now see, as I think, that it is established in our will whether we enjoy or lack so great and so true a good?” After he had cited many other similar passages from his writings, which Pelagius was twisting to an alien sense, he adds: In these and similar words of mine, because God's grace was not mentioned—since it was not then under discussion—the Pelagians think, or can think, that I held their opinion. But they think so in vain. For it is the will by which one sins and by which one lives rightly, and that is what we were treating in those words. Therefore, unless the will itself is freed by God's grace from the slavery by which it was made a slave of sin, and is helped to overcome its vices, mortals cannot live rightly and piously.⁷⁵ And unless this divine benefit, by which it is freed, preceded it, it would already be given to it on account of its merits, and it would not be grace, which is certainly given freely. And below: As for what I said—“That light does not nourish the eyes of irrational animals, but the pure hearts of those who believe in God and turn away from love of visible and temporal things in order to fulfill his commands; all men can do this if they will”—let the new Pelagian heretics not think that this was said in accordance with their view. It is entirely true that all men can do this if they will; but the will is prepared by the Lord and so greatly strengthened by the gift of charity that they can do it. This was not said here because it was not necessary for the question at hand.

XXIX. As regards St Thomas, it is clearer than daylight from the passages cited above that he expressly taught our opinion; nowhere did he approve, or even hint at, the opposite. And when he says that God moves our will in such a way that he does not determine it by necessity to one thing, he clearly favors our opinion. For he adds the phrase “by necessity” precisely to indicate that he determines it in another way, one consonant with the nature of the will itself. He is therefore speaking of determination to one thing by absolute necessity, such as is found in things that lack freedom, as he explains in those same and other passages.

To the other testimony from Question 3 of On the Power of God, we reply that the determination of the act is left to the power of reason and will because the will is what, as a secondary cause, determines its own willing for itself. Yet, since it is not simply the first thing to determine itself, it must be determined by God, as the simply first cause,⁷⁶ as he explained in the other passages cited above. See what he teaches in Summa theologiae I, q. 19, a. 3, ad 5, and q. 83, a. 1, ad 3. We still have a lengthy discussion of this in Disputation 117, where we shall explain how the assent of free choice lies within its power. When the objection is raised, “If St Thomas had acknowledged this efficacious predetermination by God, he would not have had recourse to the existence of future contingents in eternity in order to preserve in God infallible knowledge of those same future things and reconcile it with their contingency,” the reply is that St Thomas has recourse not only to the existence that future contingents have in eternity to show that God's knowledge of them is infallible, but also to the predetermination of secondary causes that are not to be impeded, as is evident in Summa contra Gentiles I, chapter 67, argument 3; Summa theologiae II–II, q. 171, a. 6, ad 2; and I, q. 14, a. 13, body; and from what was said in Disputation 10, where we cited and examined St Thomas's words.⁷⁷ Hence Cajetan, in the cited passage of Summa theologiae I, section “Concerning the points made,” and section “As for the second point,” notes that St Thomas's text manifestly assigns two causes for things being present to God from eternity, and consequently known by him with certainty. But since the existence of things in eternity, on the part of eternity itself, is the proximate reason why God's knowledge of future contingents is infallible—even though, considered in relation to their proximate cause, contingents can fail to exist—St Thomas therefore demonstrates the infallibility of divine knowledge specifically from the presence in eternity of future contingents according to their real existences, as was explained in Disputation 9.

XXX. To the second argument it is answered that the Lutherans and Calvinists did not err because they said that our will is predetermined by God through a certain physical efficacy to will—namely, by his most efficacious will, by which he precedes it—but because they wrongly inferred from that Catholic principle that by this kind of determination the freedom of choice in its operation is destroyed, as will become clear in Disputations 115 and 116. To make this clear, one must consider that Pelagius and Luther with Calvin, persuaded by the same argument and in the same way, fell into contrary errors.⁷⁸ For they thought this inference evident: “There is an efficacious will of God, or efficacious prevenient grace, that precedes our will and moves it to act; therefore our will is not free in its operations.” One of them, namely Pelagius, in order not to deny the freedom of human choice that he experienced, denied that the grace of God and his efficacious will precede our wills. The other, namely Luther with Calvin, admitted the eternal, absolute, and efficacious decree of the divine will and its efficacious motion preceding our wills, but did not understand how the freedom of our choice could stand together with that efficacious will and grace of God. He therefore erroneously asserted that our free choice is a mere label. Thus Pelagius argued: “There is true freedom of choice in us; therefore there is no efficacious will and prevenient grace in God that precedes our wills, by which he brings it about that we act and works so that we may act.” Luther and Calvin, however, argued from the opposite of the consequent to the opposite of the antecedent and inferred as follows: “There is an efficacious will and prevenient grace in God that precedes our wills, by which he brings it about that we act and works so that we may act; therefore there is no free choice in us.”

XXXI. Calvin moderated Luther’s heresy somewhat in this respect. For Luther, as we saw in disputation 3, asserted that our free choice is purely passive with respect to free operation, which he thought was produced in us by God alone as its efficient cause. Calvin, however, admitted that our choice does indeed cooperate by efficient causality with God as he moves it efficaciously to consent, but not freely; it cooperates only spontaneously, because it does not resist. This is like a horse that does not rear and runs spontaneously, but not freely, when moved by its rider.⁷⁹ But we detest the extreme and impious heresies of the Pelagians and the Lutherans, and proceed on the right middle way. Against the Pelagians we admit that God, by an eternal, absolute, and efficacious decree of his will and by his grace working beforehand, precedes our wills and directs them, as a physical cause, to every good work. We also assert against Calvin and Luther that, without anything impeding the efficacy of the divine will or motion, the freedom of choice remains entire in a human being, namely, the faculty and power by which, if he wishes, he can fail to follow the divine motion. Thus, together with the efficacy of God’s will and motion preceding the determination of the created will, the freedom of our choice remains entire and unharmed, as will be shown expressly below.

These points also answer the confirmation. For we say that heretics did indeed infer from that principle that free choice is a mere label, but they inferred it by a bad inference, which we therefore cannot accept. By denying that inference, we resist both the Pelagians and the Lutherans, overturning in particular the foundation by which they were deceived and fell into contrary errors.

XXXII. To the third argument we reply that, just as being able to run differs from actually running, so being able to will, or to produce some particular free act, differs from actually producing it.⁸⁰ Thus, for a man truly to be able to will some object, it is not required that from eternity there have preceded in God an absolute and efficacious decree predetermining his free choice to will that same object, although this is required for him actually to will it. Hence, from the fact that there was no such decree in God, it does not follow, absolutely speaking, that a man cannot will such an object; it follows only that in fact he does not will it. Nor does it follow that, if God predetermines me to will this particular thing, it is not in my power, absolutely speaking, to will something else, although, given God's efficacious will, it is impossible, in the composite sense, for me to will another object, as will be clear in Disputation 25. Otherwise God's will would be inefficacious. Therefore this conditional—“If God wills me to will this, here and now, I shall do it”—is necessary, as St Augustine and St Thomas teach in the passages to be cited below, since the inference is valid. But the consequent is absolutely free and contingent,⁸¹ for the reason given by St Thomas in 1. p. q. 14. ar. 13., ad 2: “When the antecedent posits something pertaining to an act of the soul, the consequent is to be understood not according to what it is in itself, but according to what it is in the soul; for a thing's being in itself differs from its being in the soul. For example, if I say, ‘If the soul understands something, it is immaterial,’ this must be understood to mean that it is immaterial insofar as it is in the intellect, not insofar as it is in itself. Likewise, if I say, ‘If God knew something, it will be,’ the consequent is to be understood as subject to divine knowledge, namely, as present to him; and thus it is necessary, just as the antecedent is, because whatever exists while it exists must exist, as is said in Book 1 of On Interpretation.” In proportion, we say here that the consequent “I shall do this particular thing” is necessary by the necessity of consequence, insofar as it is subject to that antecedent, namely, “God wills that I do this”; for it necessarily follows from it by a valid inference, as St Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae I, q. 19, a. 8, ad 1. There, explaining Augustine's statement in the Enchiridion, chapter 103, “No one is saved except the one whom God wills to be saved. Therefore he must be asked to will it, because it must happen if he wills it,” he says: “By that saying of Augustine, the necessity in things willed by God is to be understood as not absolute but conditional; for this conditional must be true: ‘If God wills this, this must be.’” Absolutely speaking, however, and considered in itself or in relation to its proximate cause, the consequent is contingent and free.

XXXIII. The same reply is given to what is objected in the same argument concerning omitted acts that are commanded. For we say that we omit them freely and sin by omitting them, even though God has not efficaciously predetermined our will to perform them. This predetermination by God is not necessary for a man truly to be able to produce those acts, but for him actually to produce them, as was said above.⁸² Since, then, one who omits acts that are commanded truly can perform them but does not, it follows that he omits them freely and consequently sins. For, as St Thomas and all his disciples teach, for an act to be considered voluntarily omitted, at least indirectly, it is enough that a man can perform it and does not; and if that act is commanded, its omission will be imputed as guilt.⁸³ See what was said above in Disputation 18, no. 20.

To the confirmation, we reply on the basis of what has been said that, in the composite sense, we can will nothing without divine predetermination, because these two things cannot be true together: that we will some particular thing and that God did not preordain and predetermine that we should will it. Absolutely, however, and in the divided sense, we can indeed will the opposite of what God willed us to will.⁸⁴ For by such a decree, which predetermines our will to one side, God does not establish that we cannot will the opposite, but that in fact we will only that particular thing which he decreed by his efficacious will that we should will. Hence, although the determination of the divine will, insofar as it is in God and is his immanent act, is not in our power but in God's alone, the effect of that predetermination—our free act—is in our power. For God has not decreed to produce it, nor does he produce it in us, without our freely consenting and cooperating. And although, after the divine determination by which he determined us to this particular act, we can do nothing to make him determine us to other acts, since the divine will cannot be subjected to, subordinated to, determined by, or changed by the human will, we nevertheless perform freely the act to which he determined us. Consequently, we truly can perform it or not perform it, or elicit the contrary act; for God not only predetermined that I perform this particular act, but also pre-defined that I perform it freely, in accordance with the mode of my own nature, and consequently decreed that I be able not to perform that act.

Second, perhaps this solution can be explained in clearer terms if we say that the antecedent assumed in the argument—namely, “Without the predetermination of the divine will, I can perform no act”—can be understood in two ways. First, the phrase “without the predetermination of the divine will” can fall upon and modify the verb “can.” The sense then is that without the aforesaid predetermination I do not have a true ability with respect to an act that is not predetermined by God. In this sense the antecedent is false. Second, the phrase “without divine predetermination” can fall upon and modify the verb “perform.” The sense then is that it is impossible for me to perform any act while my will is not physically predetermined by God to produce that act. This sense is true. But from this it does not follow that someone who is not predetermined by God to such an act lacks a true ability with respect to that same act; it follows only that he will not in fact bring about such an act. This solution is drawn from St. Thomas, q. 1, On the Power of God, art. 5, ad 1, where, explaining the proposition “God cannot do anything except what he foreknows he will do,” he says: This expression can be taken in two senses, because the exception can be referred either to the power signified by the term “can,” or to the act signified by the term “do.” If in the first way, the expression is false, for God can do more than he foreknows he will do; and in this sense the argument proceeded. But if in the second way, the expression is true, and its sense is that it cannot happen that something is done by God without being foreknown by God. In proportionate fashion, we say in the present case that in the proposition “I can perform no act except one that God has predetermined me to perform,” if the exception is referred to the power signified by the verb “can,” then the proposition is false, as was said above; for I can do more than God has predetermined that I will do. But if the exception is referred to the act, then the proposition is true, and its sense is that it cannot happen that I do something without God having predetermined that I will do it.

XXXIV. To the fourth argument it is answered that it concludes only that without God’s external predetermination and without an efficacious decree of the divine will, a human being will not be free in second act. This is most true, because the created will will produce no second act unless God has preordained and predefined that it produce it.⁸⁵ Otherwise some effect would be produced by the created will prior to the decree and causality of God; consequently, with respect to that effect, the created will would be the first cause simply, which cannot be admitted, as St. Thomas shows in Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 2, art. 2, in the body. The argument does not, however, conclude that the will is not free in first act; for a human being acquires this freedom through divine action when he is brought into being. But this freedom passes into second act, or an actual operation in particular, dependently on an efficacious decree of the divine will predetermining our free choice to that operation. The reason is that our choice is not the first free being simply, nor the first thing that determines itself simply, and consequently it is essentially subordinated to the choice of God, who is the first free being simply and subject to no other. Hence, in order to move and determine itself to such an act, it needs to be moved and predetermined by God; otherwise it will remain wholly unmoved, since it does not move itself unless moved, as was said.

XXXV. The fifth argument must be answered expressly in Disputations 115 and 116, where the nature and essence of free choice will be treated. For now, it is answered that there are two kinds of indifference in the created will: one is passive indifference in relation to God, insofar as the will receives a prior motion by which God himself brings it about that free choice determines itself to will this or that; the other is active indifference with respect to this or that free act.⁸⁶ The first indifference is removed through efficient causality by God alone through the efficacious decree of his will, by which he produces the prior motion received in the created will; and it is removed formally by that same motion, discussed in disputation 18. For that motion is not produced through efficient causality by the created will, since it precedes the will’s determination or cooperation by a priority of nature and causality. But the second indifference, namely, active indifference, is removed through efficient causality by the created will moved by God, and formally by the free act. That act is not produced in us through efficient causality by God alone, but by God and free choice. For although God, as the Apostle says, works in us both to will and to accomplish,⁸⁷ he does not work this without us, consenting together and freely cooperating in that same willing, as is clear from the Council of Trent.⁸⁸ Hence he always preserves our freedom unharmed, however efficaciously he predetermines it to act in this particular way. Indeed, by that same predetermining motion he perfects the freedom of our choice.

XXXVI. For a fuller explanation of this solution, it should be noted that since indifference is opposed to determination, and what is indifferent is opposed to what is determined according to the different kinds of determination, the indifference found in a power must be distinguished. There are two kinds of determination. The first is natural, by which an agent is determined to one thing by absolute necessity, as fire is determined by heat to heat. The second is free determination, which the will has when it actually acts; for then it freely determines itself to such an operation according to the mode of that same free will, which wills to perform this determinate act in such a way that it retains the free capacity to perform the opposite, if it wishes, or not to act.⁸⁹ In proportion to these, two kinds of indifference, or indetermination, of a power must be distinguished. One is opposed to natural determination, which is determination to one thing by necessity; this belongs to the essence of freedom, since it is incompatible for a power to be free in its exercise and naturally determined to one thing. Thus, as will be clear in disputes 115 and 116, free choice has this indifference not only prior in the order of nature to its acting, but also in the very instant in which it produces a free act. The other kind of indifference is opposed to free determination and signifies a certain potentiality or suspension of the free act. The will has this indifference throughout the time in which it does not act and is not efficaciously premoved by God to act, since it is then determined neither by a free act nor by an efficacious motion, to which such an act follows through the mediation of a free power. This indifference is not of the essence of freedom, but rather an imperfection belonging to it when it is deprived of the second act, to which it is in potency; for the will and its freedom are more perfect when free in second act than when free only in first act. Moreover, if such indifference were of the essence of freedom, the will would not be free when it actually produces a free act, since it is already determined by that act. The same is also shown by a clear argument: God is most perfectly free in the things he wills or performs outwardly, and yet he has absolutely no indifference that includes potentiality; otherwise he would not be supremely perfect or pure act. Therefore, such indifference is not of the essence of freedom, but an imperfection belonging to it insofar as it is found in created and mutable intellectual nature, which proceeds from potentiality to act.

XXXVII. Second, it should be noted that each kind of determination, whether natural or free, is itself twofold. One is in first act, or in the ultimate completion of first act; it is understood as prior to the actual operation of the secondary cause and is called predetermination, because it precedes the determination of that same power in second act only in the order of causality. This predetermination occurs extrinsically through the efficacious will of God, and intrinsically through the prior motion by which each secondary cause is efficaciously premoved and applied by God to its operation according to its nature.⁹⁰ The other is called determination in second act, and is formally effected by the operation itself of the secondary cause.

From these points the answer is easy: indifference opposed to natural determination, or to determination to one thing by necessity, belongs to the intrinsic essence of freedom; but not the indifference opposed to free determination, such as the prior determination of the will, or predetermination, which occurs through an aid that efficaciously premoves the will to the operation itself.⁹¹

XXXVIII. But an objection is raised: the determination of the will is an operation of the will; therefore, if God predetermines the will antecedently to its cooperation, the act of the will will come from God alone, with that same will remaining merely passive. The answer is that the determination of the will in second act is formally an operation of that same will, and this is brought about not by God alone, but by God and free choice, moved by God himself.⁹² But the determination of the will in first act, or in the ultimate completion of first act, is not formally an operation of the will, but something prior to it. Hence it does not follow that the free action of the will comes from God alone as efficient cause, or that the will remains merely passive. For although it is passive insofar as it receives the aid and prior motion, in relation to the term of the motion, which is the free operation, it is active and free. St. Augustine says: Let those who are sons of God understand that they are moved by the Spirit of God so that they do what they ought to do, and, when they have done it, give thanks to him by whom they are moved; for they are moved so that they may act, not so that they themselves may do nothing.⁹³ He repeats the same in many other places cited in dispute 18, no. 16. If it is said that willing, since it is an immanent action, is received in the power that elicits it, and therefore free choice is passive even in relation to willing, the answer is that it is first active, freely producing the act of willing, and secondarily passive, insofar as it receives within itself the act of willing that it produces.

To the confirmation it is answered that for the will to be free with respect to some operation, it must determine itself through efficient causality to that operation; it need not, however, be the first thing that determines itself simply, since this is proper to the first free being, who is God.⁹⁴ The created will, then, determines itself in second act, but is predetermined by God in the ultimate completion of first act through efficacious help, just as the will moves itself but is not the first thing to move itself simply; rather, it moves itself while moved by God, as was said above. But just as it belongs to the character of free choice that it determine itself, so too it belongs to its character that it move itself. Therefore, just as it can move itself without being the first thing to move itself, so it can freely determine itself without being the first thing to determine itself simply. When it is argued that what is already determined does not determine itself, etc., it is answered that the antecedent is true when speaking of what is determined in every way, especially as already accomplished. Nevertheless, what is determined by God by a priority of nature in the ultimate completion of first act can determine itself in second act. Hence, prior in the order of nature to the will’s determining itself through its free operation, it is understood to be indifferent, or undetermined by itself through that same free operation. Or one can say that free choice is determined by God as the first cause and determines itself as the proximate cause of its operation. As to the proposition “Every determination presupposes indetermination in the power itself,” it is answered that this is true when speaking of determination and indetermination with respect to the same cause. Hence, before the created will determines itself in second act as the proximate cause, it is understood to be undetermined by itself and by every proximate cause. Nevertheless, it is understood beforehand to be predetermined in the process of coming to be, or to be predetermined by God as the first cause, from whom every determination of every secondary cause first begins, as will become clear in Disputations 89 and 98.

XXXIX. The sixth argument was already answered in part in disputation 18, no. 23, in reply to the seventh argument. Now we say that it belongs to the character of a free power that, once all the requisites for acting are posited, it can act and not act, speaking absolutely and simply. It is not, however, incompatible with this that, on a supposition of God’s efficacious will, the will cannot in the composite sense fail to perform the act to which God predetermines it, as will become clear in Disputations 25 and 115.⁹⁵ Therefore, by predetermining our will to some determinate act, God does not take away from it the power for the opposite, as was said in disputation 18, no. 23; he only takes away the opposite act and brings it about that a human being infallibly wills the act predetermined by God. Hence the will remains free in the exercise of that act. The reason is that which St. Thomas assigns: God not only predetermined that the will will the object, but also predefined that it will will it freely.⁹⁶ Therefore, from the fact that created free choice cannot resist God’s efficacious will, it follows not only that the things God wills to happen do happen, but also that they happen contingently or necessarily, according to the way he wills them to happen.

To the seventh argument it is answered that absolute necessity is opposed to freedom, but not necessity on a supposition, or in the composite sense, as will become clear in disputation 25.

To the eighth it is answered by denying the antecedent as universally assumed. A clear counterexample is Peter’s denial, which was simply and absolutely free, although it was not in his power to remove or posit the antecedent supposition, namely, the saying of Christ the Lord: Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.⁹⁷ From that supposition Peter’s denial necessarily followed by a certain necessity, not an absolute one, but the necessity of inference and infallibility. Otherwise Christ the Lord would have spoken falsely, which is incompatible with him, since by essence he is the first truth, who cannot deceive or be deceived. Likewise, the conversion of the Gentiles was free, and yet it necessarily followed from God’s promise, which promise⁹⁸ was not in the power of the Gentiles. And if the argument proved anything, it would also proceed against the authors of the opposing opinion and prove that conversion is not free for a human being, because it follows necessarily by the necessity of the consequence upon a fitting call, which is not in human power but only in God’s.

We reply, therefore, that when the antecedent supposition belongs to the First and most universal Cause, namely God, something can rightly be necessary by supposition with respect to created will and simply free for it, even though it is not in that will's power to remove or posit the supposition from which it follows necessarily, by the necessity of infallibility. The contrary occurs when the antecedent supposition belongs to some created cause external to the will. The reason for the distinction is this: as St Thomas teaches in Summa contra Gentiles III, chapters 88 and 89, and elsewhere, God alone, because of his infinity and omnipotence and because he is the author of created will, can change it in a manner consonant with its nature, efficaciously move and apply it to producing a particular act, not only as regards its substance but also as regards its mode of freedom. No created cause can do this, since it is limited and finite and inferior to the will itself.⁹⁹ See, concerning this solution, St Thomas in 1. p. q. 22. ar. 4. and Summa contra Gentiles III, chapter 148.

To the confirmation, we reply by denying the assumption. For we say that if God willed to impose absolute necessity on the will with respect to some act, he could bring this about by physically predetermining it to one thing through a judgment by which the person judges that the act, or the good it pursues, is necessarily connected with the good in general, toward which the will is naturally determined, as occurs in the beatific vision, as will be clear in the second confirmation of the following argument. Outside the beatific vision, too, he could impose necessity on the will by physically predetermining it to one thing without an indifferent judgment of reason, as occurs in first-first movements.

XL. To the ninth argument we reply that St Thomas, without naming Anselm, states and resolves the same argument in its very terms in Part I, Question 19, Article 8. There, in the third argument, he argues as follows: That which has necessity from something prior is absolutely necessary, as an animal's dying is necessary because it is composed of contraries. But created things are related to the divine will as to something prior, from which they have necessity, since this conditional is true: “If God wills something, it is.” Every true conditional is necessary; therefore everything God wills is absolutely necessary. To this argument he replies: “Posterior things have necessity from prior things according to the mode of the prior things. Hence things that come to be by the divine will have the kind of necessity God wills them to have, namely, either absolute necessity or only conditional necessity; thus not all things are absolutely necessary.” Nor is St Anselm opposed; rather, he favors our opinion. For in the cited chapter 2, shortly after its beginning, he expressly teaches that necessity from the supposition of the divine will does not take freedom away from our acts. He says: “When God wills an effect to follow from the will, then the will must be free, and what it wills must exist.” Yet it is certain that the decree of the divine will, and consequently the necessity arising from the supposition of such a decree, precedes the act of our will. Likewise, in Book 2 of Why God Became Man, chapter 17,¹⁰⁰ Anselm, while establishing that twofold necessity, antecedent and consequent, says that Christ had to suffer because it was written, but that this was not necessary simply speaking. He therefore admits necessity from an antecedent supposition together with freedom, since the Scripture preceded Christ's human will. To the authority of Anselm cited to the contrary, we reply that, as is clear from the context itself, he is speaking of antecedent necessity, which is necessity simply speaking and makes a secondary cause act without its own consent and without any deliberation of reason. For in the cited chapter 17 he gives the example of the movement of the heavens, saying: “Antecedent necessity causes necessity, as the heaven must revolve; the antecedent and efficient necessity is that the heaven revolve, because it must revolve.” And a little later: “The violence of natural condition compels the heaven to revolve, but no necessity makes you speak.” The necessity of a future consent, however, which is inferred from an antecedent decree of the divine will, is not absolute necessity, but conditional and qualified necessity, as was said above. Hence our free acts, which necessarily follow from such a supposition, are not necessary simply speaking, but free, as will be clear from the common opinion of the ancients in Disputation 25.

St Anselm understood absolute or natural necessity by the name “antecedent necessity” because this necessity precedes every supposition and is taken from the nature of the thing, or from the connection of the terms considered in themselves, as the heavens must revolve because motion’s connection with heaven is natural, not free. By “consequent necessity,” however, he meant conditional necessity, or the necessity of consequence, because such necessity is not absolute and does not belong to a subject by the nature of the thing; it follows only from a supposition or condition, from which what is said to be necessary on that supposition or condition is necessarily inferred with necessity in a qualified sense, even though absolutely and in itself it is free or contingent, as will be clear in Disputation 25.¹⁰¹ St Thomas explains antecedent and consequent quality in this sense in I–II, q. 17, a. 7, ad 2, where he says: “A bodily quality is related to an act of the sensitive appetite in two ways. In one way, as antecedent, insofar as someone is bodily disposed in some way toward this or that passion. In another way, as consequent, as when someone grows hot from anger. An antecedent quality, then, is not subject to the command of reason, because it arises either from nature or from some prior motion that cannot immediately cease; but a consequent quality follows the command of reason, because it follows the local motion of the heart, which is moved in different ways according to the different acts of the sensitive appetite.” Just as St Thomas understands a natural quality by “antecedent quality,” and by “consequent quality” a quality that follows the command of reason, so St Anselm understood natural necessity, which is absolute necessity, by “antecedent necessity,” and by “consequent necessity” conditional necessity, or the necessity of consequence or supposition. He teaches that the former necessity is incompatible with freedom, but not the latter. This explanation can be confirmed by another example. St John of Damascus distinguishes God's will into antecedent will and consequent will. As will be clear in Disputation 34, nearly all the Scholastics, and especially St Thomas in 1. par. q. 19. ar. 6., ad 1, understand by antecedent will the will directed toward an object considered absolutely and in itself, and by consequent will the will directed toward an object together with all its attendant conditions and circumstances. Accordingly, St John of Damascus understood by antecedent necessity that which is absolute and in itself, and by consequent necessity that which is not absolute but conditional, following from some attendant or presupposed condition.¹⁰² In this sense Augustine says, “He must be asked to will,” namely, God, “for if he wills it, it must be.”¹⁰³ There, “must” is used not for absolute necessity, which is incompatible with freedom, but for conditional necessity, or the necessity of consequence, which does not impede freedom. For this inference is valid and therefore necessary: God wills this to be; therefore it will be—in the manner in which God willed it to come about, namely, freely and contingently, if the consequent is free and contingent, or necessarily, if the consequent is necessary. St Thomas interprets Augustine's words in this way in 1. par. q. 19. art. 8., ad 1. See what we shall say concerning both kinds of necessity in Disputation 25.

XLI. Second, and perhaps more clearly as to Anselm's words, we reply that necessity from the supposition of the divine will is not antecedent necessity, but rather follows the cause of the thing. For although it precedes the secondary cause, which is created will, it does not precede the simply First Cause, namely the divine will, which contributes to the effect more than the secondary cause and reaches powerfully from end to end, disposing all things gently; rather, it follows the divine will.¹⁰⁴ Therefore, just as necessity from the supposition of the free influence of created will does not take freedom away from its acts, but rather causes freedom with respect to the exercise of the act, since this necessity is inferred from the secondary cause of those acts, so much more does necessity from the supposition of the divine will—which operates more perfectly, contributes more forcefully, and reaches the effect according to every aspect of its substance and mode—not take freedom away from human acts but rather cause it. Hence Augustine says in Book On Correction and Grace, chapter 14: “No human choice resists him who wills to save. For willing or not willing is so within the power of the one who wills or does not will that it does not impede the divine will or overcome its power.” And below: “One must not doubt that human wills cannot resist the will of God, who has done in heaven and on earth all things whatsoever he willed, and who also made the things that are to come, so that he may do what he wills; for he also does what he wills with the wills of men themselves.” And at the end of the same chapter he says: “God has men's wills more in his power than they have their own.”

XLII. To the first confirmation from the authorities of St Thomas, I answer that nothing is clearer in his teaching than that necessity on the supposition of the divine will does not take freedom and contingency away from human acts, as is clear from what he teaches in 1. p. q. 19. ar. 8. ad 3. and 1. con. Gen. c. 85. in ratione 4., and in other places to be cited in disp. 25.¹⁰⁵ The passages adduced to the contrary do not seem pertinent. For in 3. p. he speaks expressly of prior necessity, which is taken from a particular efficient or moving cause, not of antecedent necessity, which is taken from the efficacy of the first and most universal cause. Indeed, in that same place he plainly teaches that the freedom of choice is preserved along with this necessity: for he admits necessity on the supposition of God’s eternal predefinition together with the freedom of Christ our Lord, who freely accepted death. Likewise, in another passage from lib. 2. cont. Gent., he plainly speaks of necessity taken from prior causes when they operate after the manner of nature, as is clear from the context itself, in which he speaks of prior necessity arising from a material or formal cause, which are essential principles and naturally cause their effects. Likewise, he also speaks of efficient or moving causes operating naturally, not of the first cause simply. The passage adduced from q. 6. de malo concerns a natural disposition that determines; St Thomas says that this makes the act necessary, but this is understood with respect to specification and on the part of the object, not with respect to exercise, as is clear from the end of the body of the article and from what he says in p. 2. q. 9. art. 5., where he teaches expressly that, with respect to the exercise of the act, the will cannot be moved efficaciously either by the heavenly bodies or by the sensitive appetite.

XLIII. To the second confirmation I answer that it is one thing for an act to be necessary, given this or that; it is another for it to be necessary on a supposition. Beatific love of God, then, is necessary with respect to exercise, given the beatific vision, which it follows; for if the blessed did not see God in his essence, they would not love him necessarily. Nevertheless, that love is not called necessary merely on a supposition, but absolutely and simply.¹⁰⁶ The reason is that it is directed toward God through a judgment by which the intellect judges that this supreme good has a necessary connection with the good in general, toward which the will is naturally determined, and consequently that it must necessarily be loved. Hence the will of one who sees God in his essence loves him necessarily, and not freely. But this reason does not apply to acts which the will produces in this life, although they are necessary on the supposition of the divine will. For God’s decree does not predetermine or move the created will to them through a judgment naturally determined to one thing, but through an indifferent judgment of reason: that is, the intellect judges that this good to be pursued has no necessary fittingness with the good whose love the will is naturally determined to. For although freedom is formally in the will, it nevertheless originates and is grounded radically in the indifference of the object and of the judgment of reason by which it is proposed to the will as something to be loved, as was explained in disp. 18. nu. 23.

By this we also answer the third confirmation: first spontaneous movements and things done in sleep proceed naturally from a person, without a judgment of reason; and therefore they are not free acts, since natural inattention and sleep, which is presupposed, deprive a person of the use of reason with respect to such acts. But the efficacious decree of the divine will, which predetermines our free choice to consent, does not deprive a person of the judgment of reason; rather, it applies his will to acting through a judgment of reason, in which the formal freedom of the will is rooted, as was said. Hence the cases are not alike.

XLIV. To the tenth argument I answer that, for the will to be free, it must indeed have dominion over its act; it need not, however, have first and absolute dominion over it, as will be made clear in disp. 117. For this dominion resides only in God, who is the first free being, on whom all created freedom depends intrinsically.¹⁰⁷ Hence St Thomas, in 2. sent. d. 25. q. 1. ar. 1. ad tertium argumentum, speaking of created free choice, says: “The determination of the action and of the end is placed in the power of free choice; hence dominion over its act remains its own, though not in the same way as it does for the first agent.” By these words he teaches that the dominion which created free choice has over its acts is subject and subordinate to God’s first and absolute dominion. He teaches this also in 3. cont. Gent. c. 169., whose words we shall adduce in disp. 117. num. 7. Just as, then, a created will moves itself to its operations but is not, simply speaking, the first mover of itself, so likewise it has dominion over its act but not first dominion. In answer to the authority of St Thomas cited in the reply to the first argument, I say that when he says that free choice is in God because the determination of his act is from himself and not from another, by this causal clause he proves not only that free choice is in God, but also that the free choice in him is most perfect, absolute, and wholly independent of another, since he has no higher cause by which he is determined to his acts. Human free choice, however, because it is created, although it determines its own act, nevertheless determines it as predetermined by God, according to the manner of its nature, just as it moves itself while itself moved by God. But this must be treated in disp. 117.

Second, we reply that this argument proves only that, for a man to have free choice, it is necessarily required that the determination of his act not be in him from another as from a proximate efficient cause, with free choice itself being merely passive; rather, it must be from himself, as from a proximate, active, self-moving principle. Nevertheless, this is compatible with the first principle and first source of this determination being from God. This solution has strong support in St Thomas, Summa theologiae I, q. 105, a. 4, ad 2, where he says: “To be moved voluntarily is to be moved from oneself, that is, by an intrinsic principle; but that intrinsic principle can be from another extrinsic principle, and thus being moved from oneself is not incompatible with being moved by another.”¹⁰⁸ And in the reply to the third objection he adds: “If the will were so moved by another that it were in no way moved from itself, the will's acts would not be imputed for merit or demerit. But because being moved by another does not exclude being moved from itself, as was said, the account of merit or demerit is consequently not removed.” He gives the same solution in Question 83 of that same Part I, Article 1, ad 3, and in On Evil, Question 3, Article 2, ad 4, where he says that when free choice “moves itself, this does not exclude its being moved by another, from whom it has precisely this: that it moves itself.”

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

I. As I noted at the beginning of the preceding dispute, this question is not about the name “physical predetermination” (although the name itself is very ancient in both its components and, as shown above, has been used by the Fathers and Scholastic Doctors), but about the reality signified by that name. Therefore, so that we may proceed distinctly and without ambiguity or equivocation of terms, both in confirming our opinion and in refuting the contrary one, we must first establish what is understood by the name “physical predetermination,” or “physical motion predetermining free choice to will.”

Some theologians who oppose this kind of predetermination state the question in ambiguous terms and add certain things to the Thomists’ opinion which, if omitted, would make its meaning easier and clearer to understand and make physical predetermination more difficult to attack. For when they explain what is signified by the name “physical predetermination,” they speak as follows: “This physical determination, then, is said to be a certain form impressed upon the will, which together with it completes the proximate principle of the will’s act. This form is said to be a determination of the will not only because it inclines it toward one thing as regards specification, but because it determines it altogether to the exercise of the act.” A few lines later they say: “But this motion, or form, of which we are now treating, which is added above every habit and permanent faculty of the will, is said to be its determination because, once it is posited, the will immediately and infallibly issues into the act toward which it moves or inclines it.” Finally, they say that this determination is called physical, first, to signify and explain that this kind of determination and infallible emanation of the second act from a will thus affected and determined does not proceed from any moral cause, but from the intrinsic and connatural manner of acting of such a form, which, just as it is in its own genus the physical cause of its act, so by its nature is altogether determined to the actual production of that act. Therefore, while it inheres in the will, it determines it at the same time and is, as it were, its intrinsic weight, by which it is altogether determined to perform that same act. This determination is also called physical to distinguish it from moral determination, which does not proceed from a physical and natural manner of acting, but from some moral persuasion or effect; and thus it is not determination simply speaking, nor infallible determination, but determination in a qualified sense. In these words, first, we note that the adverb altogether occurs in none of the Thomists I have seen. For they do not assert that God, by a prior motion, physically predetermines free choice altogether to a determinate operation, much less do they say that the form by which the will is moved is by its nature altogether determined to the actual production of this act. Rather, without that added qualification, they affirm that God truly premoves as efficient cause, applies, and efficaciously predetermines the will by an actual motion physically—that is, as an efficient cause—to such an operation, while preserving its freedom. The pious reader will gather from this how much harm that addition causes: when it is said that God by an actual prior motion physically predetermines the will altogether to consent, it seems to mean that by this same motion God predetermines the will to consent in such a way that the will itself does not determine itself and cannot dissent if it wishes. This is foreign to the sense and opinion not only of the Thomists but of all Catholics. Second, we note that we do not call the prior aid of which we speak a form impressed upon the will, since this name seems to signify a quality constituting the power in first act. Rather, its proper name is an actual motion by which God truly causes through efficient causality free choice to perform a determinate free act, with the true and ready capacity not to perform it if it wishes, as was said in dispute 18, no. 23. Likewise, when the Thomists say that God physically predetermines the will to good acts by his efficacious aid, they do not exclude moral motion, but presuppose it.

Therefore, once we have rejected the expressions that generate obscurity and equivocation and seem to make the Thomists’ opinion harsh and difficult, the clear sense of this dispute is as follows: whether God, not only by the absolute and efficacious decree of his will, which we discussed in the preceding dispute, but also by a prior actual motion inhering in secondary causes, especially free ones, applies them to act and truly through efficient causality and efficaciously causes those same causes to cooperate and perform a particular act—that is, physically determines or predetermines them to act, not by temporal priority, but by priority of reason and causality alone—so that God is the one who truly and efficaciously begins to act before we cooperate with him, and consequently this causal statement is true: Because God acts, our free choice cooperates with him. For this, and nothing else, is signified by the name of God’s motion physically predetermining free choice to perform a particular act. Some theologians call this motion, abstractly, “physical predetermination”; the question, however, concerns the motion that physically predetermines in the concrete. If, then, we agree among ourselves that God by an actual motion premoves and applies free choice in the manner described, and truly through efficient causality and efficaciously causes us to will this or that without prejudice to freedom, as St. Thomas says, we shall care little about the name “physical predetermination.”¹ For once the reality is established, we should not quarrel over the name.

Those theologians, then, who hold that God did not, prior to his middle knowledge of the future cooperation of free choice under a hypothesis, predetermine our free acts in particular by an absolute and efficacious decree—and could not have predetermined them while preserving their freedom, as was seen in the preceding disputation—consequently teach that by his actual motion God does not premove, apply, or physically predetermine free choice to particular good acts. They further add that the actual exercise of that same choice in its operations cannot coexist with such a predetermining motion. Several other theologians defend the same opinion, even some who admit that by an absolute and efficacious decree God predetermines the human will to its acts in particular, while preserving their freedom.

The arguments by which they seek to establish this rest in part on a principle they have persuaded themselves is most evident in philosophy, although it is in fact contrary to philosophy: namely, that God’s general concurrence is not an immediate influx into the secondary cause, but rather concurs with the secondary cause in its effect. We set out and answered their arguments in disputation 18. In part, however, these arguments are drawn from the same principles by which, in the preceding disputation, they tried to prove that external predetermination through God’s absolute and efficacious will removes the freedom of created choice with respect to its actual exercise.

Moreover, they prove their point as follows. Our will, simply as a secondary cause and by its essential subordination to the first cause, does not need this predetermining premotion in order to act. For, as is clear in other secondary causes naturally determined to one outcome, the subordination of any secondary cause to God as first cause is sufficiently preserved by its essential dependence on him, not only in being but also in acting, by reason of the simultaneous or concomitant concurrence that is necessary for it to act. Therefore, this subordination does not require another divine motion predetermining it; hence such a motion is posited superfluously, unless one can assign some special reason why the will needs this kind of predetermination in order to act.

They confirm this as follows. The will is no less powerful in exercising acts connatural to it than other natural causes are in performing their actions. Nor can any special reason be found in the will why this determination should be necessary for acts of the will rather than for the acts of other causes. For the chief reason our opponents give is this: from an indifferent and undetermined cause, precisely as such, no determinate effect can proceed. But the will, once all the requirements on the part of the object, the intellect, and its own powers are in place, is indifferent to eliciting this act or that. Therefore, at least by a priority of nature, before it elicits any act determinately, it must be determined by something. Hence it must be determined by God, since no other cause can determine it, none having efficacy over the will itself; nor can it be determined by itself, since before receiving determination from another it will often be found indifferent and therefore insufficient to make a determination. This argument, however, presupposes something false: namely, that all the indifference of our will is passive and not active, and negative rather than positive. This is shown as follows. If the will, prior to its act, is so indifferent that it cannot determine itself, even when all the prerequisites for willing are in place, unless it is determined by some external agent through a prior motion received in the will, then this indifference is merely passive: it is an indifference to receive this or that determination according to another’s will and choice. Consequently, the will would not be free, not only with respect to its exercise but even with respect to the very faculty of acting. The consequence is proved: with respect to such a determination the will is merely passive, not active, since the determination precedes every act of that will in the order of causality and nature. Further, if that determination were effected by the will, then it would be effected by the will as indifferent, since before the determination it is wholly indifferent. By the same reasoning, then, willing itself, even if determined, could proceed from the will as indifferent.

II. Second, it is argued as follows. A power that is by its very nature actively and passively indifferent, as master of its own act, is able by its intrinsic power, together with the general concurrence of the first cause, to determine itself to its act. Therefore, it does not need to be predetermined by God through a prior motion in order to act. The antecedent is proved: such a power, although formally indifferent in itself, is nevertheless virtually in act because of its perfection and eminent power, through which it has true and proper dominion over its act. Therefore, by a second act it can determine itself formally, just as the divine will, although in itself indifferent with respect to producing this or that effect, nevertheless determines itself; because of its eminent active power, it is virtually in act.

They confirm this. There is no contradiction in the will’s being indifferent in itself in first act and being determined through a second act, since one act does not necessarily include the negation of another. Just as prime matter’s being indifferent in passive potency and being actualized or determined by one formal act are not opposed but rather follow naturally together, so likewise it is fitting for the will to be actively and perfectly indifferent and, by its own choice and intrinsic power, to unfold itself into one act and through that act to be determined formally, both by acting and by receiving that act.

III. Third argument. To be formally and physically determined is nothing other than to will. Therefore such determination can neither come from an external agent without the will itself, nor be anything prior to the act of willing that is its efficient cause. The antecedent is clear: that intrinsic determination of the will, inhering in a human being and in the will, exists only in the will itself as in its subject. Therefore it is either something in the manner of a first act or a second act of the will. But it cannot be something in the manner of a first act, since it is not a habit—for a habit does not determine the will; rather, the will uses it when it wills. Nor, properly speaking, does the will need another first act, especially to elicit acts proportionate and natural to it, since it is sufficiently constituted in first act by itself. Therefore such determination can be nothing other than the second act, which is willing or the action of willing; for no intermediate term between first act and second act can be conceived, and none was ever taught by Aristotle.

This is confirmed. Even if the will needed some other active principle in the manner of a first act for supernatural acts, that principle would nevertheless be subject to its freedom as regards use; for the same reasoning applies to it as to a habit. Therefore, by such a first act the will is not predetermined to will this or that.

Fourth argument. The determination of the will must be voluntary; otherwise the will would not be determined in a free and spontaneous manner, but rather as if it were some lifeless thing. But nothing can be voluntary unless it either presupposes an act of willing by which it is voluntary, or is itself the very act of willing, which is voluntary in itself and intrinsically. Therefore such determination either presupposes an act of willing or is itself the very act of willing; consequently, it does not predetermine that same will to an act of willing.

Fifth argument. Predetermination by a prior motion received in the will before its free influx is incompatible with the freedom of that same will; therefore it must not be admitted. The antecedent is proved as follows: if that determination is necessary for acting in the manner of a necessary influx of the First Cause, then without that influx the will cannot be moved as a proximate and ready power for action, just as fire cannot heat without God's concurrence, nor can a hand move a pen unless it is moved by the will or appetite. For the will is said to depend more intimately and essentially on this motion and determination of God in its operation than the motion of the hand depends on the will. Therefore, for as long as God does not give this determination, even if everything necessary for willing is present, it is still not placed in the will's power to will or act. The consequence is proved: the will has no power either to will without such determination or to have such a determination so that it wills. Therefore willing itself is never in its power unless God first grants this sort of determination, which is solely within his power and choice. Thus a human being's motion and determination could be free for God himself, but not for the human being, just as the motion of the hand is free for the will but not for the hand.

This is confirmed. With respect to that determination our will is not free, for in receiving it the will is purely passive. Once it has received it, however, it necessarily proceeds to act, so that it can no longer fail to act at all. Therefore it never has free use of its operation, nor can it have it; consequently, even the root freedom of created will perishes.

IIII. Sixth argument. Given any help or prior motion of God in the will, the will can dissent and resist that motion if it wishes. Therefore that motion does not efficaciously predetermine it to consent. The consequence is clear: for if it predetermined the will, once that help were given, the will could not dissent, since these two things cannot be true at once: that the motion predetermining it to consent is in the will and that the will dissents. The antecedent, however, seems expressly taught by the Council of Trent, Session 6, on justification, chapter 5 and canon 4, where, speaking of the prior motion by which free choice is aroused and moved by God toward justification, it determines that free choice can reject that motion and dissent from it if it wishes. The Council of Sens also says in its decree of faith, no. 15: “God's drawing help is not such,” it says, “as cannot be resisted, for otherwise it would prejudice free choice.” Here the word “resist” implies the composite sense, for the will does not resist a motion by which it is not touched.

This argument is confirmed: otherwise the Council of Trent would have defined nothing against the heretics of our time who deny freedom of choice. For they would very easily grant that, before God's efficacious motion predetermining consent is in a person, his free choice can dissent and fail to act, provided they were allowed to maintain that, once that motion is in the will, it cannot fail to perform the act to which it is efficaciously predetermined by that motion.

V. Seventh argument. The opinion that posits predetermining help as necessary for the will to act makes God's commandments impossible, contrary to the Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 11, on justification, and canon 18, and contrary to the common opinion of the saints, whose testimonies we shall cite below. Therefore it must not be admitted. The antecedent is proved as follows: as the authors of the opposing opinion admit, before foreseeing any works, God, solely by his own will, denies this predetermining help to all those who are not converted or do not act. But without a necessary active principle no one can act or perform anything. Therefore all those who are not converted or do not act truly cannot be converted, act, or fulfill God's commandments, especially since such predetermining help is not in man's power but only in God's, who grants it to whomever and whenever he wills. Consequently, God would command man to do the impossible.

Eighth argument. If, besides sufficient help, another efficacious predetermining help were necessary for acting, it would follow that no help would remain that was truly sufficient. This consequence must in no way be admitted. Therefore, etc. The consequence is proved as follows. Something is said to be simply sufficient for an effect if nothing else is simply necessary beyond it. For someone who had four votes by which he would be elected prelate would not be said to have sufficient votes if four further votes were simply necessary in addition to them. Therefore, if, for a man actually to act, another predetermining help is necessary besides sufficient help, the help called sufficient is not truly sufficient for acting, but will be sufficient in name alone. The falsity of the consequence is proved from 1 Timothy 2: “God wills all men to be saved.” Ecclesiasticus 15: “Do not say, ‘It is through God that it is lacking,’ etc.” Hosea 13: “Your destruction, Israel; your help is only in me.” Isaiah 5: “What more ought I to have done for my vineyard that I have not done?” Psalm 129: “With the Lord there is mercy, and with him abundant redemption.” And it is proved from other passages of Scripture, the Councils, and the holy Fathers, from which we shall show in Disputation 112 that, in due place and time, God denies no adult, especially a believer, sufficient help for acting rightly in this life.

Ninth argument. It would follow from the opposing opinion that no place would remain for divine exhortations and admonitions. But this is contrary to the express passages of Scripture, in which people are often admonished to turn away from evil and do good. The consequence is proved: God does not exhort everyone in Scripture to prophesy, raise the dead to life, or heal incurable diseases because it is not established in men's power and choice to possess or obtain gifts by which they can accomplish these things. Rather, God distributes such gifts solely by his own will, to whomever and whenever he wills. Therefore, if another efficacious predetermining help is required for acting rightly besides sufficient help, and if having this help is not established in our power but only in God's, who grants it solely by his own will to whomever and whenever he wills, then by the same reasoning people should not be exhorted to penance or to other righteous or pious acts.

Tenth argument. For the same reason that predetermining help is said to be necessary for the will to perform good acts, it would also be necessary for it to perform sinful and intrinsically evil acts. Consequently, God would predetermine man's will to evil and would be the first author and cause of sin. But this is contrary to the express passages of Scripture and to the definition of the Council of Orange, canon 25, and of Trent, Session 6, canon 6, which will be examined expressly in the following disputation. Therefore, etc.

VI. St Augustine and St Thomas teach the opposing opinion in the passages cited in the preceding disputation and those to be cited below. All the Thomists and other theologians who have attained a true understanding of the teaching of St Augustine and St Thomas defend it with unanimous agreement. For all acknowledge that God, the Best and Greatest, not only by his eternal and efficacious decree predetermined all secondary causes, even contingent and free ones, to their particular effects and operations in all their circumstances, but also in time, through a motion prior to the determinations of secondary causes—that is, through efficacious predetermining help—predetermined each one according to the condition of its own nature, especially when the causes are free and contingent.

VII. To explain this, we must first examine and recall what we said in Disputation 18, where we showed expressly that God's general concurrence is an immediate influx into secondary causes, whether natural or free and contingent, by which God, as simply the First Agent, efficaciously moves and applies those same causes to acting according to the condition of their own nature. This motion is something incomplete in the secondary causes themselves, produced by God alone as efficient cause and really distinct from the operation of the secondary cause, as we left explained in Disputation 19.

Second, we must presuppose that the middle knowledge invented by some to reconcile freedom of choice with the infallibility of divine providence and predestination does not exist even in God, as we proved at length in Disputation 7. There we showed that it is impossible for God, before any decree of his will, to know certainly and infallibly what a created will in particular would do on the hypothesis that it were placed in this order of things and in these circumstances.²

VIII. Third, one must presuppose what we demonstrated in the preceding disputation: from eternity, by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will, prior in the order of reason to knowing toward which side the created will would turn—or will turn—by its innate freedom, even on the hypothesis that it were placed in such circumstances, God determined all the good acts that it and each secondary cause would perform in time, while the nature and freedom of that cause remained whole and unharmed. For the resolution of this controversy and the true understanding of Sts. Augustine and Thomas depend on these three principles. Let the following, then, be stated.

IX. First conclusion. By that prior motion God efficaciously applies the created will so that it acts freely and infallibly, just as he also applies other secondary causes so that they act naturally.³ The conclusion is taught by St. Thomas, q. 3, On the Power of God, art. 7, at the end of the body, where he says: God is the cause of every action insofar as he gives the power to act, insofar as he preserves it, insofar as he applies it to action, and insofar as every other power acts by his power. And in 1 p., q. 105, art. 5, ad 3, he says: God not only gives forms to things, but also preserves them in being and applies them to acting. He teaches the same in Against the Gentiles III, ch. 63, argument 4, and ch. 70, argument 3. St. Augustine seems to teach it in On Various Questions to Simplicianus I, q. 2, after the middle, where he says: Who would dare say that God lacked a way of calling by which he might also apply Esau’s mind to that faith and join his will to it, in which Jacob was justified? By these words he plainly indicates that through the efficacious help of his grace God applies a person’s will to believing and acting piously, and joins it to himself.

Moreover, the conclusion is proved as follows. A power that regards an end moves and applies the other powers to their operations. For this reason the will moves and applies the other powers with respect to exercise, since it regards the end itself. The same is true of charity with respect to the other virtues: because charity has God as its object insofar as he is the supernatural end, it orders and applies the acts of the other virtues and joins them to that end. But God’s power regards the end of all secondary causes and of the will itself. Therefore, it moves and applies the created will to its operations.

Second. God is the final cause of the application of secondary causes; therefore he is the efficient cause of that same application. The inference is proved: God is the first efficient cause with respect to all things of which he is the ultimate end. This is gathered clearly enough from the words in Rev. 1, I am the α and the ω, the beginning and the end, which signify that God is the first efficient cause of the things of which he is the ultimate end. The argument can be confirmed: otherwise God would be the ultimate end of all things that have being by participation, while something besides God would be the first efficient principle of some being by participation. For that application by which secondary causes are efficaciously applied to acting is not a being of reason but something real existing in the nature of things. Therefore, if God is the ultimate end of that application but not its first efficient principle, it follows that the first principle and ultimate end of all things are not one and the same.

Third, God is the true Lord of all secondary causes; therefore, he uses them when and how he wills. The inference is proved: dominion is the power to use a thing. Therefore, if God has dominion over all secondary causes, he uses them and applies them to their operations.

They confirm this. As St. Thomas teaches in 1.2, q. 16, art. 1: The use of a thing is nothing other than its application to some operation. Hence the operation to which we apply a thing is also called its use, just as riding is the use of a horse and striking is the use of a stick.⁴ For this reason dominion is defined as the proper power of anyone to use a thing for every use permitted by law. Since, then, God has absolute and supreme dominion over the created will, it follows that he uses it and consequently applies it to its proper operations.

X. Some theologians answer that God, as supreme Lord, can use all secondary causes as he wills, but they deny that this use consists in that prior application or determination. To explain their view, they observe that it is one thing for the action itself of a secondary cause to be under God’s dominion—which is always true and essential to every created action insofar as it is a positive thing—and another for a secondary cause, as it performs that action, to act by God’s dominion, or for its action, insofar as it is that cause’s action, to be an exercise of divine dominion by which God, as supreme Lord, wills to use it. Although this often occurs, it is not necessary. For God sometimes permits his creature to act otherwise than he himself would will, as is clear when a human being sins by exercising an evil will. Then the person does not properly perform the service of God as supreme Lord, nor does God then use that will for that action, since he simply does not will the action but permits it. If someone asks what constitutes, essentially, the exercise of God’s dominion over the created will and every other secondary cause, they answer that it consists in two things. First, God does something from a created thing in such a way that he turns one creature into another, as he turned water into wine at Cana in Galilee, or even annihilates it. They say that this is done by an action of God, either positive or negative—the latter being the suspension of the influx by which he preserved it in being, and not by any predetermination. Second, God works something through that same secondary cause; this exercise of dominion takes place through God’s command and through the creature’s own action proceeding from God’s will and command.

XI. This solution, however, is not satisfactory, for it is argued against as follows. Not only the action of the will and of every other secondary cause, but also the very determination by which the will determines itself and applies itself to acting, is under God’s dominion. Therefore, God makes use of this very application of the will; therefore, he applies the will so that it determines itself.⁵ The inference is clear: for, as was said on the authority of St. Thomas, the use of something means nothing other than its application to some operation. This is confirmed as follows: the proper use of an operative power, insofar as it is such, is to operate; therefore, if God uses a created operative power, he applies it to operate. Moreover, according to the solution given, it often happens that a secondary cause, in performing its action, acts under God’s dominion, or that its action, insofar as it is its action, is an exercise of God’s dominion. Therefore, we already have what we intended to show: God often applies the will to acting while preserving its freedom, and consequently this kind of application does not prejudice human freedom. That this is necessary is proved as follows. This application proceeds from God’s supreme dominion; but all secondary causes in all their operations, at least according to every actuality they possess, are subject to God’s supreme dominion. Therefore, God not only often but always applies secondary causes to their operations whenever they act; therefore such application is necessarily presupposed. In answer to the objection brought forward concerning a person who exercises his evil will, we reply that although God does not will that action insofar as it is evil, but merely permits it, nevertheless, insofar as it is an action and a positive being, he wills it simply by his absolute and efficacious will, since as such it is good. Consequently, it comes from God as first cause, and under this aspect God uses the created will under this aspect and applies it to produce that same action insofar as it is an action. By performing that action insofar as it is an action, the will itself properly performs the service of God, as will be clear in the following dispute,⁶ although, when considered as morally evil, the created will does not serve God by producing it, but displeases him, as the authors of the solution we are attacking admit. Further, God’s use of dominion consists in his causing something by his command through a secondary cause, even a free one. Therefore, no secondary cause does anything without God’s prior motion, which applies it to act in this or that particular way. Therefore, it is clearly inferred from God’s supreme dominion over all secondary causes that he applies them to acting.

XII. The conclusion is proved fourth. The actual application of the will to acting is something created, willed and known by God through practical knowledge, and distinct from the will’s operative power, since it can happen that the will has the power to act but is not applied to an operation and does not act. Therefore, God effects this application; otherwise he would not be simply the first cause of all things. Therefore, he applies the will to acting.

They answer that God does indeed apply the will to acting, but not by an application prior to the determination and application by which the will determines and applies itself; rather, they say, the two applications are simultaneous. For they contend that the application of the will is nothing other than the very free act of the will: the created will applies itself by willing and wills by applying itself. Therefore, since God does not produce the created act of willing antecedently to the will’s consent and influx, it remains that he does not apply it to acting by any application prior to the consent and influx of that same will.

This solution, however, is easily refuted. For although the determination by which the will formally determines itself is really the very free act of the will, the prior determination by which God causes the will to determine itself is really distinct from the will’s free act, as was said in dispute 19, no. 8. God applies the will by a prior application, just as by a prior motion he moves it, in accordance with what was said in dispute 18.

XIII. Second conclusion. Through this motion and application, God really changes the will from one thing to another and makes it willing when it was unwilling. This is St. Thomas’s conclusion in Sentences II, d. 25, q. 1, art. 2, ad 1, where he says: God works in the will and in free choice according to its requirements. Hence, even if he changes a person’s will into something else, he nevertheless by his omnipotence brings it about that it willingly wills that into which it is changed. And in De veritate q. 22, art. 8, in the body, he says: God can change the will by necessity. Here the expression “by necessity” does not signify absolute necessity of acting, for that is repugnant to the freedom of the will, but conditional necessity, or the necessity of infallibility, as is clear from what he teaches in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 112, art. 3. The freedom of choice in acting is entirely compatible with this necessity, as will be clear in dispute 25. Explaining how this change can be made by God without doing violence to the will or compelling it, he adds: When God changes the will, he causes one inclination to succeed the previous inclination, so that the first is removed and the second remains. Hence that to which he leads the will is not contrary to the inclination that now exists, but to the inclination that existed before. Therefore it is neither violence nor compulsion. For example, by reason of its heaviness, a stone has an inclination toward a lower place; if, while that inclination remains, it is thrown upward, this is violence. But if God removes from the stone the inclination of heaviness and gives it an inclination of lightness, then its being carried upward is not violent to it. Thus a change of motion can occur without violence. In this way it must be understood that God changes the will without compelling the will. And below he says: Just as the will can change its own act into another, so can God, and much more so. And in the same question, art. 9, in the body, he says: On the part of the will, nothing can change the act of the will except what operates within the will. This is the will itself, and that which is the cause of the will’s existence—which, according to the faith, is God alone. Therefore, God alone can transfer the inclination of the will, which he gave it, from one thing to another as he wills. He teaches the same in other passages to be cited for the fourth conclusion. Nor can St. Thomas be explained as speaking only of a change in the will through the free act that God produces together with the will itself, by which act he also makes the unwilling willing. For, as was shown in dispute 18, God through his actual aid, or efficacious motion, by which he changes the will, acts immediately upon the will as a cause, as is clear from many passages of St. Thomas cited there.

Moreover, by a simultaneous influx God does not change the will so that it acts, nor cause us to will or act; he merely cooperates at the same time if we will. Therefore, some aid must be established by which God so changes the will that he causes it to exert its influence, consent, and cooperate with God who moves it.⁷

XIV. St. Augustine holds the same opinion throughout. In On Grace and Free Choice, ch. 19, he says: I think I have argued sufficiently against those who vehemently oppose God’s grace, by which the human will is not taken away but changed from evil to good, and, when it has become good, is helped. And in book 1 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, ch. 20, he says: But this God, by his most hidden and most efficacious power, converts and transfers a person from indignation to gentleness—that is, from a will to harm to a will to favor—in accordance with the Apostle’s words: “For it is God who works in you both to will.”⁸ He says the same in On the Grace of Christ, against the Pelagians and Caelestius, ch. 24, a passage we examined in our commentaries on Isaiah above, nos. 11 and 12. Likewise, in On Grace and Free Choice, ch. 16, he says: It is certain that we will when we will, but he makes us will what is good. It is certain that we act when we act, but he makes us act, by supplying the will with most efficacious powers—he who said: “I will make you walk in my statutes, observe my judgments, and act according to them.” When he says, “I will make you act,” what else does he say but “I will take away from you the heart of stone, by which you did not act, and give you a heart of flesh, by which you may act”?⁹ And in book 1 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, ch. 19, he says: In wondrous ways a person is drawn by him who knows how to work inwardly in human hearts—not so that people believe unwillingly (which cannot happen), but so that they become willing from being unwilling. He says many other similar things in many other passages. This conclusion will be clear from the arguments to be brought forward below for the fourth conclusion.

XV. Third conclusion. By this motion, application, and change, God determines the will to a determinate act while preserving its freedom.¹⁰ This conclusion is plainly gathered from the passages of St. Thomas cited in the preceding dispute, no. 11, but especially 1. p. quaest. 19. art. 3. ad 5, and De potentia q. 3, art. 7, in the body and ad 7.

These and many other similar passages are explained in two ways by the authors of the opposing opinion. First, they are understood to concern a cooperating and simultaneous motion, not a prior and operative one. But this explanation expressly contradicts St Thomas's text. In the cited Question 3 of On the Power of God, Article 7, ad 3, he says: “In the operation by which God acts, moving nature, nature itself does not act.” But when God moves by a simultaneous motion, nature itself acts together with him. Therefore the passage is not understood of a cooperating motion. And in the reply to the seventh objection of that same article, he clearly teaches that through the operation by which God acts, moving nature, he confers on it something incomplete by which it acts actually, in the manner in which the power of an art is in an artisan's instrument. Therefore he is speaking of a motion that precedes the operation of the secondary cause in the order of causality. In Summa contra Gentiles III, chapter 149, argument 1, speaking of divine help that moves our free choice, he says: “Man, then, does not move himself to obtain divine help, which is above him; rather, he is moved by God to obtain it. The motion of the mover precedes the movement of the thing moved in reason and in cause. Therefore divine help is not given to us because we advance toward it by good works; rather, we make progress through good works precisely because we are preceded by divine help.” Here he speaks openly of a prevenient motion. And certainly it is contrary to the nature of the aforesaid application to say that it is merely a simultaneous action. For the application by which God applies a secondary cause to acting is understood as prior in the order of reason and causality to the action of the secondary cause itself, which is applied; for the cause is applied in order to act. From these points it is manifest how those who say that God premoves and predetermines the will to its operations while preserving its freedom speak in conformity with St Thomas: for if he moves, applies, and determines the will prior in nature or causality, then surely he premoves and predetermines it.

XVI. Fourth conclusion. This motion, of which we have spoken in the preceding conclusions, is not merely moral but also physical; that is, it does not pertain only to the object, nor is it a motion merely in the manner of one who persuades, advises, or attracts, or in any way draws inwardly in a moral sense. Rather, it pertains to the power, is received in the power itself, and is a motion in the manner of a cause that truly and properly acts; through it God truly and efficaciously brings it about that the will cooperates and consents.¹¹ To make this conclusion clear, note that, as St Thomas teaches in On Evil, Question 3, Article 3, body, something can be a cause of human acts in two ways. First, “in the manner of one who disposes or persuades inwardly or outwardly, or even in the manner of one who commands, etc.” For the will is moved “from outside, as by an object apprehended: for an apprehended good is said to move the will. In this way one who advises or persuades is said to move it, insofar as he makes something appear good; but an object presented to the will does not move the will by necessity,” since it does not efficaciously make it will. From this the holy Doctor concludes that “no persuasion by necessity,” that is, efficaciously and infallibly, “moves a man to act.” He also infers “that the Devil is not properly the cause of sin, but only in the manner of one who persuades.” Hence one who merely moves another's will toward some act by attracting, inviting, or even inwardly persuading is not the proper cause of the human being's performing that act, but is so only metaphorically. Second, something can be a cause of a human act in the manner of one who perfects it: “A perfecting cause is that by whose action the agent is directly inclined to act,” and the effect follows from it. In this way, St Thomas says that “the perfecting and proper cause of a voluntary act is only that which operates inwardly. But this can be nothing other than the will itself, as a secondary cause, and God, as the First Cause. The reason is that an act of the will is nothing other than a certain inclination of the will toward what is willed, just as the natural appetite is nothing other than an inclination of nature toward something. But the inclination of nature comes both from the natural form and from the one who gave the form.” From this he infers that “the movement of the will proceeds directly from the will and from God, who is the cause of the will, who alone operates in the will and can incline the will toward whatever he wills.”

XVII. What we assert in the conclusion, then, is that by the prior motion through which God determines the will to act, he is its cause not merely morally, by attracting, advising, persuading, or in any other way moving it morally from within, but also by perfecting it, or as a truly and properly efficient cause, making the will will this or that particular good. This conclusion, thus explained, is expressly taught by St. Thomas in q. 3, On Evil, art. 3, cited above; he also teaches it in many other places. For in 1 p., q. 106, art. 2, in the body, he says that on the part of the power itself, the will cannot be moved in any way except by God; for the operation of the will is a certain inclination of the will toward what is willed. But only he who bestowed on the creature the power of willing can change this inclination, just as only that agent can change a natural inclination which can give the power that the natural inclination follows. God alone, however, bestows on the creature the power of willing, because God alone is the author of intellectual nature. And in q. 111, art. 2, in the body, he says: The will can be changed in two ways. In one way, from within; and in this way, since the movement of the will is nothing other than the inclination of the will toward the thing willed, only God can change the will, for he gives intellectual nature the power for such an inclination. For just as a natural inclination comes only from God, who gives nature, so a voluntary inclination comes only from God, who causes the will. And in Against the Gentiles III, ch. 88, argument 3, he says: God alone can incline our will toward something—that is, determine or predetermine it. In argument 5 he adds: God alone can move the will as an agent, without violence. To move the will as an agent is truly to bring it about through efficient causality that the will itself moves and acts freely, as is clear from what was established above. For one who moves the will only by attracting, inviting, or persuading does not move it truly through efficient causality and efficaciously on the part of the power, but only on the part of the object and inefficaciously, as St. Thomas teaches in the places cited above. Also, in ch. 89 of the same book, he proves by many arguments against Origen that God causes our willing and accomplishing—not only insofar as he gives us the power of willing, but also because he makes us will this or that. And in q. 22, On Truth, art. 9, in the body, he says: On the part of the will, nothing can change the act of the will except that which works within the will; and this is the will itself and that which is the cause of the will’s being, which according to the faith is God alone. Hence God alone can transfer the inclination of the will, which he gave it, from one thing to another, as he wills. He teaches the same in 2.2, q. 6, art. 1, in the body, and in Quodlibet 1, art. 1.

XVIII. Moreover, the conclusion is proved. If by his actual motion God moved the will only by persuading, attracting, inviting, or in any other way—even by inward moral persuasion—then it would not be proper to God alone to change the created will and move it efficaciously to good acts. For one human being or an angel can move another’s will by persuading, attracting, and inviting; indeed, the devil can in this way premove a person to sin, as St. Thomas shows in q. 3, On Evil, art. 3. If one says that there is a difference because God not only persuades the good on the part of the object, but also truly causes through efficient causality in the intellect pious illuminations or thoughts on the part of the power, and excites the will through indeliberate motions—something one human being or angel cannot directly effect in another’s intellect or will—there is an objection. For St. Thomas says in q. 3, On Evil, art. 4, in the body, that an angel can also invisibly be a cause of a person’s acting. This, he says, takes place by way of persuasion and by way of disposition. It is by way of persuasion when something is presented to the cognitive power as good. This can happen in three ways, since something may be presented to the intellect, to the interior sense, or even to the exterior sense. It may be presented to the intellect because the human intellect can be helped by the angelic intellect to know something by a kind of illumination, as Dionysius says. Although an angel cannot directly cause an act of the will, since an act of the will is nothing other than a certain inclination proceeding from within, he can nevertheless impress something on the intellect, whose act consists in receiving from outside; hence it is said that understanding is a kind of undergoing.

Moreover, the same answer is refuted because true efficient causality must be attributed to God as first cause not only with respect to the illumination of the intellect and the excitation of the will through indeliberate acts, but also with respect to the concurrence of that same will in every good free act. Therefore, one must say that by moving the will God truly brings it about through efficient causality that the will acts. But this will be treated more fully in disputations 86 and 91, in the discussion of the efficacious help of grace that works beforehand.

XIX. Fifth conclusion. By an actual efficacious motion, after the manner of a physical cause—that is, truly through efficient causality—God predetermines the human will to good free acts, so that the will, moved by God through this help, freely and infallibly determines itself to produce a second act freely.

To explain this conclusion, note that since it pertains to divine providence to preserve the natures of secondary causes that it moves or predetermines to act, when the secondary causes are natural God predetermines them to act in such a way that he makes them act naturally, that is, by absolute necessity and not freely. But if the secondary causes are free, he predetermines them to act in such a way that he makes them act infallibly, not naturally, that is, by absolute necessity, but freely and contingently in accordance with their own nature. Therefore, when we assert that God, by his efficacious motion, physically predetermines created will so that it freely performs good acts, the word “physically,” as we said above, is not taken to mean the same as “naturally”; rather, it signifies a true and real predetermination, distinguished from that which is merely moral or metaphorical.¹² In this sense the Council of Ephesus, in anathema 3 cited in Disputation 22, no. 2, called the hypostatic union of the two natures, the divine and the human, in the same suppositum of the Word “physical,” that is, true and real, as distinguished from a metaphorical union. In the same way, we assert that God, by his efficacious motion, physically predetermines created will so that the will itself freely and indefectibly determines itself by producing a good act, not by necessity but according to the mode of the will, which consists in an active faculty for either of two alternatives. Free choice always retains this faculty, even when it is actually predetermined and acts, as we said in Disputation 18, no. 23, and as will be clear in Disputations 115 and 116.

XX. The conclusion is proved first by the authority of St Thomas, On Truth, Question 22, Article 8. In that passage, as some authors of the opposing opinion admit, he clearly teaches that God inclines the will to desire something by determining it efficaciously and physically, not only immediately but also through some entity received in the will. They add that, according to St Thomas's mind, God moves all secondary causes and applies them to their operations, so that even when he moves the will, he impresses something on it in the manner of something transient. Once this is posited, in the composite sense the free operation of the will to which God moves it cannot fail to follow. They prove this with many testimonies of St Thomas; those we cited for the preceding conclusions prove it efficaciously.

Second, the argument is proved as follows. Just as it belongs to the essence of free choice to determine itself, so it belongs to its essence to move itself. But created free choice, because it is not simply the first thing to move itself, does not move itself unless it is first moved by God, as St Thomas teaches in many places.¹³ Therefore, likewise, because created free choice is not simply the first free thing or the first thing to determine itself, it determines itself formally through a second act, but is determined prior in the order of nature by God through prior help, by which its operative power is completed in act.

Third, it is proved by St Thomas's reasoning. A determinate operation does not follow from something's being indifferent between either of two alternatives unless it is determined prior in the order of nature by something else that is in act, because there would be no greater reason why one act rather than its opposite should follow.¹⁴ But created will, even when moved by sufficient help, is indifferent between either of two alternatives. Therefore, unless it is determined prior in the order of nature by God, who is pure act, to one particular side, it will produce no determinate act.¹⁵ Therefore efficacious help must be posited that physically predetermines the will to free consent.

XXI. Fourth. As the authors of the opposing opinion frankly admit, physically predetermining help, or physical or quasi-physical predetermination, and efficacious help independently of the cooperation of our free choice signify the same thing. But the help of assisting grace is efficacious independently of the free cooperation of our free choice. Therefore physically predetermining efficacious help of the will must be admitted, so that it may consent. The minor premise will be clear in Disputations 72, 73, and 90, and is proved as follows: the efficacy of a cause does not depend on its effect; rather, the effect depends on the cause's efficacy. But the concurrence and consent of free choice with God, who calls, is an effect of efficacious help, as St Thomas often says.¹⁶ Therefore the efficacy of that same help does not depend on the free cooperation of our choice. Rather, the help of grace has its efficacy as it comes from God and from the absolute decree of his will, which efficaciously wills to convert a man without presupposing middle knowledge of the future cooperation of free choice.

Fifth. As the authors of the contrary opinion admit, by efficacious grace God co-determines, that is, determines free choice at the same instant of time. For God and the will are two causes that concur in consent, but one of them determines the other to concur with it and causes it to cooperate with itself; otherwise they would be joined by chance in producing that effect. Therefore, either the human will by its concurrence determines the divine will to concur with it through the aid of grace in good free acts, or, conversely, the divine will by its efficacious grace determines the human will to consent and causes it to concur with itself. But it cannot be said that the human will by its consent determines the divine will and the aid of assisting grace to concur with it in good free acts. Otherwise this causal statement would be true: “Because the created will acts, God cooperates”; whereas this one would be false: “Because God acts, man cooperates.” Yet that cannot be said, as will become clear in dispute 99. Therefore, it must be said that by his efficacious motion God physically predetermines the created will to concur with him in particular good acts.

Sixth. By his efficacious motion God applies the created will so that it freely consents, in the way an artisan applies a tool to make an artifact, as was shown in conclusion 2. Therefore, he physically predetermines it to that same consent. For this application cannot exist or be understood without physical predetermination. Hence the authors who oppose this physical predetermination consequently say that God does not apply the created will to acting by a prior motion.

This is confirmed by all the arguments with which in dispute 18 we showed that God’s general concurrence is an immediate influx into secondary causes, by which they are moved and applied to their operations according to their proper nature. For since this prior motion and application are efficacious and cause secondary causes to act, they cannot exist without a predetermination inhering in those same causes.

XXII. Seventh. Between a power constituted in first act by an active virtue permanently inhering in it, or by a superadded habit, and the actual operation of that same free power, there is a certain prior motion by which the will itself is perfected in its active virtue. But this motion physically predetermines the will to act freely and infallibly. Therefore, it must be said that by this same motion God physically predetermines the will to act. The major premise was proved by us above in disputes 18 and 19, no. 10. The minor is clear: since that prior motion is transient and concurrent with the act toward which it moves the will, it is impossible for it to be posited in the will while the will does not perform the act toward which God efficaciously moves that same will.

Eighth. By an efficacious motion, excluding middle knowledge, God infallibly effects that the created will performs a particular act. Therefore, by the same aid he physically predetermines it to act. The inference is clear: if the infallibility of a future free act does not rest upon middle knowledge, it must necessarily be founded upon a physically predetermining aid, as the authors of the contrary opinion frankly admit. The antecedent is proved as follows. As we showed at length in dispute 7, the middle knowledge that some posit in God before the actual decree of the divine will determining the created will’s hypothetically future consent does not in fact exist even in God. Therefore, the infallibility of future consent cannot be founded upon this middle knowledge. It must therefore be founded upon God’s actual, physically predetermining aid.

XXIII. Ninth. By his eternal and absolute decree, by which he efficaciously willed that the created will produce such an act, God by extrinsic predetermination predetermines that same will to produce it freely, as was shown in the preceding dispute. But from God’s extrinsic physical predetermination, by an evident inference, follows an intrinsic physical predetermination inhering in the created will, by which God in time effects that the will freely and infallibly performs the act predetermined by God, as the authors of the contrary opinion admit; this too we noted in dispute 21, no. 14. Therefore, the conclusion follows.

Tenth. This same point can be proved by all the arguments with which in dispute 91 we shall show specifically that God by the efficacious aid of grace that works beforehand physically predetermines the created will, so that through its second act it freely determines itself.

Sixth conclusion. These two things are mutually incompatible: that such a predetermining aid is in free choice and that free choice does not perform the act toward which it is moved, although it can always refrain from performing that same act if it wishes. The first part of this conclusion is proved by the clearest testimonies of St. Prosper and St. Thomas, cited in dispute 18, no. 23, which must be cited again in dispute 115, no. 4, and dispute 122, no. 19.

It is proved further. Otherwise God’s absolute will would be inefficacious and would be hindered by the human will, so that what the omnipotent God willed to happen through that divine will would not happen. But this is repugnant to those words of Scripture: All things whatsoever the Lord willed, he did in heaven and on earth.¹⁷ St. Augustine shows this in the Enchiridion to Laurence, chs. 95 and 96, and in On Correction and Grace, ch. 14.

Moreover, the conclusion is proved by another notable testimony of St. Augustine, who expressly teaches our conclusion in On Correction and Grace, ch. 12. Speaking there of efficacious grace, he says: Therefore the weakness of the human will was helped, so that it might be acted upon by divine grace without turning aside and without separation; and thus, although weak, it might not fail or be broken by any adversity. Therefore, according to St. Augustine, these two things are incompatible: that God move free choice to consent by efficacious help and that free choice nevertheless dissent. Otherwise it would not be acted upon by efficacious grace without turning aside and without separation.

XXIV. The second part of the conclusion is found in the Council of Trent, Session 6, on Justification, canon 4: If anyone says that the free choice of a human being, moved and aroused by God, contributes nothing by assenting to God who arouses and calls it, so that it may dispose and prepare itself to obtain the grace of justification, and that it cannot dissent if it wishes, let him be anathema. Behold, the Council plainly defines that free choice, moved by efficacious grace, consents in such a way that it can always dissent if it wishes. St. Prosper and St. Thomas teach the same in the places cited in disputation 18, no. 23.

Moreover, this is proved by an argument drawn from that same Council of Trent. However much the will is moved by efficacious help to consent to God who arouses and calls it, it truly consents freely, not only by a priority of nature but also in the very instant of time in which it elicits its consent, as will be made clear in the disputations cited below. Therefore, in the same instant in which it consents, it can truly dissent if it wishes¹⁸. The inference is proved: as will be shown in disputations 115 and 116, the capacity for opposites belongs to the nature of a free power. Therefore, it is impossible for the will to consent freely without at the same time retaining the true capacity by which it can dissent if it wishes. We will touch in part on the sense in which free choice, while it consents, can dissent if it wishes—whether it can do so in the composite sense or only in the divided sense, and how this composite or divided sense is to be understood—in disputations 25 and 32. The same matter will be treated expressly in disputations 93 and 94.

XXV. To the first argument I answer by denying the antecedent. For in disputation 18, no. 3, we already showed that even natural secondary causes need God’s predetermining motion in order to act actually, because of their essential subordination and dependence in acting on the influx of the first and most universal cause, and for the other reasons adduced there.

To the confirmation I answer that, for the general reason, the will needs God’s predetermining motion in order to act, just as natural causes do; and it needs it also for a special reason, namely, because the will in itself is indifferent to opposites. Consequently, in order to produce one determinate act, it must be predetermined by God, who is pure act.¹⁹ The argument against this special reason is easily answered: as was shown in the preceding disputation, no. 35 and following, and will be explained further in disputations 115 and 116, the will’s indifference with respect to prior help is passive indifference, as the argument proves. But with respect to the free act it produces after being predetermined by such a prior motion, the will’s indifference is active and free.²⁰ Hence it does not follow that the determination produced by the will—namely, the free act—proceeds from a will not predetermined by God through a motion prior to the operation of that same will, nor that the will itself is not free with respect to the very faculty of acting or with respect to its exercise.

XXVI. To the second argument I answer that, as was said in disputation 18, God’s general concurrence is an immediate influx into the cause. Hence, from the fact that a power which is master of its act can by its intrinsic power, together with the general concurrence of the first cause, determine itself to its act, it follows that it needs the predetermination of the first cause. With respect to this, the case of the human will and the divine will is not the same. For God has absolute and first dominion over his act; therefore, he has no other cause prior to his determination, but the divine will itself first freely determines itself to an object to which it has a non-necessary relation.²¹ But as will become clear in disputation 117, because the created will does not have, simply speaking, first and absolute dominion over its act, it is not the first thing that determines itself. Hence it has another cause prior to its determination, namely, God. This is the solution of St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 19. art. 3. ad 5. When it is argued that the created will is in itself virtually in act, I answer that although it is in first act with respect to an operation proportionate to it, it is not wholly in complete first act. Hence, in order to pass into second act, it must be completed and predetermined by efficacious help, for the reasons we assigned in disputation 18.

XXVII. To the confirmation, we reply that although these two things are not incompatible—that the will is indifferent in itself and is determined by a second act—these two things do involve a manifest incompatibility: that the will is indifferent in itself and a contingent cause, yet is simply the first thing to determine itself through a second act. For a cause that first determines itself cannot, in itself, be contingent and indifferent in first act with an indifference that includes potentiality on the part of the power itself, as was shown in the preceding disputation, no. 36, and is gathered from St Thomas in 1. p. q. 19. art. 3., ad 5.

To the third argument, we reply that if we are speaking of the determination of the will in second act, the will's being determined is nothing other than its willing.²² This determination cannot be anything prior to the very act of willing, nor can it be produced by an external agent without the free influx of the will itself. If, however, the discussion concerns the determination of the will in the ultimate completion of first act, that by which the will is determined to act is something really distinct from the operation of the will itself, as was shown in Disputation 19. To the objection we reply that that by which the will is predetermined is formally neither a second act nor simply a first act, but a certain middle term, namely, the ultimate completion of first act, as was said above from St Thomas. To the objection from Aristotle, we reply first that although he did not teach this middle term between first act and second act, he did not deny it; an argument from the silence of an authority is ineffective.²³ Second, we reply that Aristotle clearly taught that completion of first act when he taught that secondary causes need the prior motion of the most universal cause, so that all the effects of those causes may be reduced to it as the simply First Agent, as is clear from his words cited and explained by us in Disputation 18.

XXVIII. To the confirmation, we reply that the supernatural habit by which the will is made capable of producing supernatural operations is subject to the will's use, like other habits, because it does not predetermine the will to act with respect to the exercise of the act. But supernatural efficacious help, by which the will, perfected by a supernatural habit, is moved and applied to consent, is not subject to the use of that same will as a habit is; rather, the will is subject to God as he moves it in this way.²⁴ For by that motion God subjects the human will to himself and brings it about that created will contributes its free influx, as will be clear in Disputations 86 and 87. Hence by the same motion he predetermines the will to will.

To the fourth argument, we reply that the determination of the will by which it is formally determined in second act must be free and voluntary, since it is nothing other than the free operation itself as it proceeds from the will. But the determination of the will in the ultimate completion of first act is not formally free with respect to created will, because it is not produced by that will as efficient cause but by God alone; nor does it necessarily presuppose another free act of that same will. Rather, it is free only causally, insofar as it brings it about that the will, moved by God, freely and infallibly determines itself.²⁵ It can also be called free on the part of the term toward which it is ultimately ordered, namely, because it predetermines that same will to produce a free act and because the will can reject God's motion if it wishes. As to the objection that, after receiving efficacious motion, the will necessarily proceeds to act, so that it cannot fail to act, we reply that, simply speaking, the will does not proceed to act necessarily but freely, even after receiving the motion; and, absolutely speaking, it can fail to act throughout the entire time it has that motion, as will be clear in Disputations 115 and 116. In fact, however, it will act infallibly: for predetermining motion does not take away from the will its proximate power for the opposite act, but only brings it about that a human being freely and infallibly determines himself to one particular act, as was explained in Disputation 18, no. 23.

XXIX. To the fifth argument, the antecedent is denied. Its proof has already been answered expressly in Disputation 18, no. 20, and Disputation 23, nos. 32, 33, and 34, where an altogether similar argument was presented and resolved. The substance of the solution is that efficacious help is not necessary for a man to be able to act absolutely and simply, but is required only for him actually to act. Hence, from the fact that a man does not receive such help, it does not follow that he cannot act, but only that he will not act; nor does it follow that the man is not free, but only that he is not simply the first free cause. The example given of a hand moved by the will is not to the point: for the hand is moved by the will toward a free act in such a way that it does not move itself through an active free principle intrinsic to it. Created will, however, is moved and predetermined by God through a prior motion toward a free act in such a way that, in the same instant of time, it freely moves itself through an active principle intrinsic to it.²⁶ For, as was said from St Augustine, people are acted upon so that they may act, not so that they themselves do nothing.

XXX. To the sixth argument, we answer that, as was said,²⁷ when the efficacious aid predetermining the will to perform such an act is present, the capacity to perform the opposite if it wishes remains simultaneously in that same will. This alone is defined by the Council of Trent, as will become clear below. The opposite act, however, which is opposed to the act toward which the will is predetermined, does not coexist with that efficacious aid; nor do the cited Councils speak in the composite sense, but absolutely and in the divided sense, as will become clear in disputes 92 and 94, where we shall set out the true understanding of the composite and divided senses.

To the confirmation, we deny the antecedent. In answer to its proof, we say that we do not assert that when this motion is in a person, the will cannot dissent from it, as Luther and Calvin impiously asserted. We say only that it will never dissent, because through this motion God powerfully and gently effects that, although the will can then dissent, it nevertheless does not dissent, but freely consents to God who calls and stirs it. The Council of Trent defines that even when efficacious motion is in a person, he can dissent from it, speaking absolutely and in the divided sense; it does not, however, define that he can dissent from it in the composite sense, as will become clear in disputes 93 and 94. What the heretics of our time, who deny freedom of choice, have erred in has already been explained in dispute 3, no. 7 and following, and dispute 22, nos. 30 and 31; it will be treated more fully in dispute 97, no. 11, and dispute 98, no. 10.

To the seventh argument, we answer that a similar argument was raised against St. Augustine by the Pelagians, as is clear from Augustine himself in book 2 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, ch. 5, and book 4 Against Julian, ch. 8, where he refutes it. The Semi-Pelagians, overcome by the same argument, denied grace that works beforehand, as St. Hilary reports in his letter to St. Augustine right at the beginning, as do St. Augustine in On Correction and Grace, chs. 3 and 4. To the argument, then, we deny the antecedent. In answer to its proof, we answer that efficacious aid is not a necessary principle for a person to be able to act or do something, but for him actually to act, as was said above. Therefore, since through sufficient aid, which is bestowed or offered to all, a person can truly act, when God imposes a command on a person to perform some virtuous act, he does not command him to do anything impossible.

XXXI. Second, we answer that although a sinner who does not fulfill the divine commands does not have the efficacious aid necessary for him actually to act, he can nevertheless, speaking absolutely, have it, and it is through his own fault that he does not have it.²⁸ This possibility is founded upon the mercy of God, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,²⁹ who calls and draws all to the good, and upon the condition of the state of wayfarers, in which free choice is flexible toward good and evil. St. Thomas expressly teaches this in Summa theologiae III, q. 8, art. 3, ad 1, where he says: Those who are unbelievers, although they are not actually of the Church, are nevertheless potentially of the Church; this potentiality is founded on two things: first and principally, on the power of Christ, which is sufficient for the salvation of the whole human race; secondarily, on freedom of choice. Hence this inference is invalid: “For a person actually to act, efficacious aid is necessary; but Peter does not have efficacious aid; therefore he cannot act.” It follows only: “Therefore, he does not actually act.” The point is clear from natural forms: it does not follow that “For Peter to be white, he must have whiteness; but Peter does not have whiteness; therefore, he cannot be white.” For the antecedent is true and the consequent false; what follows is only: “Therefore, Peter is not white.”

XXXII. To the eighth argument, we deny the antecedent, in accordance with what was said in answer to the preceding argument and in dispute 18, no. 20, and dispute 22, no. 34, where the same argument was proposed and answered. For we have said repeatedly, and say now, that this aid is truly sufficient with respect to some effect, beyond which no other principle bestowing the ability to act is required. Nevertheless, it is consistent with this that there be some principle truly sufficient to give a person the ability to act if he wishes, while another actual aid is nevertheless necessary to reduce that power to second act; Ferrariensis explains this very well in Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 155. An example is the visual power, which is sufficient for seeing in the order of first act, because in this genus no other power is required by which a person has a habitual capacity to see. Nevertheless, for this power to be reduced to act, light, the application of the object, and a motion of the power are necessary in addition to it. Therefore, since the motion by which God predetermines through efficient causality free choice to perform such a particular good act is not necessary in order for a person to be able to perform that act if he wishes, but only in order that he actually perform and will it, it follows that a person retains true sufficient aid by which he can truly act piously if he wishes, even if he does not receive within himself the efficacious aid by which God predetermines through efficient causality him to will. In answer to the example brought forward of a person who has four votes, and so on, we say that for a person to be eligible as prelate it is enough that he have no impediment and that the electors be able to elect him; but for him actually to be elected in the case posited, it is necessary that in fact the majority of electors cast votes in his favor. Hence that example proves nothing against our opinion. On the solution of this argument, see Cajetan, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 109, art. 10.

XXXIII. To the ninth argument I answer that by this same argument the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians attacked the necessity of the grace Augustine preached, claiming that it drove people to a kind of despair and did away with the need for admonitions.³⁰ Prosper answers this in On the Calling of All Nations II, ch. 36. We observe that the same argument could be turned against the authors of the opposing opinion. For, as they themselves admit, grace or congruous motion—that is, grace given by God in those circumstances in which he foresees that a person will cooperate—is necessary for that person actually to be converted and cooperate. Since such congruous motion is not in a person’s power but only in God’s, who by his mere will confers it on whom and when he wills, it follows that exhortations and admonitions are useless and deceptive with respect to those to whom God has decided, by his own will, not to confer the aforesaid congruous grace. And if the argument proved anything, it would also conclude that divine predestination is not necessary for human salvation, because it is not within a person’s power to be predestined or not predestined by God, since by his mere will God predestines one person and not another. I therefore answer the argument by denying the antecedent. To its proof I say that the reason sacred Scripture does not exhort everyone to prophesy, raise the dead to life, or heal incurable diseases is not the one touched on in the argument, namely, that it is not in human power and choice to have or obtain the gifts by which such things can be done. The true reason is that doing these things belongs to graces freely given, which are bestowed in the first instance for the benefit of others and not for one’s own benefit,³¹ as St. Thomas teaches expressly in 1.2, q. 111, art. 1. Hence the Apostle says: There are varieties of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all. To each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the benefit³²—that is, of others—: to one, through the Spirit, is given a word of wisdom; to another, a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another, faith in the same Spirit; to another, gifts of healing in one Spirit; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, the discernment of spirits; to another, various kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues. All these things are worked by one and the same Spirit, distributing them individually as he wills. A little later he asks: Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Since, then, a grace freely given is not appropriate to everyone, sacred Scripture does not exhort everyone to perform acts of that kind, but only some. But turning away from evil and doing good pertain to each person’s own benefit; therefore sacred Scripture exhorts all to works of virtue. For although there are some acts of virtue that a human being cannot perform by natural powers alone, no act can be identified that he cannot perform at least with the help of grace. That help, indeed, is mercifully given to whomever it is divinely given; to those to whom it is not given, it is not given as punishment for a preceding sin, at least original sin, as St. Thomas teaches from St. Augustine, On Correction and Grace, chs. 6 and 5, in 2.2, q. 2, art. 5, ad 1.

XXXIV. To the tenth argument I answer that even for the act of sin, insofar as it is an act, God’s prior motion is required, predetermining the created will to that same act insofar as it is an act. For although that action is otherwise intrinsically evil insofar as it proceeds from a deficient will, yet insofar as it is a being and an action it is good, and consequently proceeds from the first good as from the first efficient cause, as will become clear in the following disputation.

Whether God, by a prior motion, truly premoves through efficient causality free choice to an act of sin, as a physical cause, insofar as it is an act and a being.

I. The first opinion is that of a certain more recent Doctor, who not only denies that God premoves or predetermines created will to an act of sin insofar as it is a being, but also denies that the material element of sin, to which evil is always or here and now necessarily attached, is caused by God simply speaking, but only in a qualified sense. He gives as his reason that although God is its per se cause, he is nevertheless only a permissive cause, or a cause by a permissive will, on which such an act necessarily depends. He adds that God simply speaking is not the cause of an evil motion, even insofar as it is a motion or on account of its positive aspect. He attributes this opinion to Augustine, On Free Choice II, chapter 20, and Book III, chapter 1; The City of God V, chapter 8; and Retractations I, chapter 9. Yet in those very passages St Augustine clearly teaches the contrary, as will be clear below. Indeed, other authors who do not admit God's physical predetermination of our will to free acts, even good ones, acknowledge that God, by a simultaneous influx, absolutely and simply effects together with created will any act of sin insofar as it is a being, without contributing to its evil. Hence this first opinion must be rejected as improbable, for the reasons to be given in support of the first and second conclusions. In particular, it would follow from it that God is not the first efficient cause of every positive being insofar as it is a being, and consequently that two first principles of things must be admitted.

The second opinion is that of other theologians who, since they think God cannot physically predetermine created will to good acts, even supernatural ones, without prejudice to our freedom, assert this all the more concerning sinful acts, even insofar as they are acts. Several other Doctors defend the same opinion, including some who admit efficacious prior predetermination by God in good acts, especially supernatural ones. They prove it:

First, from the authorities of Sacred Scripture. For James 1 says: “God is untempted by evils; he himself tempts no one.” But temptation occurs in no other way than by inclining and moving a person to an evil act; for it is for this reason that the Devil is said to tempt a person. Therefore God does not incline or move the will, or predetermine it to an evil act, especially when it is intrinsically sinful, such as hatred of God or blasphemy.

This is confirmed. If God moved a person's will morally, persuading him to consent to an act of blasphemy or hatred of God, he would be said to tempt him. Therefore all the more would he be said to tempt him if he physically moved and predetermined his will to consent, that is, to an act of hatred of God or blasphemy. The consequence is clear: a cause that physically moves the will to an evil act is a more efficacious cause of evil than one that moves it only in a moral way.

The same is proved from Ecclesiasticus 15: “Do not say, ‘It is through God that it is lacking’; do not do what he hates. Do not say, ‘He has led me astray’; for he has no need of impious men.” But if God efficaciously predetermines a person's will to an act of sin, he leads that person astray. And just as it is said of good acts in John 6, “No one can come to me unless my Father draws him”; in Philippians 2, “For it is God who works in us both to will and to accomplish”; and in Ezekiel 36, “I will make you act,” and similarly elsewhere, so it could be said of sinful acts that no one can consent to an act of sin unless the heavenly Father draws him to that consent, that God works in us to will and accomplish an act of sin, that he makes us act, and that he works so that we perform intrinsically evil acts. But this is nothing other than leading a person astray. Therefore, etc.

II. The difficulty of this argument is increased by considering a person afflicted by a grave temptation of lust, who, before consenting, considers by a judgment of reason what is shameful and what is pleasurable. By the power of this consideration he can, in keeping with his freedom, either consent or dissent with divine grace. Let us then also consider God adding his efficacy, preceding this person's consent, and determining his will to consent and to will that lustful act as something pleasurable to him. Surely such a person could justly excuse himself and complain, saying, “Through God it was lacking”: for God could have determined my will to dissent, but he did not—not through any fault of mine, but by his own will. For before I sinned in any way, he had so decreed and acted. He could truly also say, “He led me astray,” for he determined my will and made me perform an act of sin; and unless he had initiated such a will in me, I could not have begun, and after he had determined me, I could not avoid the evil that I had together with that act. Likewise, Hosea 13 says: “Your destruction is from yourself; your help is only in me.” If, then, help is only from God, predetermination to an act of sin is not from him; otherwise our destruction would be more from God than from ourselves. Moreover, in Romans 9, after the Apostle had said of the reprobate, “God endured with much patience the vessels of wrath, fit for destruction,” he later says of the predestined: “So that he might show the riches of his glory toward the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory.” He says that he prepared the elect for glory, but of the reprobate only that he endured them. How, however, would he merely endure them and not prepare them, if he efficaciously predetermined them to the means of condemnation, namely, to acts that are intrinsically sins?

III. Second, an argument is made from the authority of the Councils. For canon 23 of the Second Council of Orange says: People do their own will, not God’s, when they do what displeases God. And canon 25 says: We not only do not believe that some people have been predestined to evil by divine power, but if there are those who wish to believe so great an evil, we pronounce anathema against them with utter detestation. Here it is clearly defined that God does not initiate an evil act, nor predetermine a person’s will to it by his power. For, as was said above, “predestine” means the same as “predetermine.”¹ The Council immediately adds the difference between evil and good works: This we salutarily profess and believe: in every good work, we do not begin and are afterward helped by God’s mercy; rather, with no good merits preceding, he himself first inspires in us both faith and love of himself. Therefore, it holds that in every evil work we begin first, and God does not; otherwise, in this respect there would be absolutely no difference between good works and evil ones.

Likewise, in the same Council of Trent, Session 6, on Justification, canon 6² defines: If anyone says that it is not in a person’s power to make his ways evil, but that God performs evil works just as he performs good ones, not merely by permitting them but properly and by himself, so that the betrayal of Judas is no less his own work than the calling of Paul, let him be anathema. And canon 17 anathematizes anyone who says that those who are not predestined are indeed called, but do not receive grace, since they have been predestined to evil by divine power. In this decree, the words “it is in a person’s power to make his ways evil” must be considered. This would certainly not be true if a prior motion by which God efficaciously predetermines the human will were necessary for the act of sin, since this motion is not in a person’s power but in God’s power alone. Consequently, evil works, just like good ones, would be in God’s power.

IV. If it is said that the Council is speaking of the malice of sin, but not of the act of sin insofar as it is an act and a being, the reply is: the Council defines that God does not properly and by himself perform evil works. Therefore, it speaks not only of the malice of works but also of the evil works themselves, which are properly called such only of the actual real acts performed by the will against the law.

This is confirmed as follows. Otherwise, the Council would have determined nothing against the heretics of our time. For they do not assert that God is the author of sin or instigates sin, but say that God is the author of the will by which a person consents while sinning and succumbs to temptation, and that God either instigates or determines that will. This is how Beza speaks in his response to Sebastian Castellio, in his refutation of the second calumny, explaining Calvin’s opinion in Aphorisms 22, where he says that free choice is not merely permitted by God in the act of sin, but is also driven, stirred, moved, and ruled by him. Nor does he say that God is the author of sin insofar as it is evil and deformed; for in this respect he attributes sin to the created will alone in Aphorisms 31. Rather, he says that our will is driven, stirred, moved, and ruled by God toward the very act of sin. Calvin speaks in the same way in Institutes III, ch. 22, § 9, and III, ch. 23, §§ 2 and 4, as does Zwingli in Sermon on Providence, ch. 6; we cited their words in dispute 3, no. 14. Nor could the heretics say that God causes or wills sin insofar as it is sin, since even the created will cannot will it under that aspect, because, as Dionysius says, No one acts with evil as his intention.³

V. Third, it is proved by the authority of the holy Fathers, especially Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, ch. 31, where he says⁴: Nowhere do we read in the sacred Scriptures, “There is no will except from God”; and it was rightly not written, because it is not true. Otherwise God would also be the author—far be it!—of sins, if there were no will except from him, since an evil will is already sin by itself, even if its effect is absent. Likewise, in On Articles Falsely Attributed to Him, art. 10, he says: Detestable and abominable is the opinion that believes God to be the author of each evil will or evil action, whose predestination is never outside goodness, never outside justice; for all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth. Holy Divinity knows not how to institute the adulteries of married women and the seductions of virgins, but to condemn them; nor to ordain them, but to punish them. A little later in the same article he says: Therefore God’s predestination neither aroused, persuaded, nor impelled the falls of those who fall, the malice of the wicked, or the desires of sinners. Behold, Augustine denies that not only beings of reason or formal aspects of sins come from God, but also the very acts of willing and actions by which the commandments are transgressed—namely, the adulteries of married women, the seductions of virgins, and so forth. In art. 6 he says: Just as God did not implant in the angels who transgressed the will by which they did not remain in the truth, so by the same reasoning he did not implant in human beings that inclination by which they imitate the devil. And in art. 11, speaking of certain criminal acts, he says: If the devil were charged with being the author and inventor of such crimes, he could free himself from this reproach and convict their perpetrators on the basis of their own will. For although he delighted in the fury of sinners, he would nevertheless prove that he did not impose the force of their crimes. With what folly, then, or what madness could one define as belonging to God’s counsel what cannot be attributed wholly even to the devil? Likewise, in City of God V, ch. 9, he says: Evil wills are not from him, because they are contrary to nature. And in On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins II, ch. 18, while discussing Paul’s words, What do you have that you did not receive?⁵ he reports the interpretation of those who assert that this was said because God gave us free choice and the capacity to act well. He himself attacks this interpretation, saying that this was not the reason it was said, but rather that God gives us not only the capacity but also willing the good itself. Otherwise, he says, one could also say that an evil will must be attributed to God as its author, because it could not exist in a human being unless the human being in whom it existed also existed; but God is the author of the human being. Thus, whatever there is of an evil will—which could not exist at all unless it had a human being in whom to exist—would have to be referred to God as its author, which is wrong to say. A little farther on he treats in the same way the words in Phil. 2, God works in us to will and to accomplish. He denies that this can in any way be said of an evil willing. For he says: Accordingly, our turning away from God is our own, and this is an evil will, where he speaks clearly of the very real action of sin.

VI. Leo IX, in his letter to Peter of Antioch, in his profession of faith, says that God predestined only good things, but foreknew both good and evil things.⁶ In his replies to Vincentius, objections 4 and 11, St. Prosper repeatedly says that the opinion which believes God to be the author of each evil will or evil action is detestable and abominable.⁷ Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith II, ch. 30, says that God does not predefine everything, because he does not predefine sins.⁸ Fulgentius, in On Predestination II, shows expressly that it is impossible for God to predetermine evil works.⁹ St. Thomas in 1.2, q. 9, art. 6, ad 3, seems to teach the same.¹⁰ Many other Fathers do so as well, whose testimonies in favor of the same opinion are reported in nearly countless numbers by its authors. But because they present no new difficulty beyond the one touched on in the words of the Saints cited above, they are deliberately omitted.

Fourth. If God predetermined the will to an act of sin, it would follow that he was the author of sin. The inference is proved: he would be the first root and cause of a person’s willing this object here and now, with such an awareness of reason, although the object is contrary to reason. But a person sins only by willing this; therefore God would be the cause of that person’s sinning and, consequently, the author of sin.

They confirm this. As the authors of the opposing opinion admit, God not only willed to permit Judas to sell Christ, but also willed to decree it; indeed, he prewilled and preordained it before he foreknew that Judas would will it. For Judas willed it because God willed him to will it and also made him will it. Therefore that opinion truly makes God the author of sin.

VII. Fifth. It would follow from the same opinion that no divine permission is necessarily required either for God to know that a human being’s sin will occur or for that sin to occur. This consequence is contrary to the Council of Trent at the place cited, where it is stated that God works evil deeds only permissively. Therefore, the inference is proved: whatever follows by necessary consequence and concomitance upon a predetermined act can be foreknown in the predetermination of that same act, with any further permission excluded. But the deformity necessarily accompanies an intrinsically evil act predetermined by God, precisely as it is predetermined. For according to the opposing opinion God by an efficacious motion predetermines the will and makes it consent freely to an act of blasphemy with all its circumstances, which the created will cannot do without sin. Therefore God can infallibly know that a sin will occur through that predetermination alone, with every permission excluded.

Sixth. If God predetermines the will to the act of lying, it follows that in order to lie a person needs prior efficacious aid; consequently, one who lies has greater aid from God than one who does not lie. Thus by that aid God would distinguish the liar from the non-liar, just as by supernatural efficacious aid he distinguishes the person who is converted from the one who persists in sin.

Seventh. From eternity God willed and commanded by his law that no one commit an evil act against reason. But this will cannot coexist with an efficacious will predetermining free choice to an act that must be sin and evil against reason. Therefore, the conclusion follows.

VIII. Eighth. Physical motion, or predetermination, of the will to some act cannot occur without moral motion, which is on the side of the object; rather, it necessarily presupposes moral motion, since nothing is willed unless it is first known. Otherwise, the will would not act in a free and human manner. But God cannot move the will morally by persuading or advising it to perform an act of sin, or even by commanding such an act, since he rather advises and commands that the act not be done. Therefore, he cannot predetermine through efficient causality the created will to that act.

Ninth. Whatever God does pertains either to justice or to mercy, according to Psalm 24: All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth. But inclining and predetermining a person’s will to an act of sin pertains to neither justice, at least in the first sin (for no prior sin has occurred as punishment for which God might incline and predetermine the will to another act of sin), nor to mercy, since by performing an act of sin a person falls into the greatest misery rather than being raised out of it. Therefore, God does not predetermine the created will to such an act.

Tenth. Since God is supreme goodness and first truth, he cannot infuse a habit that by itself inclines the will to an intrinsically evil act or to what is false. Therefore, neither can he infuse an aid predetermining the will to an evil act.

Eleventh. From the contrary opinion it would follow that the hardening or blinding of the sinner consists in the bestowal of some positive aid that efficaciously predetermines the will to evil acts. But this consequence is contrary to the common opinion of the Saints, who teach that God hardens and blinds sinners not positively but negatively: that is, he does not soften or enlighten them, but withdraws his aid from them. This is what St. Augustine teaches in On Predestination and Grace, ch. 34; To Simplician, book 1, q. 2; and City of God, book 20, ch. 19; Euthymius on Psalm 78 and on John 15; John Chrysostom, Homily 6 on John; Jerome, Question 10 to Hedibia; and Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, book 4, ch. 20. Therefore, the conclusion follows, and so on.

IX. Twelfth. A common argument is made: whoever is the efficacious cause of some act is consequently the cause of what follows from that act per se and intrinsically. Therefore, if God is the first cause premoving and predetermining the created will to an intrinsically evil act, namely, an act of blasphemy, then he will consequently be the cause of the moral evil that follows per se from that act; thus he will be the cause of sin in its formal aspect and insofar as it is sin. Yet it is impious and blasphemous to concede this.

This is confirmed. Sin in its formal aspect is something positive, as the authors of the contrary opinion admit. Therefore, if God predetermines the will to an act of sin according to every aspect of positive being that it has, it follows that he predetermines it to the act of sin insofar as it is sin.

X. All the Doctors who defend the necessity of efficacious aid predetermining free choice with respect to the exercise of the act for every good work hold the contrary opinion. For they consequently say that God, as a physical cause, premoves and predetermines the will to an act of sin insofar as it is an act and a being. In our judgment, this is the express opinion of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, as we shall show below.

Therefore, to resolve this difficulty, it must be assumed that sinful acts are of two different kinds. Some are good by their object, or at least are not morally evil by their object, but have evil attached to them through some circumstance—as when someone gives alms for vainglory, or goes out into the field in order to kill an enemy. Other acts are intrinsically so evil that they cannot be performed by the created will without sin, if they are freely produced. Such are acts of blasphemy or hatred of God, lying, and other similar acts, which have moral evil intrinsically attached to them.

XI. Second, it should be noted that, as St. Thomas teaches in Sentences II, d. 37, q. 2, art. 2, at the end of the body, all expressions that signify that God is, absolutely speaking, the cause of sin or moral evil must be avoided and denied.¹¹ Hence he says: Whatever name signifies deformity together with an act, either in general or in particular, cannot simply be said to come from God. Thus one cannot say absolutely that sin is from God, as in the case of murder or something of that sort, except with this qualification: insofar as it is an act and insofar as it is a being. Therefore, expressions signifying that God is the first author and first cause of any entity insofar as it is an act and a being, even if that act otherwise has moral evil attached to it through the failing created will, are to be conceded. For every being by participation, insofar as it is such, must be traced back as to its first cause to being by essence, which is God.

XII. Third, we must presuppose what we said in Disputation 18 concerning God's general concurrence, in Disputation 7 concerning middle knowledge, and what we noted in the two preceding disputations concerning both extrinsic predetermination by God's absolute and efficacious decree and intrinsic predetermination by a motion inhering in created will, by which God predetermines through efficient causality that same will to all good acts in particular, with all their circumstances. From what was said there, it will be clear what must be said about an act of sin insofar as it is an act. But for a fuller explanation and a brief solution of this disputation, let us begin with the clearer points, as follows.

XIII. First conclusion. By his efficacious will God predetermined all good acts by their object that occur in time, and those that are not evil by their object, insofar as they are acts, even though they may otherwise be sins in the individual case because of an evil circumstance.¹² This conclusion is effectively proved by that passage of Isaiah 10: “Assyria is the rod of my fury, and he himself is the staff. I will send him against a deceitful nation, and I will command him against the people of my wrath.” And a little later: “Will the axe boast against him who cuts with it? Or will the saw exalt itself against him who draws it? As if a rod should be lifted against the one who lifts it, or a staff exalt itself, which is only wood?” An argument is drawn from this testimony. Assyria sinned through the evil circumstance of his end, by defeating nations; nevertheless God predetermined that he would lay waste those nations, and sent and moved him to do so. For this reason, as St Thomas observed, he is compared to a rod, staff, and saw: by God's motion he won victories, which he nevertheless arrogantly claimed for himself, as is clear from the course of that same chapter. Therefore, etc.¹³ Isaiah 14 also says: “This is the plan that I have made concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand extended over all nations. For the Lord of hosts has decreed it, and who can weaken it? His hand is extended, and who will turn it back?” From this testimony it is clear that by an eternal decree God predetermines the punishment that he inflicts on sinners in this age by a just judgment, whether he inflicts it immediately by himself or through the ministry of angels or human beings. Yet often the people whose ministry he uses sin through an evil circumstance. Therefore, etc.

This is confirmed by Matthew 10: “Are not two sparrows sold for an as, and not one of them falls to the ground without your Father?” That is, without your Father's providence and will, as the holy Fathers commonly explain this same passage. But it often happens that a person through whose ministry and effort one of the two sparrows falls to the ground sins venially by killing the sparrow—for example, if he does so out of vainglory—and sometimes mortally, as when he kills the sparrow intending to kill an enemy. Therefore, etc.

XIV. It is also proved as follows. The consecration performed by a priest who is in mortal sin, and likewise the absolution given by a confessor who, while in an affection for mortal sin, absolves a penitent, is an evil action and a mortal sin in the individual case because of an evil circumstance, although it is good by its object. Nevertheless, by the efficacious decree of his will God moves and applies the priest and confessor to that action insofar as it is a consecration or absolution.¹⁴ For the consecrating priest and the absolving confessor act as God's instrumental causes; they do not bring it about as principal causes. But it belongs to the nature of an instrument to be premoved and applied by the principal agent. Therefore God premoves and predetermines the will to an action that is good by its object, insofar as it is an action, even though it is otherwise a sin because of an evil circumstance.

XV. Second conclusion. Whatever positive entity is found in any act of sin, even if the act is otherwise intrinsically evil, must be referred to God as the first cause premoving and predetermining the created will by actual motion to such an act insofar as it is an act and according as it is a being.¹⁵ This conclusion is opposed to the authors of the first opinion, but is defended by the authors of the second; Capreolus teaches it in Sentences II, dist. 37, art. 3, ad the second principal argument. Speaking there of the motion by which God determines the created will to an act of sin insofar as it is an act, he says: As regards everything positive that is in an act of the will, the action of the created will is posterior to God’s action in producing each such thing, because no creature acts unless moved by God.¹⁶ He adds: God’s motion does not determine the created will to something evil in itself, but to what is good in itself by its nature, although it is evil with respect to the deformity it has in relation to the secondary cause. The explanation some attribute to Capreolus is not, however, in keeping with his meaning: namely, that he speaks not of prior determination but of a determination made through the very act itself. This explanation resembles the one they attribute to St. Thomas’s words that the created will must be determined by God in order to produce a determinate act, since in itself it is indifferent among many operations. They say that St. Thomas is to be understood not as speaking of a prior motion but of one made through the very act itself. We rejected this explanation above as contrary to the mind of St. Thomas, and we will also refute it below.¹⁷ This explanation of Capreolus must be rejected in the same way. For from his second argument, to which he is replying, it is evident that he is speaking of prior determination and motion. His second argument was as follows: If God concurs in acts of the will, either this is because he follows the determination of the will in that act in such a way that by a priority of nature the will first determines itself to that act, and from this God coacts with the will once determined; or, on the contrary, God first determines himself to act, and our will follows his determination; or they come to this action on equal terms. But none of these ways applies. Not the first, because then God would willingly coact in sin; and the point at issue would also be granted, since in that determining God would not coact with the will and thus would not be the cause of every positive act. Nor can the second way be admitted, because then the will would be determined by God to sin, and thus it would not act from itself but from another; and so the will would not sin, because it would not have from itself what makes it the cause of sin, namely, freedom, for it would be determined from outside. Nor is the third way possible, both because that way would be a matter of chance and because God would willingly coact in sin. He answers this argument with the words cited above, and immediately adds: The other consequence made there is also denied: namely, “The will does not act from itself but from another; therefore it has from another, and not from itself, that it is the cause of evil; and consequently it does not sin.” The reason is that the created will does not sin because it performs that act, but because it performs it in such a way. It has the first from God, but not the second. Capreolus, therefore, speaks of prior determination, not merely of the determination made through the very act or operation of the created will.

XVI. Ferrara defends the same opinion in Against the Gentiles III, ch. 71, near the end, where he teaches that, according to the mind of St. Thomas, the first agent truly moves the secondary cause to perform the entity of the action of sin insofar as it is an action, without acting with respect to its deformity. We cited his words in disputation 18, no. 22. Master Soto teaches the same in On Nature and Grace I, ch. 18, near the end, where he says: Theologians admit that God is the cause of the entity that is sin by the kind of efficient causality by which he premoves all things, animate and inanimate, to their natural actions. Master Cano holds the same, On Theological Places II, ch. 4, ad 7; Master Medina, 1.2, q. 79, art. 2, and q. 109, art. 2; and Master Bañez, 1 p., q. 19, art. 10, dub. 1, after the third foundation, and q. 49, art. 2. Cajetan favors the same opinion in his commentary on 2 Samuel last chapter and in Ientaculum 6, q. 2. Finally, nearly all Thomists, with one or another exception, teach this conclusion, which is plainly the mind of St. Augustine and St. Thomas and is proved as follows:

First, St Augustine, in Book 2 of On Free Choice, chapter 19, poses this very question of ours in these words: “But perhaps you will ask: Since the will is moved when it turns away from the incorruptible good toward a mutable good, where does this motion of it come from? It is certainly evil.” Immediately, answering the question in chapter 20, he says: “Every good is from God; therefore there is no nature that is not from God. Therefore that motion of turning away, which we acknowledge to be sin because it is a deficient motion—every defect, however, is from nothing—see where it belongs, and do not doubt that it belongs to God, although this defect, since it is voluntary, has been placed in our power.” Here St Augustine clearly distinguishes in an act of sin the will's real and physical motion, insofar as it is motion, and teaches that this is from God and belongs to God. The other element is the defect from right reason, which he reduces to the deficient created will alone. The will has this defect because it is liable to fail, since it came from nothing. In Book 5 of Against Julian, chapter 3, he says: “The good wills of human beings, which he himself makes from evil ones, are in God's power; but so too are those that preserve the creature of the world, so that he makes them incline wherever and whenever he wills.” And again he says: God works in the hearts of human beings to incline their wills wherever he wills: toward good by his mercy, or toward evil according to their merits. Here he must be understood to speak of an evil act insofar as it is an act. And, arguing against Julian, he adduces many testimonies of Sacred Scripture to prove that God moves or inclines wills to evil acts insofar as they are acts—especially Isaiah 19: “The Lord has mingled into them a spirit of error”; Isaiah 63: “Why have you made us err, O Lord, from your way? You have hardened our hearts so that we would not fear you”; and Romans 1: “Therefore God gave them over to a reprobate mind,” etc.

XVII. Some reply that it is customary in Sacred Scripture to attribute to God as though he were the maker whatever he permits, especially if he permits it as punishment for that or another sin, or for some particular end and good—not positively and properly, as though he contributed to the effect, but negatively, because he does not prevent it although he could, and permits it. They say that Augustine's words must be understood in this way. But this explanation manifestly conflicts with the context of St Augustine. For in the same chapter 3, refuting Julian, who had assigned this very explanation to the cited words of Sacred Scripture, Augustine says: “But what do you mean when you say that those who are said to have been given over to their desires are to be understood as abandoned by divine patience, not compelled into sins by his power? As if the Apostle had not placed both things together: patience and power, when he says, ‘Thus God, willing to show his wrath and make known his power…’”¹⁸

Second, our opinion is proved by the clearest testimonies of St. Thomas, especially in his Sentences II, d. 37, q. 2, art. 2, where he teaches our opinion most clearly. To make this evident, let us cite the holy Doctor’s words.¹⁹ In the title of the article he asks whether the act of sin, insofar as it is an act, is from God; and in his answer he says: On this question the Master touches upon two opinions. One said that all acts, insofar as they are acts, are from God, but that insofar as they have deformity they are not from God, but from man or the Devil; he discussed the arguments for these opinions above, in distinction 31. The other opinion said that acts of sin are in no way from God, not even insofar as they are acts. This opinion is touched upon in the present distinction, and at present few or none hold it, because it comes very close to two errors. First, it seems to imply that there are several first principles. For it belongs to the notion of a first principle that it can act without the aid and influx of a prior agent. Thus, if the human will could produce some action of which God was not the author, the human will would have the character of a first principle. Although they try to resolve this by saying that even if the will can produce an action by itself, without the influx of a prior agent, it nevertheless does not have existence from itself, but from another—and this too would be required for something to be a first principle—this seems unreasonable: that what does not have existence from itself should be able to act from itself, since what is not from itself cannot even endure by itself. Moreover, every power proceeds from essence, and operation from power. Hence what has its essence from another must also have its power and operation from another. Further, although this answer might avoid making it a first principle simply speaking, it still could not avoid making it a first agent if its action were not traced back to some prior agent as its cause. Second, since the act of sin is also a being—not in the sense in which privations and negations are called beings, but in the sense that things existing in a genus are beings, since actions themselves are also classified in a genus—it would follow that if acts of sin were not from God, some being having an essence would not be from God, and thus God would not be the universal cause of all beings. This is contrary to the perfection of the first being; for the first in any genus is the cause of those that come after, as is said in Metaphysics II.²⁰ Therefore, with the first opinion, it must be said that an act, insofar as it is an act, is from God, and as such has nothing in it that has deformity. How this is so may be considered in this way. In everything where a defect arises from the secondary cause and not from the first cause, whatever there is in the deficient effect of essence and goodness proceeds wholly from the first cause; but the defect is traced back to the deficient secondary cause, as is clear in limping, which comes from the power of locomotion through the tibia: because of the curvature of the tibia, an obliquity remains in the gait of the person who limps. Hence whatever there is in the whole act of walking comes from the power of locomotion, but the defect or obliquity of the gait does not come from that power, but only from the tibia. The order of God to the created will is likewise that of a first cause to a secondary cause; therefore, no defect can arise on God’s part. But a caused will is capable of defect. Therefore, whatever there is in a deficient act—that is, in sin—of the character of act, being, and good, all of this proceeds from the first agent, namely, God, through the will; but the defect that is in the act in this way comes from the will and does not proceed from God. Therefore, whatever name signifies deformity together with an act, either in general or in particular, cannot simply be said to come from God. Thus one cannot say absolutely that sin is from God, as in the case of murder or something of that sort, except with this qualification: insofar as it is an act and insofar as it is a being. By these words he teaches most clearly that the act of sin, insofar as it is an act, is from God as from a prior efficient cause.

XVIII. Nor can St. Thomas be explained as speaking only of simultaneous concurrence, by which God concurs at the same time as the will determining itself in an act of sin insofar as it is an act. For through such concurrence God does not produce the act of sin by means of the will—that is, by giving influx to the will itself as a cause—but immediately together with the will. Yet St. Thomas says that whatever there is in an act of sin belonging to the character of being and goodness proceeds entirely from the first agent, namely, God, by means of the will. He therefore holds that God premoves that same will to produce the act of sin insofar as it is an act. This is clearer still from the reply to the second argument. In answering the argument that is the chief foundation of the opposing opinion—for if God were the cause of the action in which evil or sin consists, he would truly be the cause of sin or would cooperate in sin—he answers that one is said to cooperate in evil who inclines to an action insofar as it is subject to deformity and hence evil; this, however, does not befit God, and so he need not be said to cooperate in evil, although he is the cause of the action in which evil consists, insofar as he gives the agent being, ability, and action, and whatever perfection there is in the agent. Therefore, he is speaking of prior influx. For by simultaneous concurrence God does not give the agent the very act of acting, but immediately gives influx into the action together with free choice determining itself. Yet St. Thomas plainly says that God is the cause of the action in which evil consists according to the way he gives the agent being, ability, and action. When objectors say that it would follow that God should be called the author of evil actions in the same way as he is the author of good ones, he answers in the reply to the third argument of the same article: God is called the cause of good operations not only with respect to the essence of the act, but also with respect to the perfection according to which they are called good; for he gives the agent both things: that it act and that it act well. But in evil actions, although he is their cause with respect to their essence, he is not their cause with respect to their defect. Therefore he is called absolutely the cause of good works, but not of sins. I have chosen to cite all these words of St. Thomas so that it may be clear that the opinion we defend is truly and expressly his, especially since nearly all the arguments modern theologians make against our position were first raised by St. Thomas himself and resolved by precisely the same answers that we, following that same holy Doctor, apply to those arguments. He confirms the same teaching in 1.2, q. 79, art. 2, and q. 3, On Evil, art. 2, especially argument 2, where he speaks expressly of the causality of the act of sin through a prior influx received immediately in free choice. The same is gathered from the reply to the fourth argument. Moreover, in q. 3, On the Power of God, art. 7, in the body and ad 7, and in Against the Gentiles III, ch. 70, and 1 p., q. 105, art. 4, especially in the reply to the third argument, and often elsewhere, he teaches that God moves and applies all secondary causes to perform their operations, just as an artisan moves and applies his instruments to the work of his craft. He therefore holds that God, as first cause, through efficient causality moves, applies, and predetermines the created will to the act of sin insofar as it is an act. For with respect to that act insofar as it is an act, the created will is truly a secondary efficient cause, not a first cause; otherwise two first principles would have to be admitted, which would be to fall into the error of the Manicheans. Moreover, in Quodlibet 12, q. 4, art. 4, he says that all things are predetermined and ordered by God’s providence, as he also asserts in several other places cited in the two preceding disputations. Therefore, the act of sin insofar as it is an act truly proceeds from divine providence and predetermination. Nor can St. Thomas be explained as speaking of a simultaneous motion or determination, for the word “predetermines” signifies a predetermination that precedes.

XIX. Third, the point is proved by St. Thomas’s argument in Sentences II, cited above. Every being by participation must be referred to Being by essence as the first agent simply. But the act of sin, insofar as it is an act, is a being by participation. Therefore, under this aspect it must be referred to Being by essence, namely, to God, as the first agent simply. But by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will God brings about all things that he produces in time, as we said above on the authority of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 25. art. 5. ad 1. Therefore, by an absolute and efficacious decree God determined that the created will would produce the act of sin insofar as it is an act.

They confirm this: from the opposing opinion it would follow that there are several first principles. For it belongs to the nature of a first principle that it can act without the help and influence of a prior agent. Therefore, if the created will could produce some action of which God was not the author, the created will would have the character of a first principle with respect to that action, and thus there would be several first principles.

If it is said that the created will does not have the character of a first principle simply because it does not have being from itself but from another, and that therefore, although it can by itself produce an act of sin without the influence of a prior agent, it does not follow that there are several first principles,²¹ St. Thomas rises against this answer in the cited article 2, refuting it with two arguments, as is clear from the words of the holy Doctor cited above. Hence in Sentences II, to Hannibald, dist. 37, single question, art. 1, in the body, when discussing the question “Whether it must be held that every being is from God,” he answers in these words: It is heretical to say that some being, insofar as it is a being, is not from God; this is contrary not only to the faith but also to reason. He is also speaking of the entity of the act of sin, as is clear from the reply to the third argument of the same article.

XX. Fourth, the chief foundation of the opposing opinion is refuted. From it the authors prove that by a prior motion²² God does not physically predetermine created will to an act of sin insofar as it is an act; for it would follow that God is the cause of sin. But this does not follow. Therefore, etc. The minor premise is proved as follows. As we said in Disputation 18, no. 21, and as the authors of the opposing opinion admit, God concurs through efficient causality by simultaneous help in the being of every act of sin, in particular, insofar as it is an act, without concurring in its deformity.²³ Therefore he also does so by a prior influx that predetermines the will to that same act insofar as it is an act. The consequence is proved: moral evil and the deformity of sin are no less attached to the exercise of an act of hatred of God than to the application and determination of the will to such an act. Therefore, if God immediately produces through efficient causality together with the will the act of hatred of God insofar as it is an act, without concurring in its deformity, he can also premove and predetermine through efficient causality the will to that same act insofar as it is an act without moving and predetermining it to sin or concurring in the moral evil that follows from that act as it proceeds from a deficient will.

This is confirmed. God reaches the act of sin insofar as it is an act more immediately by simultaneous concurrence than by a prior motion. Therefore, if by a simultaneous influx he reaches the act of sin without working toward its deformity, all the more can he bring this about through prior concurrence.

XXI. They reply by denying the consequence and give as the reason for the distinction that God's general concurrence, by which he immediately contributes with created will to an act of sin, is indifferent in itself. But when a human being sins, he abuses that same influx through his malice in order to perform the act of sin. For this reason the moral evil found in such an act must be attributed to created will alone, since, on God's part, he does not provide man with an influx determined to an evil act. By contrast, if God were to predetermine created will through prior help to an act of sin in particular, insofar as it is an act, then, on God's part, he would grant man his concurrence for that determinate act with all its circumstances. Consequently, the moral evil, which is a circumstance that follows such an act as it occurs in the individual case, would be attributed to God, and God would truly be the cause of sin. But this solution rests on a false foundation: for God's general concurrence is not indifferent in itself, as was shown in Disputation 21. Otherwise God's concurrence would be determined by created will and would be posterior to it. Consequently, with respect to some real act insofar as it is an act, created will would be simply the first agent, and thus this causal statement would have to be granted: “Because created will performs such an act insofar as it is a being, God cooperates.” St Thomas effectively proves in the cited passage of Sentences II that this must in no way be granted: for it would follow that two first principles must be posited and that God is not simply the first cause of all things that have being in any way whatsoever.

Moreover, the same solution is refuted. Although God predetermines the will to an act of sin in the individual case, insofar as it is an act, and to all its circumstances insofar as those circumstances have the character of being, he does not predetermine the will to the act of sin or to those circumstances insofar as they have the character of sin or moral evil. For with respect to God these two things can be separated, as is clear from what was said both in this disputation and in Disputation 18, no. 21.

XXII. Fifth, it is proved that God has perfect providence over an act of sin insofar as it is an act, since divine providence extends to everything that in any way has the character of being. Therefore, by the eternal decree of his will he predetermined and ordained such an act to an end insofar as it is an act. The consequence is clear, since providence is the reason for the ordering of means to an end, as St Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae I, q. 22.

Finally, it is proved by all the arguments with which in Disputation 18 we showed God's general concurrence to be an immediate influx into a secondary cause, by which he moves and predetermines it, according to its own nature, to each operation. But by his general concurrence God is the first cause of every action, even a sinful one, insofar as it is an action, as the authors of the opposing opinion admit. Therefore, by that same concurrence, he moves through efficient causality and predetermines created will to such an act insofar as it is an act. All the arguments given in the two preceding disputations to prove that God predetermined all the good acts of created will confirm this very point, for they all apply also to acts of sin insofar as they are acts, since under this consideration they have the character of good.

XXIII. Third conclusion. Absolutely speaking, it must not be conceded that God is the cause of sin or moral evil; nor must it be conceded absolutely that God is the cause of blasphemy, lying, or hatred of God, or that a person needs God’s aid in order to lie. The arguments made at the beginning prove this conclusion effectively, and St. Thomas teaches it in the passage from Sentences II, d. 37, cited above. Theologians do not agree, however, on whether this proposition should be conceded: “God is the cause of sin materially.”²⁴ Some concede it; others deny it, even among those who follow our opinion. It is better, however, to distinguish the senses. If the term “materially” is taken formally, as referring to sin’s formal aspect, the proposition must be denied. For the act derives neither its relation to sin’s formal aspect, nor its grounding of moral evil, nor its subjection to it from God’s causality, but from the defect of the created will. In this sense those theologians can be understood who, although they admit with us that God physically predetermines the created will to good acts, nevertheless deny that he premoves or predetermines it to an act of sin and moral evil, even materially. But if the material aspect of sin is taken absolutely to mean the entity of the act of sin insofar as it is an act, to which evil nevertheless accrues through the defect of the created will, then it can be conceded that God is the cause of what is material in sin, namely, the entity of the act insofar as it is a being, as is clear from the passages of St. Thomas cited. In the same sense, it can also be conceded that God premoves and predetermines the will materially to an act of sin.

XXIV. To the first argument from scriptural authorities, we answer that it proves only the third conclusion: namely, that God does not predetermine the created will to sin, absolutely speaking, nor necessitate it to sin, as the heretics claimed. It does not, however, prove that he does not move or predetermine it to the entity of the act of sin insofar as it is an entity and a certain positive perfection. The Devil is said to tempt a person because he morally inclines him to sin, that is, by persuading him to sin; for he persuades him to the act insofar as it is against God and has the character of guilt, since, as Cajetan says, whatever the Devil does refers virtually to an evil end.²⁵ God does not do this, but moves through efficient causality the will to the positive act of sin insofar as it is a being, because in this respect it is something good.

To the other passage from Ecclesiasticus 15, we answer that God does not lead a person astray;²⁶ for he does not necessitate the person’s will or move it to evil, as was said. To the passage cited from John 6 and Philippians 2, we answer that God is said to draw people to Christ and to work in us the willing and completing of supernatural acts in a special sense, because by a special supernatural aid he moves them not only through efficient causality on the side of the power but also morally on the side of the object, persuading them to come to Christ and act well. As for the positive entity of the act of sin insofar as it is an act, he moves the will only by general concurrence. Moreover, by special efficacious aid he not only influences the will to act, but also to act well and supernaturally; by general concurrence, however, he influences the will to perform the act of sin, but does not bestow upon it the acting badly or defectively, as St. Thomas says in Sentences II, d. 37, q. 2, art. 2, ad 3. Hence the cases are not alike.

XXV. As for what is mentioned in the same argument concerning a person placed in a grave temptation of lust,²⁷ we answer that he can in no way be excused or justly complain against God if he consents to carnal pleasure. For even in the very instant in which God predetermines his will to the act of sin insofar as it is an act, he can nevertheless, speaking absolutely, refuse consent; and he consents freely. Therefore, he must impute the sin, or moral evil that follows upon that act insofar as it proceeds from a deficient will, to himself and not to God.

To the other passage from Hosea, ch. 13, we answer that the motion of God by which the created will is predetermined to the act of sin insofar as it is an action is truly an actual aid of that will, without which the creature will do nothing, in accordance with the words of the Truth: For without me you can do nothing.²⁸ Hence, just as all our aid is from God, so too it proceeds from him, and it is from him that the will determines itself to any action whatsoever, even an act of sin, insofar as it is an action; for in this respect it is good.

XXVI. To the passage from Romans, ch. 9, we answer that the Apostle says only of the reprobate, or vessels of wrath, that he endured them, not that he prepared them, since he did not prepare or predetermine them to evil or sin, absolutely speaking. Nevertheless, this is consistent with his having predetermined them to the act of sin insofar as it is an act.

To the second argument from the authority of the councils, I answer on the basis of what has been said: the councils speak of evil acts formally, or of sins insofar as they are sins.²⁹ For under this aspect they displease God, but not insofar as they are beings. For every being, insofar as it is a being, is good and consequently, under this aspect, cannot displease God or be hated by him. Hence, in every action insofar as it is an action, God is the one who first begins by moving the power. Otherwise, if its causality were not referred to another prior agent, the created will would be simply the first cause of its action. But if we speak of sin itself, or of moral evil absolutely, it must be referred to the created will alone, which by its nature is liable to fail, since it is from nothing. The difference the Council of Trent establishes between good and evil works with respect to divine operation consists in this: God works in us and with us so that we may perform good works, not only insofar as they are acts but also insofar as they are good. God works evil works in us and with us insofar as they are acts, but not insofar as they are evil. St. Thomas established this same distinction earlier in Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 2, art. 2³⁰. There, having objected in the third argument that if God were the cause of evil actions insofar as they are actions proceeding from a power, he should be called the author of evil actions in the same way that he is the author of good ones, he answers in the reply to the third argument that God is called the author and cause of good operations not only with respect to the essence of the act but also with respect to the perfection according to which they are called good. For he gives the agent both things: that it act and that it act well. But in evil actions, although he is their cause with respect to their essence, he is not their cause with respect to their defect; and therefore he is called absolutely the cause of good works, but not of sins.

XXVII. To the confirmation, which objects that the heretics of our time, against whom the Council of Trent speaks, never said that God is the author or cause of sin insofar as it is sin, but instead expressly attribute it under that aspect to created will alone, we reply that the Lutherans and Calvinists sometimes conceded in words that God is not the author of sin, but created will alone, while in reality they held something else, which at times they concealed under ambiguous words.³¹ Thus Pelagius denied in words that grace is given according to our merits, as was shown in Disputation 1, no. 5, by the clearest testimonies of St Augustine; yet in reality he always maintained and held this. Nevertheless, he often used the term “grace,” with this word “allaying odium and avoiding offense,” as that same Augustine says in his book On the Grace of Christ.³²³³ Hence St Jerome, speaking of certain heretics, says: “Thus,” he says, “they temper their words, thus they rearrange their order and compose whatever is ambiguous, so that they may retain both our confession and that of our adversaries, and so that a heretic hears one thing and a Catholic another.”³⁴ And a little later: “‘We believe,’ they say, ‘in the future resurrection of bodies.’ If said rightly, this is a pure confession. But since there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, and this air and the light breeze are called bodies according to their nature, they say ‘body’ but not ‘flesh,’ so that the orthodox person, hearing ‘body,’ thinks of flesh, while the heretic recognizes spirit.” Likewise, the Lutherans said in words that sins are not referred to God but to created will, in order to avoid the offense of the expression; in reality, however, they held that God is the author of sin and the cause of a human being's sinning. To make this clear, consider that, as is evident from what was said in Disputation 3, the Lutherans and Calvinists erred chiefly in two respects. Their first error was that God produces evil works in us just as he does good ones, with created will being purely passive. Luther asserted this. Calvin, however, and several others said that a human being is necessitated to sin by God, or by divine providence and predetermination, although he sins willingly, because he actively concurred in sin by his will, though not freely. Thus Calvin says in Book 3 of the Institutes, section 9: “The reprobate wish to be held excusable when they sin, because they cannot escape the necessity of sinning, especially since this necessity is imposed on them by God's ordination.”³⁵ He says the same elsewhere. Zwingli also says in the cited chapter 6: “Man was compelled to sin.” The Council of Trent defines against this error in Session 6, on justification, canon 6³⁶, where it anathematizes anyone who says “that it is not in a person's power to make his ways evil,” clearly showing that people sin not only willingly but also freely, for they are truly free with respect to what is in their power. Their second error was that God is the true cause, not only as efficient cause but also morally, of a human being or angel sinning. In this sense they conceded that God is the author of sin, since he makes people sin; but they added that God does not sin by bringing this about and is not called a sinner because he is not subject to the law. Zwingli said this in Sermon On Providence, chapter 5, where he says: “When God makes an angel or man a transgressor, he himself does not transgress, since he does not violate the law.” And in chapter 6: “One and the same crime, say adultery or homicide, insofar as it is the work of God as author, mover, and instigator, is not a crime; but insofar as it is the work of a human being, it is a crime and wickedness, for he is not bound by the law.” And in the same chapter he says: “What God does, he does freely, being free of every wrongful desire; therefore he does it without sin.” Calvin speaks in the same way in Book 3 of the Institutes, chapter 23, section 8: “He falls,” he says, “as God so ordains by his providence.” And in section 9 he adds: “God does not sin by doing this, because he does it with equity known to himself.” He says the same in his book On the Eternal Predestination of God, page 946. So too Beza in Aphorisms 19 and 31 and in his Response to Sebastian Castellio in Refutation of the Second Calumny, and the other heretics cited in Disputation 3, no. 14. The Council of Trent defines against this error when it condemns anyone who says: “It is not in a person's power to make his ways evil, but that God works evil deeds just as he works good ones, not merely permissively but properly and per se, so that Judas's betrayal is his own work no less than Paul's calling.”³⁷ The Council does not define that an act of sin, or the consent of created will to an evil act, is not from God as the first author insofar as it is an act; indeed, it seems to presuppose the contrary. For if a good act is more from God than an evil one, it follows that an evil act is from God under some aspect, namely, insofar as it is an act, since the comparative presupposes the positive. Nor is it enough to say that an act of sin insofar as it is an act proceeds from God by simultaneous concurrence but not by a prior motion. For, as was shown in Disputation 18, to preserve the causality of the First Cause with respect to all and each individual action, it is not enough to posit this simultaneous concurrence with secondary causes; prior concurrence must also be admitted. When the Council says that God works evil deeds only permissively, not properly and per se, it speaks of them absolutely, or with respect to the moral evil and deformity they possess. These are attributed to deficient created will alone, not only denominatively, since only created will is called sinful, but also through efficient causality. For by predetermining the will to an act of sin insofar as it is an act, God is neither called a sinner nor does he make us sin. In good and meritorious acts, however, although God is not called meritorious, he truly makes us merit and act well, both morally and through efficient causality³⁸ by moving us to act well and merit³⁹.

XXVIII. When it is objected that heretics could not have said God causes or wills evil insofar as it is evil, since even the created will cannot desire it under that aspect, I answer that, as St. Thomas teaches in 1.2, q. 78, art. 1, ad 2, although evil cannot be intended by anyone in itself, it can nevertheless be intended in order to avoid another evil or obtain some good. Thus a lustful person would rather incur God’s offense by sinning than be deprived of pleasure, although, if it could be done, he would wish to enjoy the pleasure without offending God.⁴⁰ Therefore, when the created will sins, it wills the evil of sin secondarily and consequently, because it freely chooses an action to which the evil of sin follows insofar as that action proceeds from the same deficient will. But God neither wills nor causes the evil of fault as a primary end, nor does he will or cause it secondarily and indirectly, as St. Thomas proves in 1.2, q. 79, art. 2. For moral evil does not follow upon the act of sin insofar as it is an act, nor insofar as it proceeds from God, but insofar as it is from a deficient will, as was said in disputation 18, nos. 21 and 22.

XXIX. To the third argument from the authorities of St. Augustine I answer that, in the places cited above, he teaches clearly enough that every action, even a sinful one, insofar as it is an action, must be referred to God as its first author; nor does the holy Doctor say the contrary anywhere. Hence, when he says that an evil will is not from God, and uses similar words, he is speaking of an evil will absolutely, in the sense in which we explained the words of the councils above. In particular, in City of God V, when he says, Evil wills are not from him, because they are contrary to the nature that is from him, he shows as clearly as daylight that he is not speaking of an evil will or action insofar as it is an action, but insofar as it is evil. For insofar as it is an action, or insofar as it is a being, it is not contrary to the nature that is from him; it is contrary to human nature, which is from him, only insofar as it is morally evil.

To the passage from On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins II, I answer that Augustine there wishes to conclude against the Pelagians that God is the cause of right action not only insofar as it is an action but also insofar as it is right and good. This does not apply to evil actions. For although God works them in us and with us insofar as they are actions, he is not their cause insofar as they are evil. From the position of the Pelagians, who assert that God is called the cause of good works only because he gave us free choice by which we can act well, St. Augustine plainly concludes that God would also have to be called the author of evil works, absolutely and formally speaking. For he also gave us free choice by which we can act badly, and without which no one can sin.

XXX. To the passage of Pope Leo I answer that he only denies that God predestined evil works, speaking absolutely, or insofar as they are evil. The same answer applies to the authority of Damascene, about which we said several things in disputation 22, nos. 20 and 21; and the same must be said of the authority of Fulgentius and Prosper.

As for St. Thomas, it is clear from the passages cited in support of our conclusion that he held the same opinion we defend. Nor does he teach the opposite in the cited q. 9 of 1.2; for his words are these: To the third argument it must be said that God moves the human will as a universal mover toward the universal object of the will, which is the good; and without this universal motion a human being cannot will anything. But by reason a human being determines himself to will this or that, which is truly good or only apparently good. Nevertheless, God sometimes moves certain people in a special way to will something determinate that is good, as in those whom he moves through grace, as will be said below.⁴¹ He refers to questions 109 and 111. By these words he intends to teach only three things. First, with respect to the universal object of the will, which is the good, the created will does not move itself by deliberation but is moved by God alone, who gave it its natural inclination toward the good. Second, a human being determines himself by reason to will this or that, which is truly good or apparently good. Consequently, it happens through a free determination of the created will that in some actions a person is moved toward evil and sins, namely, when he desires what is not truly good but only apparently good. Yet it does not follow from this that the created will is not determined by God to the act of sin insofar as it is an act. Just as it does not follow from the fact that the will determines or moves itself to a determinate good that it is not moved or predetermined by God, as is clear from what was said in disputations 22 and 23. On the contrary, the opposite follows from St. Thomas’s first statement. For since God moves the human will as a universal mover toward the universal object of the will, which is the good, it clearly follows that God, as universal mover, moves the human will to the action of sin insofar as it is a being, because insofar as it is such, it is good. St. Thomas’s third statement is that God moves some people in a special way through grace to will something determinate. It does not follow from this, however, that he does not move the will by general concurrence to will determinately every other action; it follows only that he does not move it in a special way, as when he moves his own through grace. Thus, according to the mind of St. Thomas, with respect to the universal good the will does not move itself morally by deliberation but is moved by God, because deliberation is not about the end but about the means, as is election, as St. Thomas teaches in 1.2, q. 13, art. 3. With respect to a particular good, however, the will both moves itself and is moved by God, for it is a moved mover. Yet with respect to a supernatural good it is moved in a special way by God through the helps of divine grace, as was said above.

XXXI. To the fourth argument, we deny that it follows from our opinion that God is the author of sin. For although God is the first source and cause of the fact that a person here and now, with such awareness of reason, has a volition concerning this object contrary to reason—insofar as the volition is an action—he is not the cause of the person’s willing that object defectively; this kind of defect must be attributed solely to the created will. A person does not sin simply because he wills that object, but because he wills defectively. Hence, as St. Thomas says in Sentences II, d. 37, q. 2, art. 2, ad 3, God is indeed the cause of the will’s acting, but is not the cause of its acting defectively and sinning, because he is not the cause of the act of sin insofar as it turns away from the rule of reason, nor insofar as it is the foundation of turning away from God himself; consequently, he is not the author of sin. We have said more about this argument in dispute 18, nos. 21 and 22.

To the confirmation, we answer that God did not will, prewill, or preordain that Judas should betray Christ, absolutely speaking, but only with a qualification: namely, considering that action insofar as it was an action, and under the aspect of being that it had. Under this aspect the following causal statement may be conceded: “Judas willed that action insofar as it was an action because God willed that he will it insofar as it is a being.” Nevertheless, God does not thereby become the author of sin, because moral evil does not follow upon that action insofar as it is an action, but insofar as it is deficient from the rule of reason, as was said in dispute 18, no. 21.

To the fifth argument, we deny the consequence. In answer to its proof, we answer that God did indeed predetermine the created will to the action of sin insofar as it is an action, and to all its circumstances insofar as those circumstances have the character of being, but not insofar as they have moral evil attached to them. Therefore, for a sin to be future, and for God to know with certainty and infallibly that it will be future, beyond the predetermination of the act of sin, God’s permission of its evil is necessarily required, as was said in dispute 11, no. 3.

XXXII. To the sixth argument, we answer that “to lie” signifies an act together with deformity, as does “murder”; hence a person does not need prior aid in order to lie, nor is the liar distinguished from the non-liar by that aid, but by his own malice. We nevertheless admit that one who produces an act of lying, insofar as it is an act, has some actual prior aid of God, or prior concurrence (let there be no dispute over the word), which another person who does not produce such an act, insofar as it is an act, does not have—just as the authors of the contrary opinion are bound to concede this in the case of God’s simultaneous concurrence. Nor is it unreasonable to concede that God distinguishes one who produces the act of lying, insofar as it is an act, from one who does not produce such an act, insofar as it is an act, by actual aid. For insofar as it is sin, the sinner is distinguished from the one who stands firm by his own fault or malice.

To the seventh argument, we answer that by his antecedent will, which is the will of sign, God willed from eternity that no one should sin. Nevertheless, an efficacious will also coexists in God, by which he predetermined that some would produce an act of sin insofar as it is an act. For these two wills are not in conflict, but rather agree with each other, just as it is not contradictory for a judge to will that a person live insofar as he is a human being and to put him to death insofar as he is a criminal.

XXXIII. To the eighth argument, we answer that physical motion of the will presupposes moral motion, but moral motion need not always come from the same agent.⁴² For the Devil moves the will morally toward an act of sin by persuading and advising that act, yet cannot move it through efficient causality, as St. Thomas teaches in De malo q. 3, art. 3, in the body. Hence it does not follow that God moves morally toward the act of sin insofar as it is an act.

Second, we answer that, as St. Thomas teaches in Sentences II, To Hannibald, d. 37, q. un., art. 1, ad 3, not only the act of sin but also the very thought by which a person thinks of carrying out an act of sin is from God insofar as it is an act. He proves this from 2 Corinthians 3: We are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as if from ourselves.

To the ninth argument, we answer that, as St. Thomas says, 1. p. q. 21. ar. 4. in the body, it is necessary that mercy and truth, or justice, be found in every work of God, provided that mercy is taken to mean the removal of any defect whatsoever, although not every defect can properly be called misery, but only a defect of rational nature, which can be happy.⁴³ Justice, in turn, is found insofar as whatever God does in created things, he does according to a fitting order and proportion, in which the character of justice consists; and thus justice must be in every work of God. On this basis, it must be said that moving and predetermining a person’s will to an act of sin insofar as it is an act pertains to God’s mercy, since through that motion he reduces the power to second act and frees it from a certain defect, namely, its lack of second act and its being in potency to that act. For everything in potency, insofar as it is such, implies a certain imperfection, since it thereby falls short of the perfection of God, who is pure act. Likewise, such motion and predetermination to an act of sin insofar as it is an act pertains to justice, insofar as God performs it according to a manner fitting to his wisdom and goodness, and according to the mode of a rational creature, which consists in freedom. Moreover, in sinful acts that presuppose another sin, divine justice appears in a certain special way, insofar as, as punishment for a prior sin, the created will is predetermined to such an act of sin insofar as it is an act, and is permitted to fall into a new sin.

XXXIV. To the tenth argument, we deny the consequence. The reason for the distinction is that a vicious habit inclines one to act badly, as St. Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae I, q. 83, art. 2, in the body, and Aristotle in Ethics II, ch. 6, and Metaphysics V, text 25. But God cannot immediately cause in us something that inclines us to evil, since that very evil and defect would then be from God.⁴⁴ On the other hand, God’s actual aid is necessary even for the entity of the action itself insofar as it is an action, in accordance with John 15: For without me you can do nothing. Hence God can properly provide immediate actual aid for producing the entity of an act of sin insofar as it is an act, without cooperating in its deformity.

XXXV. To the eleventh argument we reply that God is said to harden and blind sinners in several ways, as we noted in our commentary on Isaiah, chapter 6, no. 48 and the following two numbers.⁴⁵ First, negatively and permissively, namely, because as punishment for their previous sins he does not soften or enlighten them, as the Doctors cited in the argument explain. In a second way, God is said to harden and blind some people not only negatively, because he does not soften or enlighten them, but also positively, though indirectly, as St Thomas explains in his commentary on Romans, chapter 9, on the words, “For this very purpose I raised you up, etc.” Namely, as a just judge he uses the ministry of the Devil to punish the reprobate with the penalty of blindness, in keeping with Psalm 77, “Missions through evil angels.” So teach Augustine, The City of God XX, chapter 19; Chrysostom, Homily 67 on John and Homily 8 on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians; Origen, Homily 2 on the Book of Judges; Gregory, Moralia XXV, chapters 12 and 13, on Job 34, “He brings on night, and they are crushed,” and Homily 11 on Ezekiel; and John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith IV, chapter 20. Third, God is said to harden and blind sinners positively because he inclines their wills to evil by furnishing an occasion, by proposing inwardly and outwardly to sinners certain things that in themselves lead to good, but which sinners, through their own malice, turn to their own evil. In this way the Lord himself, speaking to the children of Israel, says: “I will provoke you to jealousy by a non-nation, by a foolish nation I will anger you.”⁴⁶⁴⁷⁴⁸ This is to be taken as occurring by occasion: for the mercy bestowed on the Gentiles, which in itself led to good, became for the Jews an occasion of envy. The statement in Wisdom 14 must be understood in the same sense: “For the creatures of God became hateful, and a temptation to the souls of men, and a snare to the feet of the foolish.” For the foolish, through their own malice, take occasion to sin from the very creatures that show the wisdom, omnipotence, and goodness of their Creator. In this same way, then, God is said to blind and harden sinners, as Augustine teaches in Question 10 on Exodus, in On Grace and Free Choice, chapters 20 and 21, and on Psalm 104, on the words: “He turned their heart to hate his people and to deal craftily with his servants.” Yet one must not therefore think that sinners hardened by God do not harden themselves or do not persist freely in their sins. Both things are entirely true: God hardens certain sinners, and they freely harden themselves. St Augustine noted this in On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 23, in these words: “Do not therefore take free choice away from Pharaoh because in many places God says, ‘I hardened Pharaoh,’ or ‘I hardened’ or ‘I will harden Pharaoh's heart.’ For this does not mean that Pharaoh himself did not harden his heart. For this too is read of him: when the dog-fly was taken away from the Egyptians, Sacred Scripture says, ‘And Pharaoh hardened his heart, and at that time he was unwilling to let the people go.’ Accordingly, God hardened him by a just judgment, and Pharaoh himself hardened his heart by free choice.” Therefore, whenever God hardens some people as punishment for previous sins, whether negatively or positively, he does so in the ways explained, permitting them to sin and moving them by actual motion to an act of sin insofar as it is an act. For, as St Thomas attests in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 109, a. 9, body, “no created thing can proceed to any act whatsoever except by the power of divine motion.” The Truth himself also attests this clearly when he says: “For without me you can do nothing.”⁴⁹

XXXXI. To the twelfth argument I answer that this same argument was proposed and answered in disputation 18, nos. 21 and 22. But because the authors of the opposing opinion press it so often, it must also be refuted often. For, as Prosper says, It is necessary and useful to write even what has already been written, lest what is not often argued be thought insignificant.⁵⁰ Julian raised a similar argument against St. Augustine to prove that original sin is not present in little children. He argued as follows: God is the universal cause of a human being; therefore, if original sin follows upon such generation, God will be the cause of original sin, for whoever is the cause of something is also the cause of what follows upon it. Hence, in his reply to the articles falsely attributed to him, Augustine writes: This, he says, is the emptiness of the objection from that school in which human nature is defended as free from Adam’s sin and unharmed, so that, because we assert that all human beings are born guilty of transgression and liable to damnation, and will perish unless they are reborn in Christ, we seem to say that the one we profess to be the creator of nature is the same one we call the author of guilt. We utterly reject this from our way of thinking, for we know God to be just and good, the creator of human substance and of the inner and outer senses;⁵¹⁵² so that⁵³ whatever pertains to nature is wholly from him, and whatever is contrary to nature is wholly not from him. But sin is contrary to nature, and from it death and all that belongs to death arise. Therefore, St. Augustine answers the argument in Against Julian III, ch. 9, by saying that original sin does not follow upon the generation of a human being according to his nature, insofar as it is human generation, but insofar as it expresses a relation to the first parent, who sinned voluntarily.⁵⁴ For if Adam had persevered in the state of innocence, there would have been true human generation without original sin following upon it. Thus original sin is not from God, who concurs in and moves the generation of a human being, but from the first parent, who stained the whole of human nature by his disobedience. This will be treated in disputation 44. By analogy we say of actual sin that the deformity of sin, or moral evil, does not follow intrinsically and by the nature of the thing upon the act of blasphemy or hatred of God insofar as it is an act, nor insofar as it is a being in the order of nature, even as an individual; it follows only insofar as the act proceeds from a deficient created will. Hence moral evil and the defect of sin must be referred to the deficient will, not to God. This is the solution of St. Thomas, q. 3, On Evil, art. 2, ad 2, and Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 2, art. 2, ad 2, which Capreolus discusses more fully in Sentences II, dist. 37, art. 3, at the beginning. His words are these: One must consider that a privation or condition can follow upon an act in two ways. First, it may follow from the very essence and nature of the act considered in itself and absolutely; for example, the privation of integrity and the experience of venereal pleasure follow and accompany by its nature the act of fornication. In another way, a privation may follow upon and accompany an act not from the act’s own nature and essence considered in itself—that is, insofar as it regards the object from which it receives its species in the order of nature—but insofar as the act is performed by a particular agent. For example, the privation of order and rectitude accompanies the act of fornication insofar as it is performed by an agent who, in doing such an act, departs from his rule and law; it does so not insofar as the act is considered in the order of nature but in the moral order. It is then said that whatever produces an act produces or causes every privation or property that follows upon the act in the first way; but it need not be the cause of a privation that follows upon the act in the second way. Deformity follows upon an act of sin in that second way, not the first. Therefore God can cause whatever is absolute and positive in the act of sin without causing the deformity that follows upon the act. Capreolus asserts that this is St. Thomas’s solution in the cited q. 3, On Evil, which we have also developed in disputation 18, nos. 21 and 22.

By this the final argument made in the preceding disputation remains answered. For we say that even for evil acts, insofar as they are acts, actual help is required beforehand to predetermine the created will to such acts in every respect of their entity.

XXXVII. But since some of the Thomists (though few) hold that by an actual motion God does not premove or predetermine the created will to an act of sin, even insofar as it is an act, we answer that argument a second time as follows. Even if it were granted—but not conceded—that God does not premove or predetermine our will to evil acts insofar as they are acts, one may not infer from this, as some do, that he does not predetermine it to supernatural good acts, especially those by which the predestined attain eternal life.⁵⁵ The reason for the distinction is that, as St. Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 109, art. 9, in the body, even one who has already attained grace needs divine aid by which God moves him to act rightly, for two reasons. First, for a general reason: no created thing can proceed to any act whatsoever except by the power of the divine motion. Second, for a special reason, owing to the condition of the state of human nature. Although grace heals the mind, corruption and infection remain in the flesh, through which it is subject to the law of sin, as is said in Romans 7. A certain obscurity of ignorance also remains in the intellect, by reason of which we do not know what we ought to pray for as we should.⁵⁶ Thus, in this present state, a person does not perfectly participate in grace itself, as he explains in his answer to the second objection⁵⁷: It is clear that anything that perfectly possesses some nature, form, or power can act by itself according to it, though not to the exclusion of God’s operation, since God works inwardly in every nature and will. But what imperfectly possesses some nature, form, or power cannot act by itself unless it is moved by another: thus the sun, because it is perfectly luminous, can illuminate by itself; but the moon, in which the nature of light is imperfect, does not illuminate unless it has been illuminated. A physician, too, who perfectly knows the art of medicine can act by himself, but his student, who is not fully instructed, cannot act by himself unless he is instructed by the physician. Therefore, since in the present state intellectual nature participates imperfectly in supernatural forms, because it does not possess them fully, in accordance with the Apostle’s words, For we know in part and we prophesy in part,⁵⁸ it needs divine motion for this special reason, in order to act according to such forms. Hence, even if one granted that God’s prior motion is not necessary for an act of sin insofar as it is an act, because of the first reason, namely, the essential subordination to the first agent, it would still have to be asserted, on account of the second reason, that this motion is necessary for good acts, especially supernatural ones, which are chiefly the subject of our dispute.

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

I. Some theologians admit in free acts a necessity from the supposition of divine foreknowledge, by which, they say, God foresaw before the predetermination of his will that, if created will were placed in this order of things, it would, by its innate freedom, perform this particular act. They do not, however, admit in those same acts a necessity from the supposition of the divine decree or of efficacious help predetermining the will to its particular good acts with all their circumstances. For they consider this necessity from supposition incompatible with created freedom as regards its use, and they are convinced by arguments advanced in the three preceding disputations, especially by the authority of Anselm cited in Disputation 22, argument 9. When they are told that necessity from the supposition of divine foreknowledge does not take freedom away from our acts—for an act of the will can be simply free and necessary in a qualified sense, namely, from the supposition of divine foreknowledge; therefore, likewise, necessity from the supposition of the divine will and predetermination will not be contrary or incompatible with created will as regards its actual use—they deny the consequence and give as the reason for the distinction that necessity from the supposition of the divine will or of prevenient help of grace is taken from something antecedent to and preceding the determination of created will; accordingly, this sort of necessity is antecedent and therefore, in keeping with Anselm's teaching cited above, overturns our freedom. Necessity from the supposition of divine foreknowledge, however, is not taken from anything antecedent but rather from something consequent upon the free determination of our will. For they think that something is not future through a free and contingent cause because God foresaw that it would be future; rather, conversely, it is foreseen by God before it happens because it is future. We treated this expressly above in Disputation 16. Therefore this necessity is called consequent and, in keeping with Anselm's teaching, does not take away freedom because it is necessity from supposition of the free act itself; for whatever exists while it exists must exist, as Aristotle says in On Interpretation I, chapter 6.

II. St Thomas expressly teaches the contrary opinion. Alongside the freedom of created choice, and without presupposing any middle or conditional foreknowledge (which, as is clear from what was said in Disputation 7, he did not admit), he admits necessity from the supposition of the absolute and efficacious decree of the divine will, of its providence and predestination, and of the efficacious help of grace that works beforehand. He now calls this necessity “necessity in the composite sense,” now “modal necessity de dicto,” now “the necessity of infallibility,” “the necessity of immutability,” “conditional necessity,” and finally “the necessity of consequence.” This is necessity in a qualified sense and does not impede freedom.¹ He teaches the same concerning necessity from the supposition of foreknowledge of future contingents, which follows such a decree of the divine will. By this distinction he resolves many arguments raised against Catholic teaching on grace and free choice, as well as on God's knowledge, will, providence, and predestination. St Augustine and the other Doctors and theologians to be cited below use the same distinction.

III. Indeed, he teaches the foregoing distinction between necessity from supposition and absolute necessity under the name of those two kinds of necessity in Question 23 of On Truth, Article 4. To prove that God wills by necessity whatever he wills, he argues in the first objection: “Everything eternal is necessary, but God wills from eternity; therefore he wills by necessity whatever he wills.”² He replies as follows: “Something is said to be necessary in two ways: in one way, absolutely; in another, from supposition. Something is said to be absolutely necessary because of the necessary relation of the terms that are posited in a proposition, as that a human being is an animal, or that every whole is greater than its part, and other such things. What is necessary from supposition, however, is not necessary in itself, but only once something else is posited, as that Socrates ran. For as far as Socrates himself is concerned, he is no more disposed to this than to its opposite; but once it is supposed that he ran, it is impossible that he did not run. Accordingly, I say that God's willing something among creatures, for example Peter's being saved, is not absolutely necessary, since the divine will does not have a necessary order toward this, as is clear from what was said. But once it is supposed that God wills or has willed it, it is impossible that he did not will it, since his will is immutable. Hence among theologians this sort of necessity is called the necessity of immutability.”³ He gives the same distinction and solution in the replies to objections 4, 8, 9, 12, and 14 of that same article, and in Summa theologiae I, Question 19, Article 3, body and ad 1.

And lest anyone say that in these passages St. Thomas admits only a necessity of the divine will in a free act that follows upon the free act’s own supposition—a necessity that the authors of the contrary opinion call consequent necessity—I cite another passage of St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 23. ar. 6., where in the second argument for proving that predestination is not certain, he argues: Given something possible, no impossibility follows. But it is possible for someone predestined, such as Peter, to sin and then be killed. If this is posited, the effect of predestination is frustrated. Therefore, and so on. To this argument, however, he answers as follows: Although it is possible, considered in itself, for someone who is predestined to die in mortal sin, this is nevertheless impossible when it is posited—namely, when it is posited that he is predestined. Hence it does not follow that predestination can fail. Behold: St. Thomas admits a necessity by supposition arising from the decree of the divine will that predestines, while preserving created free choice in its actual use. He admits the same necessity more expressly in Summa theologiae I, q. 19, art. 8, ad 1 and 3. His words must be cited and examined in no. 6. Nor is it sufficient to answer that this decree of predestination is in God only on the supposition of middle knowledge, by which he knew what would occur in particular from contingent and free causes on the hypothesis that they were placed in such an order of things and in such circumstances. For it was already shown in dispute 7 that, according to St. Thomas’s opinion, this object is not knowable before every decree of the divine will, and consequently God does not have certain and infallible knowledge of it before the actual decree of the divine will.

IV. He teaches the same distinction under the terms “necessity in the composite and divided senses” in De veritate q. 6, art. 4, ad 8, where he says that it is common. For, speaking of this proposition, “God can predestine someone who is not predestined,” he says: Although it can be conceded absolutely of anyone that God could predestine or not predestine him, nevertheless, on the supposition that he has predestined him, he cannot fail to predestine him, or vice versa, because he cannot be mutable. And so it is commonly said that this proposition—“God can predestine someone not predestined, or not predestine someone predestined”—is false in the composite sense and true in the divided sense. Therefore,⁴ all expressions that imply the composite sense are simply false. Hence it must not be conceded that an addition can be made to or a subtraction made from the number of the predestined, because addition presupposes that to which something is added, and subtraction presupposes that from which something is subtracted. For the same reason, it cannot be conceded that God can predestine more people than he does predestine, or fewer. And in the first part, q. 23, art. 6, ad 3, he says: It is not necessary to say that God can fail to predestine someone whom he has predestined, if this is taken in the composite sense, although, considered absolutely, God can predestine or not predestine. And in Summa contra gentiles I, ch. 67, at the end, explaining how what God knows must be, and resolving the arguments to the contrary, he says: In this and all similar matters, those who argue against God’s knowledge of contingents are deceived by the composition and division of propositions. Now, in St. Thomas’s teaching, it is clear that the decree of the divine will determining future things is presupposed to those things and to their being known. For this is future because God willed it to be future, if it is good, as is clear from the premises in dispute 16. Therefore, according to St. Thomas, necessity in the composite sense, which is derived from the decree of the divine will, is compatible with the freedom and contingency of future things. Finally, he intimates the same distinction when he says: Charity, on the part of the Holy Spirit moving the soul to love God, has impeccability by virtue of the Holy Spirit, who infallibly performs whatever he wills. Hence it is impossible for these two things to be true together: that the Holy Spirit wills to move someone to an act of charity, and that this person loses charity by sinning.⁵ He says the same in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 112, art. 3, in the body. Behold: he plainly teaches that it is necessary in the composite sense that a rational creature cooperate and not sin if the Holy Spirit efficaciously moves it to an act of charity. For these two things cannot be true together: that the Holy Spirit efficaciously moves it to an act of charity, and that the creature itself does not break forth into an act of charity but loses charity by sinning.

V. Under the heading of modal necessity, St. Thomas establishes the same distinction between a thing and a proposition in 1 p., q. 14, art. 13, ad 3. There, after proposing this argument against God’s knowledge—Everything known by God must be so; for everything known by us must also be so, although God’s knowledge is more certain than ours. But no future contingent must be so; therefore no future contingent is known by God—he answers: Things known by God must be necessary according to the mode in which they are subject to divine knowledge, but not absolutely, according as they are considered in their proper causes. Hence this proposition, “Everything known by God must be so,” is customarily distinguished, because it may concern a thing or a proposition. If it is understood of a thing, it is divided and false, and its sense is: “Every thing that God knows is necessary.” Or it may be understood of a proposition; in that case it is composite and true, and its sense is: “This proposition, that something known by God is so, is necessary.”⁶ And in Against the Gentiles I, ch. 67, speaking of the proposition “What is seen sitting must sit,” he says: It is clear that, understood of the proposition and taken compositionally, it is true; but understood of the thing and taken divisively, it is false. From this he derives the truth of the proposition understood of a dictum: “What God knows is going to happen must happen.” God’s knowledge of future things, however, presupposes an absolute and efficacious decree of the divine will, as was said above. Moreover, in Sentences I, dist. 38, single question, art. 5, ad 5, he says: This proposition, “Everything known by God must be so,” can concern a proposition or a thing; if it concerns a proposition, it is true, and if it concerns a thing, it is false.

VI. Under the heading of the necessity of infallibility, he establishes the same distinction in 1.2, q. 112, art. 3, in the body, where he says: If preparation for grace is considered insofar as it is from God moving, then it has necessity with respect to that to which it is ordered by God—not a necessity of coercion, but of infallibility—because God’s intention cannot fail, as Augustine says in his book On the Predestination of the Saints, that all who are delivered are delivered with the greatest certainty by God’s benefits. Hence, if it is God’s intention in moving that the person whose heart he moves obtain grace, that person infallibly obtains it, according to the words of John 6: “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”⁷

Under the heading of absolute and conditional necessity, he assigns the distinction in 1 p., q. 19, art. 8, ad 1. Explaining Augustine’s saying, No one is saved except the one whom God wills to be saved; therefore he must be asked to will it, because it must happen if he wills it,⁸ he says: By this word of Augustine one must understand a necessity in the things willed by God that is not absolute but conditional; for this conditional proposition must be true: “If God wills this, this must be.” And in the reply to the third argument, having proposed this argument to prove that God’s will imposes necessity on the things he wills—That which has necessity from something prior is absolutely necessary, as an animal’s dying is necessary because it is composed of contraries. But created things are related to the divine will as to something prior, from which they receive necessity, since this conditional proposition is true: “If God wills something, it is.” Every true conditional proposition is necessary. Therefore, everything God wills is absolutely necessary—he answers: Things posterior have necessity from things prior according to the mode of the prior things. Hence what comes from the divine will has the kind of necessity God wills it to have, namely, either absolute or merely conditional; therefore, not everything is absolutely necessary.⁹ This passage must be noted carefully in support of our opinion. For St. Thomas expressly admits that necessity taken from a cause antecedent to the cooperation of our will does not always oppose freedom of choice, and he virtually answers the argument based on the authority of Anselm by which the authors of the opposing opinion are persuaded. In q. 23, art. 3, ad 3, he uses the same distinction; and in Sentences I, dist. 47, art. 1, ad 2, he says: Although God’s will is immutable and invincible, it does not follow that every effect of his is necessary with absolute necessity, which a thing has from its proximate cause, but only with conditional necessity, as was also said about foreknowledge. Behold, St. Thomas teaches expressly that conditional necessity, or necessity on a supposition, arising not only from God’s foreknowledge but also from his immutable will, does not take away the freedom or contingency of things that occur in time.

VII. Finally, under the names “necessity of consequence” and “necessity of the consequent,” he assigns the same distinction in Question 24 of On Truth, Article 1. To prove that man does not have free choice, he sets out the thirteenth argument: “Whatever God foreknows must happen, since God's foreknowledge cannot be mistaken; but God foreknows all human acts; therefore they happen by necessity, and thus man does not have free choice in acting.”¹⁰ He replies as follows: “From God's foreknowledge one cannot conclude that our acts are necessary by absolute necessity, which is called necessity of the consequent, but by conditional necessity, which is called the necessity of consequence, as is clear from Boethius at the end of The Consolation of Philosophy.”¹¹ And in the cited Summa contra Gentiles I, chapter 67, he says: “Each thing is known by God just as if it were seen as present; thus what God knows will be necessary, just as it is necessary for Socrates to be sitting on the supposition that he is seen sitting. This is not absolutely necessary, or necessary by what some call necessity of the consequent, but conditionally, or by the necessity of consequence; for this conditional is true: ‘If he is seen sitting, he is sitting.’”

Nor is St Thomas alone in this teaching. All the Doctors who preceded and followed him taught it with unanimous agreement. The authors with whom we are disputing would also admit it most willingly if they were allowed to admit middle or conditional foreknowledge that precedes every decree of the divine will. Indeed, before St Thomas, St Augustine taught the same distinction in his book On the Predestination of God, and it is reported in the chapter “Vessels of Wrath,” Causa 23, q. 4, where he says: “There are two necessities: one simple, by which it is necessary that all human beings be mortal; the other conditional, as when someone knows that a person is walking: it is necessary that he is walking. For what someone knows to be so cannot be otherwise than as it is known; but this necessity does not bring simple necessity along with it. For this necessity is not made by nature itself but by the addition of a condition. No necessity compels the will of someone walking to walk, although it is necessary that he walk at the time when he is walking. In the same way, if providence sees something as present, it must be, although it has no necessity by nature. But God sees as present those future things that proceed from freedom of choice. Therefore, in relation to the divine vision, they are necessary through the disposition of divine knowledge; considered in themselves, however, they do not abandon the absolute freedom of their own nature. Accordingly, without doubt, all things that God foreknows to be future will happen; but”¹² “some of them proceed from free choice. Although they come to pass, they do not thereby lose their own nature, by which, before they came to be, they could also have failed to come to pass.” In this passage, St Augustine admits necessity from supposition together with freedom of created choice, with respect to its actual use, not only in relation to foreknowledge but also to divine providence and, consequently, to predestination, which according to his opinion presupposes an absolute and efficacious decree of the divine will. He teaches the same in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, chapter 103, whose words will be cited below from the ordinary gloss.

VIII. Gratian subscribes to St. Augustine’s teaching in the same chapter, shortly before the words of Augustine cited above, when he says: Divine predestination or foreknowledge does not, then, impose a necessity of correction or hardening, since the good are corrected by grace and the wicked perish by free choice. For things are not necessarily brought about because God’s predestination or foreknowledge cannot fail; nor are things that are going to happen necessarily predestined or foreknown. Rather, good things cannot happen without his grace, nor evil things without his knowledge. Therefore, although it is rightly said, “If these things are predestined or foreknown, they will necessarily happen,” it is not for that reason absolutely true that “the things that are predestined or foreknown will necessarily happen,” because in the latter case necessity refers to the event of things, whereas in the former it refers to the gaze of divine foreknowledge.¹³ The Gloss on the Decree agrees in the same chapter. Explaining the words “Although, therefore, rightly…,” and so on, it says: Note that all such expressions are ambiguous. “If God has foreseen something, it will necessarily happen”: if the word “necessarily” modifies the whole conditional, the expression is true, and the sense of the conditional is: “If God has foreseen something, it is necessary that it happen.” But if the word “necessarily” modifies the consequent itself, it is false. This proposition is likewise ambiguous: “It is necessary that Socrates walk when he is walking.” If understood compositionally and of the dictum, it is true; if of the thing, it is false. This proposition is likewise ambiguous: “It is necessary that what God has foreseen happen.” Of the dictum it is true; of the thing, it is false. For what God foresees is not necessary to happen. Note also that this argument is invalid: “If God has foreseen something, it will necessarily happen; therefore, if God has foreseen something, it is necessary that it happen.” For here the word “necessary” cannot modify the conditional itself, but only the consequent.¹⁴ St. Anselm taught the same in On the Harmony of Predestination and Free Choice, ch. 2, shortly after the beginning, saying: When God wills an effect to follow the will, then it is necessary that the will be free and that what it wills be.¹⁵ And in Why God Became Man II, ch. 17¹⁶, he says that it was necessary for Christ to suffer because this was written, but that it was not necessary absolutely. He thus clearly intimates that necessity by supposition from the Scriptures is compatible with the freedom with which Christ offered himself to death. Yet that necessity was derived from something antecedent to the free determination of Christ’s own human will. Therefore, the conclusion follows. We examined Anselm’s words in dispute 22, nos. 40 and 41.

IX. Likewise, the Gloss on the words of 1 Timothy 2, Who wills all men to be saved, says: He must be asked to will it; if he wills it, it must happen.¹⁷ This is Augustine’s gloss in the Enchiridion, ch. 103. Explaining it, St. Thomas says in Summa theologiae I, q. 19, art. 8, ad 1: Through Augustine’s gloss, necessity in things willed by God is to be understood as conditional, not absolute; for this conditional must be true: “If God wills this, it is necessary that this be.”¹⁸ By these words St. Augustine, the Gloss, and St. Thomas admit, even with respect to God’s efficacious will, the necessity of the consequence in free acts together with the freedom of the consequent. Hugo of St. Victor holds the same opinion in question 218 on the Epistle to the Romans. For he teaches that this conditional is true: “If God has provided for this, it must happen.” If it is objected that freedom is taken away by this necessity, he answers that the common solution is through the distinction between conjunction and separation.¹⁹ By conjunction and separation he means the distinction between what is necessary in the composite and divided senses, which he says is common and by which the argument is commonly resolved.

X. Likewise, the Master of the Sentences, speaking of foreknowledge in Sentences I, dist. 38, near the end, says: It is impossible, he says, for that which God has foreknown not to happen.²⁰ There he gives the distinction between the composite and divided senses under the names of conjunction and disjunction. And in dist. 40, speaking of predestination, he teaches the same as he did of foreknowledge, for he says: It is impossible for these two things to be true together: that someone is predestined and that he is damned. In dist. 47, at the beginning, he says: God’s will is always efficacious, so that everything he wills comes to be and nothing he does not will comes to be; and this is always fulfilled with respect to a human being, wherever that person turns. Nothing clearer could have been said in support of our opinion. Albert the Great, whose disciple St. Thomas was, teaches the same distinction in Sentences I, dist. 38, art. 4, and in the first part of his Summa, q. 61, member 5, and in both places asserts that it is found in Boethius and St. Anselm.²¹ Alexander of Hales uses the same distinction between what is necessary in the composite and divided senses in Summa I, q. 24, members 4 and 5, in the same terms and words in which St. Thomas teaches it in the places cited above; he affirms that the freedom of our choice stands together with necessity on a supposition.²² St. Bonaventure, Doctor of the Church, taught precisely the same doctrine in Sentences I, dist. 47, in an article where he asks whether God’s will of good pleasure can be impeded. In the body of that article he says: God’s absolute will must be fulfilled, but his conditional will need not be. One must observe, however, that there is a necessity of the consequence, as was said above of foreknowledge: it does not have the necessity of the consequent but of the consequence, because this follows necessarily: “God has foreknown this; therefore this will be.” Nevertheless, he does not foreknow it necessarily, because in the act of foreknowing a contingent effect is often signified. So one must understand that God’s absolute will connotes the event of a thing, and therefore there is a necessity of the consequence but not of the consequent, because it does not change the event of the thing; rather, God wills that a contingent consequent come to be. Thus, just as foreknowledge cannot fail because it necessarily infers an effect, so an absolute will cannot be impeded because it necessarily infers an effect; indeed, it must necessarily be fulfilled.²³ A little later he adds: Hence it rightly follows: “He wills this person to be saved by an absolute will; therefore he will be saved.” In the reply to the second argument, he says: To the second objection one must answer that just as the divine will, or divine willing, connotes an effect, so too it connotes the efficient causality of a particular cause. For when one says, “God wills this person to be saved,” he also wills that this person will. Hence, just as the divine will connotes that this effect comes to be, and therefore the effect necessarily follows upon it, so it connotes that the created cause concurs; therefore it necessarily follows: “If God wills this person to be saved, then this person also wills it.” Thus it never fails, just as the effect does not; and thus it is never impeded. He teaches the same in Sentences I, dist. 38, art. 2, q. 1, and dist. 40, art. 2, q. 1.

XI. After St. Thomas, all his disciples, both ancient and modern, followed the same doctrine. Among the ancients is Capreolus, in Sentences I, dist. 45, q. 1, art. 2, throughout, especially in the reply to the third argument of the article, where he approves the distinction between the necessity of the consequence and that of the consequent. He says: It stands well that what is willed by God will necessarily happen with respect to God, by the necessity of immutability, and will happen contingently absolutely speaking. It will happen necessarily with respect to God, because it is true that it will happen from God, and it cannot pass from true to false or cease to be true; this is the necessity of immutability. But it will happen contingently, absolutely speaking, because it implies no contradiction that it not happen; indeed, God could make it not happen. Therefore, the necessity of immutability stands together with the freedom of choice.²⁴ Durandus confirms the same in Sentences I, dist. 47, art. 10, at the end of the body, when he says: From this it is clear that those who say that everything happens necessarily in relation to the divine will are speaking badly. For, as was said, everything happens freely with respect to the divine will, and therefore, absolutely speaking, it can fail to happen, although, given the supposition that it is willed, it cannot fail to happen; but this is only a necessity of supposition.²⁵ Aegidius Colonna, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, uses the same distinction in Sentences I, dist. 38, final question, ad 2, and cites St. Anselm and Boethius in support of it.²⁶

XII. Ferrariensis, in Summa contra Gentiles I, chapter 85, while explaining St Thomas's fourth argument, says under “For clarity”: “From the fact that something is necessary from supposition, it does not follow that contingency must be removed from it. Thus, since from the fact that God wills something it is necessary only by supposition that it be, because these two things cannot stand together—that God wills it to happen and it does not happen—though it is not necessary absolutely, one need not remove contingency from things on account of God's will.”²⁷ In the discussion throughout that chapter he proves that it is impossible in the composite sense for God efficaciously to will that some effect follow from a contingent cause and for that effect not to follow. Conrad, in Part I–II, Question 10, Article 4, especially on St Thomas's reply to the third objection, and Question 112, Article 3, expressly asserts that it is contradictory in the composite sense for God to move a man efficaciously to do something and for the man not to do it, although it is absolutely possible for him not to do it.²⁸ Cajetan, in Part I, Question 22, Article 4, on St Thomas's reply to the first objection, says that all the Doctors affirm that future contingent acts are absolutely avoidable and can fail to be, yet are unavoidable in relation to divine providence and the efficacy of the divine will. He says that the distinction “between the composite and divided senses, and between the necessity of consequence and necessity of the consequent,” is commonly assigned by the Doctors to reconcile freedom of choice and the contingency of things with the infallibility of divine providence. Cajetan himself approves this teaching there, although he says it does not satisfy our intellect; therefore he takes his intellect captive in obedience to the faith. In this he speaks with great learning and piety.²⁹

XIII. More recent Thomists also unanimously teach and defend the same doctrine. Master Soto does so in Book 1 of On Nature and Grace, chapter 16, where he says that “God's concurrence, by which he moves the will to right action, although it is in the same instant of time as the concurrence of created will, is nevertheless prior to it in nature.”³⁰ A little later he adds: “At the moment of time when God concurs with me, I am free to refuse to act then; for while I am moved freely, I can, in the divided sense, fail to act, and then God's concurrence will cease, although in the composite sense these two things conflict with one another: that God acts toward me by that action and that I do not act.” Master Medina, in Part I–II, Question 10, Article 4, doubt 1, before the reply to the first objection, says: “Once God's concurrence is posited, it is not possible for a man not to be moved while the divine concurrence remains; nevertheless, absolutely and simply speaking, he can fail to be moved. This is just as if one were to say that it is impossible for this conjunction to be true: ‘God concurs with me and moves my will, and my will is not moved.’ But this conjunction is true: ‘God concurs with me in willing or speaking, and I can fail to will or speak.’”³¹ In the reply to the first objection he says: “Even when God's concurrence is posited, a person acts freely and can fail to act, although in the composite sense it cannot stand that God concurs and the person does not act. It is just as it cannot stand that God knew from eternity that Peter would sin and Peter does not sin; nevertheless, he can still fail to sin.”

XIV. Master Bañez, in Part I, Question 19, Article 8, doubt 1, second conclusion, says: “Contingent or free effects, if compared with God's knowledge, providence, or will, are necessary in a qualified sense, namely, from supposition. This necessity is conditional, or rather the necessity of consequence, not necessity of the consequent.”³²³³ He proves it because these inferences are valid and necessary: “God wills something to happen; therefore it will happen in the manner and at the time he wills it to happen”; “God provided for this as future; therefore it will be.” And in Question 23, Article 3, final doubt, after the tenth conclusion, he says: “Finally, one must consider how what was defined at the Council of Trent, Session 6, canon 4, agrees with Catholic teaching. It says: ‘If anyone says that man's free choice, moved and aroused by God, is purely passive, like something lifeless, and does not cooperate at all in preparing itself to receive grace, or cannot dissent if it wishes, let him be anathema.’ In this canon observe two things. First, that this cooperation of free choice is an effect of divine mercy. Second, that the proposition ‘Free choice can dissent if it wishes’ must be understood simply speaking, but not in the composite sense, as if these two things could stand together: that this efficacious help exists in a man and that the man resists by dissenting. The reason is evident: ‘Who will resist his will?’—that is, his efficacious and absolute will.”³⁴

XV. Master Zumel, Part I, Question 19, Article 8, Disputation 2, second conclusion, has nearly the same words as those we cited from Master Bañez on the same Article 8. Master Brother John Vincent Asturicensis, formerly Vicar General of the Order of Preachers and distinguished professor of Sacred Theology at the University of Salamanca, in his Relection on the Grace of Christ, Question 5, Article 3, Conclusion 3, page 430, says that “Christ's human will was simply and in the divided sense free to obey or not obey the command imposed on him. But in the composite sense and by the necessity of consequence he could not fail to fulfill all”³⁵³⁶ “the commands imposed on him and obey all the mandates laid upon him. Thus it could not stand that a command to die was imposed on Christ and that his will did not accept it and fulfill it at the appointed time.” There he affirms that this is the common teaching of the Thomists and explains how freedom of choice is compatible with it.

XVI. This same distinction is also commonly accepted in the school of Scotus. Scotus teaches it in book 1, distinction 39, single question, asserting that it belonged to Boethius, and in distinction 40, single question; all his disciples follow him.³⁷ Brother Peter Trigosius, a Capuchin, admits the same distinction in his commentaries on St. Bonaventure’s Summa of Theology I, q. 15, art. 2, doubt 1, conclusion 2, p. 459, where he says: Contingent and free effects, if compared with God’s knowledge, providence, and will, are said to be necessary in a qualified sense, or by supposition—a necessity called conditional or of the consequence—but not absolute, or of the consequent. He gives this reason: these conditionals are excellent: “God foreknew that this would happen; therefore, it will happen”; “God foresaw this as future; therefore, it will happen”; “God wills something to happen; therefore, it will happen in the way and at the time he willed it,” since it is impossible for the antecedent to be true and the consequent false. There he also presents the adversaries’ argument against this teaching, affirming that it proves nothing; he teaches the same at greater length in the same article, doubt 3, note 1, and in the answer to the first objection.

XVII. Finally, the necessity of this distinction is clearly gathered from Sacred Scripture and the Councils, for they contain many things that cannot be brought into harmony except through this distinction.³⁸ For the Council of Trent, Session 6, on Justification, canon 4, defines that free choice, moved and stirred by God, can dissent from him if it wishes; and chapter 5 says that a person can reject divine inspiration, and so forth. Sacred Scripture likewise proclaims that no one can resist God’s will, as is clear from Esther 13: There is no one who can resist your will if you have decreed to save Israel; Psalm 75: You are terrible, and who can resist you?; Isaiah 14: The Lord God has decreed, and who can weaken it?; and chapter 46: My counsel shall stand, and all my will shall be done; and chapter 47: No man shall resist me; and Romans 9: For who can resist his will? These passages, which at first sight seem opposed, are reconciled by the foregoing distinction, and in no other way. Moreover, 1 John 3³⁹ says: Everyone who is born of God does not sin; indeed, he cannot sin, because the seed of God remains in him. But other passages of Scripture report that many people who were just did sin. David sinned by killing Uriah and going to his wife while Uriah was still alive;⁴⁰ the Apostle Peter sinned by denying the Lord Christ on the night of his Passion;⁴¹ and very many others sinned who had previously been born of God through grace. These passages, which seem opposed, are also brought into harmony through the distinction set out above. What St. John says, “He who is born of God cannot sin,” is understood in the composite sense, since it implies a contradiction for these two things to be true together: that someone is born of God and exists in grace, and that he commits mortal sin. For grace and mortal sin cannot be together in the same person. What the other Scriptures report, namely, that many just people sinned and consequently were able to sin, is understood absolutely and in the divided sense. Therefore, that distinction must necessarily be admitted.

XVIII. To all these points, the authors of the contrary opinion reply that they gladly admit the distinction between what is necessary in the composite and divided senses, by which the holy Doctors and Scholastics commonly resolve the heretics’ arguments against divine providence, predestination, and the freedom of created choice. They say, however, that God does not have an absolute and efficacious decree to bring something about through a free cause earlier in the order of reason than his having explored through middle or conditional knowledge, and known certainly and infallibly, what the created will would perform individually according to its innate freedom, on the hypothesis that it were placed in such an order of things and in such circumstances. But this escape assumes something false: for, as was shown in dispute 7, even God cannot know before the actual decree of his will what created free choice would specifically do if it were placed in such circumstances.

We have already answered sufficiently the argument made at the beginning in dispute 22, nos. 40 and 41, where we explained the authority of Anselm.

XIX. To complete this disputation, one would have to discuss what it means for an act of created free choice to be necessary in the composite or divided sense, and how necessity in the composite sense must be explained and understood. This will be treated in disputation 94.⁴² In the meantime, we observe that some theologians fail in their dialectical principles when they suppose that this proposition—“A human being moved by God through efficacious help cannot dissent from the divine call in the composite sense”—means nothing other than that, while that motion is in the person, he cannot dissent but is necessarily converted; once the efficacious motion is removed, however, he can dissent and not be converted. But these authors do not reach the true composite sense. They merely join efficacious help to the created will; they do not combine efficacious help and actual resistance in the same subject at the same time. It is this combination that the proposition signifies: “Free choice moved by God through efficacious help to consent can dissent in the composite sense.”⁴³ For the proposition “What is white cannot be black in the composite sense” does not mean that while whiteness is in a person he cannot be black, but that once the whiteness has been removed he can be black. It means instead that whiteness and blackness are forms incompatible together in the same subject, so that it is impossible for something to be white and black at the same time. Hence the proposition is true. In the same way, this proposition—“Free choice moved by God through efficacious help cannot dissent in the composite sense”—does not mean that while efficacious motion is in a person he cannot dissent if he wishes, but once efficacious motion has been removed he can dissent. Rather, it means that these two things are incompatible together: that efficacious help is in free choice and that free choice dissents. Hence the proposition is true, because efficacious help and actual resistance neither are nor can be together in the same subject, although efficacious help can coexist in the same choice with a power to dissent if it wishes. This is sufficient and required for freedom, as we began to note in disputations 18 and 22, and will explain more fully below in disputations 32, 92, 93, 115, and 116.

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

I. The present question is especially useful for explaining how the freedom of created choice with respect to its actual exercise stands together with the absolute and efficacious decree of the divine will, which predetermines all future contingent and free things. Accordingly, after showing that God efficaciously predetermines all future contingent and free acts, we must now explain what the first root is from which the contingency of those acts is derived.

The first opinion, then, is Scotus’s, in Sentences I, dist. 2, q. 4; dist. 8, qq. 4 and 5; dist. 38 and 39; and II, dist. 1, q. 3. In these places he asserts that the first root of contingency is not efficacy but the freedom of the divine will, such that if God’s freedom were removed, no contingency would remain in things. From this he infers that philosophers who said the world proceeded from God by necessity of nature and nevertheless admitted contingency in things tacitly admitted two contradictories. Cordoba defends the same opinion in Questionary I, q. 55; all Scotists follow it. It is proved as follows.

First. If God acted by necessity of nature, he would necessarily move and apply secondary causes to acting. Therefore all secondary causes would act by absolute necessity and not contingently. The inference is clear: a cause that moves insofar as it is moved, if it is moved necessarily, moves necessarily. But all secondary causes move insofar as they are moved and applied by God. Therefore, if they were moved by God by necessity of nature, they would move and act necessarily, not freely. Therefore, for contingency to be preserved in things, the first cause must move secondary causes freely, and consequently the first root of contingency is the freedom of the divine will.

II. Second. The first cause reaches the effect by a priority of nature before the second cause does. Therefore, if the first cause acted necessarily, it would necessarily produce the effect of the secondary cause; consequently, the secondary cause would not produce it freely. For it is contradictory that the same effect be at once free and absolutely necessary, even with respect to different causes. Therefore, freedom is required in the first cause for the effect to be free and contingent.

Third. The numerically same effect that is produced by secondary causes can be produced immediately by God alone. But if it is produced by God alone, it cannot be contingent unless the first cause produces it freely; for if God acted by necessity of nature, the effect would be produced necessarily. Therefore, an effect is not contingent when produced by God through a secondary cause unless the first cause acts freely in producing it.

Fourth. Every being by participation is referred as to its first root to the first Being by essence. Therefore, everything free by participation must be referred to the first Free Being, who is free by essence. Therefore, if there were no freedom in the divine will, freedom could not be preserved in secondary causes, which are free by participation, or in their effects. Hence there would be no contingency either.

They confirm this. If God acted by necessity of nature, the free choice of a human being or an angel could not move itself freely without being moved by another prior agent; otherwise it would be simply the first mover and thus would be God. Nor could it be moved freely by God, because then God would move necessarily and not freely. Therefore, nothing would act freely.

III. The second opinion belongs to some more recent Thomists, who assert that the efficacy of the divine will is the first root of contingency. They say, however, that the freedom of the divine will is a condition necessarily required for contingency in things and for the actual freedom of our acts. From this they infer that even if, as things stand, God moved secondary causes and concurred with them as he now does—with the exception of the freedom of the first cause—there would be no contingent and free effect in the nature of things. They are persuaded by the arguments made in support of Scotus’s opinion.

The third opinion is held by other theologians who reject Scotus’s position and teach that the remote first root of contingency is God’s will creating the free choice of human beings and angels, and the sensitive appetite of beasts. The proximate and immediate root, however, is the free choice of human beings and angels, and the sensitive appetite of beasts, with respect to those acts in which these seem to bear a trace of freedom. They think that if these were removed, there could be no contingency in things. They prove that the remote root of contingency is the divine will creating free choice as follows: whatever is a root of contingency must ultimately have its being from the divine will, since the divine will is the first cause of all things that have being in any way. They prove by the following two arguments that created freedom alone is the immediate and proximate root of contingency. Let the arguments, then, be set out in order.

Fifth argument. All other secondary causes, apart from free causes or those having some trace of freedom, act by necessity of nature. Therefore, the immediate and proximate cause of contingency cannot be derived from them, but only from the created will, which has it within its power to act this way or that, or to cease altogether from acting.

Sixth. Natural causes produce their effects contingently because they are freely applied and moved by free secondary causes. For example, the light of a lamp contingently illuminates this hall because it was freely lit by a human being and brought into the hall, although by the innate freedom of the human being it could have remained unlit and not been brought into the hall. Therefore, the formal and proximate root of contingency is created freedom, or a power bearing some trace of freedom.

This is proved a seventh time. An effect of a secondary cause is called contingent because it can be impeded, but it is not called capable of being impeded in relation to the divine will. For Scripture says in Esther 13: There is no one who can resist your will. Nor is it called capable of being impeded in relation to natural causes, since they are naturally determined to one thing and produce their effects by necessity. Therefore, it is called contingent in relation to a created free cause, and consequently all contingency must be traced back to that cause; once it is removed, no effect can be contingent.

This is confirmed from Aristotle, On Interpretation I, where he defines the contingent as what is not determined to one side; and St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 14. ar. 13. in the body, says that if the contingent is considered as actually existing in itself, it is no longer considered as contingent toward either alternative, but as determined to one.

IV. The fourth opinion is that of Cajetan, Summa theologiae I, q. 19, art. 8, and q. 14, art. 13. He traces the contingency of things back to the efficacy of the divine will as to its first source and cause, but does so in such a way that he thinks the freedom of that same will is not a condition necessarily presupposed for contingent effects to proceed from contingent secondary causes. Consequently, even if God acted outwardly by natural necessity, effects would still be contingent and free. Ferrariensis follows the same opinion in Summa contra gentiles I, ch. 67, and many Thomists defend it, especially Master Báñez, Summa theologiae I, q. 19, art. 8, conclusion 7, and Master Zumel, q. 14, art. 13, dispute 8. But these Doctors do not all agree in assigning the reason why, on the supposition that God acted by natural necessity, effects would still be contingent as they are now. Some, such as Cajetan, Ferrariensis, and Master Zumel, say that the reason is to be derived from the free or impedible secondary cause, which participates in the indifferent influx of the first cause and modifies it according to its nature. Others, such as Master Báñez, do not wish to admit that the influx of the first cause is modified by a secondary cause; therefore, they assign the reason for contingency on the side of the contingent secondary causes, which are per se susceptible to being impeded, and consequently the concurrence of one can impede the concurrence of another. Still others assign various further reasons.

V. To resolve this difficulty, it must be assumed that “contingent” is taken in two ways. First, in a broad sense, for that which, simply speaking, can be and can fail to be, at least by the absolute power of God. In this sense not only corruptible things are called contingent beings, but also the heavenly bodies and the angels; for their existence does not belong to them by absolute necessity, but by God’s free will.¹ All creatures proceeded from God not by natural necessity but freely; and just as God freely produced them, so by his absolute power he can also reduce them to nothing. In the second sense, “contingent” is taken properly for that which can be or fail to be insofar as concerns the secondary cause, because that cause is of itself indifferent to producing or not producing the effect called contingent, or, if it is determined, it can be impeded by the concurrence of other secondary causes. Among contingent effects, free acts are the most contingent, as St. Thomas teaches in Sentences I, d. 38, q. 1, art. 5, for a free cause is indifferent to opposites. In this second sense we are treating future contingents here.

VI. Second, it should be noted that for contingency taken properly it is required that the active power of the cause not be determined to one thing. For what is determined to one thing with respect to exercise, so that its effect exists in the nature of things, is no longer called a contingent effect on that supposition. Or, if the cause is determined to one thing, for the effect to be contingent it must be possible for that cause to be impeded by the concurrence of another cause from producing its effect.² Thus, it is not necessary to a contingent cause that it be indifferent to either alternative; it is enough that another secondary cause can impede it. St. Thomas expressly teaches this³ and proves it by the example of fire, which is naturally determined to burn wood brought near it; nevertheless, that combustion is contingent because it can be impeded by pouring water on it. Hence the holy Doctor distinguishes three kinds of contingents.⁴ The first consists of things that occur rarely, such as things that happen by chance or accident. The second consists of things that occur for the most part, such as a person’s hair turning gray in old age, which is caused by nature. The third consists of things that are indifferent to either alternative, because of themselves they are no more inclined to one side than the other; these proceed from choice. St. Thomas therefore holds that besides contingents proceeding from free causes, there are others proceeding from necessary but impedible causes.

VII. Third, we must note that God's will can be considered in two ways. First, insofar as he willed and created free choice for human beings and angels, along with other secondary causes. On account of this will, every active power of secondary causes by which they are habitually constituted in first act is attributed to God as the first per se efficient cause. Second, insofar as he efficaciously willed, established, and ordained that from such contingent causes such contingent effects, with such circumstances, would be produced through the influx of secondary causes. On account of this will, the actual influx and operation of a secondary cause in all the being it possesses is attributed to God as the first efficient principle. We must also note that in the present discussion we can speak either of the first efficient cause of contingency and of a contingent effect, or of the proximate formal cause. Let the first conclusion, then, be as follows.

VIII. First conclusion. The supreme efficacy and omnipotence of the divine will is the first source and first efficient cause of the contingency found in things.⁵ St Thomas expressly teaches this conclusion in Summa theologiae I, q. 19, a. 8. Explaining whence it comes that certain effects are contingent and free, and that not all things occur by absolute necessity, he says “that this happens because of the efficacy of the divine will. For when some cause is efficacious in acting, the effect follows the cause not only as to what comes to be, but also as to its mode of coming to be or being. For weakness in the active power of the seed causes a son to be unlike his father in accidents pertaining to the mode of being. Since, then, the divine will is most efficacious, it follows not only that the things God wills to happen do happen, but also that they happen in the way God wills them to happen. God wills certain things to happen necessarily and certain things contingently, so that there may be order among things for the completion of the universe. Therefore he has fitted necessary causes, which cannot fail, to some effects, from which effects proceed necessarily; to others he has fitted contingent, liable-to-fail causes, from which contingent effects may come to be. The effects willed by God do not therefore happen contingently because their proximate causes are contingent, but because God willed them to happen contingently and prepared contingent causes to produce them.” Cajetan and the other Doctors cited in support of the fourth opinion follow the same conclusion.

First, it is proved as follows. The supreme efficacy of the divine will is the cause, with respect to the exercise of causation, of all things, whether natural or contingent, as was said above; likewise, it prepares contingent and liable-to-fail causes so that such contingent effects may proceed from them. Therefore it is the first source and efficient cause of all contingent things.

Second, the first source and cause of contingency is that which first contains, formally or eminently, every mode of causality actually found in all secondary causes, and brings it about that such causes produce effects proportionate to their nature. But, according to the teaching of St Thomas cited above, the supreme efficacy of the divine will contains, formally or eminently, every mode of causality of secondary causes, since it is the most universal cause and brings it about that secondary causes contribute to effects proportionate to their nature. Therefore, etc.⁶

IX. Second conclusion. The supreme efficacy of the divine will is the first source and cause of the contingency found in things not only because he created free choice in human beings and angels, but also because by an absolute and efficacious will he established that such contingent effects with such circumstances would follow from such contingent causes. This conclusion is opposed to certain modern theologians who deny that the divine will predetermines through efficient causality all secondary causes and applies them to acting. We argued against them in Disputations 22, 23, and 24. Our conclusion, however, is explicitly taught by St Thomas in the passages cited in those same disputations.

First, it is proved as follows. Otherwise it would follow that contingent and free effects, and the actual causality or influx of secondary causes, would be attributed to God as the first efficient cause for no other reason than that he created free choice. Thus man or angel would have from God as efficient cause only the ability to act contingently and freely by free choice; but the actual free and contingent act would come from himself, descending from the source of choice, or from innate freedom. This is expressly contrary to St Augustine in On the Grace of Christ, against Pelagius and Caelestius, chapter 3 and the following chapters, whose words were cited in Disputation 1.

Second, it is proved by St Thomas's reasoning in the cited Article 8. For if the divine will is the first cause and source of contingent things only because it created free choice, and not because it prepared and predetermined contingent causes so that such effects would contingently proceed from them, it would follow that these effects would occur in particular apart from the intention and determination of the divine will. Thus they would be fortuitous and accidental with respect to God, which is impossible.

Third, it is proved as follows: as will become clear shortly, even if no created free choice existed, there could still be many contingent effects that would be reduced to God as their first efficient cause. Therefore the adequate reason why the contingency of things is reduced to God as their first cause is not that he created free choice in human beings or angels.

X. Third conclusion. The proximate and formal character of contingency found in things is not the free choice of human beings or angels, nor the sensitive appetite of beasts. Consequently, even if we exclude all freedom of created choice, there can still be formally contingent effects proceeding from natural causes, one of which is liable to fail and to be impeded.⁷ This conclusion is opposed to Avicenna, whose opinion in Metaphysics X, ch. 1, St. Thomas reports and attacks in Against the Gentiles III, ch. 86, and to some theologians. Nevertheless, it is expressly taught by St. Thomas himself in the same ch. 86, in 1 p., q. 115, art. 6, and in Metaphysics VI, text 5. He says that this is Aristotle’s opinion in the same text and in On Divination in Sleep, ch. 2.

First it is proved as follows. As St. Thomas teaches, angels by the power of their nature do not know with certainty and infallibly future natural events that depend on secondary causes liable to fail, although they fail only rarely; but they know all things that occur necessarily.⁸ Therefore, contingent effects can proceed from natural causes. The inference is clear: otherwise, by their nature angels would know all future effects that depend on natural causes.

Second, rain in winter and thunder⁹ in summer are formally contingent effects, even though they occur regularly, because they sometimes fail to occur. But their contingency cannot be referred, as to its proximate cause, to the freedom of any created agent. As is clear in itself, it is not referred to human freedom, for human beings cannot prevent or cause rain from heaven. Nor is it referred to the freedom of the angels who move the heavens. For although angels move the heavens by their intellect and will, they are nevertheless determined to this motion after the manner of nature, and by the motion of the heavens they cause the effects of lower bodies. Otherwise, it would not be a miracle or contrary to the order of nature if angels were now to cease moving the heavenly bodies; for it is not a miracle for an angel to cease from a free action. Therefore, the proximate and formal character of contingency is not the free choice of human beings or angels.

Third, the liability of natural secondary causes to fail suffices for contingency, as was said in the first foundation. But this liability to fail belongs to corporeal things not because of any created freedom but by their nature, since it belongs to them through the condition of matter, which can fail in being and consequently in operation, as St. Thomas shows in Against the Gentiles III, ch. 86, argument 5. Therefore, human or angelic freedom is not required for contingency.

Fourth. Chance and fortuitous effects are contingent, as was said above. Yet many chance and fortuitous effects occur in lower things even when all created freedom is excluded. For it happens by chance that a lightning bolt falling from heaven consumes a tree that the earth produced spontaneously in that place. For, as St. Thomas shows in the cited passage of Against the Gentiles III, following Aristotle above against Avicenna, the concurrence of two causes together in a fortuitous and chance effect is not an effect intended per se by any created agent, but follows accidentally. Therefore.

Finally, this is proved by other arguments and by the authorities of Damascene and Ptolemy, which St. Thomas adduces in the cited passage of Against the Gentiles III. There he also reports and answers, on the basis of Aristotle’s teaching, the argument by which Avicenna was persuaded; Ferrara should be consulted at the same place.

XI. Fourth conclusion. The proximate and formal character of contingency in these lower things is taken from a proximate cause liable to fail or to be impeded through the concurrence of another cause.¹⁰ This conclusion is Cajetan’s in the cited q. 14 and seems to be expressly taught by St. Thomas in the same question, art. 13, ad 1, and in Against the Gentiles III, cited above, argument 2. There he teaches that although the supreme cause is necessary, an effect can nevertheless be contingent because of a proximate contingent cause, just as a plant’s germination is contingent because of its proximate contingent cause, although the motion of the Sun, which is the first cause, is necessary.

First it is proved: contingency, formally speaking, denotes imperfection and liability to fail. Therefore, its proximate and formal character must be assigned on the part of a secondary cause liable to fail and to be impeded.

Second, it is proved as follows. In the cited passage of Against the Gentiles III, St. Thomas proves from the fact that natural causes can fail because of the condition of matter that contingent effects can proceed from them. Therefore, the liability of a secondary cause to fail is the proximate and formal character of contingency. One must observe, however, that, as Master Bañez rightly notes, God’s general concurrence is not indifferent in itself, nor is it modified or determined by secondary causes; otherwise it would depend on them. Rather, God himself determines his concurrence and modifies it in secondary causes, and he also determines secondary causes to act in conformity with the condition of their nature. For it belongs to the nature of the first cause simply that every being by participation and every particular mode of created being proceed from it. Contingency, like freedom and necessity, is a mode of created being; therefore, it must proceed from the determination of the divine will. We have discussed this more fully in disputation 20 and the three that follow.

XII. Fifth conclusion. Even if God acted outwardly by natural necessity, nevertheless, if he concurred by the same concurrence by which he now moves and assists secondary causes, and the only difference on God’s part were in the mode of acting—through a natural act of the will, that is, as nature, and not through a free act of the will as he now acts—contingency would still be preserved in things.¹¹ Cajetan and the other authors cited in support of the fourth opinion intend this conclusion in this sense.

First, it is proved as follows. In that case many secondary causes would be liable to fail through the concurrence of other causes, just as they are now, and the only difference would concern the immanent act of the divine will, since that act would then be necessary. Therefore, contingency would exist in things. The inference is clear: as was said on the authority of St. Thomas, the formal and proximate character of contingency is derived from secondary causes liable to fail and to be impeded by other causes.

It is proved a second time. As St. Thomas teaches, 1. p. q. 19. art. 8. in the body, the first cause of contingency found in things is the supreme efficacy of the divine will. But even if the act of the divine will by which God acts were necessary in God and not free, the divine will would still have supreme efficacy. Therefore, if by a natural act God willed that contingent effects proceed from secondary causes liable to fail, there would be contingency in things.

This is confirmed. If God moved a person’s will to will some particular good through the mediation of an indifferent judgment of reason, by which the person judged that the good was not necessarily to be loved, that person’s act of willing would be formally free even if God moved the person to will that good through a natural act of his will. Therefore, that act of willing would be contingent.¹² The inference is clear, since every created free act is contingent, as it can be and can fail to be. The antecedent is proved as follows: although freedom is formally in the will, it is rooted and founded in the indifference of the judgment of reason, as St. Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae I, q. 83, art. 3, ad 1, and Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 85, argument 4. Therefore, if the judgment of reason is indifferent, the act of the will that follows it will be free even if God acted by natural necessity.

It is proved a fourth time by an argument drawn from St. Thomas, Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 86, argument 2. A necessary effect does not follow from a first cause unless the intermediate cause is also necessary. For example, in syllogisms with a necessary major premise and a contingent minor premise, the conclusion is not necessary but contingent. But God is the first cause of lower effects, while the proximate causes are the active and passive powers in these lower things, which are not necessary but contingent causes, since they can fail in the minority of cases. Therefore, even if God acted by natural necessity, effects would be contingent because of their contingent proximate cause.

XIII. From these points the answer is clear to the first argument proposed for Scotus’s opinion and to the assumed proposition: “A cause that acts insofar as it is moved, if it is moved necessarily, moves necessarily.”¹³ For we answer that this is true only of purely instrumental causes, which contribute nothing to the production of an effect by virtue of their own form, but not of principal causes, which contribute something to the production of an effect from themselves, that is, from an intrinsic active principle. This is clear from the example given of a plant that sprouts when moved by the sun. Although it is moved necessarily by the sun through its motion, it nevertheless sprouts contingently because of the condition of its own nature. On this point, see St. Thomas, De potentia q. 6, single article, ad 3.

To the second argument, we answer that since the concurrence of the first cause reaches the effect of the secondary cause only after it is received, prior in the order of nature, into that secondary cause and modified in it, the first cause does not reach that effect at any prior stage at which the secondary cause does not also reach it. Hence it does not follow that all effects would be simply necessary if God acted by natural necessity, as is clear from what was said above.

To the third argument, we answer first that the same argument would prove that God as things now stand produces no contingent effect through a secondary cause. For if such an effect were produced immediately by God alone, it would not be formally contingent, since it would not depend on any cause liable to fail. Second, it is said that when an effect does not imply a formal order to a secondary cause, as vital acts do, then God can properly produce by himself, immediately, the very same effect numerically as to its substance that is produced by secondary causes; there would nevertheless be a difference in the mode of causing. For if it were produced by God alone, no liable-to-fail or impedible cause would intervene, and thus the effect would not be formally contingent. But when it is produced through a secondary cause, there can then be some cause liable to be impeded and consequently the effect can be contingent simply speaking.

XIV. To the fourth argument, Master Bañez replies that if God acted outwardly by natural necessity, there would be no created free choice and no free act; he is persuaded by the argument and its confirmation. In accordance with his opinion, one replies to the fourth argument that even if there were no freedom in secondary causes, contingency would still be preserved in other liable-to-fail natural causes, as was said in the third conclusion.¹⁴ I, however, consider it much more probable that in such a case freedom would be preserved in secondary causes, just as contingency would be preserved in natural things.¹⁵ The reason is that if God preserved the order of the universe and the nature of secondary causes, and provided them with an influx outwardly just as he does now, and the only difference concerned the immanent act of the divine will—namely, that he willed creatures by natural necessity—then, just as natural causes would be liable to fail, free choice, in producing one act, would have an active power by which it could produce the opposite if it wished, on account of the condition of its own nature. Therefore, just as in such a case there would be contingency in secondary natural causes, so there would be freedom in secondary free causes.

This is confirmed by the authority of St Thomas, On the Power of God, Question 6, cited above, ad 3, where he says that “God moves the will immutably because of the efficacy of the moving power, which cannot fail; but because of the nature of the will moved, which is indifferent to different things, necessity is not induced, but freedom remains. So too divine providence operates infallibly in all things, and yet contingent effects proceed from contingent causes, insofar as God moves all things proportionately, each according to its own mode.” But, if he preserved the order of this universe, God would move all things proportionately, each according to its own mode. Therefore, even if he acted by natural necessity, there would still be free effects. I said “if he preserved the order of this universe,” because if God acted according to the full extent of his power and had produced at once from eternity everything he could produce, without preserving the natures of the secondary causes that now exist, in that case there would be no contingent or free effect. To the fourth argument, then, we reply that if God acted by natural necessity while preserving the order of the universe, created freedom would be reduced to God as the first free cause eminently, but not as the first free cause formally. For in that case God would not be formally a free cause, but only eminently so, just as he is eminently a horse, because he is its first cause.¹⁶ Similarly, he is now eminently a contingent cause, but not formally. Therefore, just as contingent effects are in fact referred to God as their first efficient cause, although God is not formally a contingent cause, so in the case posited free acts would be reduced to God as their first efficient cause, although God would not be formally free, but only eminently so.

XV. To the confirmation, we reply that in the case posited created will would act freely, moved by God through an inhering motion proportionate to the nature of the will moved, just as was said of contingent causes. Thus it could produce a free act just as it produces such an act now.

To the fifth argument, we reply that all natural causes act by natural necessity unless they are impeded by the concurrence of other causes. Since secondary natural causes can be impeded, contingent effects follow from them. If the argument is raised, “A natural cause that impedes another acts by natural necessity; therefore, by natural necessity it impedes the effect of the other cause; consequently, no contingent effect will ever proceed from that cause,” St Thomas answers this argument expressly in the cited Summa contra Gentiles III, chapter 86:¹⁷ although a natural cause per se produces its own effect, it does not have it per se that it impede the effect of another cause. The reason is that those two causes are joined not per se but accidentally, as whiteness is accidentally joined to a musical person; hence there is no per se cause of the fact that what is white is musical.

To the sixth argument, the antecedent is denied, as is clear from what was said in the third conclusion.

XVI. To the seventh argument, we reply that effects are said to be formally and proximately contingent by their relation to a secondary cause liable to fail, whether that cause is free or natural. To the confirmation from Aristotle, we reply that a contingent thing is one that is not determined to one outcome in such a way that it cannot be impeded.¹⁸ For if it is determined in such a way that it cannot be impeded, the agent would reduce to act by absolute necessity the passive potency of the matter on which it acts. But if it can be impeded, it would not reduce the passive potency of the matter to act by necessity, and thus the effect would be simply contingent. Aristotle must be understood according to this teaching, as St Thomas explains in Book 1 of On Interpretation, lecture 14, section “It must be considered.”

To the other authority from St Thomas, we reply that it proves only that contingent effects are necessary from supposition, namely, on the supposition that they exist, since whatever exists while it exists must exist, as was said in On Interpretation I, chapter 6. This necessity, however, does not destroy the contingency of things, as St Thomas says in 1. p. q. 14. ar. 13., ad 2, and in the other passages cited in the preceding disputation.

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

I. The affirmative position is defended by Scotus in the first book of the Sentences, at the place cited in the preceding disputation, by Gabriel, and by certain other theologians. Their opinion can be proved as follows: effects produced immediately by God are not necessary; otherwise God would have produced the world by a necessity of nature. Therefore they are contingent; for there is no middle between necessary and contingent. Therefore God is their contingent cause. This is confirmed. The nonnecessary and the contingent are altogether the same, but effects produced by God are nonnecessary with respect to his causality. Therefore they are contingent, and thus God will be their contingent cause.

Second, that is called contingent which by its nature is not determined to being, but can indifferently be and not be; but effects produced immediately by God can indifferently be and not be. Therefore they are contingent, and consequently their cause will be contingent.

Cajetan, I p., q. 14, art. 13, § “As to the second, then,” and Ferrari, Against the Gentiles, bk. 3, chs. 67 and 70, hold the negative position. This is also the express teaching of St. Thomas in Sentences I, dist. 43, q. 2, art. 1, ad 4; On Evil, q. 16, art. 7, ad 15; and On Truth, q. 23, art. 1, ad 2. In these places he teaches that God is neither a necessary nor a contingent cause of things, but a free one,¹ and he assigns two reasons for this.

II. The first is that the necessary and the contingent are conditions proper to a created and limited cause; but the divine will, since it is the most universal cause of all things, is above every condition and mode of a created cause. Therefore it is not formally a contingent cause. He assigns this reason in the cited On Evil, q. 16.

The second reason is that it belongs to the essence of a contingent cause to be changeable and liable to be impeded; but the divine will is neither changeable nor liable to be impeded by another cause. Therefore it is not a formally contingent cause. He assigns this in the cited Sentences I and On Truth, q. 23.

This is confirmed. A contingent cause, precisely as contingent, intrinsically includes imperfection. Therefore it cannot formally belong to God, in whom there can be no imperfection.

Some theologians think that the question concerns a name, and say that if contingency signifies only a certain indifference that an effect has in relation to its cause, insofar as by the power of that cause it can be and can fail to be, then effects are contingent in relation to God, since this is nothing other than not being simply necessary. But if contingency, in addition to the aforesaid indifference, includes some imperfection, then in this respect God is not a contingent cause, but a free one.

Nevertheless, one must say that the question concerns the thing, not the name, unless one wishes to confuse terms and names, and to speak improperly of a free cause as contingent—a practice from which every metaphysician and theologian ought to abstain. Hence Cajetan, at the cited place, after saying that contingency imports imperfection into freedom because it posits changeability, adds: And for this reason St. Thomas, anticipating the inept terminology of the moderns in Sentences I, distinction 38, denies that God causes contingently. The reasons adduced from St. Thomas effectively prove this very point.

III. To the first argument the inference is denied, because the necessary and the contingent are not immediately opposed except in relation to created causes; but in relation to an uncreated cause there is a middle between the necessary and the contingent, namely, the free.

To the confirmation the same answer is given: for we say that the nonnecessary belongs not only to contingent causes but also to free causes:² a free cause, however, is not formally contingent unless it is changeable or liable to be impeded, as a created free cause is, as is clear from what has been said.

To the second argument it is answered that for something to be contingent with respect to a cause, it is not enough that by its nature it is not determined to one outcome; beyond this, the cause said to be contingent must be liable to fail or to be impeded:³ for a contingent effect, as such, expresses a formal relation to a cause liable to fail, just as a defective motion expresses an intrinsic relation to a deficient secondary cause. Hence, just as God cannot immediately, by himself, produce a defective motion or another defective effect unless a deficient secondary cause intervenes, to which the defect is attributed, so he cannot immediately, by himself, produce a formally contingent effect, but only through a secondary cause liable to fail—unless “contingent” is taken in its broad signification for that which can be and can fail to be, at least by the absolute power of God, according to the meaning explained in the preceding disputation, no. 3. For in this meaning every created thing can be called contingent, or contingently be, because the very act of existing does not belong to a creature intrinsically and by its nature, but through God’s gratuitous communication; for to have being by essence is a proper and quidditative predicate of God alone. Hence, when Moses asked, If they say to me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?⁴ the Lord answered, I am who am. Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: “He who is has sent me to you.” And if someone asks whether the act of the divine will by which it decrees to produce things outside itself can be called contingent in that broad meaning in which contingent is called that which can be and can fail to be, the answer is that in God the efficacious willing to produce creatures includes two things: an absolute element, which is the divine essence itself; and with respect to this, the aforesaid willing can in no way be called contingent, but is altogether necessary, because, as regards what is absolute, it could not fail to be in God. The other element is relational, namely, the relation of reason to the creatures to be produced; and with respect to this kind of relation, that willing could have been absent in God. For, as St. Thomas says, although the divine will has necessity of itself, nevertheless, in relation to the production of creatures, it expresses a nonnecessary relation.⁵ Yet because the divine will is altogether immutable, as one that expresses no potentiality to be and not to be—a potentiality that every created thing nevertheless imports, at least in relation to God’s absolute power—the act of the divine will must in no way be called contingent, but free in comparison with creatures, as is clear from what was said above.

End of Book Three.