De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

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.”