De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate
Diego Álvarez (1550–1631)
De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate, ac legitima eius cum efficacia eorundem auxiliorum concordia
First published 1610
Diego Álvarez’s twelve-book treatise on divine grace and human free choice. This edition contains Book I: the prooemium and five preliminary disputations on Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian teaching, Manichaean and Reformation positions, Catholic theologians, and the authority of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Latin from the Rome 1610 edition, with a new English translation.
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Book One
Prooemium: division of the whole work
Disputatio I: Whether the Pelagians ever admitted that any inward grace, or any supernatural help from God, is divinely given for salvation or for fulfilling the precepts of the law
Disputatio II: What grace the Semi-Pelagians admitted as necessary for salvation, and where their view agrees with or departs from the error of the Pelagians
Disputatio III: What the Manichaeans formerly held, and the Lutherans and Calvinists hold in our time, about the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice
Disputatio IV: What certain Catholic Doctors hold about the natural powers of free choice and its concord with divine foreknowledge, providence, predestination, and the efficacy of the helps of grace
Disputatio V: How much authority Saint Augustine’s teaching has concerning predestination and grace, and whether it is permissible to depart from it
Book Two
Introduction
Disputatio I: Whether the knowledge of God is suitably divided into the knowledge of simple understanding and the knowledge of vision.
Disputatio II: Whether the knowledge of God is sufficiently divided into knowledge that is merely natural and knowledge that is merely free; or whether, besides both, middle knowledge must be posited in God with respect to conditional future things that depend on the human will.
Disputatio III: Whether all future things are actually present in eternity according to the proper existences they will have in their own measure.
Disputatio IV: Whether God certainly knows future contingents because of their real presence in eternity before they come to be, and whether an existence of this kind contributes anything to the certainty and infallibility of the divine knowledge.
Disputatio V: Whether God certainly and infallibly knows all future contingents in the decree, or predetermination, of his divine will.
Disputatio VI: Whether God certainly and infallibly knows future sins in some decree of his divine will.
Disputatio VII: Whether God certainly and infallibly knows future contingents in the predetermination of secondary causes, especially when the secondary causes are free.
Disputatio VIII: Whether, setting aside every predetermination of the divine will and existence in eternity, another ground for the certainty of divine knowledge can be assigned, namely, on the part of the truth of the object.
Disputatio IX: Whether God certainly knows future contingents before the decree of his will, as future, in their ideas.
Disputatio X: Whether there is in God a conjectural knowledge of what, in particular, a created will will do if placed in such circumstances.
Disputatio XI: Whether this causal proposition is true: “Because this is future, it is foreknown by God”; or, conversely: “Because God foreknows something to be future, therefore it is future.”
Disputatio XII: Whether God produces things outside himself immediately through his knowledge, that is, through his intellect; or whether, besides intellect and will, a third executive power must be posited in him, through which things are produced immediately.
Book Three
Introduction
Disputatio I: Whether God’s actual motion, which all secondary causes need in order to produce their effect or operation, is an immediate influx into the secondary cause itself; or whether instead it is only an immediate influx, together with the secondary cause, into its effect.
Disputatio II: What that prior motion is by which God moves and applies secondary causes to act.
Disputatio III: Whether God’s general concurrence, by which he helps secondary causes constituted in first act through supernatural forms to produce supernatural acts, is supernatural; or whether it is of the same order as general concurrence with merely natural acts.
Disputatio IV: Whether God’s general concurrence, especially with respect to acts that depend on created free choice, is indifferent of itself.
Disputatio V: Whether, by an absolute and efficacious decree of his will, God truly predetermines as an efficient cause all secondary causes, both natural and free, to their operations after the manner of a physical cause, while preserving their nature and freedom.
Disputatio VI: Whether, by a prior motion inhering in the created will, God moves, applies, or predetermines it after the manner of a physical cause to all its good acts in particular, while preserving its freedom.
Disputatio VII: Whether, by a prior motion, God truly premoves as an efficient cause free choice after the manner of a physical cause to the act of sin, insofar as it is an act and insofar as it is a being.
Disputatio VIII: Whether all contingent and free acts predetermined by God necessarily occur with the necessity of infallibility, or with necessity on the supposition of the predetermination of the divine will.
Disputatio IX: Whether the first root of contingency is the efficacy, or omnipotence, of the divine will.
Disputatio X: Whether any effect can be called formally contingent in relation to God’s causality, especially when it is produced immediately by him.
Book Four
Introduction
Disputatio I: Whether God has providence not only over all genera and species, but also over all individuals in particular, according to all circumstances of place, time, etc.
Disputatio II: Whether the evils of punishment are willed by an absolute and efficacious will, and predetermined in particular, through divine providence, or are only permitted.
Disputatio III: Whether the nature of divine providence includes not only the ordering of means to an end, but also the attainment of the end intended by God.
Disputatio IV: Whether contingent and free secondary causes can withdraw themselves from, or depart from, the order assigned to them by divine providence.
Disputatio V: Whether created free choice can resist almighty God, or strive against the order of divine providence.
Book Five
Introduction
Disputatio I: Whether all the explanations that St. Augustine gives of those words of the Apostle, “God wills all human beings to be saved,” are legitimate.
Disputatio II: What God's antecedent will is, what his consequent will is, and whether antecedent will formally entails some conditional act or wish in God.
Disputatio III: What predestination is, and in which act it formally consists: an act of the will, or rather an act of the intellect.
Disputatio IV: Whether the good use of the aids of grace, insofar as it proceeds from free will, is an effect of predestination.
Disputatio V: Whether the good use of free will, proceeding from the aid of grace, is a cause, reason, or necessary condition of predestination in adults.
Disputatio VI: Whether the predestination of infants depended on, and presupposed, foreknowledge of the good use of the free will of their parents or of others through whom they came to the grace of baptism.
Disputatio VII: Whether the foreseen merits of Christ are the cause of our predestination with respect to its entire effect.
Disputatio VIII: Whether the grace of the state of innocence was conferred on Adam through the merits of Christ.
Disputatio IX: Whether predestination, with respect to the attainment of its effects, is certain and infallible with the certainty of the order and causality of the means.
Disputatio X: Whether anyone, apart from divine revelation, can know with infallible certainty that he or another is among the predestined, or infer this from certain signs.
Disputatio XI: Whether, at least among the faithful, there are more elect than reprobate.
Book Six
Introduction
Disputatio I: Whether the children of Adam contract original sin through seminal propagation, such that it truly and properly has the character of guilt in them.
Disputatio II: Whether through original sin man was only deprived of original justice and supernatural gifts, or also wounded in his natural powers.
Disputatio III: What wounds man incurs through original or actual sin.
Disputatio IV: Whether free will in fallen nature, apart from the aids of grace, has the same natural powers for good that it would have had if it had been created in a state of pure nature.
Disputatio V: Whether man can, by the powers of nature alone and without the aid of grace, know every truth pertaining to the natural order.
Disputatio VI: Whether man can, by the powers of nature alone, assent to all the supernatural mysteries proposed and explained to him as revealed by God, with assent that is certain and firm on the believer’s part.
Disputatio VII: Whether, without the aid of grace, man in fallen nature can perform a moral act that is truly good in relation to the ultimate natural end and is an act of true virtue.
Disputatio VIII: Whether man in fallen nature can, by the powers of nature alone together with God’s general concurrence, elicit an absolute, purely natural act of loving God above all things, with an absolute resolve to please him in everything.
Disputatio IX: Whether free will, with general concurrence alone, can elicit attrition or contrition with respect to the substance of the act alone.
Disputatio X: Whether man can, by the natural powers of free will, restore the good connatural to him that he lost through sin.
Whether a human being can, by the natural powers of free choice, restore the good connatural to him that he lost through sin.
I. The affirmative position is first proved by the authority of St. Thomas in 2, dist. 28, in his exposition of the text, at the end of that same distinction, where he says: By the natural power he received from God, a human being can change his will for the better; therefore, the claim follows.
Second, it is proved as follows. Natural rectitude consists in the will's being subject to God; but this subjection can be had in natural matters through the powers of nature: for after a human being has sinned, he can subject himself to God and obey him in matters pertaining to the natural order. Therefore, he can restore the rectitude of will that he lost by sinning.
Third, vicious and depraved habits do not necessitate the will to remain in them always. Therefore, by the powers of nature and through habits of virtue opposed to them, the will can expel them and thus restore the rectitude of will that it lost by sinning.
II. The answer is given briefly by the negative conclusion, which St. Augustine proves in book 4 against Julian, chapter 3, where he shows that a human being cannot, by the capacity of nature alone, repair the losses he has inflicted upon himself, nor return from vice to virtue.1 St. Thomas proves the same in 1, 2, q. 109, art. 7, reply to objection 2, where he says that natural reason is not a sufficient principle of this health that is in a human being through justifying grace; rather, its principle is grace, which is taken away through sin. And therefore a human being cannot be restored by himself, but needs the light of grace to be infused into him anew, just as a soul would have to be infused anew into a dead body to raise it to life. And in his reply to the third objection he says that human nature, declining through the act of sin, since it does not remain intact but is corrupted, cannot be restored by itself, either to the good connatural to it, much less to the supernatural good of justice. The most decisive reason for this is that a human being cannot, by the capacity of nature, remove the privation of grace incurred through sin; for grace is from God alone as an efficient cause, in accordance with the saying: The Lord will give grace and glory.2 Nor can a human being rectify his own will toward a supernatural end, since this exceeds the whole capacity of nature; nor toward a natural end, because such rectification requires love of God above all things without qualification, by which a human being is converted to God, the author of nature, from whom he had been turned away through sin. But one who is in mortal sin cannot love God above all things even with natural love, as was shown in disputation 51; therefore, the conclusion follows.
III. TO THE FIRST objection it is answered, first, that St. Thomas explicitly teaches our opinion in the cited passage of 1, 2. Hence, in the second book of the Sentences he is not speaking of all the disadvantages a human being incurs through sin, but only of one of them. For by nature a human being can perform some morally good act that is not a sin in its particular instance; yet he cannot exercise all moral goods without the help of grace. Moreover, that morally good work which he performs by the powers of nature is not true good without qualification, nor does it have the character of true virtue as regards its manner, as St. Augustine teaches in the cited passage, and as we have sufficiently shown in disputation 50.
To the second it is answered that a human being in mortal sin can, without the help of grace, subject his will to God in a qualified way and with respect to some moral operation, by fulfilling some natural precept as regards the substance of the act. Yet by the capacity of nature alone he cannot subject himself to God without qualification, nor have an act of love of God above all things, in which observance of all the commandments is virtually contained. Hence it does not follow that he can restore to himself even the natural rectitude of will that he lost by sinning.
To the third it is answered that from the fact that vicious habits do not necessitate the will without qualification, it follows only that a person sins freely when he sins. If someone objects, “Therefore he can sin and not sin,” the answer is that of himself and by his own powers he can sin, and likewise he can refrain from sin, but then by the help of grace. For although by the powers of nature he can avoid one sin or another, he cannot avoid all sins without qualification. On this, see St. Thomas, 3. cont. Gent. c. 149.