De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

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.