De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

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.