De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

IN WHICH THE GRATUITOUS Predestination of the Saints IS TREATED.

I. Since predestination, as we said above, is a subjective part of divine providence, after treating those matters that pertain to God's providence, the order of teaching requires that we discuss more thoroughly the questions disputed in these times concerning divine predestination. In this regard, ten questions present themselves for discussion.

I. Whether all the explanations that St. Augustine attributes to those words of the Apostle, 1 Tim. 2, “God wills all men to be saved,” are legitimate.

II. What the antecedent will of God is, and what His consequent will is; and whether antecedent will formally entails in God some conditional act, or conditional wish.

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

IIII. Whether the good use of free will, by which the predestined person consents to God calling and stirring him, considered insofar as it proceeds from free will, is an effect of predestination, or is instead presupposed on our part for predestination itself.

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

Here predestination to grace is treated in particular, as well as predestination to glory.

VI. Whether the predestination of infants depended on the foreknowledge of the good use of free will by their parents or others through whom they attained the grace of baptism, and presupposed it.

VII. Whether the foreseen merits of Christ our Lord are the cause of our predestination with respect to its complete effect.

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

IX. Whether predestination, with respect to the attainment of its effects, is certain and infallible in itself, not only with the certainty of foreknowledge, but also with the certainty of the order and causality of the means.

X. Whether anyone, apart from divine revelation, can know with infallible certainty that he himself or another is among the predestined. In this connection, certain signs of the predestined are noted.

Whether all the explanations that St Augustine gives of those words of the Apostle, “God wills all men to be saved,” are legitimate.¹

I. St Augustine gives four explanations of the Apostle’s words just cited. The first is according to a certain suitable distribution, so that the sense is not that he wills universally that all men be saved;² rather, no one is saved whom God does not will to be saved, in the manner of speaking customary when one says: “This teacher teaches all the boys in the city”—not that he teaches them all universally, but that no one learns letters except the one whom he has taught.³ Augustine explains it thus in book 4 against Julian, chapter 8; in On Rebuke and Grace, chapter 14; and in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 8, where he adduces the example of the teacher; in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, chapter 102; in book 6 of the Hypognosticon, at the end; and in Letter 107 to Vitalis. The second explanation is that the distribution “all” is taken incompletely for the classes of individuals, but not completely for each individual in each class;⁴ and the sense is that God wills some to be saved from every condition of human beings—that is, from among rich and poor, Jews and Gentiles, males and females, kings and subjects, and so on. It is like saying, “Every animal was in Noah’s Ark”: the sense is not that absolutely every animal was there, but that an animal of every species was in Noah’s Ark.⁵ St Augustine gives this interpretation in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, chapter 103. Fulgentius also follows it in book On the Incarnation and Grace of Christ, chapter 31, as do Bede and Anselm on that passage of St Paul. The third explanation is that “God wills”—that is, causes human beings to will—that all be saved, in the sense in which it is said in Romans 8, The Spirit intercedes for us, that is, causes us to intercede with inexpressible groanings.⁶ And in Genesis 22, Now I know, that is, “I have caused it to be known,” that you fear the Lord. St Augustine explains it thus in On Rebuke and Grace, chapter 15, where he says: It can also be understood in this way: God wills all men to be saved because he makes us will it, just as he sent the Spirit of his Son crying, ‘Abba, Father,’ that is, making us cry. We therefore cry, but he is said to cry who causes us to cry. If Scripture rightly called the Spirit ‘crying,’ since he causes us to cry, then it rightly calls God ‘willing’ as well, since he causes us to will. The fourth explanation teaches that the Apostle is speaking of God’s antecedent will,⁷ which is the will of sign and the will in a certain respect, as will be said in the following disputation. St Augustine also gives this explanation in On the Articles Falsely Attributed to Him, article 2, and in the cited chapter 15 of On Rebuke and Grace. It is followed by Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, book 2, chapter 29; Prosper, On the Calling of All Nations, book 2, chapters 19 and 25, and in his second response to the objections of Vincent; Theophylact and Oecumenius on the same epistle; and St Thomas in the same place and in 1. p. q. 23. art. 4, reply to the third objection, and question 19, article 6, in the body of the article, where he also accepts St Augustine’s first and second explanations. Finally, St Chrysostom, Homily 1 on the Epistle to the Ephesians, and St Ambrose on chapter 2 of the First Epistle to Timothy give this last explanation; it is fairly common among the Doctors.

II. But some modern theologians are displeased by St Augustine’s first three explanations, asserting that they are insufficiently consonant with the sacred Scriptures and, consequently, should neither be approved nor admitted. They are refuted by the following arguments:

First: For God ordained all human beings and angels, without exception, to eternal life, and placed them all in the hand of their own counsel, so that, aided by divine grace, they could be saved if they wished, and would in fact attain salvation if the impediment did not lie with them. Therefore God truly and properly wills all to be saved, unless the impediment lies with them; therefore the authority of the Apostle should not be restricted, as St Augustine restricts it.

Second: Another distribution, by which the Apostle says in the same context, “I beseech that supplications, prayers, etc. be made for all men,” suffers no similar restriction; therefore neither does the distribution “He wills all men to be saved.” The antecedent is conceded by all; otherwise one ought to pray only for the predestined, or for some people from each class of human beings, which is more than false. The consequence is proved as follows: St Paul plainly equates the two distributions, and from the fact that God wills all men to be saved, he infers that prayers and supplications are to be made for all. He therefore understands that God wills all those to be saved for whom he says that we must pray.

III. Third, one argues as follows. In God there is a true act of will by which he wills universally that all human beings, without exception, observe the precepts and counsels if they wish; therefore there is also in him a true will by which he wills universally that all human beings be saved, if they themselves wish, or unless the impediment lies with them. The antecedent is evident from Matthew 6: “Your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth.” This prayer would be mockery unless the aforesaid act of will concerning the observance of the precepts were established in God.

Fourth, one argues that St Augustine’s first two explanations are not in good accord with passages of Scripture which say that God does not will the sinner’s death, but that all be converted and live. For Ezekiel 18 says: Is it my will that the wicked man should die, and not rather that he should be converted and live? And chapter 33 says: As I live, says the Lord, I do not will the death of the wicked; and Matthew 23⁸ says: How often have I wanted to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling? Therefore.

Fifth, it is proved as follows: otherwise the invitations to penance and to observance of the commandments, which come from God and are addressed to all human beings, would be feigned and mockeries rather than expressions of a true intention. For if God did not have a true will that all be saved without distinction, if they wished, why does he call and invite them to come to the banquet and be saved?

Sixth, one argues as follows. If the salvation and eternal glory of all human beings is considered in itself and absolutely, it is good; therefore it cannot fail to please God. Therefore, concerning the salvation of all human beings, God has not merely a will of sign, but also a will of good pleasure. Therefore, by his will of good pleasure, he wills that all be saved, unless the impediment lies with them. This is confirmed: when the Apostle says that prayers are to be made for all, he assigns the reason, adding: For this is pleasing before God, who wills all men to be saved;⁹ therefore he is speaking of the will of good pleasure.

Seventh, an argument is made against the third explanation. God does not cause each individual to will to be saved and to lead a right life, as is evident; therefore one must have recourse to one of the earlier explanations, and consequently the third explanation cannot stand by itself.

Nevertheless, these arguments not only fail to prove, but do not even make it probable, that these three explanations of St Augustine should not be admitted. For St Thomas and many other Doctors admit them in the places cited above and in their treatment of grace and predestination, concerning which the Supreme Pontiffs received the teaching of this most holy man, as was shown in disputation 5; no one ought to depart from it. But since the opinion defended by the theologians cited above concerning the manner of predestination cannot cohere with those first two explanations of St Augustine, they therefore try to exclude them with so many arguments. Yet from their solution it will become clear enough how groundlessly they attack St Augustine. Moreover, this can be established as follows: for God’s will of good pleasure is always fulfilled, as theologians commonly teach, especially St Thomas, 1. p. q. 19. ar. 6, Cajetan on the First Epistle to Timothy, chapter 2, Scotus in book 1, distinction 46, sole question, reply to the first objection, and St Bonaventure in the same distinction, article 1, question 1. But not all are saved; therefore God does not will by his will of good pleasure that all be saved. Consequently, those explanations of St Augustine and St Thomas must necessarily be admitted. The whole difficulty, then, lies in the solutions to the arguments.

IIII. To the first argument it is answered that all the elect are ordered, or predestined, by the consequent will—which is the will absolutely speaking—to attain eternal life; for since predestination is the plan for ordering means to a supernatural end, namely eternal life, it is impossible for anyone to be simply preordained to eternal life without also being predestined. The reprobate, however, are ordered by divine providence to eternal life by God’s antecedent will, which, as St Thomas says, 1. p. q. 19. ar. 6, in the body of the article, is a will in a certain respect, as was explained in disputation 30, no. 7.¹⁰ Hence God wills that the reprobate be saved, not simply, but in a certain respect. When the objection is raised that all have been placed in the hand of their own counsel, the answer is that all human beings are not said to have been placed in the hand of their own counsel because God wills universally that all be saved, but because, at least through the help of grace—which, by divine mercy, is possible for all as long as they are on the way—they can do good and be saved, or through their own malice depart from the good. For they are capable of turning toward good or evil, as was said above.

But against this: since anyone, while on the way, can be saved through the help of grace, God therefore wills by his will of good pleasure that all be saved, unless the impediment lies with them. The answer is that I deny the inference: all that follows is that God wills that all be able to be saved. This is indeed most true, because, as far as it depends on him, he is ready to give grace to all, as will become clear in disputations 112 and 113.

To the second argument, the answer given with St Augustine, in book On Rebuke and Grace, chapter 14, is that, since we do not know who belongs to the number of the predestined and who does not, we ought to be moved by such a disposition of charity that we wish all to be saved and pray for all, that they may be saved.

A second answer is that prayers are to be offered for all even if God does not will all to be saved by his will of good pleasure,¹¹ but only by his antecedent will, or will of sign. For our Lord Christ prayed to the Father, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me,”¹² even though he certainly knew that the Father had decreed that Christ should suffer death.

A third answer is that, since God has universal providence over all, it belongs to him to order some simply to attain eternal life and to leave and permit others to fall away from it and be damned through sin, so that greater beauty may be preserved in things and divine mercy shine more brightly in the elect. For this reason he does not will universally that all be saved. Each individual human being, however, has only particular providence; hence it belongs to each to pray indiscriminately for all and to wish for all that good of eternal life, as long as they are capable of it.

V. To the third argument it is answered that God wills, by his antecedent will or will of sign—which is a will in a certain respect—that all universally observe his precepts;¹³ but he does not will this by his consequent will; otherwise all would fulfill God’s precepts. For God’s absolute or consequent will is always fulfilled, as St Thomas teaches in 1. p. q. 19. ar. 6. But for the sake of a greater good he wills to permit some to transgress the precepts. The same must be said proportionately of the will by which he wills all to be saved.

To the fourth argument, the antecedent is denied. In reply to the cited passages of Scripture, it is answered that they are to be understood of spiritual death, which comes through sin. God does not will this death, but only permits it. This explanation is gathered from the context, for it says: “But rather that he be converted and live.” If, however, they are explained of the second death, namely eternal damnation, one must say that God does not will to inflict this death on anyone except on the supposition of sin, as will be clear in disputations 109 and 110.

The fifth argument has already been answered at length in disputation 23, no. 33, where, by the testimonies of St Hilary and St Augustine, we showed that a similar objection had formerly been raised against those explanations and the teaching of that same St Augustine, but that the same holy Doctor resolved it, as was said there; and more will be said in disputation 109, no. 9.

To the sixth argument it is answered that, although God wills the salvation of all universally when considered in itself and absolutely, if it is considered with all its circumstances—that is, insofar as, were all to be saved, there would not be such great beauty in the universe, nor would God’s mercy shine so brightly in the elect—then for this reason he does not will all to be saved, as was said, and will be made clearer in the following disputation. And since the will is directed toward things as they exist externally, with all their circumstances, it follows that the will by which God wills someone to be saved, with all the circumstances weighed, is a will simply speaking; whereas the will by which he wills someone’s eternal salvation considered absolutely, but without considering all the circumstances, is a will in a certain respect, as St Thomas expressly says in 1. p. q. 19. ar. 6, reply to the first objection. By this, the confirmation is also answered.

To the seventh, it is answered that God causes all who are saved to will to be saved, and likewise causes all who will the salvation¹⁴ of everyone else to will it. Nor does it follow from this that the third explanation should not be admitted or cannot stand by itself. For although it partly agrees with the first and second explanations, it nevertheless adds something beyond both, which is not challenged by the argument made.

What is the antecedent will of God, what is his consequent will, and whether antecedent will formally entails in God some conditional act, or a velleity.

I. The first opinion is that antecedent will is a will that proceeds from God alone in such a way that it takes no occasion from any of our evil deeds and presupposes none. Consequent will, however, is one that arises from our fault and presupposes it. The following argument is advanced in support of this opinion:

An argument is made from the authority of St Thomas, 1. p. q. 19. ar. 6, reply to the first objection, where he says that by antecedent will a just judge wills every person to live, but by consequent will he wills a murderer to be hanged—that is, on the supposition of sin. In this way, he says, “God antecedently wills every human being to be saved, but consequently wills some to be damned according to the order of his justice.” But God’s retributive justice presupposes sin; therefore, according to St Thomas, God’s consequent will presupposes our evil deeds.

This is confirmed from St Augustine, book 3 against Julian, chapter 18, who says: “God can free some without good merits, because he is good; he cannot damn some without evil merits, because he is just.” And if someone asks what act God’s antecedent will entails with respect to the salvation of all, they reply that it entails an act conditional on the part of the object willed, by which he wills all to be saved if they themselves will it, or if the impediment does not lie with them. From this they infer that God always wills antecedently the opposite of what he wills by consequent will. For they say that consequent will is the will by which, upon the addition of certain circumstances, something is willed absolutely, while a velleity for the opposite remains.

II. Nevertheless, this opinion explains neither rightly nor adequately what God’s antecedent will and consequent will are, nor does it accord with the mind of St Thomas in 1. p. q. 19. ar. 6 cited above, where he treats this matter expressly. To explain it, one must first assume that, as St Thomas teaches in the cited article 6, everything is willed by God insofar as it is good; nor can it be hated under this aspect, since the good is what all things desire. Second, one must note that something considered absolutely and in itself can be good and lovable, yet, when considered individually together with all its attendant circumstances, may not be good but may take on the character of evil—namely, because it deprives us of another, greater good, which is more desirable. For a lesser good, in comparison with a greater good, takes on a certain character of evil. Thus, to love and preserve one’s goods is good in itself; yet it is not good to preserve them at the cost of one’s life. Third, one must assume that a will which regards an object considered in itself is antecedent will, whereas a will which regards the object together with all its attendant features and circumstances is called consequent will, as St Thomas expressly teaches in the cited article 6, reply to the first objection. The reason the holy Doctor gives is that consideration of an object in itself precedes consideration of that same object as having such attendant circumstances. Let the following, then, be stated:

III. First conclusion. God’s antecedent will is that which is directed toward some object considered absolutely and in itself;¹ this will is called antecedent not because it precedes the good or evil use of our free choice, as the authors of the first opinion suppose, but because it precedes the will by which God is directed toward an object considered with some attendant circumstance; that will is consequent, and its consideration comes later. St Thomas teaches this conclusion plainly in the cited article 6.² It is proved in no other way than from the principles laid down and from the meaning of the words themselves.

Second conclusion. If the salvation of the reprobate is considered in itself and absolutely, then it is willed by God;³ but if it is considered insofar as it has joined to it the privation or absence of a greater good—namely, the universal good of divine providence, the beauty of the universe, the manifestation of divine justice in the reprobate, and the greater splendor of God’s mercy in the elect—then it is not willed by God. Accordingly, we assert that by consequent will God does not will all to be saved, but only the predestined. The first part of this conclusion is conceded by all; the second is denied by the adherents of the first opinion. Nevertheless, it is in keeping with the mind of St Thomas, 1. p. q. 23. ar. 3, reply to the first objection, where he says, God loves all human beings, and also all creatures, insofar as he wills some good for them all; yet he does not will every good for them all. Therefore, insofar as he does not will for some the good that is eternal life, he is said to hate or reprobate them. He confirms the same in article 5 of the same question, reply to the third objection. It is proved from the principles laid down: a particular good that entails the loss of a greater good is not desirable, since through its attendant circumstances it takes on the character of evil. But if all were saved universally, the universal good of divine providence and the perfection of the universe would be impeded; for these require different grades among things, with some of them holding the highest place and others the lowest. The manifestation of divine justice and the greater splendor of his mercy toward the elect would also be impeded. These goods are much greater than the salvation of some; therefore.

IIII. Third conclusion. It is not necessary that God, by antecedent will, will the opposite of what he wills by consequent will.⁴ This conclusion is against the authors of the first opinion, but it is proved by most evident reasons. First: God willed St Peter to be saved by consequent will, since he was saved; and he also willed his salvation by antecedent will, for by this will he wills all to be saved. Therefore God does not always will by consequent will the opposite of what he wills by antecedent will, nor vice versa. It is proved a second time: that St Peter be saved is good considered in itself; therefore it is willed by God through antecedent will. The inference is clear, for antecedent will is directed toward an object considered absolutely and in itself. Likewise, if St Peter’s salvation is considered with all its attendant features and circumstances, it is good, since he was just and holy, and in him God’s mercy and the beauty of the universe shone forth especially. Therefore it is willed by God through consequent will. The same argument applies to all the predestined; therefore the conclusion is the same as before. It is proved finally as follows: predestination includes antecedent and consequent will concerning someone’s salvation, as St Thomas expressly teaches in the first book of the Sentences, on Annibaldus, distinction 46, sole question, article 2, reply to the first objection. Therefore God wills the eternal salvation of all the predestined by antecedent and consequent will. God, then, does not always will by consequent will the opposite of what he wills by antecedent will.

V. Fourth conclusion. Antecedent will formally entails in God a conditional act by which he would will the salvation of all, unless the beauty of the universe and the universal good of divine justice and mercy were thereby impeded.⁵ Master Bañes and Zumel defend the first part of the conclusion as probable in the cited article 6, although they assert that the opposite opinion is more probable. For they say that a conditional act, or velleity, is found in God only eminently. Nevertheless, many other Thomists defend our opinion, and it is proved by the authority of St Thomas in the cited article 6, where he teaches that, just as a judge has that antecedent will, “I would wish all men to live,” so God wills all men to be saved. He says the same in question 23 on Truth, article 2.⁶ But antecedent will and velleity with respect to the preservation of everyone’s life are found formally in a judge; therefore, they are also found formally in God. It is proved a second time: God loves the reprobate by an actual love of friendship while he exists in grace; therefore, by a formal act of willing, he wills blessedness for him. The inference is clear: blessedness is a good that God wills for his friends, but this willing of blessedness is not absolute, since it is not fulfilled; therefore, it is formally a conditional act of willing on the part of the object willed—namely, if he perseveres to the end. The inference is proved as follows: every formal act of willing must be absolute or nonabsolute, and consequently conditional. The second part of the conclusion is clear from what was said both in the second conclusion and in the preceding disputation. Moreover, it can be proved by the authority of St Augustine, who says that many are not saved, not because they themselves are unwilling, but because God does not will it; this is shown without any controversy in the case of infants;⁷ therefore, the condition included in antecedent will, by which God wills all men to be saved, is not “if they themselves will it, or if the impediment does not lie with them.”

VI. But an argument is made against the first part of this conclusion. Velleity denotes an intrinsic imperfection; therefore it is not found formally in God, but only eminently.

A second argument is made. There is no formal desire in God; therefore there is no conditional will or velleity. The inference is proved as follows: velleity seems to imply a certain desire.

A third argument is made from the authority of Pope Agatho in a certain decretal letter, which is cited in the Sixth General Council, action 4. It says that our Lord Christ had two wills, the divine, namely, and the human, and assigns this difference between them: Christ’s divine will is always fulfilled, but his human will is not, as is clear when in Mark 7 he “wanted to hide, and could not.”⁸ From this the following argument is drawn: if velleity were found formally in God, the assigned difference between the divine and human wills of our Lord Christ would be null. For Christ’s absolute human will was always fulfilled, but not his conditional will, as when he said: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”⁹ But if velleity is found formally in the divine will, Christ’s divine will likewise, when absolute, is always fulfilled, but not when conditional. Therefore.

To the first argument it is answered that velleity does not denote an intrinsic imperfection on the part of the act of will in God himself, but only on the part of the object. For an object is not lovable by God insofar as it has joined to it the privation of a greater good; it is lovable only when considered absolutely and in itself. An example is found in the divine will: it necessarily loves God’s own goodness, but it does not love the goodness of creatures necessarily, rather it loves it freely—not because of an imperfection in the act of the divine will, but because of the imperfection of the object willed secondarily, namely, because that object does not have a necessary connection with divine goodness. Consequently, it is not lovable by God necessarily, but freely.

VII. To the second argument it is answered that there is no formal desire in God with respect to his own good, because he always has it present;¹⁰ nevertheless, it is not incompatible with this that he have a formal conditional desire for some created good under its antecedent aspect.

To the third argument it is answered that the divine will of our Lord Christ, by itself and from its own nature, has omnipotence and is efficacious for accomplishing everything it wills in heaven and on earth, whether it acts immediately by itself or through the ministry of creatures. The human will of our Lord Christ, however, even when absolute, was not efficacious by itself and from its own nature for doing everything it willed to be done, but acted by a power communicated to it through union with the Word, as is discussed in the third part, question 13, article 4. Hence the reasoning is not the same for the two wills.

To the argument made at the beginning in favor of the first opinion, it is answered that St Thomas there established an example concerning a particular object that God wills by consequent will, on the supposition of sin. Yet it is not necessary that what God wills by consequent will always presuppose sin, as was said in the third conclusion. By this, the authority of St Augustine is also answered.

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

I. As an introduction to this disputation, first the various senses in which these terms are commonly used—“predestination” or “predestined,” “foreknowledge” or “foreknown”—must be explained. Then the legitimate definition of predestination must be established. Finally, it must be investigated whether predestination formally consists in an act of the intellect or of the will.

Concerning the first point, it should be noted that “to predestine” (as regards the etymology of the word) means the same as to destine beforehand, send ahead, or preordain, by directing something toward an end as a target, just as an arrow is sent ahead by an archer toward the mark at which it is aimed.¹ Although the term “predestination” is taken in a very broad sense for the ordering of any thing to its end, even its natural end, among theologians it is used more strictly and properly to signify the preordination of an intellectual creature to a supernatural end, with the intention of sending it effectively to that end, just as an arrow is sent by an archer. The Prophet seems to allude to this likeness when, speaking of the predestined, especially the Apostles, he says: As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the sons of those shaken out.² Predestination is used in this sense in Romans 1: Who was predestined to be the Son of God in power; and chapter 8: Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son; and Ephesians 1: He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, unto himself, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, with which he graced us in his beloved Son. It is true that the holy Doctors sometimes use the term “predestination” with an added qualification to signify reprobation. Thus St Augustine says in book 15 of the City of God, chapter 1³: There are two mystical cities and two societies of human beings: one of them is predestined to reign forever with God, the other to undergo punishment forever with the devil. And in the Council of Trent, sess. 6, decree on Justification, canon 17: If anyone says that the grace of justification comes only to those predestined to life, but that all the others who are called are indeed called but do not receive grace, being predestined to evil by divine power, let him be anathema. Nevertheless, when “predestination” is used without qualification, it is always taken in the good sense.

II. Similarly, “foreknowledge” or “foreknown” is commonly used in a broad sense to designate what is known before it comes to be;⁴ thus God is said to foreknow all future contingencies because he knows them certainly and infallibly before they are brought about according to their proper measure. The object itself, known beforehand by God from eternity, is said to be “foreknown.” Hence, in this sense, being foreknown or known beforehand is a certain denomination of reason arising from the real cognition of the one who knows, just as being seen is a denomination of reason in an object arising from the real vision that exists in the one who sees. Nevertheless, through an accommodation in the usage of theologians, the term “foreknown” commonly signifies the reprobate, who, on the supposition that their sin is foreknown, are preordained to eternal punishment. It is true that sometimes in sacred Scripture and among the holy Doctors predestination is signified by the term “foreknowledge,” and the elect are called “foreknown” or “known beforehand” by God, as in Romans 8: Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined; and in chapter 11: God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew—that is, whom he chose and predestined,” as St Augustine explains in his book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 18. His words are these: Sometimes that same predestination is also signified by the term ‘foreknowledge,’ as the Apostle says: ‘God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew.’ What he says, ‘he foreknew,’ is not rightly understood unless it means ‘he predestined,’ as the context of the statement itself shows; for he was speaking of the remnant of the Jews who were saved while the others perished. Hence the Apostle also says: The Lord knows those who are his,”⁵ that is, he approved and loved them. Conversely, God is said not to know the reprobate because he neither approves them nor their works, as is clear from Matthew 25: I do not know you; depart from me, workers of iniquity.

III. As regards the definition of predestination, it should be noted that some theologians, in order to defend the view that predestination by God is not without foreknowledge of merits, define it as follows. Predestination is the reason for the order of means in God by which he foresees that a rational creature is to be brought to eternal life, with the intention of carrying out that same order. They explain this definition further, asserting that predestination is the reason for the order of means by which God, through natural knowledge and middle knowledge, which lies between free and purely natural knowledge, foresees that some creature endowed with a mind will attain eternal life, with the purpose or determination of the divine will, on its part, to put this into effect. From this they infer that predestination is not certain with respect to the attainment of its effect by the certainty of the order or causality of the means, but only by the certainty of foreknowledge; that is, if we set aside that middle knowledge, it is not certain that the effect of predestination for such an adult will come to pass. Nevertheless, this definition of predestination is not in accord with the definition given by St Augustine and St Thomas, as will be clear below, nor does it adequately explain the properties of gratuitous predestination. For, besides the fact that it refers the certainty of predestination to a foundation that does not exist in reality—namely, middle knowledge, which we showed to be impossible in disputation 7—from this same definition it would follow that divine predestination, formally speaking, in its character as predestination and in its efficacy, as well as all the helps of grace that our God confers upon the predestined in time, would depend, as on a condition without which they could not be, upon the free cooperation of our free choice, foreknown by God through middle knowledge. I will show below that this is false and contrary to the teaching of St Augustine and St Thomas.

The legitimate definition of predestination, therefore, is the one given by St Augustine in his book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 14, and by St Thomas, 1. p. q. 23. art. 1: “Predestination is the foreknowledge and preparation of God’s benefits, by which all who are delivered are most certainly delivered.” St Thomas uses this definition very often, although sometimes he gives it in these terms: Predestination is the foreknowledge and preparation of grace in the present and of glory in the future; at other times, in these: Predestination is the reason for the transmission of a rational creature to eternal life, existing in the mind of God,” as in 1. p. q. 23. ar. 2, in the body of the article, and part 3, question 24, article 1, in the body, and question 6 on Truth, article 1. To explain it, one should note that the “foreknowledge” in the definition of predestination is not taken to mean middle knowledge, as its defenders contend,⁶ but knowledge of simple understanding, or natural knowledge, by which God knows possible creatures. For this foreknowledge is presupposed in God, in the order of reason, with respect to predestination; or it may mean free knowledge, by which God foreknew the subject to be predestined, for this foreknowledge, too, precedes predestination in our manner of understanding. Hence St Thomas writes in part 3, question 1, article 3, reply to the fourth objection: Predestination, he says, presupposes foreknowledge of future things; this is commonly interpreted by the Thomists, especially Cajetan, not as foreknowledge of all future things, but of some—namely, those that are not constituted or brought about by predestination itself, such as the foreknowledge of the future sin of the first parent, as a remedy for which Christ was predestined. The term “foreknowledge” in the definition of predestination can also be understood to mean foreknowledge of the benefits by which all who are delivered are most certainly delivered. But in this opinion, which Augustine follows in many places, one must say that such foreknowledge does not precede the free decree of the predestining God in the order of reason, but rather follows it. God foreknew these things for this very reason: because he predestined them, as was shown by the clearest testimonies of St Augustine in disputation 7. The chief among them is the passage in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 10: For by predestination God foreknew the things that he himself was going to do; hence it is said, ‘He made the things that are to come.’ And in chapter 17: Thus they were chosen before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his future works. And in chapter 19: When, therefore, he predestined us, he foreknew his work: he who makes us holy and immaculate. He repeats the same in his book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapters 14, 17, and 18. The Apostle speaks of this foreknowledge in Romans 8 when he says: For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined. By this, the opinion of those who explain St Augustine’s definition in this way is excluded: “Predestination is foreknowledge of what free choice would do on the hypothesis that it were stirred by such grace in such circumstances, and the preparation of benefits by which all who are delivered are most certainly delivered.” For, according to our final explanation of St Augustine’s definition, foreknowledge and predestination refer to precisely the same object, namely, God’s benefits by which the elect are most certainly delivered. But middle knowledge does not have these benefits of God as its immediate object; rather, it has the affection and inclination of the human will situated in such circumstances. Therefore, by “foreknowledge” St Augustine does not mean middle or conditional foreknowledge, but absolute foreknowledge, which follows predestination.

Moreover, one should observe that, as St Thomas teaches in 1. p. q. 23. ar. 2, reply to the third objection, preparation is twofold: one kind is in the person or thing prepared, and this is found in a human being or angel who is predestined;⁷ the other is in the one who prepares, and this is not found in the recipient—that is, in the predestined—but in the agent, namely, in God who predestines. Therefore, “preparation” in the definition of predestination is not taken formally for the preparation found in the one prepared, but for the preparation that is in God who prepares, in the way that someone is said to prepare himself to do something when he arranges, orders, and girds himself to carry it out.

IIII. With these points assumed, it remains to explain whether predestination formally and essentially consists in an act of the divine intellect or in an act of the will.

There are two opinions on this matter. The first is that of Scotus, in book 1 of the Sentences, distinction 40, sole question, at the beginning; St Bonaventure, in the same distinction, article 1, question 2; and Gregory of Rimini, question 1, article 1. They assert that predestination essentially consists in an act of the will by which God wills eternal life for the elect. The chief argument for this opinion is drawn from the Apostle’s words in Ephesians 1: He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy,” etc. In this passage predestination is called election; but election is essentially an act of the will, as St Thomas teaches in 1. 2. q. 13. ar. 1. Therefore.

This is confirmed from Romans 9: That the purpose of God according to election might stand, not from works, but from him who calls, it was said: ‘The elder shall serve the younger.’ By these words predestination is called God’s purpose; but purpose is an act of the will. Therefore.

Second: although predestination includes an act of the intellect and of the divine will, it nevertheless principally signifies an act of the will, and only indirectly connotes an act of the practical intellect by which God orders means to an end. Therefore, predestination substantially and essentially stands for an act of the will. The antecedent is proved as follows: as Cajetan noted in 1. p. q. 23. ar. 1, the order of means to an end conceived by the divine intellect, insofar as it precedes the will’s approval and acceptance, has only the character of something conceived, not of predestination. Therefore it is formally constituted as predestination through the approval and acceptance of the divine will, and consequently predestination itself consists principally and formally in an act of the will.

Third: predestination and reprobation are acts of the same power, since one is opposed to the other, as willing is to not willing, and consequently they proceed from the same power. But reprobation is not essentially and formally an act of the intellect, but of the will, to which it belongs to approve or reprobate something. Therefore the same is true of predestination.

V. The second opinion is that of St Thomas, 1. p. q. 23. art. 1, and question 6 on Truth, article 1, where he teaches that predestination is an act of the intellect, although it connotes and has joined to it an act of the will. His opinion is defended by Durand, in book 1 of the Sentences, distinction 40, question 1; Alexander of Hales, part 1, question 28, member 2, articles 1 and 2; Cajetan; Master Bañes; and all the Thomists. For clarity, it should be noted that, although God is utterly simple and no multiplicity of acts really or formally distinct from one another is found in him, nevertheless, by a reasoned distinction, we distinguish in him several acts, both on the part of the intellect and on the part of the will, which concur in predestination. Of these, some stand antecedently to predestination itself, while others stand consequently to it. The first is an act of the intellect by which God, through knowledge of simple understanding, knew all possible human beings and angels. The second is an act of the will by which, from among all possible intellectual creatures, he freely chose and loved certain ones, that they might exist both in natural being and in supernatural being. The third is an active disposition by which God placed the things he had produced in different grades. The fourth is an act of the divine will concerning the end, by which God efficaciously willed to confer eternal life on some. The fifth is an act of supernatural providence, or predestination, by which things disposed among themselves are efficaciously ordered through such means to the supernatural end, which consists in the clear vision of God. St Thomas explains how the disposition of the parts stands in relation to their ordering toward the end in question 5 on Truth, article 1, reply to the ninth objection, and in book 1 of the Sentences, distinction 39, question 1, article 1, in the body and reply to the fourth objection. The sixth and final act is the execution of this order, which God fulfills in time by calling, justifying, and glorifying the predestined, according to Romans 8: Those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

Therefore, predestination essentially and formally consists in an act of the intellect, although it presupposes an act of the will antecedently. This is proved from the definition of predestination given above: predestination is the reason for the order of means to a supernatural end existing in the divine mind. But the reason for an order essentially and formally belongs to the intellect, for ordering belongs to reason and intellect. Hence ordering belongs to the wise man, as St Thomas teaches at the beginning of book 1 of the Contra Gentiles. Therefore, and so forth.

This is confirmed by Acts 13: As many as were ordained to eternal life believed,” where the predestined are called the preordained, because predestination consists in preordination of means toward eternal life. Hence St Augustine says in book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 17: To preordain,” he says, is to arrange future things in foreknowledge and to order them. And the author of the Hypognosticon says at the beginning of book 6: Predestination is so called from foreseeing and ordering what is to come. Since, then, the ordering of means toward an end is essentially an act of the intellect, it remains that predestination essentially and formally consists in an act of the intellect.

It is proved further: predestination is the first cause of all the benefits that God confers on the predestined in time, as is clear from the Apostle’s words cited above: Those whom he predestined, he also called,” etc. But God causes all things through an act of the intellect, although he presupposes an act of the will. For, as was shown in disputations 16 and 17, God operates all things through the intellect as moved by the will. Therefore predestination essentially and formally consists in an act of the divine intellect.

VI. To the first argument in favor of Scotus’s opinion, it is answered that in sacred Scripture predestination is also called preordination, and the predestined are called preordained to eternal life, as is clear from what was said above. Sometimes, however, that same predestination is signified by the name of election or of the divine purpose, which pertains to the will—not because predestination is formally and substantially election or an act of the will, but because it is election antecedently, in the way in which St Thomas says in the cited question 1. 2. q. 13, that election is an act of reason, not substantially,” but antecedently, because it presupposes an act of reason. By this, the answer to the confirmation is clear.

To the second argument, the antecedent is denied. In reply to the proof, it is answered that it concludes only that predestination, which consists in an act of the intellect, intrinsically connotes an act of the divine will, both antecedently, insofar as it presupposes God’s love and election, and also consequently, insofar as it approves and accepts the reason for ordering those to be conveyed to eternal life.

To the third argument it is answered that, as St Thomas teaches in 1. p. q. 23. ar. 3, in the body of the article, reprobation is a part of providence, just as predestination is, although they differ in this: predestination is the cause both of what the predestined await in the future life, namely glory, and of what they receive in the present, namely grace. Reprobation, however, is not the cause of what exists in the present, namely sin, but is the cause of abandonment by God; yet it is the cause of what is rendered in the future, namely eternal punishment. But sin proceeds from the free choice of the one who is reprobated and abandoned by grace. Providence, however, is formally and essentially an act of the intellect, although it presupposes an act of the will. Hence, just as predestination is an act of the divine intellect having an act of the will joined to it antecedently and consequently, so reprobation is essentially and principally an act of the intellect by which God permits some to fall away from the supernatural end, for the manifestation of his justice in the reprobate and his greater mercy in the elect, and, on the supposition of sin, ordains that they be punished with eternal punishments. Yet it has joined to it an act of the will by which God wills to permit sin and to inflict punishment on account of it. It should nevertheless be noted that reprobation does not formally consist in a positive disordering from the ultimate end—for this proceeds from the sin of the reprobate himself—but in the ordering of the permission of sin and of the punishment of the reprobate for sin, toward the manifestation of divine justice in the reprobate and of mercy in the elect, as was said. As for the point raised in the same argument, namely, that approval is formally an act of the will and therefore so is reprobation, the answer is that approval is an act of the intellect, since it is a certain examination together with a judgment of reason, as is clear from 2 Corinthians 13: Test yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; examine yourselves; and 1 Corinthians 11: Let a person examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. Hence St Thomas, question 5 on Truth, article 4, in the body and reply to the first objection, distinguishes two kinds of divine providence: one of approval, the other of permission. He teaches that the first concerns only good things, but the second evil things. Nevertheless, the act of approval also connotes an act of the will, as was said concerning reprobation and predestination.

Whether the good use of the helps of grace, insofar as it flows from free choice, is an effect of predestination.

I. The resolution of this difficulty is a preliminary to the question we shall discuss in the following disputation: namely, whether a cause, reason, or condition without which predestination would not be given is found on the part of the good use of free choice. For if the good use of free choice is an effect of predestination, it cannot be a cause, reason, or condition of predestination itself. For, as St Thomas teaches,¹ it is impossible that what falls under predestination be a cause or reason of predestination itself; otherwise, with respect to the same thing, it would be both cause and effect, prior and posterior in the same genus of cause, which is impossible. But if the good use of the helps of grace, insofar as it flows from free choice, is not an effect of predestination, it could be a cause, reason, or condition without which predestination would not be given. Therefore, those authors who teach that a condition on the part of our free choice is given, without which the reason for the order of means toward the supernatural end would not acquire the character of predestination with respect to such people, but would retain only the character of common supernatural providence, consistently defend that the good use of free choice by which it consents to God as he stirs and calls it—precisely insofar as that use flows from free choice—is not to be counted among the effects of predestination. Their arguments are as follows.

II. First: the good use of free choice is something that belongs to the part of the predestined person, and God requires from that person that, with God himself cooperating, an adult also freely consent and cooperate, so that in this way the works of the predestined may be free and meritorious of eternal life, and may be certain dispositions of the predestined, by which that person disposes himself to grace through his own freedom. Therefore, such a good use, precisely insofar as it flows from free choice, is not an effect of predestination.

This is confirmed, and the force of the argument is explained more fully. For just as in the aiming of an arrow at a target, the arrow that is aimed is one thing, and the force impressed on it by the archer, by which it is said to be aimed at the target by him, is another; so also in predestination, the one thing is that which is so destined, namely, the adult himself, endowed with his own innate freedom and placed in the hand of his own counsel; the other is the means by which he is destined by God and is said to be helped, so that by cooperating through his own free influence he may attain eternal life. Therefore, just as all the helps by which God determines to assist the predestined person and bring him to eternal life belong to God who predestines, so on the part of the predestined person lies his innate freedom of choice, or the good use of the helps of grace, insofar as it is free, or insofar as it flows from free choice as one part of a complete cause.

Second: that an act elicited by prevenient grace and by free choice is free, and for that reason capable of the character of virtue, praise, and honor, which are attributed on its account to the person freely exercising his causal influence in this way—is surely not an effect of prevenient grace, but of free choice through its influence. For prevenient grace is determined to one thing, and, precisely because it is then received in the free choice of the predestined person, by natural necessity it moves and solicits him. But free choice is what acts freely through that influence, which is proper to it by its innate freedom; and from that influence alone the act has the feature of being freely elicited by the predestined person, and on that account accrues to him as praise and honor. Therefore, the free good use, insofar as it flows from free choice, is not an effect of predestination. The consequence is proved: the free good use cannot be an effect of predestination unless it is also an effect of prevenient grace.

This is confirmed: of two people who are equally preceded by the motion of grace and moved by it, that one consents, cooperates with grace, elicits an act, and is converted, while the other does not, certainly comes solely from the innate, proper, and intrinsic freedom of each, which is common to the good and the bad, to the reprobate and the predestined. For prevenient grace, on its part, moves both equally and acts by the necessity of nature on its part. But because one of them freely chooses to employ that influence proper to his own free choice and the other does not, one is converted and the other is not. Therefore, the good use of grace, insofar as it flows from free choice, is not an effect of grace itself and, consequently, is not an effect of predestination either. Otherwise, the one who is converted would always have greater help from prevenient grace than the other, which is contrary to the hypothesis assumed.

This is confirmed a second time. Whether the helps of prevenient grace are efficacious or inefficacious for conversion depends on the proper influence of free choice. It is on account of this that one person, with equal help from prevenient grace, acts more or less intensely, and is made worthy that more sins be remitted to him with respect to punishment and that gifts be bestowed on him which are taken away from the sluggish. This proceeds from the influence proper to free choice itself, and on its account one is said to use grace more or less strenuously than another. Therefore, such good use, insofar as it flows from free choice, cannot be an effect of predestination or of grace.

III. Third: on account of this influence proper to the predestined, St Bernard said: What is lacking in us, he himself supplies—that is, God—yet he does not allow whatever little thing is ours², to be withheld.³ And on account of this same influence the Council of Trent teaches that when God touches the human heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit,” the human being himself does something, receiving that inspiration, since he can also reject it;⁴ therefore the conclusion is the same as before.

Fourth: grace and free choice are two partial causes of supernatural consent, like two people hauling a ship. For if God, through the helps of prevenient grace, does not influence a devout operation, that operation will not exist in reality; and likewise, if created free choice, by reason of its innate freedom, does not wish to influence the same operation, that operation will not exist. Therefore a devout operation can be considered precisely insofar as it flows from free choice, as from one part of a complete cause. Therefore, under this consideration, the good use of free choice must be attributed to that same choice on account of its own and innate freedom alone, and not to grace; consequently, under the same consideration, it will not be an effect of predestination, but something prerequired for it on our part.

IIII. The contrary opinion is defended from the mind of St Augustine and St Thomas by all the Thomists, who hold that no cause, reason, or condition without which the divine predestination would not be given is found on our part; their testimonies will be adduced in the following disputation. To make this clear and bring out the point on which the difficulty rests, we must assume the points on which the authors of both opinions agree. First, they agree that God, through the helps of prevenient grace and free choice moved and stirred by God, concurs as an efficient cause in every supernatural good use of free choice. Consequently, the same good use and each of its parts are effects of predestination and grace, absolutely speaking, since nothing at all in it, whether real or formal, is not wholly from God and from grace by the totality of the effect, and wholly from free choice moved and stirred by God. The authors with whom we are disputing expressly admit this, although they assert that this good use is not an effect of predestination on that account, because free choice and human freedom cooperate in it, but because God, through predestination and the helps of grace, cooperates in that same good use. Second, they agree that the good use of the helps of grace, even insofar as it flows from created free choice, is referred to God as the author of free choice itself, who conferred on human beings that power for similar good uses; as the one on whose general concurrence every influence of free choice depends; and also as the one who, through his supernatural gifts or the helps of prevenient grace, invites and entices free choice itself to give its consent in such supernatural good uses.

V. The entire difference between the authors of the two opinions, then, consists in this: whether the good use of the helps of grace, insofar as it flows from free choice, proceeds efficiently from God who predestines, and consequently, under the aspect in which it depends on free choice, is an effect of predestination. For those who defend the first opinion deny that this same good use is an effect of predestination under that aspect.

But we, who with St Augustine and St Thomas defend that no cause, reason, or condition is given on our part without which the reason for the order of means to an end, preexisting in the divine mind, would not have the character of predestination, consequently affirm that the good use of the helps of grace, even insofar as it flows from and depends on free choice, is an effect of predestination and grace, and must be referred to God himself—not only as the author of free choice itself, who conferred that power on human beings; nor only as the one on whose general concurrence every influence of free choice depends; nor merely as the one who, through his supernatural gifts or the helps of prevenient grace, invites and entices free choice itself to give its consent, for even the Pelagians did not deny these things, as was said above;⁵ but also as the truly efficient cause which, through the help of pre-operating grace, causes free choice to influence the good use of the helps of grace itself. That is, the actual dependence and derivation of this same good use from free choice, or its consent insofar as it proceeds from free choice, must be referred to divine predestination and grace as a per se efficient cause.

VI. First, this doctrine can be proved by all the arguments with which it was shown in disputations 18, 22, and 23 that God’s general concurrence, in both the natural and supernatural orders, is an immediate influence upon secondary causes, and that it premoves and predetermines them to act in actuality, each in conformity with its own nature. For from this principle it follows evidently that the good use of the helps of grace, and every other devout operation, even insofar as it flows from free choice, is an effect of predestination and grace not only in the genus of moral causality but also of efficient causality. This can also be proved by all the testimonies of Scripture, the Supreme Pontiffs, and the holy Fathers, as well as by the theological arguments drawn from them, through which it will be made clear below that God, or efficacious help, is the adequate cause of a person’s conversion;⁶ and consequently that grace and free choice are not partial causes of supernatural consent, like two people hauling a ship. Rather, God, through the efficacious help of divine grace, causes us to act and to work, not only morally but also in the manner of a physical cause. For it follows manifestly from these points that the good use of the helps of grace, even insofar as it flows from free choice, is an effect of divine predestination. Finally, this same point can be proved by the arguments with which in the following disputation I will show that no cause, reason, or condition without which predestination would not have its character as predestination is given on our part, on which it depends.

VII. Second, this is proved by the authority of St Thomas, part one, question twenty-three, article five, in the body of the article. There he attacks the opinion of those who said that merits following the effect of predestination, are the reason for predestination, and says: They seem to have distinguished between what is from grace and what is from free choice, as though the same thing could not be from both. But it is clear that what is from grace is an effect of predestination, and this cannot be posited as the reason for predestination, since this is included under predestination. If, therefore, something else on our part is the reason for predestination, it will be beyond the effect of predestination. But what is from free choice and from predestination is not distinct, just as what is from the secondary cause and the first cause is not distinct; for divine providence produces effects through the operations of secondary causes. Hence what is through free choice is also from predestination. And in the First Part of the Second Part, question 111, article 2, reply to the second objection, he says: God does not justify us without us, because, through the motion of free choice, when we are justified we consent to God’s justice; yet that motion is not the cause of grace, but its effect. Hence the whole operation belongs to grace. By these words he teaches plainly that the cooperation of free choice is an effect of grace and divine predestination. And in question 6 on Truth, article 2, reply to the eleventh objection, he says: This very act of willing to receive grace is from divine predestination.

Third, it is proved by reason. Everything that conduces to salvation and to the predestined person’s attaining eternal life is an effect of predestination, as is clear from the definition of predestination given by Augustine: Predestination is the preparation of God’s benefits, by which all who are delivered are most certainly delivered;⁷ but the good use of the helps of grace, even insofar as it flows from free choice, is something that conduces to salvation and to the predestined person’s attaining eternal life. Therefore, under this same aspect, it is an effect of predestination. This is confirmed: through efficacious grace, which is an effect of predestination, God not only concurs in that good use of free choice by cooperating and influencing the act together with that same free choice, but also moves free choice efficiently so that it concurs in eliciting that act. Therefore, that act, even insofar as it is from free choice, is an effect of prevenient grace and, consequently, of predestination.

VIII. They reply to this argument by distinguishing the antecedent. If it is understood to mean that free choice influences and concurs through the motion of prevenient grace alone, with no further need for a proper and particular influence or concurrence of free choice itself—one that it could suspend and render the motion of grace ineffectual with that motion of grace placing no obstacle in its way—they say the antecedent must be denied. But if it is understood to mean that free choice does not influence and concur through the motion of grace alone, but that a proper and particular influence or concurrence of free choice itself is also necessary, which it freely employs with the motion of prevenient grace placing no obstacle in its way, they concede the antecedent but then deny the consequence that is inferred: therefore that act, even insofar as it is from free choice, is an effect of prevenient grace and, consequently, of predestination. They deny it if the consequence is understood of that act precisely as considered to flow from that particular and proper influence of free choice, which is also necessary; for, considered in this way, they say, it is not an effect of prevenient grace, but of free choice alone.

This answer, however, does not remove the force of the argument. We do indeed admit that, besides God’s concurrence, or prevenient grace, the free concurrence of our free choice is necessary for a devout operation: it must consent in such a way to God who calls that it could dissent if it wished, and this was defined at the Council of Trent. Nevertheless, we contend that this same influence of free choice is indeed proper to it, because it proceeds from an intrinsic principle that moves itself and moves freely; yet it is not so proper to it that, under the aspect in which it flows from free choice, free choice’s very act of concurring and consenting freely does not depend on God as an efficient cause. Consequently, this same influence of free choice cannot be considered precisely as flowing from free choice. For just as the concept of the ultimate difference cannot be considered apart from being, because the concept of being is the most universal and is intrinsically intimate to the formal character of every particular being,⁸ so that if the character of being is abstracted from the ultimate difference nothing remains, so too, because divine operation is the operation of the first and most universal cause, it is so intimate to the formal character of every cooperation or concurrence of a particular agent that a created action cannot be considered as proceeding from a particular agent without the divine operation and dependence on God as universal cause being included intimately in that same formal character. Hence, if we abstract dependence on divine operation, no concurrence of a particular cause can remain. More must be said about this in disputation 97.

Some theologians, including those who defend middle knowledge, also admit as true the opinion that all the supernatural works of the elect which effectively contribute in some way to the attainment of eternal life are effects of predestination with respect to everything found in such works, and under every relation, whether to God, to some prior grace, or to free choice. They add, however, that, formally speaking, an act is not called an effect of predestination because it proceeds from a special absolute will by which that effect or act is predefined in particular with all its circumstances, but because the means or principles necessary for it are given from an efficacious intention to save the human being; or, at any rate, because they come from such a providence of God toward the human being that he is finally brought in fact to final salvation. They also add that this very cooperation is an effect of efficacious grace, which is without doubt an effect of predestination. They explain and clarify this both in terms of moral causality—for God, by calling and by exciting helps, morally draws a person to will and cooperate, and in this way, they say, makes us will and act—and also in terms of physical causality. They prove the latter because that cooperation is something real, pertaining to devotion and very necessary for salvation. Therefore it cannot come from us without God and his grace, in keeping with the saying: Without me you can do nothing;⁹ and: What do you have that you did not receive?;¹⁰ these statements are true even with respect to real and physical efficient causality.

But this manner of speaking does not adequately explain whether the cooperation of our free choice is an effect of God and of his predestination in such a way, according to physical causality, that it not only cannot exist without God’s supernatural influence, but is also an effect of the divine operation in the genus of efficient causality. For they do not admit that God’s action precedes our cooperation in the order of causality, except if God’s action is taken to mean the action by which he produces a calling in us, by which he morally causes us to will and act. Finally, this manner of speaking is founded on the opinion, to be refuted in disputation 86, that God through efficacious grace causes us to act or cooperate only morally, but does not truly cause us efficiently, or in the manner of a physical cause. We, however, believe that God through efficacious grace truly causes us efficiently—that is, in the manner of a physical cause—to cooperate and to cooperate freely. Consequently, within the same genus of cause, we admit that the cooperation of our free choice, even insofar as it flows from free choice itself, is an effect of predestination, although it does not occur without our freely consenting.

IX. To the first argument it is answered that the good use of free choice belongs to the part of the predestined person, not indeed as something presupposed to predestination on our part, but as a free act elicited by the predestined person as its proximate cause. Yet it must be referred both to God, as the first efficient cause, and to his gratuitous predestination and grace. For this reason, that good use, informed by grace, is meritorious of eternal life, and through it an adult disposes himself for the infusion of grace or for its increase.

To the confirmation it is answered that the example favors our opinion rather than attacking it. For just as, when an arrow is aimed at a target, the arrow to be aimed is presupposed with its natural properties, but all the force and motion by which it tends toward the target come to it from the archer, or the one who aims it, so too a human being with his innate freedom and the other powers belonging to his nature is presupposed for predestination. Yet the actual motion and use of that same freedom, by which he tends toward eternal life, come to him from the one who predestines, as first mover and director. For this reason St Dionysius the Areopagite said that God is the cause of love as an archer and as one who sends forth.¹¹ Since, then, cooperation, or the good use of the helps of grace, even insofar as it flows from free choice, is something by which the predestined person is moved toward eternal life, it follows that under the same aspect it comes from the one who predestines as first mover, and consequently is also an effect of predestination and grace.

X. To the second argument it is answered that an act elicited by prevenient grace and free choice has its being free from grace itself and from created free choice, but in different ways. For from free choice it has this as from the principle that acts; from grace, as from the principle by which it acts. For grace not only causes a person to consent, but also to consent freely, since God does not destroy nature but perfects it, and attains the act together with the mode of freedom proper to it. So too, the proximate and formal vitality of a supernatural act is “that by which,” from a supernatural principle, and “that which,” from a natural power elevated by a supernatural form, as will be clear in disputation 64. Nor should it be admitted that grace determines to one thing by necessity or moves to an act by natural necessity, because it does not cause free choice to act by natural necessity, but according to its own mode of freedom—unless one is speaking of exciting prevenient grace, in which respect it moves the will insofar as the will is nature toward certain imperfect and undeliberated acts. Beyond this exciting prevenient grace, however, efficacious prevenient grace must be established, which moves and predetermines free choice to consent not by natural necessity, but according to the mode of freedom, as was said in disputations 18 and 23 and will be explained below.

To the first confirmation, it is answered by denying the antecedent: for the one who is converted always receives from God greater help of prevenient grace than the one who is not converted. I say “greater” not only in the extrinsic aspect of the benefit, because it is given in those circumstances in which God foreknows that, if free choice is premoved by it, it will give consent, but also in the real efficacy of the same help as it proceeds from God, as will become clear in disputation 108.

XI. To the second confirmation it is answered that, as will become clear in disputations 73 and 90, the efficacy of the helps of grace does not depend on our free choice cooperating with them, but comes from God alone. Likewise, the greater intensity of cooperation by free choice is not to be measured by its own innate freedom alone, but must be referred to God’s mercy and to the more intense help received by the one who acts more intensely, as will become clear in disputations 62 and 78.

To the third argument it is answered that St Bernard called the influence of free choice “our own,” not because it is in us from ourselves, but because it proceeds efficiently from our free choice as a secondary cause. Nevertheless, free choice’s influence in cooperating with God who calls has another prior efficient cause, namely God himself, who, through the efficacious help of pre-operating grace, causes free choice to influence and to consent freely, as St Bernard himself expressly teaches in his treatise on grace and free choice when he says: What was begun by grace alone is completed by both together—that is, by grace and will—so that they work in combination, not separately, together, not in turn, at every stage of progress. Not partly grace and partly free choice, but each accomplishes the whole by a single joint work. This one indeed accomplishes the whole, and the whole is from that one; but as the whole is in the one, so the whole is from the other. The Council of Trent must be understood in the same way. More will have to be said about its explanation in disputation 115, no. 12, and disputation 116, no. 10.

XII. The fourth argument, which is the principal foundation of the contrary opinion, will be answered at greater length in disputation 85, where we shall show that grace and free choice are not two partial causes of supernatural consent, like two people hauling a ship, but that each is total in its own genus. Of these, free choice is subordinated to grace, or to God moving through grace, from whom, as efficient cause, it receives its actual influence and cooperation. All these matters will be made clearer by what we shall say in the following disputation.

Whether the good use of free choice, proceeding from the help of grace, is the cause, reason, or condition without which there is no predestination of adults.

I. Passing over the various opinions of Henry, Javelli, and other theologians, which Master Báñez and Zumel report and refute in 1. p. q. 23. art. 5., as do the other commentators on St. Thomas, only the opinions of Ambrosius Catharinus and certain more recent theologians will be brought forward and refuted. Therefore:

The first opinion is that of Ambrosius Catharinus, who, as his disciple Sixtus of Siena reports,¹ asserted that from eternity God, in his gratuitous goodness, knew, loved, chose, and appointed all human beings, excluding no one, so that they might be ordered to eternal life while the freedom of choice remained intact, though not all in the same way.² For he distinguishes two classes of the predestined. In the first God, as Catharinus supposes, places certain persons specially predestined, specially chosen beforehand, and called beforehand, such as the Blessed Virgin, the Apostles, and a few others. These very few God predestined from eternity by an absolute decree and efficacious will, and decreed to confer so many helps of grace upon them that, while the freedom of choice remained intact, they could not fall away from eternal salvation. He says that in their case the cause of predestination is not found on the part of the foreseen good use of free choice. He proves this as follows: otherwise the scriptural passages that speak of the predestined could not be upheld, such as: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?³ and: He predestined us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy.⁴ and: Not from works of righteousness that we had done.⁵ The second class comprises all the others who in fact are saved. He says that these too are predestined by God, but not by an absolute, unchangeable, and efficacious decree of his will; rather, they are predestined under some changeable condition of the good use of free choice—namely, if they themselves wish to act well.⁶ He proves this with many arguments, which are for the most part the same as those we shall bring forward in support of the second opinion. Sixtus of Siena followed this teaching of Ambrosius Catharinus, as he himself reports: And it, he says, I preached for ten years in many of the principal cities of Italy. But later, when I had observed that this assertion was beset by no few difficulties and constraints, and was therefore not approved by most⁷ learned and devout theologians, I judged it better to desist from preaching it than to teach what the pious judgment of the learned had rejected.⁸ More recent theologians adequately refute this opinion, which Augustine had earlier condemned among the ancient Pelagians when he said: To deny predestination, then, which we have briefly proved to be in God, is monstrous blasphemy. We must acknowledge it not only, as you are accustomed to say, in the Apostles, but also in the Patriarchs, Prophets, Martyrs, and Confessors, and in all the Saints and those who serve God worthily.⁹

II. The second opinion belongs to certain theologians. To explain and defend it, they lay down the following propositions.

First, they say that from eternity God willed all human beings and Angels, without exception, to be saved, on condition, however, that the fault did not lie with them or with our first parent. They extend this willing of God to all those who would have come into being under the established constitution of this universe, if, according to human choice, this world had followed another course with respect to the generations of human beings, and other people, numerically distinct, had been born. God, they say, also willed all these people to be saved, on the condition that they were born (as they could naturally have been).

Second, they say that although God confers upon everyone helps directed to salvation, as well as sufficient exciting and prevenient grace, nevertheless, generally speaking, he is not accustomed to confer it unless certain acts of free choice come first. They add that by his merits the Lord Christ obtained this for us and established this law with the Father: whenever we endeavored, by our natural powers, to do what lies within us, helps of grace would be at hand, by which we could accomplish it as is required for salvation.

Third, they say that the helps of prevenient grace by which the predestined actually attain eternal life are not efficacious in themselves, nor by reason of the intrinsic quality and power they possess as they come from God; rather, they are called efficacious because of the effect, which at the same time depends on the freedom of choice. From this they infer that whether the helps of prevenient and assisting grace, which are conferred on wayfarers according to the ordinary law, are efficacious or inefficacious for conversion and justification depends on the free consent and cooperation of our choice with them. Accordingly, it lies within our free power to make them efficacious by consenting, or inefficacious by withholding consent.

Fourth, they say that predestination is not certain with the certainty of the causality of its means, but only with the certainty of foreknowledge; they extend this claim even to those confirmed in grace. But this assertion will be treated in disputation 41.

Fifth, they say that predestination was not made on account of foreknowledge of the good use of free choice. That is, the good use of free choice, foreknown by God, is not the cause, reason, or condition on account of which God decreed from eternity to confer upon the predestined those means by which he foresaw that they would, through their own freedom, attain eternal life. The reason offered by the proponents of this same knowledge is that God foresaw of many people that, if they were placed in a certain order of things or given certain helps, they would, through their own freedom, use their free choice well and be saved; nevertheless, God neither placed them in that order of things nor predestined them. They add, however, that predestination was not made without foreknowledge of the good use of free choice that would occur on the hypothesis that a person were placed in such circumstances.

Sixth, they say that foreknowledge of the future good use of free choice is a condition without which the decree to confer on adults the means of salvation would not have the character of predestination, but would retain only the character of a common supernatural providence. By “foreknowledge” they mean middle knowledge, which we refuted in disputation 7.

III. This opinion is proved first from the authority of Scripture. For it is said in Romans: Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed, etc.¹⁰ These words can more suitably be understood of no other foreknowledge than that which necessarily precedes predestination; this is middle knowledge, by which God knew what each person's free choice would do through its own freedom, on the hypothesis that the person were placed in a certain order of things and given certain helps. Likewise, Romans 11 says: God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Therefore, foreknowledge of the good use of free choice is presupposed to predestination. Moreover, 1 Peter 1 says: Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, unto the sanctification of the Spirit, etc. These words imply that predestination to sanctification and glory is according to foreknowledge of the good use of free choice. Finally, in the second epistle, chapter 1, he says: Be diligent, brothers, to make your calling and election sure through good works. Therefore, the certainty of election and predestination depends on foreknowledge of good works; consequently predestination cannot exist without it. For predestination is certain with respect to the attainment of its effects.

Second. The Greek Fathers who wrote before St. Augustine unanimously taught that predestination was made according to foreknowledge of the good use of free choice. This is clear from St. Prosper's letter to Augustine, where he says: Almost all—that is, the ancient Fathers—are found to have a similar and single opinion: they accepted God's purpose and predestination according to foreknowledge, so that God made some vessels of honor and others of dishonor for this reason: he foresaw each person's end and, under the help of grace itself, foreknew what his will and action would be. Origen teaches the same in book 7 of his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Explaining the passage in Romans 9, Does not the potter have power, etc., he says: Jacob was chosen as a vessel of honor because he purified himself; for God, seeing his purity, made him a vessel of honor from the same mass of Adam. Chrysostom holds the same view in homily 16 on the Epistle to the Romans, as do Theodoret, Theophylact, and Oecumenius on the words of Romans 8, For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined. For all teach that election was made on the basis of foreseen merits. Among the Latin Fathers, St. Jerome in letter to Hedibia, question 10, teaches the same thing plainly enough. After saying much about reprobation and predestination, he adds: From this it is shown that not nations, but the wills of human beings, are chosen. St. Augustine likewise says in chapter 10 of On the Predestination of the Saints that predestination cannot exist without foreknowledge. Finally, St. Thomas says in 3. p. q. 1. ar. 3. ad 4. that predestination presupposes foreknowledge of future things. This must be understood of conditional foreknowledge. Therefore, such foreknowledge is presupposed to predestination.

Third. By the eternal decree of his will, God predestined us to be justified and saved in the same way in which we are in fact justified and saved in time, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. p. q. 23. ar. 5, in the argument on the contrary. But all adults are justified and saved dependently on the good use of free choice. Therefore, that they were predestined from eternity through those means by which they are justified and saved depends not only on the divine will by which God decreed to confer those means of salvation upon the predestined, but also on the free cooperation and influence of choice, foreknown by God.

Fourth. With the same helps on God's part by which one person is justified and saved, another, through his own freedom, is neither justified nor saved. Therefore, for the will to confer such helps to have formally the character of predestination depends on the free influence of created choice—that is, on God's foreknowledge that the predestined person would use those helps well. The antecedent is proved as follows: given any helps of prevenient grace, it remains open to a person to cooperate with them or not to cooperate; otherwise he would not cooperate freely. Therefore, if he cooperates, as he can, he will be saved; but if he does not cooperate, he will not be saved. It can happen that one person cooperates while another does not, even when they have the same helps. Therefore, it can happen that, with the same helps on God's part, one person is saved and predestined while another is condemned and becomes reprobate. Consequently, predestination does not exist without foreknowledge of the good use of free choice.

This opinion can be confirmed by all the arguments with which in disputation 22 we endeavored to prove that, by an absolute and efficacious decree antecedent to middle knowledge, God did not predetermine our free acts, including supernatural ones. For those same arguments seem to prove that predestination was not made antecedently to foreknowledge of the good use of free choice.

IIII. The third opinion belongs to other theologians, who assert that foreknowledge of the good use of free choice does not, in the order of reason, precede predestination—that is, the decree of the divine will by which God predestined human beings—but is simultaneous with predestination itself, so that foreknowledge neither precedes predestination nor follows it. They think this opinion is expressly taught by St. Augustine and St. Thomas. They speak expressly of the knowledge of vision, by which God foreknows future merits proceeding from the help of grace. They prove their opinion with many authoritative passages from St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and St. Prosper, who seem in general to assert that foreknowledge of merits is simultaneous with predestination. They also prove it by very many arguments, the chief of which follow.

Fifth, it is argued: if God predestined some people altogether antecedently to foreknowledge of the good use of free choice, one of three very great absurdities would follow. For such a decree of predestination would either not be entirely certain, or it could be fulfilled in execution without the cooperation of the predestined person, or it would impose absolute necessity upon that person. This is proved as follows. Given that decree, which is antecedent to foreknowledge of cooperation, either the predestined person can still fail to cooperate, or he will cooperate necessarily on the hypothesis of that same decree. If he can still fail to cooperate, then the decree could go unfulfilled and would therefore be uncertain; or, if it is certain and will be fulfilled despite this, it could be fulfilled without the cooperation of the predestined person. But if it is said that he cooperates necessarily on the hypothesis of that decree, then the decree imposes an absolute necessity of cooperation upon the predestined person. For a necessity that follows from some hypothesis which is neither the act itself nor includes in itself a relation to the exercise of that act is a necessity without qualification.

Sixth: it would follow that all human beings are predestined by God, insofar as it depends on him, or that eternal salvation is impossible for some who are living this life. It would consequently also follow that the Lord Christ did not die for all in respect of sufficiency, which is contrary to the express passages of Scripture. The consequence is proved as follows: if predestination was made, in the order of reason, antecedently to foreknowledge of the good use of free choice, then those who were not predestined before that foreknowledge will not be able to be saved. For God's predestination is necessary for attaining eternal salvation, since only the predestined are saved. Therefore either everyone is predestined before that foreknowledge, or there will be some people living as wayfarers who cannot be saved.

Seventh. God is no respecter of persons. For the Apostle Peter says in Acts 10: In truth I have found that God is no respecter of persons. But God would be a respecter of persons if he predestined some and reprobated others before foreknowledge of the good or bad use of free choice. For when two people are altogether equal and in an equal situation, to prefer one to another without any cause is respect of persons. Yet all are equal in themselves both in nature and in original sin. Thus, the conclusion follows.

V. The fourth opinion belongs to other recent Doctors, who distinguish between predestination to grace and predestination to glory. On this supposition:

First, they say that predestination to grace was made by God antecedently to foreknowledge of the good use of free choice. They say that this alone was St. Augustine's intention in teaching against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians that God's election does not arise from merits, but solely from God's gratuitous will. For before the first help of grace, no merit can be understood to exist in nature on account of which grace might be given; otherwise grace would no longer be grace, but a reward.

Second, they say that the efficacious election to glory was made on the basis of foreseen merits proceeding from grace; and they say that St. Augustine taught this doctrine and nowhere even slightly suggested the contrary. They bring forward the following arguments in its support.

Eighth, it is argued: by his antecedent, or conditional, will, God wills to give eternal life universally to all; but he does not will this by his consequent will, which is efficacious. The antecedent will is posited in God before foreseen merits or demerits, and for that reason is equal with respect to all. But the consequent will is not in God before foreseen merits or demerits, but follows them; for that is why it is called consequent will. It is not equal with respect to all, because it is in God after his foreknowledge of their different merits. Therefore the efficacious election to glory was not made before the merits proceeding from grace were foreseen.

Ninth, it is argued from an analogy with what happens among human beings. If a king offered a prize to contestants on the condition that no one obtain it unless he proved victorious, he would surely never decree, by an absolute and efficacious will, to give the offered prize to someone, even if he loved him, before seeing him victorious. But God offers eternal life to all as a prize, to be bestowed on this condition: no one obtains this prize unless he has competed lawfully, as is clear from 2 Timothy 2: No one will be crowned unless he has competed lawfully. Therefore, before foreseen merits proceeding from grace, God did not decree to give glory to anyone.

Tenth. We must assign the same order among the objects themselves as actually exists, according to the different signs of reason in the divine decree. For since the divine will is utterly simple and its act is one and most simple, we ought not distinguish it even according to our way of understanding except in accordance with the different order that the objects willed by God have among themselves. But the object that is eternal blessedness has no order to predestined adults except with merits presupposed: for no one is worthy of eternal life unless merits have preceded. Therefore, by his absolute and efficacious decree God does not will eternal life for anyone unless merits of grace foreknown by God are presupposed. Consequently, predestination to glory is based on foreseen merits.

This is confirmed as follows. Although an efficacious intention of an end is prior to the choice of means when the means are a physical cause of attaining the end, as medicine is in relation to health, when the means are only a moral or meritorious cause of attaining the end, the efficacious intention of the end does not precede the choice of means but presupposes it. Yet merits proceeding from grace are not a physical cause of attaining glory, but only a moral cause. Therefore, in God the efficacious will to predestine to glory—which is the end of an intellectual creature—does not precede the choice of merits or foreknowledge of them, but presupposes it. They adduce other arguments from effects in confirmation of their opinion, drawn from the freedom of choice and the efficacy of merits; these present no new difficulty beyond the one touched upon in the preceding arguments.

VI. The fifth opinion maintains that God's efficacious election both to grace and to glory precedes foreseen merits in the order of reason. That is, the efficacious intention to give the predestined grace and glory proceeds from God's gratuitous will alone, without any merits foreseen. This is the common opinion of the Thomists and is explicitly taught by St. Augustine and St. Thomas, as well as by other Doctors, as will become clear below.

VII. To resolve this difficulty, we must presuppose everything we said about knowledge of future conditionals in disputation 7, where we taught that there is no middle knowledge between purely natural and purely free knowledge, because before a free decree of the divine will it is not knowable what a created will would do if placed in such circumstances. We must also presuppose what we shall say about the efficacy of the decree of the divine will and of the helps of grace in disputations 72 and 90. And, so that the truth we sincerely seek may appear more clearly, note first that, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. par. quaest. 23. artic. 2. 3. et 4. on the authority of St. Augustine in book de dono persev., chapter 14, and as we noted above in disputation 35: Predestination is the foreknowledge and preparation of God's benefits, by which all who are delivered are most certainly delivered.¹¹ The same holy Doctors commonly give this definition in other words: Predestination is the preparation of grace in the present and glory in the future. Here “grace” and “God's benefits” include not only justifying grace and the meritorious works that proceed from it, but also all the supernatural gifts and helps by which a human being is disposed and led to eternal life. As St. Thomas noted in 1. par. quaest. 23. artic. 2. ad tertium, this preparation is twofold:¹² one is in the preparer, namely in God, insofar as through his intellect and will he conceives beforehand and arranges the order of what is to be done in time, so that by it the elect may be led to eternal life. Such preparation is predestination formally. The other preparation is found in the person being prepared, who is disposed by God to attain eternal life efficaciously. This preparation, taken passively, is also called predestination by common usage, the name of the cause being taken to signify its effect. This manner of speaking is frequent in Sacred Scripture, as in 1 Thessalonians 4: This is the will of God, your sanctification. There the sanctification found and received in us is called God's will because it is its effect.

Note second that the influence of free choice by which a predestined person freely consents to God as he calls and stirs him—even when considered formally, as proceeding from free choice—is an effect of predestination, as was shown in the preceding disputation and will become clearer in disputations 96 and 97. Consequently, it is not presupposed on our part as prior to predestination itself.

VIII. Note third that something may be said to be prior to something else in three ways. First, by priority in time, as Adam was prior to the Antichrist. Second, by priority in nature, namely when it is the cause of the other; for although a cause may be in the same instant of time as its effect, it is prior in nature, as the Sun is prior in nature to its rays.¹³ Third, something is said to be prior to another in the order of reason when, according to our way of understanding, it is conceived and understood before the other, although it precedes it neither in time nor in nature. For example, the knowledge of simple understanding, by which God knows possible things, is prior in the order of reason to the knowledge of vision, because according to our way of understanding we first conceive that God knows possible things and then that he knows things actually existing. Nevertheless, the knowledge of simple understanding is not prior in God, either in time or in nature, to the knowledge of vision, because nothing in God can be the cause of anything else. The same must be said proportionally of the divine essence in relation to the Persons, their notional properties, or even the relations: in the order of reason we understand the essence before the Persons or their divine properties or relations.

Fourth, we must presuppose that although God does not understand or will one object before another, but by one and most simple act his intellect and will understand and will simultaneously from eternity whatever he wills and understands, nevertheless according to our way of understanding we must distinguish different instants and signs of reason, in which, on the part of the object, he is said to understand or will one thing before another.¹⁴ In the first sign of reason, therefore, God knows through the knowledge of simple understanding all possible creatures. In the second sign, from among all possible creatures, by his sheer gratuitous will and for the manifestation of his goodness, he decreed to create or produce the order of this universe, with all the creatures, bodily and spiritual, that belong to it; among them he placed our first parents with grace and original justice. This grace, insofar as it belonged to the state of innocence, was not an effect of Adam's predestination, nor was it conferred on him through the merits of the Lord Christ, as will become clear in disputation 40, because it was not the grace of a frail or redeemed human being, but an effect of God's supernatural providence. In the third sign, he decreed to permit the sin of our first parent for the sake of a greater good, namely, so that the divine Word might assume human flesh as its remedy. In the fourth sign, he willed the Incarnation of the Word as a remedy for sin, and predestined the Lord Christ, insofar as he is man, as the head of all the predestined and the exemplar of the Saints. In the fifth sign, he loved, chose, and predestined in the Lord Christ and through Christ all the predestined, and by an absolute and efficacious will willed for them the good of eternal life. As for the rest, he reprobated them, willing by an absolute and efficacious will not to give them this good, which is eternal life. In the sixth sign, he decreed to confer on the predestined efficacious helps of grace and good merits, through which he would in fact lead them to eternal life; but to the reprobate he decreed sufficient helps, by which they could be saved. He decreed not to give them the efficacious helps by which they would in fact be saved—in such a way that they would in fact receive those helps—but willed, for the manifestation of his justice and the splendor of his mercy in the elect, to permit the reprobate's sins and their perseverance in them until the end of life; and on account of those same sins he also decreed at last to inflict eternal punishment upon them. With these points presupposed, then, let the following be established:

IX. First proposition. Predestination, formally speaking, in the character of predestination, does not depend even as on a condition without which it could not be on the good use of free choice foreknown by God; nor does it presuppose, in the order of reason, foreknowledge of that use.¹⁵ If we are speaking of the good use proceeding from the faculty of nature alone, the authors of the first and second opinions accept the conclusion, although some assert, as was said above, that certain acts of free choice proceeding from the faculty of nature alone ordinarily precede the first prevenient grace. Nevertheless, as we shall note in disputation 56, St. Augustine very often shows against the Semi-Pelagians that God's grace, or his help, from which the first beginning of our salvation is taken, must come first, so that nothing is presupposed from the principles of nature which, once posited, would bring grace's help infallibly.

Nevertheless, the conclusion is proved universally, including insofar as it extends to the good use proceeding from the help of grace.

The first argument is drawn from the authority of the Apostle in Romans 9: When they had not yet been born or done anything good or evil, so that God's purpose according to election might stand—not from works, but from him who calls—it was said: The elder shall serve the younger; as it is written: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. As is clear from the whole context of the passage, by these words he intends to exclude every cause of predestination that lies on our part, and every reason or condition without which it would not occur, and to trace the benefit of predestination back to God's sheer and gratuitous will. Hence St. Augustine, in q. 2. ad Simplicianum, when considering the Apostle's words just cited, notes first that the Apostle deliberately said Isaac begot both sons, Jacob and Esau, from one act of intercourse. This was to remove the suspicion that the predestination of one could be referred to the merits of his parents at the time they begot him—as if they had been in grace at the conception of one and in sin at the conception of the other—and also to remove from astrologers the opportunity to attribute their different lots to the different aspect of the stars under which they were born. Second, Augustine notes that the Apostle deliberately said, “when they had not yet been born or done anything good or evil,” lest anyone refer their predestination or reprobation to their own prior merits or demerits. Third, Augustine observes that the Apostle therefore added, “not from works, but from him who calls,” etc., to show that the predestination of one and the reprobation of the other are not to be referred to a difference in their subsequent deeds, or to their own foreseen merits or demerits, but solely to the divine will, as in the words: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I show compassion.¹⁶ And again he says: It is not of him who wills or of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. And again: Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills. And again: O man, who are you to answer back to God? Shall the thing formed say to the one who formed it, “Why have you made me thus? St. Augustine repeats and insists on these words often, to show against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians that predestination was not made on the basis of foreseen merits, even merits grounded in grace, but from God's sheer will and grace.

X. Some respond that from this passage of the Apostle we may conclude only that predestination was not made from foreseen merits, nor according to foreseen merits, even those grounded in grace, but from God's sole and free will. They say, however, that the Apostle does not intend to teach or prove that predestination was made without foreknowledge of merits proceeding from grace, or before such foreknowledge—the foreknowledge by which God knew future merits on the hypothesis that free choice were placed in such circumstances and given such helps.

But an argument presses against this response. The Apostle intends to exclude everything that lies on our part, so that free choice may glory in God and not in itself, and may claim nothing for itself that it has not received. He therefore holds that nothing on our part is presupposed, not even as a condition without which God would not have predestined his elect. Moreover, otherwise all the arguments that the Apostle presents in the same chapter could easily be answered, and there would have been no need to appeal to the depth of the riches of God's wisdom and knowledge, or to the depth and incomprehensibility of his judgments. For one could answer that God already knew before the decree of his will predestining or reprobating them what they would do, by their innate freedom, with the helps of grace given or to be given to them, and what others would not do. Thus these people remained predestined with these helps because they were foreseen as going to use their choice well; others, however, remained reprobate with the same helps because they were not going to use their choice well. Yet the Apostle does not resort to this response, but to God's sheer and gratuitous will and to his unsearchable judgments.

Nor is the response of certain theologians valid: they assert that the Apostle resorts to God's will alone and to his unsearchable judgments because by his own gratuitous will God chose to place the predestined in an order of things and circumstances in which he foresaw they would use the helps of grace well, although he could have placed them in other circumstances in which he foresaw that, on the hypothesis that they were placed in those same circumstances, they would use those same helps badly.¹⁷ They also say that by his sheer will God decreed to place the reprobate in an order of things and circumstances in which he foresaw that, by their innate freedom, they would use their choice badly, although he could have placed those same people in other circumstances in which he foresaw that they would use their choice so well that, with divine help, they would attain eternal salvation, on the hypothesis that they were placed in those circumstances. Nor, as to this, is any condition on our part presupposed without which predestination would not occur. For God foresaw of many people that, if they were created in such circumstances, they would use exciting grace well and be saved; nevertheless, he decided neither to create them nor to place them in those same circumstances. I say that this response is invalid because Pelagius expressly conceded that free choice is created by God entirely gratuitously and without any merits, even hypothetical future ones. All the more, then, the Massilians either conceded, or would very readily have conceded, that no reason can be assigned on the part of the good use of free choice that would occur hypothetically for God's choosing, from among the infinite possible human beings who (as they asserted) would have used their choice well if God created them in such circumstances, to create these particular people or those and place them in those circumstances in which they would be saved. Rather, they would refer all of this to God's sheer and gratuitous will. The opposite is not credible, for then they would be compelled to admit that all possible human beings and Angels who would have used their choice well on the hypothesis that they were stirred and moved by such grace in such circumstances were in fact predestined by God by an absolute and efficacious will. For that reason applies equally to all possible human beings and Angels, and this could not have occurred to them. Therefore, when St. Augustine presses the Pelagians and their remnants from scriptural passages that there is no cause of predestination on the part of the good use of free choice foreknown by God, he means not only that there is no cause on account of which God decided to create a human being and place him in those circumstances in which he foresaw the person would use his choice so well as to attain eternal salvation. He also means that there is no reason or condition on the part of the hypothetical future good use of free choice on which it would depend whether the order of means to an end, preexisting in the divine mind, acquired the formal character of predestination or retained only the character of common supernatural providence. Second, the same point is shown as follows: otherwise, as the first root, we would have to refer the distinction between the predestined and the non-predestined to foreknowledge alone, and not to God's gratuitous will. Consequently, the ultimate difference found between them would have to be referred to natural freedom, from which alone, according to the opposing opinion, proceeds one person's making a free contribution by consenting to the helps of exciting grace. This is clearly proved: according to the opposing opinion, that contribution, insofar as it proceeds from free choice, is an effect neither of grace nor of predestination, as is clear from what was said in the preceding disputation. But by that contribution the predestined person is distinguished from the non-predestined. Therefore, the predestined person is distinguished from the non-predestined by something he has from his innate freedom and has not received from grace. Third, not only must it be referred to God's gratuitous will that he placed the elect in those circumstances in which he foresaw they would use their choice well by consenting to the helps of prevenient grace; it must also be referred to that same will that they be willing to consent and do consent to God as he calls them. Hence St. Prosper says in lib. 1. de vocat. Gent. c. 25.: That question which, in accord with the Apostle's mind, we acknowledge to be impenetrable is not resolved through free choice's willing and refusing; for although not willing the good is present in a human being, he does not have the willing of the good unless it is given.

XII. St. Thomas confirms this argument in q. 6. de verit. ar. 3. in corp., where he says: It cannot be said that predestination adds nothing to the certainty of providence except the certainty of foreknowledge, as if one were to say that God orders the predestined person to salvation just as he does anyone else, but knows in addition about the predestined person that he will not fail to attain salvation. For if one speaks this way, the predestined person would not be said to differ from the non-predestined on the part of the order, but only on the part of foreknowledge of the outcome; thus foreknowledge would be the cause of predestination, and predestination would not occur through the choice of the one predestining, which is contrary to the authority of Scripture and the sayings of the Saints.¹⁸ Here St. Thomas most clearly excludes the opinion we are refuting and asserts that the difference between the predestined and the non-predestined is not drawn from foreknowledge of the good use of free choice in consenting to God as he calls, but from the choice of the one predestining. Hence St. Augustine, after teaching many things in confirmation of this doctrine in tom. 3. lib. de spiritu, et littera c. 34., concludes as follows: If anyone presses us to probe that depth—to ask why one person is persuaded in such a way as to be convinced, but another is not—we have only two answers in mind for now, which I am glad to give: ‘O the depth of riches!’ and ‘Is there injustice with God?’ But if this answer displeases anyone, let him seek out wiser people, while taking care not to find people more presumptuous.

XIII. Some used to respond to the passages brought forward from Romans 9 that the Apostle succumbed to the difficulty and could not find an answer to the question and argument proposed. But St. Augustine also rejects this response in tom. 4. lib. 83. qq q. 68., in these words: Although the Apostle seems to have rebuked the curious by saying, ‘O man, who are you to answer back to God?’, they raise a question about this very matter and do not cease to be curious in the very opinion by which that curiosity was rebuked. It is indeed an impious insult to say that the Apostle failed to resolve the question and rebuked those asking because he could not explain what they asked.¹⁹ A little later he says: Some people, however, reading the Scriptures with a good and pious mind, ask what answer may be given here to those who speak evilly or slanderously. But let us cling with salutary firmness to the Apostle's authority and judge what is true: we are unworthy and weak in understanding the divine secrets within which these matters are shut away. When those who murmur and are indignant that they do not learn God's counsels begin to say, ‘Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills. What more is sought?’, let us answer with complete confidence: ‘O man, who are you to answer back to God?’

XIV. Second, our conclusion is proved from Romans 11: The remnant has been saved according to the election of grace. And from Ephesians 1: He predestined us to adoption as sons according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace. A little later: In him we have also been called by lot, having been predestined according to his purpose.²⁰ Here we should note that predestination is called a lot because it comes to the elect not from merits, even foreseen merits, but from God's gratuitous will, which is expressed in the words according to the purpose of his will, and in Romans 8: For those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called saints according to his purpose. It does not say, “according to foreknowledge of the good use of free choice,” nor “according to foreseen merits,” but according to the purpose of his will. Nor should we accept the explanation of certain modern authors who assert that the Apostle is speaking of a human purpose, so that the meaning is that people are predestined according to the purpose of our will or free choice as it consents to God calling. St. Augustine expressly rejects this explanation in lib. 2. cont. duas epistolas Pelag. cap. 9. and lib. de corrept. et grat. c. 7., where he says: They were chosen because they were called according to a purpose—not their own, but God's, of which he says elsewhere: ‘So that God's purpose according to election might stand.’²¹ And: Not from works, but from him who calls, it was said to her: The elder shall serve the younger.²² Another relevant passage is in Matthew 11: I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, for so it was pleasing before you. Here he teaches that the predestination of the elect must be referred to the mere good pleasure of the divine will. Hence certain weighty authors who wrote against heretics in our own time assert that no reason can be assigned for our predestination, nor any condition without which it would not occur—not merits properly so called, nor even the proper use of free choice or of grace, or of both together, foreseen by God, even if it is called merit only by congruity and is not called a true cause but merely a condition without which the predestined person would not be predestined. Hence St. Augustine says in lib. de don. persev. c. 18.: This one thing I know: no one can argue against this predestination, which we defend according to Holy Scripture, except by falling into error.²³

Third, this is proved by the authority of St. Thomas in 1. p. q. 23. art. 5 and tertio cont. Gent. c. 163., q. 6. de verit. art. 2., super cap. 15. Io. lect. 5., ad Rom. 9. lect. 2., and ad Ephes. 1. lect. 1. In these passages he asserts that foreknowledge of merits is not the cause of predestination with respect to its entire effect. St. Thomas also intends to exclude a condition without which predestination would not occur, as is evident from the context itself.

XV. Fourth, this is proved by an argument drawn from the same St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 23. ar. 5, ad 3. To make this clear, we must presuppose what he taught in the body of the same article and in q. 20. ar. 2.: namely, that this is the difference between God's will and ours: God's will does not presuppose goodness in the things he loves and chooses, but by loving and choosing them he causes in them the goodness and suitability for the end to which they are ordered by divine providence.²⁴ Hence the Apostle says: He has made us competent ministers of a new covenant.²⁵ He placed “competent” before “ministers,” because God first gives people competence for a certain ministry and then gives them the ministry itself: by choosing them, he makes them competent ministers. Created will, by contrast, presupposes in the object it loves a true or apparent goodness caused by something else. Given this, the argument proceeds as follows. No cause, reason, or condition without which it would not occur can be assigned on the part of creatures to explain why, from among all possible Angels, God created these rather than those. Nor can a reason be assigned on the part of the elements on which it would depend that God produced this portion of water or air at the first creation in this place rather than in that one. These things are referred solely to God's sheer will. Therefore, all the more, no reason or condition without which it would not occur can be assigned on our part on which it would depend that the order of means to an end, as applied to this human being, should acquire the character of predestination. The consequence is proved as follows: just as God's will was the cause of creatures with respect to their natural existence, so too God's gratuitous will and love are the true cause and first root of predestination and of all the spiritual goods he confers on intellectual creatures for eternal salvation.

Fifth, it is proved as follows. As was shown in the preceding disputation, the good use of free choice by which a person consents to God as he calls and stirs him, even insofar as it proceeds from free choice, is an effect of predestination in the predestined. Therefore, it is not presupposed on our part as prior to predestination itself, even as a condition without which it would not occur. The consequence is clear: an effect cannot be presupposed to its cause or be required beforehand, even as a condition without which it would not occur, for its causality.

Sixth, it is proved as follows. Before predestination, the good use of created free choice, foreknown by God through the knowledge of vision, is not understood beforehand. For such knowledge follows the decree of the divine will and predestination in the order of reason. God foreknew that good use precisely because he predestined it, as St. Augustine expressly teaches in the passages cited in disputation 7, number 28. Nor is such good use presupposed as foreknown through conditional knowledge, by which it is asserted that before an actual decree of his will, even a decree conditional with respect to the object willed, God knows certainly and infallibly what a created will would do in particular on the hypothesis that God placed it in a certain order of things. For this object is not knowable even to God antecedently to an actual decree of his will, as we showed at length in that same disputation 7. Therefore, and so forth.

XVI. Second conclusion. Foreknowledge of merits is not simultaneous with predestination in the same sign of reason.²⁶ This conclusion is against the third opinion; nevertheless, it is common among the Thomists and accords with the mind of St. Augustine and St. Thomas. For St. Augustine teaches that God knows with certainty the future salvation of a human being because he predestined it. He therefore holds that predestination precedes, in the order of reason, foreknowledge of future salvation or of the cooperation of free choice. The antecedent is proved as follows. In chapter 10 of On the Predestination of the Saints, he says: By predestination he foreknew the things he himself was going to do; hence it is said, ‘He made the things that are to be.’ And in chapter 17: They were chosen, then, before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his future works. He says the same in chapter 19 and in lib. de don. persev., chapters 14, 18, 22, and 24.

Second: the knowledge of vision follows the decree of the divine will. Therefore, the decree itself is prior in the order of reason to such foreknowledge. Therefore, predestination is not made on the basis of a foreseen good use of free choice, foreknown by God in the same sign of reason in which predestination is understood.

Third. Calling is an effect of predestination, as is clear from the Apostle's authority in Romans 8: Those whom he predestined, these he also called, etc. Therefore predestination precedes, in the order of reason, the good use of free choice and foreknowledge of it. The consequence is clear: that good use follows the calling itself, for no one uses his choice well unless the calling of God who moves him comes first. Since, then, predestination precedes calling, it follows that it also precedes, in the order of reason, the future good use of free choice and foreknowledge of it.

XVII. Third conclusion. There is no cause on our part, nor any condition without which it would not occur, not only for predestination to grace but also for predestination to glory; rather, such predestination was made antecedently, in the order of reason, to foreseen merits.²⁷ Thus, with no foreseen merits presupposed, God had an efficacious intention to give glory to all the elect. The first part of this conclusion has been sufficiently proved by what was said in the first conclusion. The second part is against the authors of the fourth opinion, but is commonly asserted by the Thomists. Cajetan teaches it in 1. p. q. 23. art. 4., Soto in his commentary on cap. 9. ad Rom., Durandus in primo d. 41. q. 1. num. 8., Giles of Rome in the same place, article 2, Scotus in the same distinction, question 1, section “potest aliter,” Corduba in lib. 1. q. 56. opinion. 5., and Zumel in 1. p. q. 23. art. 5. disput. 1. ad primum argumentum.

It is proved first from Sacred Scripture. For Acts 13 says: All who were ordained to eternal life believed. These words plainly imply that the ordering of the elect to eternal life precedes, in the order of reason, the gifts of grace—that is, the will to give them efficacious helps by which they merit eternal life. Likewise, Luke 12 says: Do not be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom. These words express the gratuitous will by which the heavenly Father, before foreseeing merits of grace, had the will or efficacious intention to give them glory. This is confirmed by the authority of the Council of Valence, under Emperor Lothair, chapter 3, which says: We confess the predestination of the elect to life and of the wicked to death; yet in the election of those to be saved, God's mercy precedes good merit.

It is proved second by the authority of St. Augustine, lib. de corrept. et grat. cap. 7., where, speaking of God's gratuitous election, he says: They were certainly chosen by election, as was said, freely, not on account of preceding merits. And explaining what they were chosen for, he adds: They were chosen to reign with Christ. A little later he says: Them, he says, he chose to obtain his kingdom. And in chapter 13 he says: Of those, he says, I speak who are predestined to the kingdom of God. In lib. de dono persev. cap. 14., he says that many are not given the help to believe because, by God's higher judgment, they have not been separated from the mass of perdition by the predestination of grace. Here he clearly presupposes that the gifts of grace by which the elect infallibly attain eternal life, or merit it, are effects of predestination to glory. Consequently, predestination to glory precedes, in the order of reason, the will to give the merits of grace.

St. Thomas teaches the same in the body of 1. p. q. 23. art. 4. For he says that the predestination of some to eternal salvation presupposes in the order of reason that God wills their salvation, to which election and love belong. He is plainly speaking here of the efficacious willing by which God wills eternal salvation for the elect. By “eternal salvation,” St. Thomas does not mean only justifying grace, perseverance in grace, or the will to give fitting helps, as the authors of the opposing opinion interpret him; he means eternal glory, because he speaks expressly of the will of the end, which prudence presupposes when it prescribes the means. And in article 3, ad 1, he says that insofar as God does not will for some this good, which is eternal life, he is said to hate or reprobate them. He therefore holds that God is said to choose the elect insofar as he wills eternal life for them. But according to St. Thomas election arises from God's gratuitous will before foreseen merits. Therefore, according to his opinion, predestination to glory, which follows election, is prior to foreseen merits.

Third, it is proved by reason: the holy Fathers in general, and even Sacred Scripture, teach absolutely that the predestined were chosen before merits were foreseen, as is clear from the passages cited above. But people are not called simply and absolutely “chosen” unless they are chosen to glory, as is clear from Matthew 24: For the sake of the elect those days will be shortened; and 2 Timothy 2: I endure all things for the sake of the elect, so that they too may attain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with heavenly glory. Otherwise, reprobate people, while in grace, would be called simply “chosen.” Therefore election to glory was made before merits were foreseen.

Fourth, it is proved as follows: the efficacious intention of the end is prior, in the order of causality and of reason, to the choice of means, at least on the part of the object willed, since means, precisely as means, are desirable only on account of the end.²⁸ But the will to choose some for glory is an efficacious intention of the end, for glory is the end of merits. Therefore, in God the will to choose for glory is prior in the order of reason to the will to give the merits of grace. Election to glory, then, cannot be based on merits of grace.

XVIII. Fourth conclusion. Election to glory, with respect to its execution in time, is not without preceding merits of grace, or at least without the merits of Christ.²⁹ I say this on account of baptized infants, who attain glory without their own merit because the merits of the Lord Christ are applied to them through baptism under the law of grace, through circumcision under the written law, or through another remedy under the law of nature.

To understand this conclusion, we must presuppose that, as St. Augustine teaches in tract. 68. in Ioan., election is twofold: one by way of intention, the other by way of temporal execution.³⁰ The former was made from eternity; the latter takes place in time—or, to speak more precisely, its execution takes place in time—according to Matthew 13: They selected the good into their vessels. It is of this second election to glory that we assert it presupposes merits of grace. St. Augustine intends to teach only this conclusion when he says: No one is chosen unless already distinguished from the one rejected. Hence I do not see how the words, ‘God chose us before the foundation of the world,’ can be understood except of foreknowledge,³¹ namely, of merits. And speaking of Jacob, he says: He was not chosen in order to become good; rather, once he had become good, he could be chosen. In sermon 7 on the Lord's words according to Matthew he says: God chose, as the Apostle says, according to his grace and according to their righteousness. Here he suggests a twofold election to glory: one according to the order of intention, which he says was made according to grace; the other in execution, which he says was made according to their righteousness because it presupposes merits of grace, to which glory is due in justice, according to 2 Timothy 4: From now on a crown of righteousness is laid up for me. Explaining Romans 11, The remnant has been saved according to the election of grace, he says: I chose them because I saw their minds trusting in me and not in Baal.

XIX. An objection is raised: in the cited passage to Simplician, St. Augustine is expressly speaking of God's eternal election. For he cites the Apostle's testimony in Ephesians 1: He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, and says it must be understood according to foreknowledge. He is therefore not speaking of the execution of election, which takes place in time. We reply that God's eternal election can be considered in two ways. First, as the intention to give glory; second, as the arrangement of its execution—that is, the execution itself conceived beforehand in God's mind. St. Augustine speaks in this second sense, not the first. Many learned men explain in the same sense the passage of Ambrose, lib. 7. in Lucam, where he says: Those whom he foreknew would be devoted to him, he chose for eternal rewards. The Greek Fathers who say that election was made according to foreknowledge of merits should be explained in the same way and brought into agreement with St. Augustine's teaching.

Second, this is proved from Matthew 25: Come, you blessed of my Father; possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, etc. These words signify that good works done out of charity are a meritorious cause of attaining glory, as St. Thomas also expressly teaches in 1. p. q. 23. ar. 5.

XX. To the first argument, among those made at the outset in support of the second opinion, we reply that, as Cajetan teaches in his commentary on the authority cited from St. Paul, the foreknowledge of which the Apostle speaks there follows predestination itself, or the decree of the divine will. For God foreknew the future salvation of the elect because he predestined it, as St. Augustine says in the passages cited in disputation 7, no. 28, and in this disputation, no. 16.

Second, as is clear from the passages of Scripture and St. Augustine cited in the preceding disputation, no. 2, “to foreknow” often means the same as “to predestine,” “to approve,” or “to love” in Sacred Scripture;³² similarly, “not to know” means the same as “to reprobate.” This answers the passages cited from Romans 11 and 1 Peter 1. To the other authority from the second epistle of St. Peter, we reply that it proves only that the certainty of predestination, with respect to attaining its final effect, namely glory, depends on preceding merits of grace, as was said in the fourth conclusion.

To the second argument, we reply that the Greek Fathers were not opposed to St. Augustine's opinion, as St. Augustine himself suggests in lib. de dono persev. c. 14. They must be understood in accordance with what we said in the fourth conclusion. The authority of St. Jerome and of St. Augustine in chapter 10 of On the Predestination of the Saints must be explained in the same way. Or one may say that St. Augustine there speaks of the knowledge of vision or approval, which follows the decree of the divine will that predestines, as was said.

XXI. To St. Thomas's authority from the third part, we reply, following Cajetan's teaching on the same passage, that predestination presupposes foreknowledge of future things, but not of all of them. It does not presuppose foreknowledge of those future things that are constituted through predestination itself; rather, in the order of reason, predestination is presupposed to foreknowledge of these future things.³³³⁴ Therefore, predestination presupposes only foreknowledge of those future things that are not constituted through predestination itself. In this way, Christ's predestination presupposed in God, in the order of reason, foreknowledge of Adam's future sin, as a remedy for which the Word was made flesh.

To the third, we reply that the order of execution is contrary to the order of intention. For the end is intended first, yet is put into effect last. Hence, although in execution a predestined adult does not attain justifying grace and glory without the free consent of choice moved by a special help from God, nevertheless in the intention God willed glory for the elect first, in the order of reason, before he decided to confer on them the means by which they would attain this end. We reply to St. Thomas's authority that its meaning is this: just as in time he saved us not from works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy,³⁵ so also from eternity he arranged to save us according to his mercy and not on the basis of preceding merits, in that he willed to confer the first effect of predestination on the predestined entirely gratuitously. And just as in execution he grants glory to the elect on account of merits of grace, so also from eternity he arranged this execution in his decree and mind after he had willed glory for them by an absolute will as their end.

XXII. To the fourth argument, the antecedent is denied if the statement concerns all the helps of prevenient grace, both sufficient and efficacious. For, as will become clear in disputation 108, the person who is converted and saved always receives within himself a new help of efficacious grace that the other person, who persists in sin, does not receive. This efficacious help is greater and more excellent than any of the sufficient helps. To the proof of the antecedent, we reply that, once the efficacious help of prevenient grace is posited, a person necessarily cooperates with a necessity of infallibility and consequence alone, which is not incompatible with freedom, but not with absolute necessity, as was explained in disputation 25.

By this we answer the fifth argument in support of the third opinion. We say that none of the three absurdities follows from our doctrine. For the decree of predestination—that is, the decree of God who predestines—is most certain with respect to the attainment of its effect, not only by the certainty of foreknowledge but also by the certainty of the order and causality of its means, as will be clear in disputation 41.³⁶ Similarly, with respect to some effects of predestination, its execution does not take place without the free consent of our choice. But it does not follow from this that the decree imposes an absolute necessity of cooperation on free choice, only a conditional necessity, as was said. When it is objected that the necessity of an act arising from some hypothesis which is neither the act itself nor includes an order to its execution is an unqualified necessity, we reply that the divine decree, on the supposition of which the consent of free choice is necessary by a necessity of infallibility, includes an order to the execution of that same free consent as an effect that God produces through free choice. Hence foreknowledge of this future consent does not precede the decree itself, nor is it simultaneous with the decree in the same sign of reason, but follows it: for an effect is always understood as posterior to its efficient cause. How the freedom of choice is compatible with a necessity of infallibility was explained in disputation 22, nos. 40 and 41.

To the sixth, we reply that every human being, as long as he is a wayfarer, can, absolutely speaking, be saved, even if he is not predestined. Predestination is not necessary in order for someone to be able to be saved absolutely, but in order for him to be saved infallibly. See St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 23. art. 3, ad 3, where he raises and resolves the same argument.

XXIII. To the seventh, we reply that respect of persons has no place in things that are entirely gratuitous, as is clear from Matthew 20: Is it not lawful for me to do what I will? Or is your eye evil because I am good? Friend, take what is yours and go in peace.³⁷ Since eternal blessedness and grace are owed to no pure creature, God is no respecter of persons when by his gratuitous will, before foreseen merits, he chooses one person for eternal life and does not choose another, even if all are equal with respect to natural endowments.

To the eighth, we reply that consequent will is found in God antecedently to foreknowledge of merits and demerits, as was said in disputation 34.

To the ninth, we reply that a temporal king cannot efficaciously make victorious the person he loves and to whom he wishes to give a crown. Hence he cannot, by an absolute will, will the crown offered for victory to that person without presupposing the same victory. But God can efficaciously make victorious whomever he wills. Therefore, by an absolute will he can rightly will the crown of glory for the elect by way of intention before foreseeing their victory. Hence on the feast of St. Vincent the Martyr the Church sings: He himself keeps a crown prepared for you in heaven, he who made you victorious amid torments.³⁸

To the tenth, we reply that eternal blessedness, according to the divine intention, has an order to predestined adults prior to foreseen merits, though not in execution. For in execution blessedness presupposes merits, as was said in the fourth conclusion.

To the confirmation, we reply that the efficacious intention of the end is always presupposed, in the order of reason, to the choice of means, whether the means are a physical cause of attaining the end or a moral cause. For by its intrinsic character a means presupposes the goodness, or willing, of the end.

Whether the predestination of infants depended on foreknowledge of the good use of their parents’ free choice, or of others through whom they came to the grace of baptism, and presupposes it.

I. In this difficulty we have a twofold dispute: one with heretics, the other with Catholics. The heretics, namely the Pelagians, denied that original sin is in infants and asserted that baptism is not necessary for the remission of original sin, but for their attaining the kingdom of heaven. Consequently, they said that infants who died without baptism were predestined or reprobated on account of the good or evil deeds they would have committed had they lived.¹ St Augustine rejects this opinion as erroneous in his book On the Predestination of the Saints, chapters 12 and 13; his book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapters 9 and 10; and Letter 107 to Vitalis. For no one is judged according to what he would have done had he lived, or according to what he would have done had this or that opportunity presented itself to him, but according to what he did in the body—that is, during the time when his soul lived in the body—as is clear from 2 Corinthians 5: We must all appear before the tribunal of Christ, so that each may receive according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil: ‘he did,’ he says, not ‘he would have done.’²

And if it is objected that infants did nothing in the body deserving reward or punishment, the answer with St Augustine is that either by themselves or through others they did something deserving reward or punishment;³ for through others some were baptized, while some were not baptized but died in the sin they contracted from their first parent. Furthermore, otherwise an adult who died in grace would have to be punished with eternal punishment on account of the mortal sins he would have committed had he lived longer. Likewise, one who ended his life in mortal sin would be worthy of glory on account of the repentance he would have had, had a longer life been granted him. To assert this, however, would be most absurd.

II. Among Catholics, however, there is the opinion of certain theologians who assert that, although the predestination of infants was not made on account of the good use of the free choice of their parents or of those who baptized them, nevertheless, as from a condition without which the reason for providing them with the means of salvation would not have had the character of predestination, the predestination of infants depended on God’s foreknowledge of the free will of the person administering baptism and of the free will of the parents who gave birth to those same infants. From this they infer that the certainty that infants will attain eternal life does not come from the certainty of the means or the effect of predestination, but from the certainty of divine foreknowledge.

They prove this first. If infants had not been born of their parents, or if the person baptizing them had not intended to baptize and they had died without baptism, they would not have been predestined. Therefore, whether God’s will, by which he provided them with the means of salvation, acquires in each particular case the character of predestination with respect to infants depended, as on a condition without which it would not be, on foreknowledge of the parents’ will and of the baptizer’s proper intention.

Second: the remedy against original sin provided by God could fail to be applied to an infant, even one who was predestined, for it is applied to him freely and contingently. Likewise, he could die in his mother’s womb, and he could also attain the use of reason, later commit many sins, and be damned. Therefore, his predestination was not certain and infallible by virtue of the means or effects of predestination, but by the certainty of divine foreknowledge. Some moderate this opinion, however, asserting that this foreknowledge is not understood to precede the predestination of infants, but to be simultaneous with it in the same order of reason, as was said above concerning the predestination of adults.

III. Nevertheless, in keeping with what we said in the preceding disputation, it is answered that the predestination of infants, formally speaking and in its character as predestination, does not depend—even as on a condition without which it would not be—on foreknowledge of the will of the parents or of the person administering baptism. Nor does it depend on the concurrence of other natural causes that contribute to the generation and preservation of offspring;⁴ rather, it depends on God’s mere and gratuitous will, as was said above concerning the predestination of adults. This conclusion is defended by all the Thomists and is that of St Thomas and St Augustine in the latter’s book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 12, at the end. While treating this question of infants, Augustine says: For God is not compelled by fate to help these infants and not to help those, since the case of both is the same; nor shall we suppose that human affairs in the case of infants are governed not by divine providence but by fortuitous events, when their souls are rational and must either be damned or set free, since not even a sparrow falls to the earth without the will of our Father who is in heaven. Nor should it be attributed to the negligence of parents that an infant dies without baptism, as if the heavenly judgments had no part in the matter, as though those who die badly in this way had themselves chosen, by their own will, the negligent parents from whom they would be born. What shall I say, since an infant sometimes expires before it can be helped through the ministry of the one baptizing? For often, although the parents are hurrying and ministers are ready to give baptism to the infant, it is nevertheless not given because God does not will it: he did not keep that infant in this life so that it might be given.⁵

This is proved as follows: that an infant in fact receive the remedy against original sin and die before reaching the use of reason, at which he could sin mortally, is an effect of that infant’s predestination. Therefore, the predestination of an infant, in its character as predestination, does not depend on the future application of baptism or on a future premature death, nor does it presuppose foreknowledge of that application or death. The inference is clear, for an effect is not presupposed to its cause. The antecedent is proved: the means by which the predestined person effectively attains eternal life are effects of that person’s predestination, as is clear from the definition of predestination explained above. This is also gathered from St Thomas, in the passages to be cited in the following disputation, no. 1. But through the remedy applied against original sin and through premature death, an infant effectively attains eternal life. Therefore these are effects of the predestination of infants.

Second: given that God has predestined an infant, it belongs to God’s providence that the infant be born and preserved until the remedy against original sin can be applied to him. Therefore, given this supposition, it is impossible in the composite sense that this infant not be born or die before the remedy against original sin is applied to him, although, absolutely speaking and in the divided sense, it is possible that it not be applied to him.

Third: otherwise, one would have to concede that something is given on the part of created free choice on which the predestination of an infant depends, and so it would not be purely gratuitous.

They reply that the predestination of infants was nevertheless purely gratuitous, because it arose from God’s mere will that a predestined infant be placed in such an order of things⁶ and in such circumstances that God foresaw that, by the free will of the parents, he would be conceived and, through natural causes, brought to the time when the sacrament of baptism could be applied to him and would in fact be applied. But this answer has already been refuted in the preceding disputation, nos. 10 and 11.

IIII. To the first argument it is answered that, on the supposition that an infant is predestined, it is impossible in the composite sense that the remedy against original sin not be applied to him or that he not be born, although, absolutely speaking, his parents could have refrained from begetting him, and baptism likewise could have not been applied to him. Hence, although baptism was applied to him contingently with respect to the proximate cause, and consequently could have failed to be applied, nevertheless, with respect to the divine will, which infallibly brings about whatever it wills, such application of baptism, the child’s begetting, and premature death introduce a certain necessity of immutability, or of the consequence, as was said in disputation 25. By this, the second argument is answered.

With these points assumed, it must be investigated whether a cause of predestination can be assigned on the part of Christ’s merits.

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

I. Master Báñez treats this rather difficult question in 1. p. q. 23. art. 5. dub. 2., as does Zumel in the same article, disputation 2. It is also commonly discussed in 3. p. q. 19. art. 4. and quaest. 24. art. 4. Asturicensis treats it at length in q. 7. de gratia Christi, dub. 3. pag. 974. Concerning it, there is the following opinion:

The first opinion is that of many theologians, including Thomists, who assert that the grace of calling, faith, and supernatural dispositions that precede justifying grace are not conferred on us from Christ’s merits, but from God’s mere and gratuitous will. Driedo holds this in lib. de captivitate, et redemptione generis humani tract. 4. c. 2. par. 8. memb. 3., as do Ruarus in art. 6. contra Lutherum and Somnius in lib. 2. demonstrationum fidei tract. 3. cap. 19. Capreolus taught the same opinion in 3. dist. 18. q. 1., as did Ferrariensis in 4. cont. Gent. c. 55., in his reply to the seventh argument, although he restricts his opinion to remote dispositions. Consequently, these authors must concede that the foreseen merits of Christ were not the cause of our predestination with respect to its entire effect. In support of this opinion:

First, it is argued: our predestination and grace come from God's mere and gratuitous will, as was said in disputation 37. Therefore they are not a reward corresponding to Christ's merits. The consequence is clear: what is rendered as a reward for merits is owed according to justice, not given according to grace, in keeping with Romans 4: To him who works, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to what is owed. And chapter 11: But if it is from works, it is no longer grace.

This is confirmed as follows. When St. Thomas in 3. p. q. 19. ar. 4. had proposed an argument to prove that the Lord Christ did not merit the grace conferred on us, he replied to it in the answer to the third objection and taught most clearly that although the Lord Christ merited that grace be given to those reborn through baptism, the very fact that a human being is granted rebirth through baptism is itself a matter of grace. From this he concludes that human salvation is from grace. He teaches the same in q. 29. de verit. ar. 7. ad ultimum. He therefore holds that the application of baptism does not come from Christ's merits; consequently, Christ's merits are not the cause of the entire effect of predestination. For the application of baptism to the predestined is an effect of their predestination.

Second: Christ did not merit, nor could he merit, his own predestination, just as he could not merit the Incarnation of the Word. Therefore, he did not merit our predestination with respect to all its effects and benefits, which God predestined and prepared for us. The consequence is clear: among these benefits are numbered Christ's predestination and Incarnation, which are the source and origin of all the supernatural benefits and goods God prepared for his elect.

This is confirmed: predestination is the preparation of God's benefits, by which all who are delivered are most certainly delivered, as was said in disputation 35. But the Lord Christ was not the meritorious cause of all the benefits God prepared for us, because he was not the meritorious cause of his own Incarnation, as was said. Therefore, he is not the cause of our predestination.

II. Third. According to our way of understanding, other human beings are understood as predestined before the Lord Christ is understood as predestined. Therefore, our predestination does not depend on Christ's merits, for what is prior does not depend on what is posterior. The antecedent is proved as follows. In the order of reason, God decreed to save the human race before he decided to send the Savior. For the salvation of human beings was the end of the Incarnation, and the intention of the end is prior by nature to the willing of those things ordered to the end. But that decree to save human beings was predestination, for predestination is the preparation of grace in the present and glory in the future, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas teach in the passages cited in disputation 35. Therefore, other human beings were predestined before the Lord Christ.

This is confirmed. In the order of reason, Adam is understood as pleasing to God before Christ is understood as predestined. Otherwise the grace Adam had in the state of innocence would have been conferred on him from Christ's merits, which is false, as will become clear in the following disputation. But that grace of Adam was an effect of his predestination, for through it he attained a certain degree of glory, just as he did through the meritorious works he had in the state of innocence. Therefore, Christ's merits were not the cause of the entire effect of Adam's predestination, and the same reasoning applies to the other predestined.

Fourth. If for some reason Christ's merits were the cause of our predestination with respect to its entire effect, it would be chiefly because he is the head of all human beings and must therefore pour into them, as into his members, all the spiritual life and motion they have. But this reason has no force. Therefore. The minor premise is proved as follows: Christ is also the head of the Angels, as St. Thomas teaches in 3. p. q. 8. ar. 4. This is manifest from Colossians 2: Who is the head of every principality and power. Yet the foreseen merits of Christ were not the cause of the predestination of the Angels, or of all its effects. For otherwise, even if Adam had not sinned, the Word would have been incarnate to complete the Angels' predestination. Also, the grace by which the Angels were predestined and attained glory was not conferred on them from Christ's merits, just as the grace conferred on our first parents in the state of innocence did not come from Christ's merits. Therefore, Christ's merits were not the cause of our predestination.

III. The second opinion is held by certain Thomists. Although they admit that the foreseen merits of Christ were the cause of our predestination with respect to its entire effect, they nevertheless deny that they were the meritorious cause of the act itself, or preordination, of the one predestining, with respect to its termination in such an object. In support of this opinion:

Fifth, it is argued from St. Thomas in first part, question 23, article eight, in the body, where he says: As to the preordination itself, predestination is in no way helped by the prayers of the Saints. For it is not by the prayers of the Saints that someone is predestined by God. And in art. 5. of the same question, in the body, he says: No one was so unsound of mind as to say that merits are the cause of divine predestination on the part of the act of the one predestining. Thus, the conclusion follows.

Sixth: no one's merits can be the cause of the very act of the one predestining because predestination, with respect to the act of the one predestining, is eternal, whereas every merit is temporal; and nothing temporal can be the cause of what is eternal. But the act of the one predestining, with respect to its termination in such a secondary object, is also eternal. Therefore, no one's merits, not even those of the Lord Christ, could be the cause of predestination with respect to the act of the one predestining as it terminates in such an object. Nevertheless, for the resolution, let the following be established.

IIII. First conclusion. The foreseen merits of the Lord Christ are the cause of all the helps and of all the grace conferred on human beings in fallen nature.¹ The same must be said of all dispositions, both proximate and remote, that precede justifying grace, and of the increase of grace and all merits. For all these things are conferred on us by God from Christ's merits. This conclusion accords with the mind of St. Thomas in 3. p. quaest. 7. articulo nono, decimo, et undecimo, and quaestione octava articulo tertio. He teaches it expressly in quaestione vigesimanona de verit. articulo 1., especially in the reply to the eighth objection, where he says: The merit of Christ operates sufficiently as a certain universal cause of human salvation; but this cause must be applied to individuals through the sacraments and through formed faith, which works through love. Therefore, something besides Christ's merit is required for our salvation, although Christ's merit is its cause. He therefore holds that Christ's merit is the cause of the application of the sacraments, our faith, and all the merits and gifts required for salvation.

The conclusion is proved first from Sacred Scripture, especially Ephesians 1: Who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that is, from Christ's merits, as Ambrose explains. And John 1 says: From his fullness we have all received. Again he says: The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 15 also says: As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. From this testimony the Council of Trent, session 6, chapter 16, proves that Christ pours power into just persons as the head into the members, and as the vine into the branches. It says: Christ Jesus himself, as the head into the members and as the vine into the branches, continually pours power into the justified; this power always precedes, accompanies, and follows their good works, and without it those works could in no way be pleasing to God or meritorious.

Moreover, Psalm 67 says literally of the Lord Christ: You ascended on high, took captivity captive, and received gifts among human beings. These words signify that all the gifts of grace conferred on human beings are the reward of Christ's merits, a reward he received in his members.

The conclusion is proved second by reason. The grace conferred on redeemed human beings is called Christ's grace, as is clear from the Council of Milevis, canons 3 and 4, where the grace by which we are justified is called God's grace through Jesus Christ. And the Council of Trent, session 6, chapter 5, says: The beginning of this same justification in adults must be drawn from God, through Jesus Christ, by prevenient grace. But this grace is called Christ's grace, or grace “through Jesus Christ,” because it is conferred on us through his merits. Thus, the conclusion follows.

Third, Christ's humanity is the instrument united to the divinity through which God works all the good things and supernatural gifts that he confers on redeemed human beings. Therefore, since the entire effect of our predestination is referred to God's will as its cause, it must also be referred to the humanity of the Lord Christ as an instrument, and to his foreseen merits.

V. Second conclusion. Christ's predestination is the cause of our predestination with respect to its entire effect in three kinds of cause: in the category of efficient cause, insofar as he is the mediator of our salvation;² in the category of formal cause, insofar as we are predestined as sons of God in his image; and in the category of final cause, insofar as our salvation redounds to his glory. This conclusion is expressly taught by St. Thomas in 3. dist. 10. quaest. 3. quaestiunc. 3., where he proves it from Ephesians 1: He predestined us to adoption as his sons through Jesus Christ. The word through denotes an efficient cause, as St. Thomas says in the body of 1. p. quaest. 36. art. 3, just as when it is said that the Father works all things through the Son, in keeping with John 1: All things were made through him. Therefore, Christ's predestination is the efficient cause of our predestination with respect to its entire effect. That it is an exemplary cause, which is called an extrinsic formal cause, is proved from Romans 8: Those whom he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. An image is an exemplary cause, which is reduced to the formal cause. Therefore. That it is a final cause is proved as follows: our predestination is ordered to the perfection of the mystical body of Christ as to an end, in keeping with Ephesians 4: He gave others as pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. And 1 Corinthians 3: All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things are yours, but you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. It is as if he said: all lower things are ordered to the human being as their end, for whose sake they were created; human beings, however, are ordered to Christ's glory, while Christ's humanity is ordered as to its ultimate end to God's glory, in keeping with the words: The Lord has made all things for himself.³

This is further proved by St. Thomas's argument in the third part, question 24, article 4. From eternity God predestined the salvation of the elect in such a way that he also predestined it to be accomplished through Christ. For under eternal predestination falls not only what is to be done in time, but also the manner and order in which it is to be accomplished. Therefore, Christ's predestination is the final cause of our predestination, completing and perfecting it.

VI. Third conclusion. Christ merited predestination for us and an efficacious election to glory—not with respect to the absolute character of the act of the one predestining, but with respect to its relational aspect, which it connotes, or with respect to its termination in certain persons and in this or that secondary object.⁴ Thus, the very efficacious will of God by which he ordered the predestined to eternal life had some foundation in Christ's foreseen merits; on account of those same merits, this love and predestination was freely directed to this secondary object, as we shall explain in the following conclusion. This conclusion, so understood, is against some disciples of St. Thomas, but is asserted by other Thomists and seems to be the express opinion of St. Thomas on the Apostle's words: He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.⁵ He says: He blessed us not on account of our merits, but from the grace of Christ; just as he chose us and freely preordained us to be separated from the mass of perdition in him, that is, through Christ. Here the preposition through denotes the meritorious cause of this same election. This also seems to be the opinion of St. Augustine in lib. de praedest. Sanct. cap. 18. Among other Thomists, Asturicensis defends it in the cited relection on the grace of Christ, pages 983 and following.

It is proved by the Apostle's authority in Ephesians 1: Who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. But the chief spiritual blessing, from which the other blessings flow, is God's eternal election and predestination. Therefore, this is from Christ's merits foreseen by God.

This is confirmed by the authority of St. Chrysostom, homily 1 on the same epistle, where he says: Through him he blessed us; through that same one he chose us.

Second, it is proved as follows. God foreknew Christ's merits before he predestined other human beings. Therefore, they were the cause of our predestination. The antecedent is proved: Christ was the first of the predestined. Therefore, in the divine mind, in the order of reason, his predestination and merits preceded the predestination of the other people who were redeemed through Christ. The consequence is proved: God did not foreknow Christ's merits before our predestination for any other reason than as its meritorious, final, and exemplary cause.

Third, God could predestine those redeemed through Christ on account of his foreseen merits. For a cause or reason of the divine will can be assigned on the part of the object willed, as all the Thomists teach with St. Thomas in prima parte, quaestione decimanona, articulo quinto. But it belongs to the dignity and excellence of the Lord Christ and his merits that they were predestined in this way. Thus, the conclusion follows.

The greater difficulty is whether the comparative and efficacious election of this person in particular over another was made on account of Christ's merits. For some Thomists who defend our third conclusion, understood of absolute election, deny it of comparative election. Nevertheless, let the following be established:

VII. Fourth conclusion. The Lord Christ merited the comparative election of the predestined, taken formally.⁶ To explain this, note that the Lord Christ did not merit that certain people in particular or in general would not be loved or chosen by God, nor do we assert that in our conclusion. Rather, we say he merited that, although all people can fall away from the supernatural end by themselves, given God's permission, nevertheless certain people in particular would be designated by God in whom Christ's merits would attain their effect. Christ left the material designation of those to be chosen to the Father, just as someone might offer his goods to the commonwealth for distribution to the poor and leave the material determination of those poor people to that commonwealth's decision and choice. Asturicensis teaches this conclusion, so explained, in the place cited above, conclusion 3. It is proved by the arguments given for the preceding conclusions. For Scripture says that through the Lord Christ and in him people were foreordained by God to eternal life, as is clear from the Apostle's words already cited. But, speaking with the utmost formality, election means taking one and leaving another, for election is among several. Therefore, the Lord Christ merited the comparative election of the predestined, taken formally.

Second, the Lord Christ offered his merits so that they might efficaciously attain their effect in some people. Hence he is called the Redeemer of all with respect to sufficiency and of some with respect to efficacy, as will be clear in disputation 71. Therefore, the fact that some were chosen from among many for glory was due to Christ's foreseen merits. Therefore, he merited comparative election.

This is confirmed: in Sacred Scripture a great multitude of sons was promised as the reward of the passion and death of the Lord Christ, in whom those same merits would attain their effect. For Isaiah 53 says: If he offers his life for sin, he will see a long-lived offspring, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand—that is, through his merits and works God will fulfill his will in the election of the predestined. Again he says: Who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living—as if to say more plainly: the multitude of sons he will acquire through his passion and death will be countless, as we noted in our commentaries on the same passage. Thus, the conclusion follows.

VIII. But the authors of the opposing opinion argue against this conclusion. The comparative election of one person over another can have no foundation in Christ's merits. Otherwise, this causal statement would have to be admitted: “Because the Lord Christ willed efficaciously to apply his merits to Peter in particular, Peter was chosen and predestined by God,” and the same of others. But this is a great inconvenience: otherwise the whole matter of the predestination and election of human beings would have to be traced first and fundamentally to the human will of Christ, not to the divine election.

Second, they argue that otherwise Christ would have merited that some people not be chosen by God. This is proved as follows: to merit comparative election is to merit that one person be chosen while another is left and abandoned.

To the first argument, we reply on the basis of the doctrine already laid down that the particular election of this person, materially speaking—that is, insofar as it is of this person—did not arise from Christ's merits, but from God's mere and gratuitous will. For although the Lord Christ, in God's foreknowledge and before our predestination is understood, applied his merits and offered them to the Father so that certain people in particular, formally speaking, might be chosen by God, in whom his Passion would attain its effect, he nevertheless left the material designation of those to be chosen to God's free will, as was said. Our predestination is also traced back to God's gratuitous will for another reason: although Christ merited that some people be chosen by God not determinately but vaguely, the Incarnation of the Word and the predestination of the Lord Christ nevertheless proceeded from God's mere and gratuitous will, without any merits foreseen, even Christ's own. For Augustine says in chapter 15 of On the Predestination of the Saints: That man, as he says, assumed by the Word, coeternal with the Father, into the unity of person, is the only-begotten Son of God. But by what did he merit this? What good of his, however small, came before it? What did he do, what did he believe, what did he ask for, to attain this unspeakable excellence?⁷ Therefore, once the mystery of the Incarnation and Christ's predestination are presupposed, before God determined anything in particular concerning our election and predestination, he first foresaw, in the order of reason, Christ's merits and his human will offering those merits, so that in view of them certain people, but only vaguely, might be chosen and predestined in him by God.⁸ In the second sign is understood God's free and gratuitous will: although he could have chosen and loved other people in particular and materially designated them to give them to Christ, he chose these people determinately. In the third sign is understood the application made by the Lord Christ of his merits. For knowing that these particular people had been chosen freely by God, he applied his merits for them with respect to their efficacy and poured out prayers that God would preserve them from evil, in keeping with what he himself says in John 17: I pray for them; I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me—that is, I pray for the predestined. Hence St. Thomas, explaining Luke 22, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing, in 3. p. quaest. 21. art. 4. ad 2., says that Christ did not pray for all his crucifiers, nor even for all who were going to believe in him, but only for those who were predestined to attain eternal life through him. Christ's prayer and application of merits are understood in this third sign of reason.

To the second, we reply that for the Lord Christ to be said to have merited the comparative election of some people, it is not required that he merit the abandonment or reprobation of others. It is enough that, on account of his foreseen merits, some of the many who could fall away from eternal salvation by themselves were chosen so that they would attain that same salvation infallibly.

IX. To the first argument presented at the outset, we reply that our predestination is traced back to God's gratuitous will insofar as it was made before all our merits were foreseen; it is not, however, inconsistent that Christ's merits were foreseen before it, in the manner explained above. For the first calling is simply called gratuitous and is gratuitous because it takes place without any preceding merits of ours, although Christ merited it for us, as was said. Likewise, the same predestination is entirely gratuitous insofar as the particular designation of the predestined took place without any merits foreseen by God, even Christ's own, as is clear from what has been established.

To the confirmation from St. Thomas's authority, we reply that when he says that being reborn in Christ is a gratuitous gift, he means that it is a gratuitous gift with respect to the person who is reborn, not with respect to Christ himself.

Second, we reply that St. Thomas's words prove only that the designation of the particular person who is granted rebirth in Christ through baptism and salvation proceeded from God's mere will, without Christ's merits having been foreseen.

To the second, we reply that Christ's predestination was not an effect of our predestination;⁹ otherwise our predestination would be understood as prior to Christ's. Rather, it was something presupposed to it, according to the order God in fact followed in predestining human beings. Hence, from the fact that Christ did not merit his own Incarnation or predestination, it does not follow that he did not merit our predestination with respect to its entire effect. On this, see Asturicensis in the place cited above, conclusion 4.

To the confirmation, we reply that predestination is not the preparation of just any benefits of God, but of those constituted through predestination itself and belonging to the order of predestination. Christ's predestination or Incarnation is not constituted through our predestination, nor does it belong to its order; rather, as was said, it is presupposed to our predestination extrinsically. St. Augustine's definition of predestination must be understood according to this doctrine.

X. To the third, the antecedent is denied. To its proof, we say that the will to save the human race understood as prior in God to Christ's predestination was not an act of predestination of the human race itself, nor did it formally belong to our predestination; it was prior to and presupposed by our predestination. The reason is that God's will, which formally belongs to predestination, reaches particular persons together with their circumstances and the means by which they attain eternal salvation, for election concerns particulars. But the will to save the human race, insofar as it is presupposed in God to Christ's predestination, regarded only the salvation of the human race in general; it did not reach the particular salvation of this or that person as distinguished from another. Hence such a will did not formally belong to our predestination.

XI. To the confirmation, we reply that Adam is understood as pleasing to God in the state of innocence before Christ is understood as predestined in the order of reason. Nevertheless, that grace, insofar as it belonged to the state of innocence, was not an effect of Adam's predestination, but of a certain supernatural providence, as will become clear in the following disputation.

To the fourth, we reply that we do not infer from the general character of “head” alone that the whole effect of our predestination proceeds from Christ's merits, but from the relation of a head to those members whose restoration was the principal reason for Christ's coming. Hence, in the cited q. 29. de verit. art. 4. ad 5., St. Thomas infers from the end of the Incarnation—namely, that it was made principally for the deliverance of human beings from sin—that Christ's humanity is ordered to its influence upon redeemed human beings as an intended end, but not to its influence upon Angels.¹⁰ For he says: Christ is the head of the Angels not only according to his divine nature but also according to his human nature, because he enlightens them according to his human nature, as Dionysius says in chapter 7 of On the Divine Names. Hence Colossians 2 also says that he is the head of every principality and power. Nevertheless, Christ's humanity stands in a different relation to the Angels than to human beings in two respects. First, with respect to conformity of nature, through which it is of the same species as human beings but not as the Angels. Second, with respect to the end of the Incarnation, which was made principally for the deliverance of human beings from sin. Thus Christ's humanity is ordered to its influence upon human beings as an intended end, whereas its influence upon Angels is not an end of the Incarnation, but something consequent upon the Incarnation. This difficulty must be treated at greater length in the following disputation.

Whether the grace of the state of innocence was conferred on Adam from Christ's merits.

I. To explain this difficulty, note that the grace of the state of innocence can be considered in two ways. First, as it was restored after sin through Adam's penance; in this respect all theologians acknowledge that it came from Christ's merits. The reason is that this grace, insofar as it was restored through penance, belonged to a human being redeemed by Christ, and through it, as thus restored, Adam was led efficaciously to eternal life, for by reason of it he has some degree of glory. The same must be said of the meritorious acts Adam performed in the state of innocence: for, as St. Thomas teaches in 3. p. quaest. 89. art. 5., meritorious works made dead through a subsequent sin come back to life through penance. That Adam did penance is found in Wisdom 10: She guarded the first-formed father of the world, who was created by God, and delivered him from his sin. Second, that grace can be considered according to its substance and insofar as it formally belonged to the state of innocence. In this respect too some have said that it was given to Adam from Christ's merits. They add that this opinion is very consonant with the order of Christ's predestination and belongs to his honor and excellence. Asturicensis defends the same teaching as probable in his relection on the grace of Christ.¹

The first reason for this opinion is that Christ is the universal source and origin of all grace conferred on human beings. Therefore, the grace of the state of innocence also came from the influence of Christ's merits; otherwise he would not be the universal source of grace.

Second, as St. Thomas teaches in 2. 2. quaest. 2. art. 7. and 3. p. q. 1. art. 3. ad 5., before sin Adam had explicit faith in the Incarnation of Christ, as ordered to the consummation of glory. Therefore, he was justified through faith in Christ and consequently from Christ's merits. The consequence is clear: justification through faith in Jesus Christ comes from his merits, because his merits are applied through faith, as is clear from Romans 3: God set him forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood.

Third. The grace conferred on Adam in the state of innocence belonged to a predestined subject. Therefore, it was an effect of his predestination, and therefore came from Christ's merits. The consequence is clear: since the Lord Christ merited our predestination, as was said above, every grace that is an effect of predestination comes from his merits.

Fourth. Christ, insofar as he is man, is the head of all human beings, as St. Thomas teaches in the body of 3. p. q. 8. ar. 3. Therefore, he was the head of our first parents in the state of innocence. But it belongs to the character of a head to pour motion and life into its members. Therefore, the grace of the state of innocence came from the influence of Christ's merits.

Fifth. As Cajetan teaches, grace was conferred on the Angels from Christ's merits,² and St. Bernard seems to teach the same in sermon 22 on the Song, where, explaining the Apostle's words, He was made for us righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, he says: He raised up fallen man and gave the standing Angel the gift not to fall. Thus he rescued the one from captivity and defended the other from captivity; in this respect he was redemption for both alike, freeing the one and preserving the other. Hence Ephesians 1 says: To restore all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on earth, in him. Therefore, all the more, the grace conferred on Adam in the state of innocence came from Christ's merits.

II. I consider the opposing opinion more probable and more in keeping with St. Thomas's mind. Master Soto holds it in lib. 1. de natura, et gratia, c. 6.; it is common among Thomists and can be clearly inferred from St. Thomas in 3. p. q. 1. ar. 3., where he teaches that if Adam had not sinned the Word would not have become incarnate.³ But if the grace of the state of innocence had come from Christ's merits, then, insofar as that grace belonged to the state of innocence, even without sin the divine Word would have become incarnate to bring Adam's grace to completion and lead him to eternal life through Christ's merits. Thus, the conclusion follows.

This is further proved because, as St. Thomas teaches in 3. sent. d. 13. q. 2. ar. 2. quaestiunc. 1. in corp., grace conferred on the Angels did not come from Christ's merits, since that grace did not belong to a redeemed subject: there was no sin among the good Angels.⁴ But the grace of the state of innocence, formally speaking, did not belong to a redeemed or captive human being either, because no sin had preceded. Thus, the conclusion follows.

This is confirmed. Christ, insofar as he is man, was the meritorious cause only of that grace by which human beings are freed from sin. For he came as a physician and as a redeemer to save and free what had perished, as is said in Matthew 9 and 18 and Luke 5. But the grace of the state of innocence did not belong to a sick human being, but to one who was healthy. Thus, the conclusion follows.

III. To the first argument for the opposing opinion, we reply that Christ, insofar as he is God, is the universal source and principal efficient cause of all grace; but insofar as he is man—that is, according to his humanity—he is the source, meritorious cause, secondary efficient cause, and instrumental cause only of that grace conferred on fallen and redeemed human beings.

To the second argument, we reply that for someone to be justified by faith in Christ and by his merits, he must first have been captive and sick. This is clear in the case of the Angels, who were not justified from Christ's merits, as St. Thomas teaches in the cited 3. d. 13. Nevertheless, from the beginning of their creation they had faith in the Incarnation of Christ with respect to its substance, as St. Thomas also teaches in 1. p. q. 64. ar. 1. ad 4. Hence, although Adam had faith in the Incarnation of Christ before sin, it does not follow that he had grace in the state of innocence from Christ's merits.

To the third, we reply that for the grace of a predestined human being to be an effect of his predestination, it is required that through that grace he be led efficaciously to eternal life.⁵ But through the grace of the state of innocence, insofar as it was the state of innocence, Adam was neither led efficaciously to eternal life nor ordered efficaciously to it. Hence it was not an effect of his predestination, but of a certain supernatural divine providence. Similarly, the grace given for a time to the reprobate is not an effect of their predestination, because through it they are not led efficaciously to eternal life.

Second, we reply that the argument proves only that the grace of the state of innocence was in some respect an effect of Adam's predestination and consequently came from Christ's merits insofar as it was restored through Adam's penance, as was said above.

To the fourth, we reply first that Christ, insofar as he is man, was the head of the faithful in the state of innocence. For although he did not merit the grace conferred on them in that state with respect to its substance, he nevertheless influenced that same grace in certain accidental respects, as was said.⁶ It is not necessary, however, for a head, especially a mystical head, to influence all its members in the same way. Second, we reply that Christ, insofar as he is man, is the universal head of the whole Church, including the Church triumphant, provided that the mystery of the Incarnation is presupposed. For if Adam had not sinned, the Word would not have assumed human flesh, as St. Thomas teaches;⁷ consequently Christ as man would not have been head of the Church, but only insofar as he is God, as St. Thomas expressly teaches in q. 29. de ver. ar. 4. ad 3. And because the state of innocence is understood as prior to the Incarnation of the Word or to the divine decree concerning the Incarnation, Christ, insofar as he is man, need not have been the head of the state of innocence except consequently, as St. Thomas says of the Angels in the cited question of De veritate, article 4, ad 5.

IIII. To the fifth, we reply that the grace of the Angels, considered according to its substance, did not come from Christ's merits, as St. Thomas says in the cited 3. d. 13., but only with respect to certain accidents, namely illumination.⁸ For Christ, even insofar as he is man, enlightens the Angels, as St. Dionysius infers in chapter 1 of the Celestial Hierarchy from Isaiah 63, where, as Christ ascends, the Angels are introduced asking: Who is this who comes from Edon, with garments dyed from Bosrah? Christ, insofar as he is man, answers their question: I, who speak righteousness and am a champion to save. Likewise, insofar as he is man, he sends Angels to us, as St. Thomas infers in 3. p. q. 59. art. 6. from Hebrews 1: All are ministering spirits sent out for service on behalf of those who inherit salvation. Moreover, insofar as he is man, he has the power to judge the Angels and confer accidental rewards on them. Hence St. Thomas teaches in the same article 6 that the judicial power in the Lord Christ, insofar as he is man, also extends to the Angels. Nevertheless, he adds in the same article that, insofar as he is man, Christ did not influence the essential reward of the good Angels, but did so only insofar as he is God. From this it is clearly inferred that the grace of the Angels and the merits by which they attained that essential reward did not come from Christ's influence insofar as he is man, or from his merits. To the authority of St. Bernard brought forward, we reply that it is to be understood of Christ insofar as he is God. Its meaning is that through Christ insofar as he is God the good Angels remained standing, just as through that same Christ, God and man, fallen humanity was restored and redeemed. To the Apostle's passage, we reply that Christ, insofar as he is man, restored the things in heaven insofar as, by redeeming and saving fallen human beings, he filled the vacant seats of the Angels who had fallen.

Whether predestination, as regards the attainment of its effects, is certain and infallible with the certainty of the order and causality of the means.

I. SOME have said that predestination is certain only with the certainty of middle, or conditional, foreknowledge, which they think must necessarily be presupposed, in the order of reason, before predestination. They prove this first from the Apostle's authority in 2 Timothy 2, where he traces the certainty of predestination back to divine foreknowledge, saying: The firm foundation of God stands, bearing this seal: The Lord knows those who are his. He immediately adds: In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of clay, some indeed for honor, and some for dishonor. And he continues: If anyone, then, purifies himself, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful, etc. From these words they draw the following argument. It lies within the power of every adult to purify himself and become a vessel for honor, or to defile himself with sins and make himself a vessel for dishonor. Therefore predestination is not certain on the part of the order and causality of the means, but only by reason of foreknowledge, by which God foresaw that a person placed in such circumstances would use his free choice well, and so become a vessel for honor and sanctified.

A second argument follows, and it is the chief foundation of this position. Whether helps of grace are efficacious or inefficacious for salvation depends on the free cooperation of our free choice with them. Therefore, if we set aside foreknowledge of the future good use of free choice, the power of the helps of divine grace does not make anyone's predestination certain. The antecedent is proved as follows: a person freely cooperates with, and assents to, any helps of prevenient grace. Therefore he can cooperate or not cooperate with them, since those helps place no impediment. If he cooperates, then, he makes the helps of grace efficacious; if he does not cooperate, as he is able not to do, he makes them inefficacious. Consequently, their being efficacious for salvation does not come from themselves or from their intrinsic power alone; rather, they have it dependently upon the future cooperation of free choice.

If it is said that, in the divided sense and speaking absolutely, a person can fail to cooperate with efficacious helps of prevenient grace, though not in the composite sense, all the arguments marshaled above in Disputations 22 and 23 militate against this. They sought to prove, especially from the Council of Trent and that of Sens, that a person roused and moved by God can dissent from any help of prevenient grace even in the composite sense. This will also be discussed again in Disputations 91 and 93.

Third, it is argued that certainty, formally speaking, like truth, is taken in relation to the intellect. For St. Thomas says in 3, distinction 26, question 2, article 4, in the body of the article, that certainty is the firmness with which the cognitive power adheres to its object; and in article 1 of the same question, and in distinction 23, question 3, article 2, third subquestion, in the body of the article, he says that certainty is the intellect's determination to one thing. Therefore the certainty that the predestined will attain eternal life through such means is drawn solely from divine foreknowledge, and not from the causality of the means.

Fourth, Calvin's position was that the certainty of predestination depends on divine predestination alone, as is clear from Institutes, book 3, chapter 21, §§5 and 9. Therefore, at least so that we do not agree with heretics even in words, we must say that predestination is not certain from divine preordination alone, but is founded on foreknowledge, by which God certainly foresaw that free choice would consent if it were roused in this or that way.

Other theologians qualify the foregoing position as follows. They assert that, although this middle or conditional foreknowledge is a necessary condition presupposed in God before the decree of predestination, it does not follow that predestination derives all its certainty or infallibility from such foreknowledge. They give this reason: the absolute certainty of a future event—that this person will be saved or converted—does not arise formally and proximately from that middle foreknowledge, but from the absolute decree of God's will. God is powerful to do what he wills, and he immutably does what he absolutely decrees. For middle knowledge has as its object nothing absolutely future, but only what would occur on the hypothesis that the will, in such circumstances, would be attracted and moved by such an excitation. They add, however, that one may say that predestination's infallibility arises radically from that conditional foreknowledge, as from a necessary condition, so that the divine will can proceed to that absolute decree. But this position differs little or not at all from the preceding one. For this is the controversy: whether, ultimately and as it were radically, the certainty of predestination is to be referred to the absolute and efficacious decree of God who predestines, or to foreknowledge of the future cooperation of free choice with grace, whether that foreknowledge is conditional or absolute.

Some extend this doctrine to the number of the predestined and to the degree of glory for which they are chosen. They say that these are certain not from predestination alone, but also from conditional foreknowledge, whose certainty is the foundation of the certainty of predestination. In this connection, they observe that something can be future and certain to God from eternity in three ways. First, by mere predestination, as with the number of future stars or other things he was to make immediately, without the intervention of contingent secondary causes. For precisely as many stars, neither more nor fewer, were to exist as God decreed from eternity to produce, by his mere preordination and without any regard for or consideration of the influence of a secondary cause, with this or that degree of perfection. Second, by mere foreknowledge, as with future sins, which God did not preordain or predestine to occur, but only foresaw would occur from the malice of the created will. Third, by preordination or predestination presupposing in God partly conditional or middle foreknowledge of the future free cooperation of free choice on the hypothesis that it were touched by such an excitation, and partly absolute foreknowledge, which follows the decree to give the aforesaid excitation; with which God knows that the person will cooperate with such or such intensity of act. It is in this third way, they hold, that predestination is certain and infallible as regards the attainment of its effect, but not in the first way. They are convinced of this by the fourth argument given at the outset and by others adduced in Disputations 7, 22, and 23 to prove that God has not predetermined any free act except on the presupposition of foreknowledge of the free cooperation and action of free choice. Otherwise, they think, the certainty and infallibility of predestination could not coexist or be reconciled with the freedom of free choice. All these ways of explaining the certainty of predestination agree in the same principle, which is the chief point of our controversy: namely, that the certainty of predestination is founded radically on the certainty of that conditional foreknowledge. For this reason, they must be refuted by the same arguments. And what we shall say about the certainty of predestination, as regards the attainment of its effect, according to the mind of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, should be understood and extended to the particular number of the predestined, to the degree of glory for which they are predestined, and also to the means and meritorious acts by which they attain that degree of glory.

Let the first conclusion, then, be this: in accordance with the Catholic faith, one must assert that predestination is certain and infallible as regards the attainment of its effect.¹ All Catholics agree on this conclusion. For Christ our Lord taught it in John 10, speaking literally of the predestined: My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. From this testimony the certainty of predestination is clearly inferred. Likewise, Romans 8 says: We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called saints according to his purpose. There he speaks of the predestined, of whom he immediately adds: Those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified,² he also glorified. And a little later: I am certain that neither death nor life nor Angels, etc., will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Consider that word I am certain: from it St. Augustine draws the certainty of predestination in On Correction and Grace, chapter 7. Although the predestined can be separated from God by mortal sin, according to their present state of righteousness, nevertheless in the composite sense they cannot be separated according to eternal predestination, for in the end they will be converted and saved. Whether those confirmed in grace can sin mortally will be examined in Disputation 104.

Second, this is proved from 1 John 2: They went out from us, but they were not of us³; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us. St. Augustine understands this passage of the predestined in On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 8, and from it proves the infallible certainty of predestination.

Third, it is proved from the definition of predestination that we explained in Disputation 35. Predestination is God's foreknowledge and preparation of benefits by which all those who are delivered are delivered with the utmost certainty. Therefore, etc.

Fourth, it is proved as follows. It is of faith that God's efficacious will is always fulfilled, as St. Augustine proves in Handbook to Laurentius, chapters 95 and 96, from Psalm 134: All that the Lord willed, he did in heaven and on earth:⁴ But God wills eternal salvation for all the predestined by an absolute and efficacious will, as was shown above. Therefore, etc.

III. Second conclusion: predestination is certain not only with the certainty of foreknowledge, but also with the certainty of providence, order, and the causality of the means that God prepared for the predestined.⁵ By “foreknowledge” we do not mean middle knowledge; for we showed in Disputation 7 that this does not exist. Rather, we mean absolute and free knowledge, which presupposes in God the decree of predestination, as we explained in the same disputation, numbers 27 and 24, on the basis of St. Augustine's teaching. This conclusion is opposed to the authors of the first position; nevertheless, it is taught by Cajetan, Summa theologiae I, question 23, article 7; Bañez and Zumel, article 8; and all Thomists. St. Thomas also states it explicitly in the same article 7, in the body of the article, where he says that the number of the predestined is certain to God not only by reason of his knowledge, because namely he knows how many are to be saved, but also by reason of a certain election and predefinition. He says this more clearly in 1 Sentences, to Hannibal, distinction 40, single question, article 3, reply to objection 2: predestination with respect to grace and glory has the certainty of foreknowledge and of a cause. There he assigns this as the difference between predestination with respect to grace and reprobation with respect to sin: reprobation with respect to sin has only the certainty of foreknowledge, whereas predestination with respect to grace has both certainties, that of foreknowledge and that of a cause. In On Truth, question 6, article 3, in the body of the article, he says that besides the certainty of foreknowledge, the very order of predestination has infallible certainty. There the holy Doctor proves this while excluding the contrary position: from that, he says, it would follow that predestination was not according to the election of the one who calls, which is nevertheless contrary to the authority of Scripture and the statements of the Saints.

Moreover, this is proved by the authority of the Apostle in Romans 4, where he refers the certainty of predestination to grace itself, saying: Therefore it is by faith, so that it may be according to grace, in order that the promise may be sure. Explaining this passage in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 10, St. Augustine says: He did not promise this on the basis of the power of our will, but on the basis of his predestination. For he promised what he himself was going to do, not what human beings were going to do. For even if human beings do what pertains to worshipping God, they do not do this so that he may do what he promised; otherwise, the fulfillment of God's promises would lie not in God's power but in that of human beings, and what the Lord promised to the nations would be rendered to Abraham by those nations themselves. But Abraham did not believe in this way; rather, he believed, giving glory to God, because he is powerful also to do what he promised. He did not say, “He is powerful to predict and foreknow,” for he can predict and foreknow the deeds of others too. Instead he said, “He is powerful also to do,” and thus the deeds are not another's but his own. By these words Augustine teaches that, according to the Apostle's meaning, the good works and salvation of the predestined are certain not merely by foreknowledge—for in that way sins too are certain to occur—but with the certainty of the order and causality of grace itself, through which God brings it about that the predestined are saved infallibly and freely. The same is inferred from the Apostle in Ephesians 1: Predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. Explaining these words in his commentary on the same epistle, St. Jerome says: Predestination and purpose are set together; in accordance with them God works all things according to the counsel of his will. That is, he does all that he does by counsel and will, so that they are full of reason and of the power of the one acting. Human beings often wish to do many things deliberately, but the effect by no means follows their will. No one, however, can resist him and prevent him from doing all that he wills. By these words he teaches clearly enough that predestination is certain by the free will of the one who predestines, by which God is powerful also to do whatever he has decreed.

Likewise, Romans 9 says: So that God's purpose according to election might stand, not on the basis of works but of the one who calls, etc. From these words St. Thomas infers there that predestination is certain and firm on the basis of God's election and will, and consequently on the basis of the causality of the means. For all that the Lord willed, he did in heaven and on earth,⁶ in agreement with Ezekiel 36: I will cause you to walk in my commandments, and to keep my judgments and do them. In keeping with this, the Council of Orange, canon 9, defines: Whenever we do good, God works in us and with us, so that we may act. The conclusion is also proved from John 6: All that the Father gives me will come to me. For this is the will of my Father, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me. Here Christ our Lord refers the infallibility of predestination to the Father's mere and free will. And in John 10, speaking of his sheep, that is, the elect, he says: They shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand, that is, out of my power. Here he refers the same certainty of predestination to the omnipotence of God's will, for he is powerful also to do whatever he has decreed or promised.

IIII. Second, this is proved by the authority of St. Augustine in On Correction and Grace, chapter 7, where, speaking of the certainty of predestination, he says: If any of these—that is, of the predestined—perishes, God is overcome by human fault; but none of them perishes, because God is overcome by nothing. If any of these perishes, God is deceived; but none of them perishes, because God is not deceived. Here he establishes both certainties: the certainty of the causality of the means, expressed by the words God is overcome by nothing, and the foreknowledge following the decree of the one who predestines, signified by the words because God is not deceived.

Third, it is proved by an argument drawn from St. Thomas, On Truth, question 6, article 3, cited above. Otherwise, it would follow that the predestined person would differ from the non-predestined only on the side of foreknowledge of the outcome, and not on the side of the order. Foreknowledge would thus be the cause of predestination; consequently predestination would result not from the election of the one who predestines, but from foreknowledge of the good use of free choice. It would then follow that some cause of predestination was on our part, contrary to St. Augustine, as was shown in Disputation 37.

All this is confirmed by what we said in Disputation 30 about the infallibility of divine providence, where we showed that, from the very efficacy of the divine will, God's providence is certain as regards the attainment of its effect. Therefore, a fortiori, this must be said of predestination, which is the most perfect providence.

They reply that predestination is certain by the absolute decree of the one who predestines, although that decree presupposes middle knowledge of the future cooperation of free choice, if it is roused in such circumstances. They likewise acknowledge that predestination is certain with the certainty of absolute foreknowledge, although this presupposes that conditional foreknowledge. But this solution can be challenged by the same arguments by which it was shown in Disputation 7 that middle knowledge must not be admitted.

Third conclusion: not only is it certain, with the certainty of the order and causality of the means, that the elect will attain eternal life; it is also certain with the same certainty that they will attain such a degree of glory, so that they will receive neither a greater nor a lesser one. This certainty is founded as its first root not on foreknowledge of the future cooperation of free choice, but on the absolute and efficacious decree of God's gratuitous will. This conclusion remains partly proved by what has been said both in this disputation and in the third conclusion of Disputation 37.

Moreover, it is proved as follows. As was said above, predestination is a part of the most perfect providence. But it belongs to the most perfect providence that a nature, especially an intellectual nature, be ordered not only to an end but also to this or that degree of participation in that same end. Therefore every predestined person has been ordered by God, through an absolute and efficacious will, not only to glory but also to a definite and determinate degree of glory. Consequently, by the free decree of God who predestines, it is certain and infallible that each predestined person will attain that degree of glory to which God has preordained him. The consequence is proved as follows: as was shown in Disputation 30, God's efficacious will infallibly brings about its effect.

Second, it is proved as follows. On the contrary position, it would follow that God predestines a person only to glory in general, while the person, by his innate freedom and by cooperating more intensely with the helps of grace, would attain a greater and more intense glory than others. Consequently he could glory in himself against another, claiming that, other things being equal on the part of divine predestination, he had attained greater glory. Yet this seems contrary to the Apostle's words: What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as though you had not received it?⁷

Third, it is proved as follows. As the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 15: God gives it—that is, to the wheat—a body as he wills, and to each of the seeds its own body, whether greater or smaller, as it pleases him. Christ our Lord taught this earlier of human bodies when he said: No one can add one cubit to his stature,⁸ signifying that it is not in a person's power to make his body large or small, but that it arises from God's mere will that each person receive a body of this or that size. Much more, then, must it be certain that it proceeds from the gratuitous decree of God who predestines that each predestined person attain this or that measure of glory; no one will attain greater or lesser glory than God has preordained.

Fourth conclusion: all the meritorious works by which the elect attain the degree of glory for which they are predestined have been preordained and predetermined by God, so that the free choice of the predestined will produce in time neither more nor fewer of them, or works more or less intense, than have been preordained by the free decree of the one who predestines. Consequently, from that same decree, as from their first root, it is certain and infallible that the predestined will in time produce by free choice all those particular pious works, with all their circumstances, through which God preordained to bring them to such glory. This conclusion is inferred from the Apostle in Ephesians 2, where, speaking of the predestined, he says: For we are his workmanship, created in good works, which God prepared so that we might walk in them. Explaining these words, St. Athanasius says: Knowing this,⁹ supply, the good works, God prepared them; they could not be deferred or omitted, but had to be carried out, as though they had been divinely appointed beforehand, and this through his great providence toward us. Therefore, by the decree of the one who predestines, it is certain that the elect will perform in time those good works through which God preordained to bring them to glory. The same is taught by Theodoret, whose words we cited in Disputation 22, number 10.

Second, it is proved as follows. One who wills an end efficaciously prepares and predetermines the means by which he wills to attain that end; otherwise he would expose himself to the danger of not attaining the end, like the man of whom it is said: This man began to build and was not able to finish.¹⁰ But before any foreknowledge of the future cooperation of free choice, God willed eternal beatitude for the predestined as an end to be attained in practice through meritorious works. Therefore he prepared and predetermined all and each of the good works through which the predestined were actually to attain eternal beatitude. Since God infallibly does whatever he has decreed to do, it follows that by the force of that same decree it is certain and infallible that the predestined will in time elicit all those pious works.

This is confirmed as follows. As was shown in Disputations 22, 23, and 28, by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will God predetermined individually everything that occurs in time, according to every aspect of being and goodness it possesses. Hence, by the force of that same decree, it is certain how many flies there will be at a given time, and likewise for other individuals of every species. Therefore this is much more true of the meritorious actions by which the predestined will attain eternal life. The consequence is proved as follows: divine preordination shines forth most perfectly in the predestined, and in the ordering and predetermination of the acts by which they attain eternal life.

Third. As will be clear in Disputation 62, the degree of free choice's cooperation with grace is measured by the degree of the efficacious help with which God premoves that same free choice to cooperate. Thus, if God moves it by help intense to the degree of four, free choice will cooperate to the degree of four; and if he moves it by help intense to the degree of six, it will cooperate to the degree of six. Therefore the decree by which God determined to give the predestined such efficacious helps in order to produce good acts with such intensity is the first root on which the infallibility and certainty that the predestined will elicit those same acts is founded.

Nor does it follow from this, as some argue, that the predestined cannot act otherwise or differently from what God has preordained, if “can” is taken in the divided sense. It follows only that, as a matter of fact, they will not act otherwise or differently from what God has preordained. In the composite sense, however, it must be conceded that they cannot act otherwise or differently from what God has preordained, since these two things cannot both be true at once: that a predestined person performs some good act and that the act is not preordained by God. Conversely, these two things likewise cannot both be true at once: that God predetermined that a predestined person perform such a good act, and that the predestined person nevertheless fail to carry it out.¹¹ Hence, still less may one infer from this doctrine that the predestined do not act freely, as is clear from what was said above.

V. TO the first argument, the reply is that the Apostle's authority as cited proves only that predestination is certain with the certainty of foreknowledge, not that it is certain by foreknowledge alone. For the other scriptural passages cited in support of the second conclusion show that predestination itself is infallible also with the certainty of the order and causality of the means. Indeed, God knows that the salvation of the predestined will certainly occur because he predetermined and predestined it by an efficacious decree, as we showed from various passages of St. Augustine in Disputation 7. Nor is this contradicted by the fact that a predestined person can cooperate or fail to cooperate with the helps of prevenient grace. For although, speaking absolutely and in the divided sense, he can fail to cooperate, on the supposition that he is predestined he will necessarily cooperate with the necessity of infallibility, or of the consequence. This is a qualified necessity that does not hinder freedom, as we said in Disputation 25.

To the second argument, the reply is that the efficacy of the help of prevenient grace does not depend on the free consent of our free choice, even as on a condition without which it could not occur, as will be clear below.¹²

To the third, the reply is that, as St. Thomas teaches,¹³ certainty is twofold: of cognition and of order. Certainty of cognition obtains when cognition in no respect departs from what is found in the thing, but judges of the thing as it is. And because a judgment about a thing is held with certainty especially through the thing's cause, the name “certainty” has been drawn from the order of cause to effect: the order of a cause to its effect is said to be certain when the cause infallibly produces the effect. We therefore say that certainty of cognition is taken by comparing the object with the intellect, whereas certainty of order, or of causality, is taken from the relation and infallible connection of the effect to the cause. Predestination is certain in both ways as regards the attainment of its effect, as St. Thomas teaches in the same article.

To the fourth, the reply is that Calvin's meaning was heretical and to be abhorred by all Catholics: he held that predestination was certain from God's mere preordination in such a way that it had absolutely no certainty from foreknowledge of the free cooperation of free choice, which would be absolutely future by the decree of the one who predestines. For he thought that God's predestination removes every free election of free choice, as was shown in Disputation 3 and is explained more fully in Disputations 97, number 11; 98, number 10; and 121, number 10. We, however, assert that predestination is certain and infallible on both grounds. First and principally, it is certain from the free election and preordination of God who predestines, who is powerful to bring about what he predestined. Secondarily and consequently, it is certain from absolute foreknowledge of the free cooperation of free choice, which will be future through the efficacious help of grace that works beforehand. This cooperation will indeed occur infallibly because God, presupposing no middle knowledge of that same cooperation, predestined it and preordained it to occur freely. How the freedom of our free choice stands together with this sort of preordination and predestination has been explained in part above, in Disputations 18, 22, and 23, and is to be explained more fully below, in Disputations 116, 117, and 121. We adduced and answered the other arguments usually raised against our position in Disputation 30.

Whether anyone, without divine revelation, can know with infallible certainty that he or another is among the predestined, or infer this from certain signs.

I. IT IS PROVED that this can be known with infallible certainty. First, from 1 John 5: I write these things to you so that you may know that you have life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God. But knowledge denotes certain and infallible cognition. And in Romans 8, speaking in the name of all the predestined, of whom he had said beforehand, Those whom he predestined, he also called, etc., the Apostle says: Who will separate us from the love of Christ, etc.? He immediately adds: I am certain that neither death nor life, etc., will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. There the words I am certain designate infallible certainty.

Second, it is argued from Romans 8: The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs. But the testimony of the Holy Spirit is infallible, since it is trustworthy, in accordance with Psalm 18: The testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the little ones. Therefore, etc.

Third, predestination and election depend on the divine will alone, and so does grace. But without a special revelation, a person can know with infallible certainty and without fear that he is in a state of grace. For St. Bernard says in sermons 68 and 69 on the Canticle that certain most holy men would not be foolish if they wished to glory in divine friendship. And in 2 Corinthians 13 the Apostle says: Do you not recognize that Christ dwells in you? Unless, perhaps, you are reprobates? Therefore a person can be certain with infallible certainty that he is predestined.

II. Against this is what Ecclesiastes 9 says: No one knows whether he is held worthy of love or of hatred; all things are kept uncertain for the future. St. Bernard, in his sermon on Septuagesima, and St. Augustine, On the Spirit and the Soul, chapter 59, understand this passage of hatred and love according to eternal reprobation and predestination. And the Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 12, admonishes all the faithful lest anyone, while living in this mortal life, presume so far as to determine with certainty that he is among the predestined; it immediately adds: For unless by special revelation, it cannot be known whom God has chosen for himself.

In this controversy, two errors of heretics must be noted and avoided. The first is that of those who assert that the predestined are always in God's grace and can never fall away from it, while the reprobate remain forever in God's hatred and can never attain his grace even for a time. Such was Wycliffe, condemned at the Council of Constance; he also asserted that the distinction between God's love according to eternal predestination and according to present righteousness should be rejected and ridiculed. Calvin held the same heresy with respect to the predestined, Institutes, book 3, chapter 2, §§11 and 12. Andrew de Vega argues very well against it in book 11 of his work on the Council of Trent, chapter 1 and following.

The second error was that of Martin Bucer at the Colloquy of Regensburg, where he dared to assert that one is not a true Christian unless one believes with the certainty of faith that one will have eternal life, with the same certainty with which one believes that Christ is man or God. Calvin followed the same heresy in Institutes, book 3, chapter 2, §16, as did Chemnitz in his Examination of the Council of Trent, where he sharply criticizes the words we cited from Session 6, chapter 12.

Nevertheless, against these heretics, let the following be maintained.

III. First conclusion: in accordance with the Catholic faith, it must be asserted that the predestined who have not been confirmed in grace can sin mortally and lose grace for a time, and that this in fact happens to some.¹ This conclusion opposes the first error, but it is clearly proved from Sacred Scripture. The Apostle Peter was predestined, and yet he sinned mortally and lost grace for a time by denying Christ on the night of his Passion, as the Evangelists relate. The same argument can be made from David and the Apostle Paul, who were among the predestined; yet David sinned mortally through adultery and murder, as is clear from 2 Kings 12: The Lord also has put away your sin. Likewise, Paul sinned mortally by persecuting Christ and his disciples, as he himself attests in 1 Timothy 1²: For I was a blasphemer, and insolent, and a persecutor. Yet he was predestined by God. Therefore, etc.

If an argument is made in this way: “God always wills eternal life for the predestined, since from eternity he predestined them and willed this good for them, for otherwise he would change; therefore he always loves them, and consequently they can never fall away from his grace,” the reply is that, according to eternal predestination, God always wills a blessed life for the predestined. For although they sometimes sin, he will eventually convert and save them. But he does not always will eternal life for them according to their present state of righteousness, except when they are in a state of grace.

Moreover, the conclusion is proved by an argument. As long as the predestined are in this life, their free choice remains flexible toward good and evil. For although predestination infallibly effects that a predestined person dies in grace, since the gift of perseverance is an effect of predestination, it does not effect in all the predestined that they never sin or cannot sin mortally. Therefore they can sin unless they have been confirmed in grace. Whether those who have been confirmed in grace can sin will be discussed in Disputation 104.

IIII. Second conclusion: many of the reprobate are for a time in a state of grace and are truly loved by God according to their present state of righteousness.³ This conclusion too is of faith, and is proved from Sacred Scripture. Saul was in a state of grace when he was chosen king, as is clear from 1 Samuel 9, where it says: His son Saul was chosen and good, and there was no one among the children of Israel better than he. Yet he was reprobate and damned, as St. Augustine teaches in To Simplicianus, book 2, question 1, and as is inferred from 1 Chronicles 10: Saul died because of his transgressions, because he had transgressed the command of the Lord. And 1 Samuel 28 says that Samuel said to Saul: Why do you ask me, when the Lord has departed from you? The Catholic Doctors commonly hold this view, although some among the Hebrews think he was saved, as may be seen in the Ordinary Gloss, part 2, on 1 Samuel, chapter 2, and in the additions on 1 Chronicles, chapter 10, at the words Saul died, where the Ordinary Gloss holds our position. It is also clear from 2 Chronicles 7 that Solomon was at one time God's friend and in his grace, where we read: When Solomon had finished offering his prayers, fire came down from heaven and consumed the holocausts and victims, and the majesty of the Lord filled the house. This was a manifest sign that he, his prayers, and his sacrifices were pleasing to God. Yet he was reprobate and damned, according to the more common opinion of the Doctors, which St. Augustine holds in Against Faustus, book 22, chapter 88, and in his commentary on Psalm 126 explicitly says that Solomon was reprobated by God. He holds the same in City of God, book 17, chapter 20; so do Cyprian, book 1, letter 5; and the Gloss on 2 Kings, chapter 17, at the words I will not take away my mercy from him;⁴ and on 4 Kings, chapter 23, at the words He did not remove the high places that were in Jerusalem; and on Isaiah, chapter 1, at the words The idols shall be utterly broken; and at greater length at the beginning of Proverbs, chapter 30. Nevertheless, some Catholic Doctors piously believe that Solomon was saved. St. Jerome follows this opinion in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, and more explicitly on Ezekiel, chapter 43, where he says that Solomon sinned and offended God, although afterwards he did penance when he wrote the Proverbs. He proves this from Proverbs 24, where in another translation Solomon says of himself: At last I did penance and considered how I might choose instruction. Genebrard defends the same opinion in book 1 of his Cosmography, page 112, moved by the authority of Jerome and the cited passage from Proverbs; the Hebrews commonly hold the same, as Lyra noted on Proverbs, chapter 30. However, the Vulgate edition does not contain those words cited from Proverbs 24, nor do they agree with the Hebrew text, as Fr. Ludovicus a Soto Mayor noted in the preface to the Canticle, in the section “On Solomon's penance.” Whatever the case may be, the conclusion is proved by other examples that are not disputed. Lucifer is reprobate and damned, as we read in Ezekiel 28: You were the seal of likeness, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty; you were in the delights of God's Paradise. And below: In the multitude of your commerce your innermost parts were filled with iniquity, and you sinned; and I cast you out from the mountain of God and destroyed you, O covering Cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones. And Isaiah 14 says: How have you fallen, Lucifer, who rose in the morning? St. Augustine interprets this passage of the first Angel in On Christian Doctrine, book 3, chapter 3. Yet the first Angel was created in grace, as were the others, as St. Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae I, question 61, article 3. Judas too was reprobate and damned, as Psalm 108 says and is inferred from the Gospel words: And going out, he hanged himself with a noose.⁵ Yet at one time he was in a state of grace, namely, from the beginning of his apostleship. Therefore.

Second, the conclusion is proved from the definition of the Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 17, which says: If anyone says that the grace of justification comes only to those predestined to life, while all the rest who are called are indeed called but do not receive grace, as being predestined to evil by divine power, let him be anathema.

Third, it is proved by an argument. As long as a reprobate is on the way, his mind is not hardened in evil; this is proper to those who are in hell, where there is no redemption. Therefore, with God's help he can attain grace, even though in the end he will fall away, as is clear from 1 John 2: They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us. Therefore a reprobate can for a time turn to God and be in a state of grace.

V. Third conclusion: without a special revelation from God, no one can know with certainty and infallibly that he is among the predestined, much less is he bound to believe this with certain faith.⁶ This conclusion is opposed to the second heresy, but it is proved by the authority of Ecclesiastes cited above: No one knows whether he is held worthy of hatred or of love. It is also proved by those words of Proverbs 27: Do not boast about tomorrow, since you do not know what the coming day will bring. To this agrees 3 Kings 20: Let the one who is girded not boast as does the one who has loosened his belt. We explained this passage at length for this purpose in our Commentaries on Isaiah, chapter 45, number 3.

Second, it is proved from the definition of the Council of Trent, Session 6, canon 15 cited above, which says: If anyone says that a person reborn and justified is bound by faith to believe that he is certainly among the predestined, let him be anathema. Canon 16 adds: If anyone says that he will certainly have that great gift of perseverance to the end, with infallible and absolute certainty, unless he has learned this by special revelation, let him be anathema.

Third, it is proved by the authority of the Saints, who unanimously teach our conclusion, especially Cyprian, book 1, letter 5; St. Gregory, Homily 38 on the Gospel; Ambrose, sermon on Psalm 118, at the words Establish your word for your servant in your fear; St. Jerome on Ecclesiastes, chapter 9; Augustine, On Correction and Grace, chapter 13, and On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 22; Prosper, book to the articles falsely attributed to Augustine, article 13; and St. Bernard, in the passage cited above.

Finally, it is proved by an argument: predestination depends on God's gratuitous will, as was shown in Disputation 37. But what depends on God's mere will cannot be known by us with certainty and infallibly except by God's special revelation, as is clear from the Apostle's words: Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?⁷ Therefore.

It follows from this conclusion that without a special revelation no one can be certain of being predestined, not only with the infallible certainty of faith, but not even with moral certainty to which no falsehood could attach. Thus one cannot be morally certain of this in the way one is certain that one has been baptized, or that the priest celebrating is truly a priest or has the proper intention to consecrate. This is proved as follows: the moral certainty with which one believes that one has been baptized, or that the priest celebrating has the intention to consecrate, excludes all fear and doubt. But no one can be so certain of his predestination, even morally, that this certainty excludes all fear and doubt, as is clear from what was said. Therefore.

Fourth conclusion: as a matter of fact, some people have been certain of their own predestination and salvation with infallible certainty by a special revelation from God.⁸ This conclusion is inferred from Sacred Scripture. In Genesis 15 and 22, the Lord said to Abraham: Do not fear; I am your protector, and your reward is exceedingly great. A little later: But you shall go to your fathers in peace and be buried in a good old age. By these words he signified Abraham's own predestination, as the Doctors commonly explain. The same was revealed to Moses in Exodus 33, in the words: I will show you all good. The Apostles' own predestination was also revealed to them in Luke 22: I appoint to you, as my Father appointed to me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom. It was revealed especially to the Apostle Paul, as is clear from 2 Timothy 4: As for the rest, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the just judge, will give me on that day. It was revealed also to the Thief, to whom Luke 23 says: Today you will be with me in paradise. Finally, ecclesiastical histories relate that for certain most holy men their own predestination and salvation were revealed to them as a reward for their labors.

VII. Fifth conclusion: even without a special revelation, the predestination of oneself or another can be known by the faithful from certain signs with a kind of moral certainty, to which, speaking absolutely, falsity could attach and which does not exclude all fear and apprehension of the opposite.⁹

To understand this conclusion, note that, as St. Bernard teaches in sermon 2 on the Octave of Easter, although the Lord decreed that this benefit of predestination should remain hidden from us during mortal life, so that in accordance with the Apostle's command in Philippians 2 we may work out our salvation with fear and trembling, he did not leave his elect entirely without the testimony of consolation in this matter. Rather, he marked them with certain signs from which it is permissible to infer with probability that they are predestined to eternal life. The Apostle seems to suggest this when he says: The Spirit himself¹⁰ bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

VIII. The holy Doctors enumerate various signs of predestination. We shall collect only the most important and confirm them with some testimonies of Sacred Scripture.

The first sign is frequent adversity and tribulations in this world, borne patiently.¹¹ St. Chrysostom establishes and proves this sign at great length in his treatment of Luke 16¹², at the words Son, remember that you received good things during your life, and Lazarus likewise received bad things; also in book 1, On Providence, near the end, and Homily 66 to the people of Antioch. So does St. Gregory, Moralia, book 5, chapters 1 and 2, at the words Why was light given to the wretched? To make this clear, two foundations assumed by Chrysostom in the cited Homily 8 must be set down.

The first foundation is that no mere human being is so righteous and innocent—excepting only the Blessed Virgin—that he has committed not even some venial sin for which he deserves punishment.¹³ For James 3 says¹⁴: We all offend in many things. And 1 John 1 says: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Proverbs 24 says¹⁵: The just man falls seven times a day. Likewise, no reprobate is so wicked that he has not done one or another morally good deed. St. Chrysostom proves this from Luke 18, where a certain unjust judge is said to have shown mercy to the widow, restraining those who were doing her injury.

The second foundation is that God, since he is supremely just and merciful, leaves no evil deed unpunished and no good deed, even a morally good one, unrewarded. Yet God rewards the good deeds performed by the reprobate with temporal goods in this world, as Ezekiel 29 says of the king of Babylon: I gave him the land of Egypt because he labored for me. And of those who practiced righteousness before people in order to be seen by them, Matthew 6 says: They have received their reward. But for the sins they have committed they will receive fitting punishment in the future. God, however, punishes the sins of the elect with temporal punishments, while he crowns their good merits with an eternal reward.

IX. From these foundations St. Chrysostom draws this conclusion: Therefore, when you see someone living a wicked life and suffering nothing bitter here, do not consider him happy; instead, mourn and lament him, as one who will suffer everything grievously, just as happened to that rich man. Again, when you see someone devoted to virtue and afflicted by countless troubles, consider him blessed and judge him happy, since here he has wiped away all his sins and there has much reward prepared, as happened to this Lazarus.¹⁶ Thus far Chrysostom. The same is suggested by Abraham's reply to the rich man who feasted: Son, remember that you received good things during your life, and Lazarus likewise received bad things; but now he is comforted here, while you are tormented.¹⁷ For this reason St. Augustine in letter 5 to Marcellinus: Nothing, he says, is more wretched than the prosperity of sinners. And on Psalm 143, after the Psalmist had spoken of the reprobate: Their storehouses are full, overflowing from one thing to another, he excludes people's vain judgment by adding: They called the people happy who have these things; but blessed is the people whose God is the Lord. The Apostle also seems to intimate this sign in Hebrews 12 when he says: For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are bastards and not sons. Hence St. Augustine's prayer: Lord, burn here, cut here, so that you may spare us forever. For he knew what the Lord had promised through Nahum 1: Affliction shall not rise up a second time, or, as the Seventy translate it, You will not punish the same thing twice—as if he had said: it will not happen that those who have been tested in the present life, like gold in a furnace, are punished together with the reprobate in the age to come. Finally, St. Bernard, explaining Psalm 72 in sermon 23 on the Canticle, at the words They are not in the labor of men, nor will they be scourged with men, says: Those who are not in the labor of men will surely be in the labor of demons, since the Lord says: Go, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels.¹⁸ See St. Augustine, volume 8, on Psalm 91, at the words Your thoughts have become exceedingly deep, and on Psalm 93, at the words How long will sinners glory, etc., through the words until a pit is dug for the sinner.

X. The second sign is mercy: when people grieve from the heart over the miseries of others as over their own and strive, in a spirit of charity, to relieve them. St. Augustine establishes this sign in Tractate 5 on the First Epistle of John, where he says that love alone distinguishes the children of the Kingdom from the children of perdition. And at the beginning of volume 10, sermon 44 to the Brothers in the Desert, he says: My dearest brothers, I do not remember ever reading that a person who willingly practiced works of charity or piety in this life died an evil death. For a pious person has many intercessors, and so does one who cheerfully performs works of charity, etc.; therefore it is impossible that the prayers of many should not be heard.¹⁹ This too is found in Sacred Scripture. John 13 says: By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. And Matthew 5 says: Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy. Scripture says the opposite about the reprobate: Judgment without mercy for the one who does not show mercy. And Tobit 4 says: Almsgiving delivers from every sin and death, and does not permit the soul to go into darkness. Great confidence before the Lord will be almsgiving for all who practice it. Hence the Apostle calls mercy and almsgiving an account of giving and receiving in Philippians 4, saying: No church shared with me in the account of giving and receiving, except you alone. As Chrysostom noted in Homily 15 on the same epistle, he did not say, “No church gave to me,” but shared with me in the account of giving and receiving: for a rich person gives money or something similar to a poor person and receives the kingdom of heaven in return, because almsgiving is a kind of sharing in giving and receiving.²⁰ See Chrysostom also in the argument of the same epistle, column 3, where he explains Proverbs 3 in the same sense: Let almsgiving and truth not forsake you. He observes that it does not say, “Do not abandon alms,” but Do not let alms abandon you, plainly indicating that we need the alms we give more than they need us.

XI. The third sign is drawn from the goodness and holiness of a person's entire course of life. A holy life regularly produces a good death, whereas a wicked life produces a most wretched death.²¹ St. Augustine establishes this sign in On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 22. St. Bernard does so in sermon 22 on the Canticle, explaining Numbers 23: May my soul die the death of the just, and may my end be like theirs. There he teaches plainly that the death of the just is reached through the life of the just. Hence St. Augustine affirms that if someone who has lived wickedly makes a true repentance at the hour of death, his sins will undoubtedly be forgiven and he will be saved. Augustine does doubt, however, that someone who has grown old in a life of sin will afterwards make true repentance before God at the hour of death, because this rarely happens, in accordance with Proverbs 22: A young man will not depart from his way, even when he has grown old. See his commentary on Psalm 118, at the words By what does the young man correct his way?

The fourth sign is willingly to hear the word of God and to taste it with a certain inward sweetness and delight.²² St. Gregory infers this from John 8: Whoever is of God hears the words of God; this is why you do not hear, because you are not of God. And John 10 says: My sheep hear my voice and follow me. As a sign of this, when Ezekiel, chapter 3, and John the Evangelist, Revelation 10, had eaten the book offered by God, which contained divine words, it seemed sweet in their mouths but bitter in their bellies. For the words of God are sweet and delightful to the elect, who are represented by the mouth of the Lord, in accordance with Jeremiah 15: If you separate the precious from the vile, you shall be as my mouth. But they are bitter and unpleasant to sinners and the reprobate, who are represented by the belly, since, as the Apostle says, their God is their belly²³. Thus Augustine, explaining Psalm 5: According to the multitude of their impieties drive them out, for they have embittered you, O Lord,²⁴ says: For sinners the bread of truth is bitter. Hence they hate the mouth of one who speaks the truth. They, then, embittered God, who by sinning fell into such a sickness that they cannot endure, as though it were gall, the food of truth in which sound souls rejoice. Of the elect, however, the Prophet says: How sweet your words are to my palate, sweeter than honey to my mouth. He says “to my mouth,” that is, to the just, not “to my belly,” that is, to the reprobate.

XII. The fifth sign is the testimony of a good conscience. For the Apostle says: This is our glory, the testimony of our conscience.²⁵ And again: The Spirit himself bears witness that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs;²⁶ and again: In him, when you believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance.²⁷ There, as St. Thomas noted in lecture 5, the Holy Spirit is called the pledge or earnest of our inheritance, as another reading has it in the Gloss, because something of the very price is now given to the elect, which is not to be taken away but completed in the homeland. St. Bernard establishes this sign in sermons 1 and 2 on the Octave of Easter,²⁸ where, for our purpose, he explains 1 John 5: There are three who bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood. Therefore, those who ordinarily abstain from mortal sins and have a peaceful, tranquil, and quiet conscience may reasonably be thought to belong to that kingdom of peace, of which the Apostle says: The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.²⁹ For other signs, see Andrew de Vega, On Justification, book 12, chapter 19; Medina, On Right Faith in God, book 3, chapter 3; and M. Soto, On Nature and Grace, book 3, chapters 11, 12, and 13.

XIII. TO the first argument from the outset, the reply is that the authority of St. John is understood of the certainty of faith, by which we are bound to believe that eternal life is prepared for those who believe in the Son of God and love him, provided they persevere to the end, as St. Thomas explains in his commentary on the same passage. By conditional knowledge, however, our salvation is most certain to us, namely, if we keep God's commandments and persevere to the end. But whether this or that particular person will absolutely persevere to the end, or truly loves God, cannot be certain to us without a special revelation, except by conjectures to which falsity may nevertheless attach.

To the other passage from the Epistle to the Romans, the first reply is that the Apostle there speaks of himself and of others who had a special revelation of their predestination and salvation, as St. Augustine explains in On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 17. A second reply is that, if this authority is understood universally of all the just, its sense is that given by St. Bernard in his sermon on the Twofold Baptism³⁰: those who are in charity cannot be separated from it by any external cause unless they themselves wish it. For this reason, among the things he listed, the Apostle said: Neither death, nor life, nor Angels, nor Principalities, nor Powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor strength, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God;³¹ he did not include the person himself. For he did not say, “Nor we,” to indicate that by his own free choice a just person can be separated from the love of God by sinning mortally. St. Chrysostom develops this with great elegance in Homily 9³², entitled “That no one is harmed except by himself.” There he proves at great length that no external cause can harm a person in spiritual matters unless the person himself wills it. Hence Jerome says: The enemy is weak, since he conquers only one who is willing.

To the second argument, the reply is that this passage is understood of a certain confident assurance to which falsity may attach, as was said; or it can be explained of the Apostles themselves, who had a special revelation of their salvation.

To the third, the reply is that even without a special revelation no one can be certain with infallible certainty that he is in a state of grace, as the theologians commonly teach in part 2, question 112, article 5.