De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

Whether, by reason of a greater effort or influx of free choice, with equal help of assisting grace, one person obtains greater justifying grace than another.

I. Some have said that from an unequal effort and influx of free choice according to its freedom it can happen that, when God confers equal help of assisting grace on two men, one of them acts more intensely and disposes himself better for justifying grace than the other; and that, when unequal helps are conferred on those same men, they may act equally, or sometimes the one who is supported by the lesser help may act more. The arguments by which they are persuaded are these.

First, an argument is made from the parable of Matt. 25 and Luke 19 about the talents and money entrusted to servants. For he gave five talents to one, but two to another, and one to another, to each according to his own ability. By these words it is signified that, from the servant's own greater or lesser ability, industry, and effort, it came about that each servant received more or fewer talents.

Second, an argument is made from the Council of Trent, session 6, On Justification, chapter 7. Explaining whence the quantity of habitual grace by which we are justified is measured, the holy Synod says: We are truly named and are just, receiving justice in ourselves, each his own, according to the measure that the Holy Spirit distributes to each as he wills, and according to each person's proper disposition and cooperation. Therefore, according as one, by his freedom, cooperates more intensely with the divine call and the helps of prevenient grace, he obtains greater justifying grace than another.

Third. Free choice, together with God's help, is a free cause exerting causal influence on the act by which it disposes itself for justifying grace. Therefore, by its freedom it can exert greater or lesser effort and causal influence. Therefore, with equal help, one can make a greater effort than another and so obtain greater justifying grace.

II. Fourth. When two partial causes concur together for some effect, other things being equal, a more perfect and intense effect is produced the more one of them strives to produce it, as is clear in the motion of a ship drawn by two. But prevenient grace and free choice concur partially, with the partiality of a cause, for the production of a disposition for grace, like two people drawing a ship. Therefore, other things being equal on the part of prevenient grace, the one who strives more by his innate freedom produces a more intense disposition for habitual grace. The minor premise is proved: that is a partial cause in comparison with an effect which has the partnership of another cause concurring in the production of that same effect. But God has the partnership of another cause concurring in the production of the ultimate disposition for grace, for free choice also concurs in it, as is clear from the Council of Trent. Therefore both God and free choice are two partial causes of that same disposition.

This is confirmed¹: when free choice produces that disposition, it does something from itself; otherwise it would be like something lifeless, behaving merely passively, the opposite of which the Council of Trent defines in session 6, Decree on Justification, chapter 5, and canon 4. Therefore, by reason of free choice's own effort, a more intense disposition for grace arises.

Fifth. Since God does not destroy the nature of free choice but perfects it, his relation to it is such that before the reception of grace, during the very reception of grace, and after it, he leaves free choice its proper place. Therefore he is the author of all good things in such a way that industry and praise are nevertheless preserved for free choice. Otherwise man would not be worthy of praise for having disposed himself for grace. Therefore, by his own industry, one person can dispose himself for grace more intensely than another, when the helps of prevenient grace in those men are entirely equal.

It is confirmed. It can happen, and often does, that with equal helps of prevenient grace one person turns to God according to his freedom while another remains in sin; otherwise they would not act freely. Therefore, in keeping with that same freedom, it can happen that one of them turns more intensely and disposes himself better for grace than another.

Sixth. A human being and an Angel are precisely alike in relation to grace, since it is owed to neither by nature. But greater grace was given to an Angel according to the greater perfection of his natural endowments, as St. Thomas teaches in part I, question 62, article 6. Therefore, the same applies to a human being.

It is confirmed: for this reason St. Thomas teaches there that an Angel of more perfect nature obtained greater grace and glory because he turned to God more strongly and efficaciously, since an Angel acts according to the utmost of his power. Therefore, similarly, to the degree that a human being turns to God through a greater effort of his innate freedom, he obtains greater grace than another, other things being equal on the part of divine help.

Seventh. As Cajetan teaches in part III, question 10, article 4, on St. Thomas's reply to objection 2, given equal light of glory, a more perfect intellect sees God more perfectly than another with a less perfect intellect. The reason is that a more perfect intellect makes a greater effort to see with the same light. St. Thomas also seems to hold this in the same reply to objection 2, where he says that the degrees in the beatific vision are considered more according to the order of grace than according to the order of nature. By these words he seems to presuppose that they are considered also according to the order of nature, though less principally; for a comparative presupposes a positive. Therefore, by the same reasoning, given equal help of prevenient grace, one person will make a greater effort than another, dispose himself better for grace, and thus obtain greater grace.

It is confirmed: other things being equal on the part of the object and medium and on the part of the visible species, someone with more perfect and sharper sight elicits a more perfect act of seeing than another. Therefore, proportionately, the same will occur in the beatific vision and in the disposition for grace.

III. I judge the opposite opinion to be that of St. Augustine and St. Thomas in the places to be cited below, and their disciples follow it. To explain it, note that in this part we can speak of the quantity and perfection of the first habitual grace, or of its increase, and likewise of the disposition by which free choice, moved and roused by God, disposes itself to obtain that grace. If the matter is examined carefully, precisely the same reasoning applies to the increase of habitual grace as to its first infusion. For if, on account of a greater effort of free choice, greater justifying grace is infused into one person than another, the help on God's part being equal, a greater increase of that same grace could also be conferred on account of a greater effort of the same free choice. Hence the resolution of this controversy will be universal and will apply both to the first infusion of habitual grace and to its increase. Second, it should be assumed from what was said above that the helps of prevenient grace are not measured by the quantity of the preceding effort of free choice, but by the mere and gratuitous will of God, who by his hidden yet just judgment gives some greater and others lesser helps of prevenient grace.

IIII. Let the first conclusion, then, be this. The entire quantity of the intensity of the act by which a sinner is proximately prepared for habitual grace is measured according to the quantity of the efficacious help of prevenient grace.² Thus, it is impossible for someone moved by God through efficacious help intense to four degrees to produce a disposition intense to six degrees on account of a greater effort of free choice. Rather, in general, the greater or lesser effort of free choice must be considered according to the quantity of the greater or lesser help and must be equal to it. St. Thomas establishes this conclusion in II–II, question 24, article 3. For he asks there whether charity is infused according to natural capacity, and the same reasoning applies to habitual grace. In the body of the article he says: The quantity of charity does not depend on the condition of nature or the capacity of natural power, but only on the will of the Holy Spirit distributing his gifts as he wills. And in reply to objection 1 he says that the power according to which God gives his gifts to each person is the disposition or preceding preparation, that is, the effort of the one receiving grace; but the Holy Spirit also goes before this disposition or effort, moving the human mind more or less according to his will. By these words he teaches plainly enough that this effort and disposition are measured by the quantity of the motion of the Holy Spirit, who moves more or less according to his will. He teaches the same in part I, question 62, article 6, and in book 1 of the Sentences, distinction 31, question 1, article 4.

Moreover, it is proved as follows. If someone having the help of assisting grace at four were converted with an act at intensity six because of a greater effort of free choice, it would follow that the greater intensity of the disposition beyond the quantity of the help, and likewise the excess of habitual grace by those two degrees, must be attributed to free choice according to its natural capacity and not to the help of divine grace. The consequence seems contrary to 1. ad Corinth. 4: For who distinguishes you? What do you have that you did not receive? It would likewise follow that free choice could puff itself up against God and say: “Thank you, Lord, for helping me with help at four, without which I could not dispose myself for grace; but thanks to myself that I turned with an act at six, for this greater intensity must be attributed to me and my effort.” This too seems to conflict with the Apostle's authority just cited. The consequence is proved plainly: as regards that greater intensity, the act cannot have as its efficient cause the help of grace, for help at four cannot be the efficient principle of an act at six, since an effect cannot exceed the power of its cause. Therefore, one having the help of grace at four cannot produce an act intense at six; or, if he does produce it, that excess does not come from the help, but from the natural power of created free choice. Consequently, as regards that excess, by nature's powers he would distinguish himself from another who, with equal help, produced a less intense act.

V. They reply to this argument that the whole intensity and excess is from God, simultaneously and especially, through the help of prevenient grace. For the total cause of that intensity is neither the help alone nor free choice alone, but free choice together with the help. An effect can exceed the power of its partial cause, but not the power of its total cause. Hence one person's free choice does distinguish him from another, but not by something so proper to himself that it is not principally from God; rather, it is by something so proper that, under every aspect and formal character, it is principally from God through the help of prevenient grace.

But against this: free choice, by its natural capacity, has no proximate active power in relation to a supernatural act by which it is proximately prepared for its justification; it receives that power from the help of rousing and assisting grace, from which, as from the first root, proceeds its application of its own influx and consent. Therefore, free choice together with the help cannot produce a disposition for grace more intense than the help of God moving it; or, if it does, it effects this from itself and not from the help of grace. Thus the person himself distinguishes himself from another by something proper to him which, insofar as it flows from free choice, he does not receive from grace. Nor does the given solution—that it is God alone who principally distinguishes him through the help of grace—suffice. For even Faustus, who wrote contrary to the doctrine of St. Augustine, as we saw above, asserted that grace always has the leading role in works pertaining to human salvation, as is clear from what was said in disputation 2, no. 8.

Moreover, an argument is made against the same solution. If it means that God through the help of prevenient grace is the principal cause of a person eliciting a disposition intense at six, so that by the same help he properly effects as an active cause that a person is converted with an act at intensity six, then the person converted with an act at intensity six has greater prevenient help than another who is converted at four. But if it means that God is the principal cause of that intensity in the manner in which two partial causes work together to pull a ship, one being of greater power and acting more forcefully than the other, as they seem to understand,³ an objection is made: in such partial causes, the effort and influx of one do not depend for their efficient causation on the effort and influx of the other, although the effect depends on both. Rather, each cause in itself, even if it is less principal, contributes its own effort, which it does not receive from the influx and effort of the other, since one cause is not subordinated to the other in causing. Therefore, if grace and free choice are related in this way, it follows that free choice has some influx of its own into that disposition intense at six, which it does not receive from the influx and operation of prevenient grace. But by reason of that greater influx it distinguishes itself from another who is converted at four, for the latter, with the same assisting help, willed to strive only at four. Therefore, by something proper to itself proceeding from its innate freedom, it distinguishes itself from another.

VI. This is confirmed by a remarkable testimony of St. Augustine in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 5, where, weighing the Apostle's passage cited above, For who distinguishes you? he says: Did he perhaps first say, ‘Who distinguishes you?’ with respect to these gifts that are common to all people, and afterward add, ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ For a puffed-up person could say against another: ‘My faith, my justice, or something else distinguishes me.’ The good Doctor, coming to meet such thoughts, says: ‘But what do you have that you did not receive—from whom, unless from the one who distinguishes you from another to whom he did not give what he gave to you?’ By these words he teaches clearly enough that a person has nothing from himself by which he is distinguished from another, even less principally, that he did not receive from the gift of grace. Therefore, according to Augustine, one who is converted more intensely receives from God some help of assisting grace more intense than another.

Our conclusion is proved second. For the holy Fathers commonly teach, against human pride, that whatever good is found in man must be referred to God alone as the first author, and not to free choice. For St. Cyprian says, in book 3 to Quirinus, chapter 11: We must glory in nothing,⁴ since nothing is ours. St. Augustine reports and confirms these words in On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 14, saying: We live rightly if we give everything to God, not partly to him and partly to ourselves. And in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, chapter 32, explaining the Apostle's words, it is not of the one who wills or of the one who runs, but of God who shows mercy, etc., after reporting and attacking a certain explanation that we shall recall in disputation 97, no. 7, he concludes as follows: It remains that the saying, “It is not of the one who wills or of the one who runs, but of God who shows mercy,” be rightly understood for this reason: everything is to be given to God, who both prepares man's good will in order to help it and helps it once prepared. And Gregory Nazianzen, in a certain homily on Matthew 19, explaining the words, It is not of the one who wills, etc., says: Since willing itself is also from God, he most rightly assigned everything to God. And St. Anselm, in On the Concord of Predestination and Free Choice, a little after the beginning, says: Everything is to be attributed to grace, since it is not of the one who wills that he wills, nor of the one who runs that he runs, but of God who shows mercy. And St. Bernard says in the treatise On Grace and Free Choice: Not partly grace and partly free choice, but each accomplishes the whole by an undivided work. Free choice accomplishes the whole, and so does grace; but just as the whole is in free choice, so the whole is from grace. Therefore the whole effort by which free choice prepares itself for grace, and all its intensity, must be referred to the help of assisting grace. We shall adduce other passages of the holy Fathers that confirm our opinion in the answers to the arguments.

All these points are confirmed by arguments through which it will become clear in disputation 85 that grace and free choice are not partial causes of a pious operation, but total causes in their own order, one subordinated to the other. The same is confirmed by arguments through which we shall show in disputation 108 that it is impossible for all the helps of prevenient grace to be equal in two men while one is converted and the other is not. For if the one who is converted receives from God some new help not given to the one who is not converted, it follows by the same reasoning that God gave greater or more intense help to the one who is converted more intensely than was conferred on the one who acts less intensely.

It is proved third: when the mover is of infinite power, whose will no one can resist, the thing moved is moved with as much intensity as the mover moves it. Therefore, if the human will is moved so that it moves itself with intensity six, the help of assisting grace by which God efficaciously moves that same will to free consent must be intense to degree six. Therefore, it is not possible that someone have the help of assisting grace at degree four and by his innate freedom be converted to God with intensity six, or even with intensity two or three; rather, he will always be converted with intensity four, according to the measure of the help.

Second Conclusion. The entire quantity of habitual grace infused into a sinner is ultimately measured according to the quantity of divine motion, or of the help of assisting grace. This conclusion follows from the first by an evident inference: for grace is measured according to the quantity of the preparation of free choice, and that preparation itself is measured according to the quantity of the help of assisting grace, as was shown in the preceding conclusion. Therefore, from the first to the last, the quantity of habitual grace is measured by the quantity of that same help.

VII. It is proved second from the passage in Eph. 4: Grace has been given to each of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. And 1 Cor. 12: All these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each as he wills:⁵ therefore grace in adults is measured by the divine will and the motion of his grace, and not by some natural power. For grace exceeds every natural power and human preparation, as was said above.

VIII. To the first, it is answered with St. Thomas, II–II, question 24, article 3, reply to objection 1, that the ability according to which God gives his gifts to each is the prior disposition or preparation, or the effort of the one receiving grace. But the Holy Spirit also goes before this disposition or effort, moving it more or less according to his will, as was said above. This answer can be confirmed and explained from another Gospel parable, in which it is said that the one who received five talents from God gained five more, and the one who received two talents gained two more. For he does not say, Lord, you gave me five, and I gained eight or three, but I gained five more. Nor does he say, you gave me two and I gained one or three, but I gained two more, according to the measure of the talent given. By this it is signified that the quantity of the cooperation of free choice, through which a man gains eternal life and merits entry into the joy of his Lord, is measured according to the quantity of divine motion, which is signified by the talent given by God.

To the second it is answered that something can be called proper to someone in two ways.⁶ First, because it comes from him and is not freely given by or received from another; in this sense no disposition for grace is proper to a human being, because whatever a human being has he has received from God, as was said above. Second, something is called proper because it proceeds from an intrinsic principle and is elicited freely by this person and not by another human being. In this sense each person receives grace according to his own disposition and cooperation, which he has nevertheless received from the gift of prevenient grace that efficaciously moves free choice, as was said. The words of the Council of Trent are to be understood according to this teaching, as Bañez explains in II–II, question 24, article 3, reply to objection 1. St. Thomas develops the same teaching in his commentary on Matthew, chapter 25, and it is gathered from St. Augustine, book 1 of the Retractions,⁷ where, retracting what he had said in his exposition of certain propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 23—namely, that our believing is ours, but that our doing good is his, who gives the Holy Spirit to those who believe—he says: Both, then, are ours because of the choice of the will, and yet both have been given through the Spirit of faith and charity. And in his second sermon on the Ascension of the Lord, which is sermon 175 for the liturgical year, he says: Let us not exalt ourselves, nor presume on our own merits as though they were our own. By these words he plainly teaches that our merits are not so proper to us as to be in us from ourselves. Therefore, they are proper because they are freely effected by us. But this ours will not be ours unless God gives it.

IX. To the third it is answered that free choice moved and roused by God through a special help is indeed the free cause of the act by which it disposes itself for justifying grace; nevertheless, it is not the first cause of that act but its proximate cause, and therefore is subordinate to the motion of God himself, who is the first cause without qualification. Hence, the intensity of the act of free choice will be according to the quantity of the divine motion.

To the fourth it is answered that the help of grace and free choice are not two partial causes of the preparation for grace, but each is total in its own order, with one subordinated to the other, as will become clear in disputation 85.

To the confirmation it is answered that to act from oneself is taken in two ways. First, it means to perform something from an intrinsic principle moving itself; in this sense, when the will consents and produces a preparation for grace, it acts from itself.⁸ Second, it means to act with the exclusion of another, prior, extrinsic moving principle. In this sense the will does not act from itself, but from God's motion, according to which the very influx of the will is measured, as was said. This answer is gathered from St. Thomas, part I, question 105, article 4, replies to objections 2 and 3, as will be clear in disputation 96.

X. To the fifth it is answered that before receiving grace, in the very reception of grace, and after receiving grace, God leaves a proper place for free choice, insofar as he does not compel or necessitate it by absolute necessity, but always moves it freely according to the condition of its nature.⁹ Hence, in the work of its justification free choice does have its own praise and industry, insofar as it freely brings about a disposition for grace, namely, willing itself. Yet, just as it does not have willing from itself but receives it from the gift of grace, according to the Apostle's words in Philippians 2, For it is God who works in us both the willing and the accomplishing, so too free choice does not have that praise and industry from itself but from the gift of grace, so that whoever glories may glory in the Lord and not in himself. For Isaiah 42 says: I will not give my glory to another. Explaining these words, St. Bernard says in his sermon on the threefold glory:¹⁰ The Apostle knew that glory belongs to the Creator, who says, I will not give my glory to another; but he considered that rational nature so longs for glory that it can scarcely, or never, be restrained from this desire. Therefore, according to the wisdom given to him by God, he found the most salutary counsel, saying: Since we cannot be persuaded not to glory, at least let the one who glories glory in the Lord. St. Prosper develops this answer at great length in book Against the Collator, chapters 36, 37, and 38. There he reproves Cassian because he had said that in matters pertaining to piety something should be attributed to free choice that had not been received from the gift of grace.¹¹ For Cassian, in Conference 13, chapter 14, speaking of Job's patience, says that God's grace did not so protect him from the devil's attack as to leave no place for human power. Later, explaining Matthew 8, I have not found such faith in Israel, he adds: For it would be neither praiseworthy nor meritorious—that is, the Centurion's faith—if Christ had preferred in him what he himself had given. Otherwise he would have said, I did not give such faith in Israel. A little later, explaining Genesis 22¹², God tested Abraham, he says: For divine justice wished to test not the faith that the Lord had inspired in him, but the faith that, once called and enlightened by the Lord, he could display through the freedom of his choice. By these words he attributes something to free choice that was not given through assisting grace. St. Prosper refutes this teaching and, among other points worthy of consideration that he teaches in the cited chapter 36, says: But with a brief conclusion you confirm almost the whole of your¹³ Pelagian doctrine, by saying: For it would be neither praiseworthy nor meritorious if Christ had preferred in him what he himself had given. He repeats the same in chapters 37 and 38. But more has been said about these matters above. In reply to the confirmation, the antecedent is denied; it will be treated expressly in disputation 108.

XI. To the sixth, St. Thomas responds in Part I, question 62, article 6, reply to objection 3 that the case is not the same for a human being and an angel, and the difference consists in this: angels differ from one another in species, while human beings differ only in number.¹⁴ Difference in species is through form, but difference in number is through matter. Hence God, according to the order of his wisdom, mercifully willed to give angels greater or lesser help of grace according to the greater or lesser perfection of their nature, as was explained above. But among human beings he did not maintain this kind of proportion. Hence, both in angels and in human beings, the quantity of their conversion to God, by which they prepared themselves for grace, is taken from the quantity of divine help. For angels did not prepare themselves for grace through a natural conversion to God, but through a supernatural one, which consequently had to be measured according to the quantity of the motion of the Holy Spirit, as it is measured in us. Nevertheless, as was said, God willed to confer more intense help on angels of more perfect nature so that they might obtain greater grace and glory. But the Thomists treat this subject expressly in the cited Part I, question 62 See St. Thomas, II–II, question 24, article 3, reply to objection 3, and Cajetan there. This makes the response to the confirmation clear.

The seventh argument will be answered expressly in the next disputation.

To the confirmation the consequence is denied: the visual power is of the same order in itself as the act of vision, and by its nature has proximate active power to see any visible object; the species is required on the object's part, so that it may be united with the power. But a created intellect without the light of glory has no proximate active power in relation to the beatific vision, but only a radical power, as will be clear in the next disputation, because that vision belongs to a higher order. Hence the cases are not alike.