De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

Whether, on account of the greater effort of free choice, a human being obtains greater, or more intense, helps of exciting and prevenient grace.

I. Those authors who teach that God has established a law to confer the helps of prevenient grace on those who do all that lies within them by the capacity of nature alone consequently said that greater or lesser helps of prevenient and exciting grace are given to them by God in proportion to the amount of the preceding effort of free choice. They do not mean that the greater effort of free choice is a meritorious cause or a reason why more perfect helps of prevenient grace are given, but only a condition without which God ordinarily would not give them. This opinion can be proved.

First, from the parable in Matthew 25 and Luke 19 about the talents and sums of money entrusted to servants for them to trade with by their own industry. The talents signify the helps of grace, and it is suggested that, through each servant's own industry and the greater or lesser effort of free choice, one servant received more talents and another fewer.

Second. God, supremely good and great, ordinarily does not grant people the helps of prevenient and exciting grace toward faith unless there is prior knowledge and consideration from another source of what the faith teaches. But when an adult acquires knowledge through another's preaching and instruction, or when he himself reads, recalls, or considers what the faith teaches, God is accustomed to insert himself through gratuitous gifts into those same acts of knowledge and elevate them so that they are supernatural and enlighten the intellect to excite the will. Therefore, when a human being makes a greater effort to produce more perfect knowledge and more intense consideration of what the faith teaches, prevenient and exciting grace will be more intense and greater. The consequence is proved: for, as is clear from the Council of Trent, prevenient and exciting grace consists in the enlightenment of the intellect that occurs through knowledge and in the excitation of the will.

Third. God's inward call depends greatly on the free choice of the one who is called: both because he could have gone or not gone to hear or read the word of God, and so acquire the knowledge into which God is accustomed to insert himself and by which he calls one to the faith; and also because, after going, he could have turned his thoughts elsewhere and failed to attend to what was being proposed for belief; and finally because he could have gone with the intention of learning and embracing what he judged to be true and good, or with the intention of mocking or attacking what was said. Therefore, in proportion to the difference in the effort of free choice of the one who is called, the inward call itself will be more or less intense.

II. Fourth, it is argued: The motions of prevenient and exciting grace are not effected by God alone, but our intellect also concurs as an efficient cause in the illuminations of grace by which it is enlightened, and our will concurs in the affections and motions of exciting grace that it receives. Therefore, the quantity of prevenient grace must be measured by the quantity of the effort of our intellect and will. The consequence is proved: as St. Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae II–II, question 24, article 3, body, the quantity of each thing depends on that thing's proper cause.

It is confirmed. The motions of prevenient grace are formally vital acts. Therefore, they depend intrinsically on an intrinsic vital principle, namely our intellect and will, not insofar as they are free but insofar as they are natural; for they concur in the motions of prevenient grace in the same way as they do in first-first motions. Therefore, prevenient grace will be more intense to the degree that the effort of the intellect and will itself is more intense.

Fifth. The motions of prevenient and exciting grace are often quite weak on account of our slight preparation and effort, and our many preceding offenses and corrupt affections. Therefore, if our effort of free choice were more intense, prevenient grace would be greater and more perfect. Therefore, on account of the greater effort of free choice, greater and more perfect helps of prevenient grace are given to a human being.

The contrary opinion is consequently taught by all the Doctors cited above, who hold that no law was established by God to confer the helps of prevenient grace on those who do all that is in them by nature's capacity alone. I judge their opinion to express the mind of St. Augustine and St. Thomas and to be true. Hence let this be said:

First Conclusion. The actual helps of prevenient grace are not measured in their perfection and intensity according to a greater or lesser quantity of the preceding effort of free choice, but according to God's entirely gratuitous and free will.¹ Thus, in the bestowal or distribution of such helps, no consideration is given to our prior efforts of free choice or to anything natural; rather, according to his will, God grants more perfect and more intense helps of prevenient grace to one person, and lesser helps to another, because it so pleases him. This conclusion is asserted everywhere by Augustine, especially in the places cited in disputation 56, most of all in Questions to Simplicianus, question 2, at the end, whose words we cited above.² St. Thomas also expressly teaches this conclusion of ours in 2. 2. q. 24. art. 3., which he proves from the Apostle, 1. ad Corinth. 12: All these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills. And Ephes. 4: To each one of us grace has been given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Likewise, 1. ad Corinth. 1 says: See your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many powerful; but the Lord chose the lowly things of the world to confound the strong, and the things that are not to destroy the things that are, etc. By these words he teaches plainly that God's calling is not considered or measured according to anything natural, nor according to the wisdom or power of human nature, but according to God's gratuitous will. Moreover, it is proved by reason. Prevenient grace does not depend on any natural power, but is given to whomever it is given through divine mercy alone; for grace exceeds every capacity of nature. Therefore, similarly, the quantity and perfection of that same grace are not taken from anything natural, but from the mercy alone of God who calls. This is confirmed because, as was shown in the two preceding disputations, all efforts and good moral works proceeding from nature's capacity alone have no order to grace and no proportion to it. Therefore, they cannot quantify its perfection or intensity; otherwise they would already bear an order to grace, since every disposition that quantifies a form bears some order to it. Second, it is proved as follows. Works of nature preceding prevenient grace contribute absolutely nothing to the obtaining of grace, not even as remote dispositions, as was shown in disputation 55. Therefore, prevenient grace is not given to a person on account of them; therefore, the quantity of that same grace is not measured in proportion to the intensity of free choice's effort.

III. Third. Prevenient and exciting grace has God alone as its efficient cause; for God alone calls a person to himself, and this is signified by the very name “prevenient grace” when it is first prevenient. For it is called first-prevenient because it precedes, at least in the order of nature, all efficient causality of the intellect and will, not only insofar as the will is free but also insofar as it is a nature, as will be clear in disputation 74. Therefore, the quantity and perfection of that same grace must be referred to God alone and to his mere and gratuitous will.

They reply to this that prevenient and exciting grace depends on God alone, rather than free choice, as its efficient cause. For although the movements of that same prevenient grace are vital actions of the intellect and will, strictly speaking they are not acts of free choice—not only because the illumination of the intellect can occur through thoughts into which a person falls without any deliberation or movement of free choice, or which an angel or God has impressed or aroused in him, or which another person has suggested by speech, before every movement of free choice, but also because that the thought becomes illumination and prevenient grace is due only to God's supernatural influx and to its relation to God as the illuminating cause, not to its relation to our intellect. Nevertheless, unless the intellect cooperated at the same time, that thought and illumination would not exist in reality.³ Hence such illumination, insofar as it is illumination of the intellect and prevenient grace, is not an act of free choice. But the supernatural affection of the will concerning matters of faith arises in the will purely naturally when there is illumination of the intellect and God simultaneously acts upon it through a particular concurrence. Nor is the will's cooperation with that affection within the will's free power, but it results from the will purely naturally insofar as it is a nature, not insofar as it is free choice. Yet, insofar as it is free choice, by warding off a thought or adducing reasons that attract the will to the opposite side, it can prevent the affection from arising.

IIII. Yet this solution involves many matters to be discussed. First, as will be clear in disputation 70, formally speaking, first-prevenient grace is not an undeliberated vital act, but God's motion which, in the order of causality, precedes our vital act of the supernatural order.⁴ For through the help of prevenient grace God elevates the intellect and will and moves it to elicit supernatural acts, whether they are free or deliberated, or undeliberated; for before such help our intellect and will have no proximate power or activity for eliciting supernatural acts, even undeliberated ones, or, as they say, first-first acts.

Second: for prevenient grace, by which God effects that the cognitions of our intellect, or thought of things to be believed, or even sudden movements of our will, be supernatural and of the kind required for salvation, is not an immediate influx into the acts of the intellect and will; rather, it is an immediate influx into the powers themselves, and through the powers into their acts, as is clear from what was said in disputation 18. But an immediate influx into the intellect and will cannot have the intellect and will as its efficient cause, for the intellect and will exert no influx into themselves prior to the acts they elicit. Therefore prevenient grace does not have our intellect or will as its efficient cause, even as regards its own entity. Therefore it is not more or less intense according to a greater or lesser effort of the same free choice, not only insofar as it is free but also insofar as it is nature. Third: although a thought, not only an indeliberate one but also a free one, can be prevenient grace in relation to other subsequent supernatural acts, it is nevertheless impossible for some thought to be absolutely the first prevenient grace. For since that thought is supernatural, the intellect must be moved and elevated before that thought by some supernatural help in order to elicit it; otherwise some supernatural act, namely, the thought of things to be believed, would proceed from the faculty of nature alone, contrary to what the Apostle says: We are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as though from ourselves; rather, our sufficiency is from God:⁵ therefore, etc.

V. Second conclusion. It must not be said that God inserts himself into cognitions or other acts of the intellect or will begun from the faculty of nature alone, or that by his supernatural influx into those same acts he sharpens them or makes them supernatural, so that in their order they are of the kind required for salvation and acquire the character of prevenient grace in relation to the supernatural free consent to an act of faith, hope, charity, or other supernatural acts.⁶ This conclusion remains partly proved from what was said in the preceding disputation, third conclusion. It is proved further. First, for this way of speaking was frequent among the Massilians, among whom Faustus says in book 1 of On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 4: Grace is everything, but he offers and presents it to all for salvation. And Cassian says: When he has seen in us some beginning of a good will, he at once illuminates, strengthens, and stirs it toward salvation, granting increase to the will that he himself either planted or saw spring up through our effort.⁷ And again he says: For when God sees us turning toward willing the good, he comes to meet us, directs, and strengthens us.⁸ At the sound of your cry, as soon as he hears it, he will answer you.⁹ And call upon me, he says, in the day of tribulation, and I will deliver you, and you will glorify me.¹⁰ Refuting these words, St. Prosper says: Who does not see that this doctrine assigns to free choice a merit by which grace is anticipated, grace that serves it by repaying what is owed, not by conferring a gift? This definition was condemned by an anathema at the Synod of the Bishops of Palestine, even by Pelagius. For in the one who¹¹ begins to will the good and desires to depart from wickedness and error, we profess that the grace of God brings this very thing about. Therefore the opinion that God, through his exciting or prevenient grace, inserts himself into acts begun by the powers of nature and sustains them, etc., is not to be admitted.

VI. This is confirmed: for St. Prosper himself attacks the Massilians in his letter to Augustine because they said that God's grace sustains one who desires the good. Indeed, St. Augustine too, in book 1 against the Two Letters of the Pelagians, chapter 19, whose words we cited in disputation 1, no. 11, for this reason also reproves Julian, because he asserted that a man, not preceded by any grace of God, begins or undertakes a good work, and afterward is helped by God in the very work already begun. From this assertion St. Augustine there infers that God's help is given on the basis of merits; for immediately after Julian's words, is helped by God in the very work already begun, he adds: namely, on account of the merits of a good will, so that grace owed is repaid, not grace unowed bestowed; and thus grace is no longer grace, but is that which Pelagius, with feigned sincerity, condemned at the judgment in Palestine: that the grace of God is given according to our merits. From this it is clear that Julian held that the good efforts of free choice, begun from the powers of nature alone, are sustained and perfected by grace inserting itself into them. Therefore this opinion is not to be admitted.

Second, it is proved: otherwise it seems to follow that a human being, by using the good of nature well, reaches saving grace with the help of initial grace. Yet St. Prosper attacks this position among the Massilians in his letter to Augustine, saying: Some of them remain so close to the Pelagian paths that, when they are compelled to confess the grace of Christ that precedes all human merits—lest grace be named in vain if it is paid in return for merits—they wish it to belong to that condition of each human being in which the grace of the Creator fashions him as one endowed with free choice and reason, when he has merited nothing beforehand because he did not even exist, so that through discerning good from evil he may direct his will toward knowledge of God and obedience to his commandments; and that he may reach the grace by which we are reborn in Christ through his natural capacity, by asking, seeking, and knocking. Thus he receives, finds, and enters because, having used the good of nature well, he has merited to reach this saving grace with the help of initial grace. Hence St. Hilary too, writing to St. Augustine and reporting the opinion of those same Massilians, says that they assert: Grace is not denied if such a will is said to precede, a will that merely seeks a physician and is not yet itself able to do anything. For they want those testimonies, such as ‘According as he has apportioned to each the measure of faith,’ and similar ones, to mean that the one who has begun to will is helped, not that he is also given the gift of willing.¹² Therefore, it must not be admitted that free choice, by the powers of nature alone, begins by seeking, asking, and knocking, and that grace afterward—or God himself through grace—inserts himself into those same acts, sharpening and fostering them so that they become supernatural. Third, it is proved because it is unintelligible how God, by a supernatural influx immediately flowing into acts begun by the powers of nature, could make them supernatural. For God cannot cause vital acts except through a vital power. Therefore, he cannot flow immediately by a supernatural influx into a thought and knowledge of the things to be believed unless he first, in the order of nature, acts upon the power and moves it to produce such supernatural acts. This is confirmed by the arguments with which it was shown in disputation 18 that God's general concurrence is an immediate influx into secondary causes, moving them beforehand and applying them so that they produce their operations.

VII. To the first argument it is answered that by “talents” are understood the gifts of grace that God distributes to each according to that person's disposition; but the Holy Spirit himself produces this disposition in them, with greater or lesser intensity, as he wills, as was said in conclusion 1.¹³ This answer is explicit in St. Thomas, II–II, question 24, article 3, reply to objection 1. But against it: for it follows that there is a process to infinity, because a disposition is required for receiving the gifts of grace, and another disposition is required for that disposition, since it too is a gift of grace, and so on to infinity. It is answered that habitual gifts of grace, because they are perfect and are not of themselves ordered to another form, require a disposition on the part of adult recipients, to whom God does not infuse these gifts without their consent. But actual gifts, because they are given in a transitory manner, do not require another disposition¹⁴; rather, through them God prepares free choice to elicit supernatural acts and a disposition for justifying grace. Hence no infinite process follows.

To the second it is answered that intelligible species are indeed ordinarily supplied by nature, but the knowledge or thought by which a human being apprehends the things of faith through those same species in order to assent to them does not come from nature alone. Rather, it comes from the motion of the Holy Spirit, who elevates the species and the intellectual power itself so that it apprehends, considers, and weighs the things of faith, and assents to them.¹⁵ Hence the very knowledge of the things to be believed, and its intensity, comes from the Holy Spirit as the first mover through the help of grace, as was said above.

VIII. To the third it is answered that it is not by the powers of nature alone but by the motion of the Holy Spirit that someone approaches to hear or read the word of God so as to obey it; and by the same motion, after approaching, he does not turn his thought to another matter but attends to what is said.¹⁶ Thus Acts 16 says of the purple-seller woman: God opened her heart to attend to the things Paul was saying, as was explained above. Likewise, it comes from the same help that someone approaches with the intention of learning and embracing what is said, as St. Augustine expressly teaches in On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 14, when he says: But to those who obediently hear the exhortation of truth, the very gift of God has been given, namely, to hear obediently; but to those who do not hear in this way, it has not been given. And below: Hence, although the Lord was speaking to those who had the ears of the flesh open, he nevertheless said: ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear,’ for he undoubtedly knew that not all had them. And the Lord himself shows from whom those who have them receive them, when he says: ‘I will give them a heart to know me and hearing ears.’ Therefore, ears for hearing are the very gift of obedience.¹⁷ By these words he plainly teaches that attending to what is said and hearing the words of God with an intention to obey is also a gift of God. Hence the Holy Spirit also distributes the intensity of these acts to each person as he wills. But if someone does not approach to hear the word of God, or if he approaches but does not attend to what is said, or approaches with the intention of mocking it, he has this from his own evil will or even from the devil's suggestion, as was said above.

IX. To the confirmation it is answered that first-prevenient grace is not formally a vital act, but is so causally; for it is a motion toward a vital act, as will be said in disputation 74. But prevenient grace that is not simply first is a vital act, having our intellect and will as its proximate efficient cause; nevertheless, its intensity and perfection must ultimately be reduced to the prior prevenient grace, which is not formally a vital act but God's motion prior to a supernatural vital act.¹⁸ By this, the fourth argument is answered.

To the fifth it is answered that, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2. q. 112. ar. 3. ad 2., The first cause of the defect of grace is from us, but the first cause of the bestowal of grace is from God, in accord with Hosea 13: Your destruction is from you, Israel; your help is in me alone. Hence the weakness of the movements of prevenient grace can proceed from us insofar as God, on account of preceding faults, does not grant more abundant helps of prevenient grace. But that he confers them with great abundance and intensity must be wholly ascribed to God's mere and gratuitous will and mercy, as was said.¹⁹

Consequently, it must be explained what powers free choice has in relation to supernatural good after it has received the prior helps of divine grace. Twelve matters must be discussed concerning this.

I. Whether to someone who does all that is in him through the prior helps of grace, as through sufficient help, subsequent helps are infallibly given by a certain law, such as efficacious help, by which he is infallibly converted and saved.

II. Whether to someone who does all that is in him through efficacious help, habitual or justifying grace is infallibly given by a certain law.

III. Whether through acts of charity equal to the pre-existing habit, or even through less intense acts, a person infallibly obtains, by a certain law, an increase of habitual grace, of charity, and of essential glory.

IIII. Whether on account of deadened merits a penitent infallibly obtains, by a law established by God, greater habitual grace and a right to more intense essential glory.

V. Whether, by reason of a greater effort of free choice or of its influx together with equal help of assisting grace, one person, all else being equal, obtains more intense justifying grace than another.

VI. Whether an intellect that is naturally more perfect, with an equal light of glory, produces an act of beatific vision more intense than another. And the same difficulty arises concerning other supernatural acts.

VII. Whether an act of supernatural faith and charity, or of beatific vision, insofar as it is formally a vital action, is efficiently caused by a supernatural principle as that by which the faculty acts, or by the natural faculty alone according to its innate power.

VIII. Whether acts of faith, hope, and charity are supernatural as to their substance, or only as to their manner.

IX. Whether the final disposition for habitual grace has habitual grace itself as its efficient cause, or a power elevated by special help alone.

X. Whether, without the help of grace inhering in the created will, free choice can, by the extrinsic assistance of the Holy Spirit alone, elicit a supernatural act of faith, hope, charity, or repentance by which it may dispose itself proximately or remotely for justifying grace.

XI. Whether man, in the supernatural acts that he performs from grace, is a principal cause in his own order, or only an instrument of God.

XII. Whether, by God's absolute power, there can be created an intellectual substance to which, from the powers of nature alone, it belongs to love God above all things as the author of grace and to elicit other supernatural acts.