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.
Disputatio XI: Whether fallen man can, without the aid of grace, keep all the commandments and resist, at every moment, all the temptations he encounters, even the gravest, which must be overcome to keep the natural law.
Book Seven
Introduction
Disputatio I: Whether man can, without the aid of grace, dispose himself at least remotely to obtain grace by asking, seeking, knocking, and so forth.
Disputatio II: Whether those who do all that lies in their power by nature alone receive from God, infallibly and according to a fixed law, the aids of prevenient grace by which they carry it out as required for salvation.
Disputatio III: Whether greater effort of free choice obtains greater or more intense aids of rousing and prevenient grace.
Disputatio IV: Whether someone who does all that lies in his power with the earlier aids of prevenient grace receives subsequent aids infallibly and according to a fixed law.
Whether, for one who does all that lies within him by the prior helps of prevenient grace, later helps are given infallibly and under a certain law.
I. The whole difficulty of this disputation consists in this: Can a human being, through the good use of sufficient help, attain efficacious help by his own industry, using that same sufficient help well through his innate freedom and cooperating piously with it? For some defend the affirmative side, which these arguments seem to prove.
First, God does not abandon a human being unless that person first abandons God, as is stated in the Council of Trent, session 6 on justification, chapter 11. Therefore, if a human being does all he can by virtue of sufficient help, God will infallibly give him efficacious help by which he may act piously and be saved; otherwise God would truly abandon the person by denying him efficacious help before the person himself abandons God.
Second. God, for his part, is ready to give grace to all: For he wills all human beings to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.12 Hence, as St. Thomas teaches in third contra Gentiles, chapter 159, only those are deprived of grace who provide an impediment to that same grace. But one who, after receiving from God sufficient help for salvation, does all he can through that help does not provide an impediment to efficacious grace. Therefore, he will infallibly attain it from God.
Third. By sufficient help a human being can truly turn to God, act piously, persevere to the end, and be saved; for it is called sufficient because through it a human being can do these things. But it would not be sufficient for salvation if God did not infallibly give efficacious helps by which a person who uses that same help well is saved. Therefore, efficacious help will be given infallibly to one who does all that lies within him by sufficient help. The minor premise is proved: otherwise these two things would stand together, namely, that a human being does all he can by sufficient help, and that God does not wish to give him efficacious help. If this is admitted, it evidently follows that this person, whatever he does, must perish; yet this seems foreign to God's mercy.
II. Fourth. After God in his mercy has called a sinner through sufficient grace, without any preceding good merits of ours, it is prior in the order of reason that the sinner's free choice, moved by God's exciting and sufficient grace, determine itself to consent than that God give him assisting, or efficacious, grace. For efficacious grace, insofar as it is efficacious, depends as on a condition without which it would not be on the free cooperation by which our free choice wills to consent to God as he calls and excites us. Therefore, the sinner himself, by doing all he can through sufficient help, infallibly obtains efficacious help from God3; consequently, later helps of divine grace are given infallibly and under a certain law to those who do all that lies within them by the prior helps.
It is confirmed: for this causal statement is true: Because a human being wills to consent to God as he excites and calls, he is therefore helped by God. Since free choice determines grace to concur with it and is not predetermined by grace as to its exercise, otherwise a human being would not consent when and as he wills, but when God wills, and so his freedom would be utterly lost. Therefore, the help of assisting, or efficacious, grace is given infallibly and under a certain law to those who do all that lies within them by the help of sufficient grace.
III. Fifth, the argument is made from all the arguments by which in disputation 56 we sought to prove that the helps of exciting and sufficient grace are given infallibly by God to those who do all that lies within them by the capacity of nature. For from this it is evidently inferred all the more strongly that efficacious helps of assisting grace are given infallibly by God to those who, in accordance with their innate freedom, do all that lies within them by the help of sufficient grace. For the distance and disproportion between works of nature and the prior helps of sufficient grace is greater than that between works proceeding from prior helps of sufficient grace and later helps of efficacious grace. For works of nature do not belong to the same order as grace, whereas works proceeding from sufficient help belong to the same supernatural order as efficacious help. Therefore, if the first helps of prevenient grace are given infallibly to those who do all that lies within them by the capacity of nature, it follows that efficacious help is given infallibly to those who do all they can by sufficient help.
Sixth. A person existing in grace can merit the gift of perseverance through good works and infallibly obtain it from God. For Augustine says in lib. de dono persev. c. 6: This gift of God, namely, perseverance, can be obtained by humble supplication, but once it has been given it cannot be lost. But the gift of perseverance pertains to the subsequent helps of divine grace. Therefore, subsequent helps by which a person is saved are infallibly given by God and by a certain law to someone who uses the prior helps of grace well.
This opinion nevertheless does not seem to conform to the statements of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, nor does it agree with what was said about the efficacy of divine motion in disputations 18, 19, 22, and 23, and what will be said below. For clarity on this point, it should be observed that the good use of sufficient help does not come from sufficient help alone, or from free choice elevated by sufficient help alone. For, as will be clear below, efficacious help is posited precisely to confer actual good action, so that the power which, through sufficient help alone, had been constituted in first act and made capable of performing supernatural acts may infallibly produce them. Let this therefore be:
IIII. First Conclusion. A certain sign after the fact that efficacious help was given to a person by God is that his free choice does all that it can do through sufficient help.4 This is proved, first, because through sufficient help a person can truly turn to God and act piously; but, in order actually to turn to God and act piously, efficacious help is necessary, as will be made clear in disputation 88. Therefore, if he does all that he can do through sufficient help, it is a sign after the fact that he had efficacious help.
Second Conclusion. No law was established by God to infallibly give subsequent helps of grace to those who do all that is in them with the prior helps and use them well through their innate freedom. This conclusion is established against certain Doctors who suppose that God indeed mercifully grants a person the first helps of exciting and sufficient grace.5 If his free choice, by its own innate freedom, then wills to consent with those same helps to God who excites him and to cooperate, God will also cooperate with him, and the exciting or sufficient help will have a new influx together with that same free choice into the operation, and will acquire the character of assisting grace; and thus he will infallibly obtain from God efficacious or cooperating help. But if, by that same freedom, he does not will to cooperate, then the exciting help will remain within the bounds of exciting and sufficient help for salvation and will not acquire the character of efficacious assisting help. Yet our conclusion is expressly St. Thomas's in the places cited in disputation 56. Moreover, he teaches the same in 1. 2. q. 114. art. 9., speaking about the gift of perseverance. It can also be proved first by all the arguments by which it was shown in disputation 36 that the good use of exciting grace does not proceed from innate freedom alone, but requires efficacious help, by whose power free choice cooperates. Therefore, there cannot be a law established by God to give efficacious helps to those who by their own innate freedom alone use or have used sufficient helps well.
V. Second, this is proved because, as I showed in disputation 56, no law was established by God6 to give the first helps of prevenient grace to those who do all that is in them by nature's capacity alone. Therefore, there is also no law established by God to give subsequent helps of efficacious grace to those who by their own innate freedom alone will to use sufficient helps well and cooperate with them. The consequence is proved as follows: there is no law to give the first helps of grace to those who do all that is in them by nature's powers because then the beginning of the prior helps of grace would be from nature and not from God's mere and gratuitous will, and it would thus follow that grace is given according to our merits. But this same inconvenience seems to follow if it is asserted that a law was established by God to infallibly give efficacious help to those who use or will to use sufficient help well by their own innate freedom alone. For then the beginning of efficacious grace would come from nature and from the innate freedom of a person willing to use sufficient help well. Therefore.
Perhaps they will answer that the reason is not the same in both cases, because in the case of the antecedent no help of grace preceded the good works of nature. Hence, if the first helps of prevenient grace were given by a certain law to one who does all that is in him by the faculty of nature, then the first beginning of grace would be absolutely from nature. But in the case of our present disputation the first beginning of efficacious grace is not established in nature, but in sufficient grace, which preceded the right use of the will and the works themselves, on account of which subsequent efficacious helps are always given by God by a certain law. Thus everything is ultimately reduced to the grace that first mercifully went before and stirred man's free choice. But there is an effective argument against this solution. For, as will be clear in disputation 68, according to the authors of the contrary opinion God does not properly effect actively through prevenient grace, but only morally, that free choice determine itself and cooperate with God who stirs it. Therefore, as to a per se efficient cause, it is reduced only to the innate freedom of choice, by which it wills to cooperate with exciting grace. Therefore, if efficacious help of assisting grace is infallibly given to those who will cooperate in this way, it follows that the works on account of which efficacious helps are given by God by a certain law are reduced to nature alone as their efficient cause, and that exciting grace, which preceded those same works, is only a condition without which free choice would not determine itself to use that same exciting grace rightly. It is like the saw, or the maker of the saw, that an artisan uses to make a bench: it is only a condition without which that use would not exist, and is not truly an efficient cause of the use itself. Therefore, if the opinion we oppose is true, the first beginning of efficacious grace would be absolutely from nature; and from exciting grace it would be the beginning of efficacious grace only with a restricting qualification, namely, as from a condition without which the good use of that same exciting grace would not exist.
VI. Third, it is proved: for, as St. Thomas teaches, 1. 2. q. 114, art. 9, the gift of perseverance, which is the most important and final efficacious help, does not fall under merit of condignity, because it depends only on divine motion, which is the principle of all merit, and consequently cannot be the terminus of merit. For it is impossible for the same thing, with respect to the same thing, to be the efficient principle of merit and the terminus of merit. Therefore efficacious helps are not infallibly and by a certain law given to those who use sufficient helps well. Otherwise they would fall under merit of condignity, if the good use of sufficient help were from a man already in grace. For a man does not always obtain through merit those things that fall only under merit of congruity, nor does he obtain them infallibly, as Thomists commonly teach in 1. 2. q. 114.7
VII. To the first, it is answered that, if a man is in justifying grace, God does not first abandon him by withdrawing grace itself from him unless the man himself first, by sin, abandons God in the order of nature.8 But if he is in mortal sin, the man himself has already abandoned God by actual or original sin before God abandons him by not giving him efficacious help. For, as St. Thomas teaches from St. Augustine, as a punishment for prior sin, at least original sin, God justly does not give the sinner efficacious help by which he would actually be converted, although he mercifully granted him sufficient help by which he can be converted.9 Second, it is answered that if, when the precept to turn to God is binding, the sinner, who is moved by sufficient help, does not wish to turn but wishes to persist in sin, he already commits a new actual sin, on account of which God justly does not give him efficacious help, since by the newly committed mortal sin, which is incompatible with efficacious help, he places an obstacle to that help. And if someone objects that God’s not giving efficacious help for conversion comes before the man's placing an obstacle to the same help by committing a new sin—for if God had given him efficacious help for conversion, he would not have placed an obstacle and would not have sinned, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2. q. 79, art. 2, in the body—the answer is that, if the lack of efficacious help is considered as a simple negation, we understand that God does not give efficacious help before the man sins; but if it is considered as a privation, or punishment for sin, we understand that the man sins, or wills to persist in sin, before God does not give efficacious help for avoiding sin. Nor is it unreasonable for the same thing, with respect to the same thing under a different aspect, to be prior and posterior, as was said above.
VIII. To the second, it is answered that although a sinner who, by sufficient help, does all that he can do before efficacious help is given to him does not place a new obstacle to efficacious grace, nevertheless he placed an obstacle through prior sin. This always remains until God mercifully removes it by his grace, as St. Thomas teaches in 3. against Gentiles, c. 160 and 161.
To the third it is answered that through sufficient help a sinner can indeed turn to God, as was said in disputation 18, but in fact he will never turn through sufficient help alone. For more is required for someone actually to turn than for him to be able to turn. Nor is it an absurdity, given that a human being has fallen into sin through his own fault and thereby merited eternal damnation, that he necessarily perish whatever he does by the powers of nature or with sufficient help alone. For that necessity is not absolute but qualified, and follows on the supposition of preceding sin. Hence, if he perishes, this is to be imputed not to God but to the human being who sinned. This answer can be confirmed by the authority of St. Jerome, book 3 of his work Against the Pelagians, where, explaining John 6, No one can come to me unless my Father, who sent me, draws him, he says: When he says, ‘No one can come to me,’ he breaks the pride of free choice; for even if someone wishes to go to Christ, unless what follows takes place, ‘unless my Father draws him,’ he desires in vain10 and strives fruitlessly. Therefore, according to Jerome, a human being strives in vain by his innate freedom, even if he endeavors to come to Christ with sufficient help alone, unless he is drawn by the Father through the efficacious help of preoperating grace.
IX. To the fourth it is answered that in the order of efficient causality it comes first that God confers efficacious help on a human being and determines him to consent to exciting grace, and only afterward that the human being determines himself through free choice and wills to consent to that same grace, as is clear from what was said above. Nor is it to be admitted that efficacious grace depends as well, as on a condition without which it would not be, on the free cooperation11 of free choice, as will be clear in disputations 73 and 90.
To the confirmation it is answered: that causal statement is false: Because a human being, excited by God, wills to consent and cooperate with God as he calls, he is therefore helped by God. But this causal statement is true: Because a human being, excited by sufficient grace, is helped by God with efficacious help, he therefore cooperates, as will be clear in disputation 99.
The answer to the fifth is clear from what was said in the preceding disputation.
To the sixth it is answered that no one can merit for himself the gift of perseverance by condign merit, or perform any work such that, once it is done, this gift is granted to him infallibly and under a certain law; for, since it is the efficient principle of meriting, it cannot be the term of merit, as St. Thomas teaches in I–II, question 114, article 9. Augustine's authority is understood, however, of merit of congruity, which does not infallibly obtain what it merits, as was explained above.