Disputatio de efficacia praevenientis auxilii gratiae, cum responsione et censura (1599-1600)

It is asked: whether the whole efficacy of prevenient grace is from God as from its sole total and properly efficient cause.

It is asked secondly: whether such an aid of prevenient grace is called and is truly and completely efficacious of itself and precisely as from God.

It is asked thirdly: whether rather this efficacy is from God and from the consent of free choice as from two properly efficient causes.

It is asked fourthly and consequently: whether it is situated in the power of free choice to render the aids of prevenient grace properly efficacious or inefficacious.

It is asked fifthly and lastly: whether, with a truly and properly efficacious aid of prevenient grace posited, the dissent of free choice can stand together with it.

Reply of Father Master Bañez

1. — To the first question, according to the ancient doctrine of Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine, it is to be answered affirmatively. For I suppose that by the name of efficacy there is understood in that interrogation not the effect itself of prevenient grace, but there is understood the actually efficacious power which is in prevenient grace. For God alone gives this efficacy when He illumines, when He breathes into the mind of the man whom He wills absolutely to draw to Himself through actual faith or love. Otherwise God would await the human will, which is against the fourth canon of the Council of Orange.

2. — To the second question it is answered consequently in the affirmative, provided that by those words "completely efficacious of itself" there is not understood anything concerning the completion of the effect, which is the good use of free choice in deliberating and consenting; for this good use is not completed without our consenting. And yet this use of free choice is the infallible effect of efficaciously prevenient grace. And this is the mystery which the new theologians say they cannot understand: namely how that consent is free, if it follows infallibly from an aid of grace efficacious of itself. And wishing to comprehend the judgments of God, which are a great deep, they do not notice that they are opposed to the will of the divine good pleasure, although God has done all whatsoever He willed in heaven and on earth, Psal. 139. And as Augustine says in the Enchiridion, ch. 95: 'how would God be omnipotent if He willed to do something which He did not do? And — what is more unworthy — He did not do it for this reason, that what He willed would not come to be: did the omnipotent will of man impede it?' Thus far Augustine.

But we, truly Thomists and Augustinians, thus understand with Saint Augustine the saying of the Apostle at Rom. 9: Therefore it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. On which passage Augustine above in ch. 32 rejects the erroneous solution of certain men who say that it was said "not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy" because the will of man does not suffice unless there be also the mercy of God, since it comes to be from both together.

Against whom Augustine argues thus: that by equal reason the contrary would be said — it is not of God that showeth mercy, but of man that willeth — since the mercy of God alone does not fulfill it. Augustine concludes that, just as no Christian will dare to say "it is not of God that showeth mercy, but of man that willeth," it remains that for this reason it is rightly understood to have been said "not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy," so that the whole may be given to God, who both prepares the good will of man for aiding and aids it once prepared. And so the good will is counted among the gifts of a merciful God. Saint Augustine, moreover, calls the good will the very good act of free choice.

3. — To the third question the answer is clear from what has been said. For we deny that the consent of free choice is the efficient cause of the efficacious power of prevenient grace, and hence there are not two efficient causes of that efficacy of the divine aid, although free choice is the cause of its own consent, both physical and moral, yet always subordinated to the first cause, which in both ways also concurs to that consent.

The new theologians also say that they cannot understand this, and they strive by their own judgment to comprehend the mystery of the justification of the ungodly and to propose it to the Christian multitude as comprehensible. But we are content openly to dissolve the arguments of our opponents; the mystery of justification, however, which pertains to the sixth article of divinity, we do not rashly attempt to demonstrate directly, neither as to its substance nor as to the manner in which it comes about mightily and sweetly.

4. — To the fourth interrogation the answer is clear from the reply to the second and third. For we deny that it is situated in the power of free choice to render the aids of prevenient grace properly efficacious or inefficacious. The reason is that the divine aids which are called and are efficacious bear with them from God their efficacious power, although not without our consenting do they effect what God wills with absolute will to effect. And so the divine aids receive no power from us, but confer efficacious strengths upon our free choice, so that we infallibly use well the aid of prevenient grace and it may will freely what God wills it to will freely.

5. — To the last interrogation we deny that these two can stand together: this man has a truly and properly efficacious aid of prevenient grace, and he has an actual dissent of free choice. Let Saint Thomas be read, 2. 2, q. 24, a. 11, where he says: 'It is impossible for these two to be true together: that the Holy Spirit wills to move someone to an act of charity, and that he himself loses charity by sinning.' The reason for this is that 'the Holy Spirit infallibly works whatsoever He has willed.'

And so we do not wish to know more than it behooves us to know, but we walk by the safe and royal way, not denying what is most certain because we comprehend what is hidden. For these two extremes are most certain: man by his free choice believes and is converted to God; and God by the efficacious aid of His grace converts man to Himself when it is His good pleasure. This, however, is obscure and cannot be comprehended in this life: how, with so great an efficacy of divine grace, free choice exercises its freedom.

6. — But if the new theologians, because they wish nothing to be reserved from their own judgment, deny the efficacy of divine grace as it is from God — affirming that free choice is at least a partial cause of that efficacy, and that God's aid is called efficacious from the outcome, from the fact that free choice uses it and effects what God has commanded or is wont to have done — since otherwise they do not understand how man is free in believing or in loving God: we on the contrary, led by better reason, say that it is less intelligible how God is omnipotent if He did not do what He willed to do and, as Augustine says in the place cited above, did not do it because the will of man prevented Him from doing it.

It will therefore be safest for both parties: to refuse to comprehend what is incomprehensible, and to confess what is most certain — both that God mightily and sweetly moves our free choice to the act of love of God, so that He does not derogate from its freedom, and yet that free choice may not glory in itself concerning its inborn freedom, by which man distinguishes himself from another who, forestalled by equal aid, has resisted divine grace, refusing to consent to the divine inspiration. For where divine grace is equal in both, nature itself distinguishes itself, and the total cause of this difference is man himself through his inborn freedom.

7. — I know that certain theologians of the Society of Jesus have devised a new solution, among whom is Francisco Suarez in the opuscule De concursu, motione et auxilio Dei, book 3, ch. 20, where on the part of God conferring the aid he posits a certain moral inequality, which consists in nothing other than this: that the same aid of grace, given at an opportune time — although absolutely and in the genus of being it is not greater — is nevertheless morally and respectively a greater benefit than if it were given at another time. Thus far he. From this it follows that that difference — why one is converted and another is not converted — is to be ascribed to free choice together with the opportuneness of the time, and not to the real power of the grace of God, who by His efficacious aid draws this man to Himself and does not draw the other.

Surely those who thus wish to investigate why God draws this man and does not draw that man act against the counsel of Saint Augustine, who on that passage of John 6 — No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him — says: 'Why He draws this man and does not draw that man, do not wish to investigate if you do not wish to err.'

8. — I pass over now how difficult it is to investigate what effects the opportuneness of the time: whether the heavenly bodies and their concurrence, or the complexion and disposition of the human body. For the soul is the same and free choice is the same. Then too they could not render a cause why He has given aid at an opportune time to this man and not to another, apart from the divine will. Hence they walk in a circle and do not at once attribute that difference to the efficacious aid of the divine will as it proceeds from it. Can it be that Paul was converted because aid was given to him at an opportune time, when he was called by Christ in the blazing crime? Can the difference of the thieves who were crucified with Christ be ascribed to the opportuneness of the time, or to the complexion and disposition of the body?

9. — Farewell then to such opportunenesses, and let the grace of God who calls be praised, who has mercy on whom He wills and hardens whom He wills: namely through the subtraction of efficacious aid, which to those to whom He gives it He gives mercifully, while to those to whom He does not give it He at times justly denies it, yet He never unjustly fails to give it. Yet in the separation of the good and evil angels, how will they be able to attribute the efficacy of the aid to the opportuneness of the time?

For the highest angel, the most advanced of all, in what better opportuneness of time could he have received God's aid than when he in fact received it? And the very many angels of the lesser hierarchy who persevered, submitting themselves to the divine precept by referring themselves and all their own to God, the supernatural ultimate end — can it be that that humility, that love of God above all things, followed from an equal physical aid — indeed, as they say, at times from a lesser aid — on account of a different opportuneness of the time?

Let those who wish to know more than they ought take heed of these things. We for our part prefer with religious ignorance humbly to venerate the omnipotence, wisdom, justice, and mercy of the divine majesty than to inquire into the reason of the mysteries of God. For he that searcheth into majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory (Prov. 25, 27).

(Roma. Biblioteca Angelica. Cod. 862, ff. 272-73).