De gratia Redemptoris

God wills all men to be saved, unless by the salvation of all higher ends should be hindered. Since this is so, God, antecedently to the foreseen good or evil use of the created free will, has elected certain determinate men to a determinate degree of eternal glory (predestination to glory taken precisely, before foreseen merits); the rest he passed over in the same sign of reason (antecedent negative reprobation). But the predestined must merit eternal glory for themselves; and therefore God so orders their life and chooses such means for them that in death they are found in the state of grace and with that merit which corresponds to the glory previously predestined to them. In consequence of the absolute election to glory, therefore, he must give them the gift of perseverance and efficacious graces in such a way that in fact they acquire that merit for themselves. But the life of those who are antecedently negatively reprobate must be so ordered that they do not die in the state of grace; they must therefore receive graces which are finally merely sufficient¹,

The helps of efficacious grace, by which God brings the elect to their end, are nothing other than physical predeterminations to salutary acts. Now physical predetermination is an entity created and received in the creature, which is the physical cause of the act, which in a sign antecedent to its own determination determines the free creature to the placing of a determinate act, in such a way that, this created entity being posited, it is repugnant that the act not be placed, and yet it is placed freely. Without predetermination the act cannot be done; but the conferring of this entity is not in the power of the creature, but depends on the will of God alone. Since physical predetermination has been treated in the treatise De Deo uno², it may suffice to set down a few things here. “The efficacy of the help of prevenient grace and its infallible connexion with the free cooperation of the will is wholly founded on and drawn from, as from its first root, the omnipotence of God, and from the absolute and efficacious decree of his will willing that the man whom he moves be converted and act piously; nor does this efficacy in any way depend, even as on a condition without which it would not be, on the future cooperation of the created will, although the free act by which a man perseveres depends effectively on his will moved by God”³. The intrinsic predetermination of our will “is made through a previous motion received in the will, whose power and efficacy depend on the efficacy of the divine will”⁴. “What therefore we assert in the conclusion is that God, by the previous motion by which he determines the will to act, is the cause not only moral, by way of one alluring, counselling, persuading, or in any way whatever moving interiorly in a moral manner, but also by way of one perfecting, or as a cause truly and properly efficient, of the will's willing this or that good in particular”⁵. “God by an actual efficacious motion after the manner of a physical cause, that is, truly and efficiently, predetermines the will of man to free good acts, so that the will moved by God through such a help freely and infallibly determines itself to the second act to be freely produced”⁶.

Sufficient grace is conceived as follows: “From these principles, which have place in every state, the Thomists infer that a twofold grace is necessary in order to salvation, both in the state of innocence and in the state of fallen nature: the one less perfect and less powerful, which gives only the power, elevates a man and renders him apt for a supernatural act, and is called sufficient; the other more perfect and more powerful, which determines the power and confers the action, and is called efficacious; so that it never happens that this power, which sufficient grace confers, acts or obtains its principal and ultimate effect except by the help of efficacious grace, since otherwise God would cease to be the first and immediate cause of the action...”⁷.

“We say therefore that the grace which so gives a man the faculty of acting well that, if he does not act, the reason is not that he cannot but that he will not — we say, I repeat, that such grace, in its proper and natural sense and according to the common manner of speaking, is and is called sufficient, although for acting in fact the other, efficacious grace is required. To be sure, it is not sufficient in every genus and order, since another of a different genus and order is required; but it is sufficient in its own genus and order: and we say that so to speak is to speak in the proper sense and as men commonly speak. For indeed we say every day that fire is sufficient for burning, although it must further be applied to a combustible subject; that bread is sufficient for nourishing, although it must besides be chewed, swallowed and digested; that the intellect is sufficient for understanding, although it never understands unless the species of another be supplied and it be brought to bear upon its object by a further motion; that the Passion of Christ is sufficient for saving us, even though it does not always save, if its merits be not otherwise applied to us, and six hundred other things... So when we say that grace is sufficient for acting well, that phrase, in its proper sense and according to the common manner of speaking, does not mean that nothing else is required for acting in fact in any other genus whatever, but only that, without any other power of the same order, it confers on us a sufficient faculty of acting well, if we will. Wherefore it is ignorantly objected against us that we abuse terms, and that we teach a sufficient grace which does not suffice”⁸.

“This false notion of sufficient grace, then, which our adversaries invent for us — namely that it is a faculty sterile of itself, from which God at will withdraws the influx necessary to reduce it to act, so that it should always happen to be frustrated of its effect — must be corrected. For according to us sufficient grace is the evangelical seed, containing in its power that principle of the good work, and would in fact attain it, unless a man by his defective liberty halted the course of its power; as good seed committed to the earth would bear fruit, unless it were hindered by some defect of the earth. To be sure, we do not deny, but hold for certain, that in order that a man be not wanting to sufficient grace and consent to it, efficacious grace is required; but (mark this well) in order that he be wanting to it, resist it, sin, efficacious grace is not required, but his defective will suffices; and because that resistance, that sin, precedes in nature and order the privation of efficacious grace, therefore it is true to say that a man is deprived of efficacious grace because by sinning he resists sufficient grace, but not that he sins because he is deprived of efficacious grace”⁹. “By grace taken entitatively as sufficient a man is placed in the state of not sinning, but by his own defect he halts the course of this grace, and brings it about that it remains merely sufficient”¹⁰.

But that these last points may be rightly understood, it must be recalled that according to this system, in order that a man be able to place a free act of resistance against grace, he needs physical predetermination, and that God must predetermine him to the material element of formal sin¹¹. The matter, then, is to be conceived thus: God confers sufficient grace on a man; he predetermines the same man to the material element of sin, by which he resists this grace; the man formally sins; by this sin he renders the grace merely sufficient; in punishment of this sin he is deprived of efficacious grace, by which he would be predetermined to a salutary act.

From what has been said it is clear: sufficient grace and efficacious grace differ intrinsically in their entity; efficacious grace is by its internal nature conjoined with the salutary act, since it is predetermination to that act. Therefore if to two men, however much they differ from one another, the same efficacious grace is given, in both the salutary act follows; therefore any man whatever is converted with the grace with which this man is converted.

What is to be said of this opinion? How does it stand in relation to the five truths indicated above¹²?

1. As has been more fully proved in the treatise on the one God, in this opinion that universal saving will of God which the sources set forth does not remain — the will, namely, which is universal in every sign antecedent to final impenitence; the saving will ceases to be universal in that sign in which God exclusively elects some to glory¹³, 2) The predilection for the elect is preserved, but in such a way that offence is given against the universal saving will of God.

2. Merely sufficient grace does not remain truly sufficient, such as the sources set forth. According to the sources, God confers sufficient grace from a sincere will that a good act be done; on God's part all things are present so that the act can be placed; but the act does not follow because man does not will to use the help, therefore through man's fault, and on that account man is punished by God.

But such is not sufficient grace in this system. For it does not appear how the conferring of sufficient grace can proceed from a serious saving will of God. For finally efficacious grace is prepared for a man in this system because God has antecedently and independently of the use of free will absolutely elected him to glory; but to those antecedently negatively reprobate God must prepare graces that are finally not efficacious.

The same must be said as regards individual salutary acts: because God antecedently wills absolutely this determinate good act in this man, therefore he confers on him the corresponding efficacious grace, the physical predetermination to this act; consequently it seems that one must say: because he does not have such a will of a salutary act in another man, he does not give him efficacious grace, but merely sufficient grace and a physical predetermination to the act of resistance against this grace. But how, by conferring sufficient grace in this way, God wills that man use it, is difficult to understand.

Moreover, according to the sources all things are present on God's part so that a good act can be placed; but in this system sufficient grace does indeed give the power of the good act, yet that act cannot be done in fact unless efficacious grace be present; something therefore is lacking on God's part, namely the physical predetermination to the good act, without which the act cannot be done. Therefore in the text of Is 5, cited in the earlier thesis, where the Lord asks, “What is there that I ought to do more?” the answer seems simple: Thou shouldst also have given physical predetermination for bearing fruit, and without doubt we should have borne it; but because thou gavest us a “sufficient” grace and together with it a predetermination to the act of resistance against grace, therefore we have not borne fruit.

Likewise Matth 11, when the Lord reproaches the inhabitants of Corozain and Bethsaida, the sense seems altogether clear: with those helps which these received, the Tyrians and Sidonians would have done penance, if they had received them. But according to Alvarez the sense is: the Tyrians and Sidonians would have been converted “from another cause, which Christ presupposes, namely from the efficacious help which God had resolved to confer on them, if those signs had been done among them which the Lord worked in Corozain and Bethsaida”¹⁴. Rightly does Pesch say of such an exegesis: “Therefore the men of Corozain are reproached because they were not converted by those graces with which alone it is repugnant that actual conversion be combined, whereas the Tyrians and Sidonians would have been converted with another grace, with which conversion cannot be combined in act. — This answer of Alvarez seems sufficient to show that the doctrine of the Bañezians cannot be true”¹⁵.

The same holds of Matth 23, 37, where the Lord says that he indeed willed to gather the children of Jerusalem, but Jerusalem would not. In this system the sense would be: the Lord, because he willed to gather them, gave them sufficient grace and together with it a physical predetermination to the act of resistance against this grace. If that were so, it should rather be said that the Lord did not will to gather the children of Jerusalem. For if there is present a physical predetermination to the act by which grace is resisted, it is impossible for a man not to resist and not to sin; nor is it in man's power to receive this or that physical predetermination.

But in the text cited above Billuart says that “a man is deprived of efficacious grace because by sinning he resists sufficient grace”; therefore it is man's fault if he does not have efficacious grace. It seems therefore to follow that God waits for the decision of free will and makes the conferring or non-conferring of efficacious grace depend on its consent or dissent? Moreover, consent and resistance depend on the corresponding physical predetermination, whose conferring depends on God alone. And if this argument is pressed further, they take refuge from actual moral defect to original sin, which nevertheless is no longer present in the baptized, and so this refuge no longer suffices; wherefore they take refuge further in the natural defectibility of the created will, which nevertheless only states the possibility of resistance against grace, not actual resistance, nor has any character of fault¹⁶.

Finally, from the very examples which they bring forward to illustrate the sufficiency of grace, it appears that it is not truly sufficient. It must be noted that the question is not whether in some sense that grace can be called sufficient, but whether it has that sufficiency which the sources attribute to sufficient grace, namely such that the non-use of this sufficient grace, or resistance against it, has the character of fault in a man¹⁷. Fire has the power of burning, but it cannot burn anything unless it be applied to a combustible thing; food has the power of nourishing, but it cannot nourish anyone unless it be eaten, etc. In like manner by sufficient grace a man has the power to place a good act, but he cannot place that act unless efficacious grace be added¹⁸. But if a man has some power which cannot pass into act unless something be added which is not in his power, it cannot be imputed to him as a fault if the act is not placed. Thus no one has fault from the fact that he does not place the act of understanding, if the species necessary for this intellection are lacking, and if the man himself cannot procure these species for himself but must receive them from another who nevertheless does not confer them. If therefore such only is the sufficiency of sufficient grace, that the good act cannot follow unless efficacious grace come, the predetermination to the good act, and this is not in man's power, man does not commit a fault if he does not place the act: therefore there is not such a sufficiency of sufficient grace as the sources attribute to it.

4. The threefold infallibility, objective, cognitive and affective, of the connexion of efficacious grace with the salutary act is explained.

5. Freedom under the motion of grace is not preserved. For according to the Bañezians efficacious grace is the physical predetermination to a good act; but true freedom cannot be combined with physical predetermination. This has been copiously proved in the treatise De Deo uno¹⁹, where it has also been shown that the various escapes which have been devised are empty. However freedom be defined, this is certainly required, that the faculty determine itself, and therefore be undetermined antecedently to its determination. But physical predetermination is an entity created and received in the creature, whose conferring or non-conferring does not depend on the free creature, and by which the creature, antecedently to its own determination (for it is the cause of this determination), is already intrinsically and physically determined to the placing of a determinate act. Therefore in relation to this act it is no longer free.

Hence it is also that the doctrine of the councils on freedom under the motion of grace can be accommodated to this system only in a violent sense. For if the Church teaches²⁰ that a man receives grace which he can cast away; that free will cooperates with God who excites and calls, and can dissent if it will; that a man renders free obedience to God by consenting to and cooperating with the grace which he can resist²¹; without doubt the sense is: to the same grace with which a man cooperates, which therefore is efficacious, he can, if he wills, dissent, he can resist the same; but if this grace by its nature physically predetermines to one act, so that by the very nature of this grace, of this created entity received in the creature, it is metaphysically repugnant that that determinate act not be placed, a man can no longer cast away this grace, dissent from this grace or resist it. According to the Bañezians it would have to be said: a man can dissent or resist if not this grace, this physical predetermination, were present, but another, namely the physical predetermination to the act of dissent or resistance. They try indeed to escape by distinguishing: a man cannot conjoin actual dissent, the act of dissenting, with the physical predetermination, but the power of dissenting is present. But now, to be able to cast away grace, to be able to dissent from grace, to resist, according to the common manner of speaking, means to be able to conjoin the act of dissent with this grace. He who cannot conjoin actual dissent with grace, and that from the internal nature of this grace, independently and antecedently to his own election, cannot dissent from this grace or resist it, that is, he does not have the power of dissenting; for a power which does not state a power to the act is not a power.

The Bañezians nevertheless think that the doctrine of physical predetermination necessarily follows from the supreme dominion of God. But a distinction must be made: it follows from that idea of God's dominion which they have fashioned for themselves — granted; from that supreme dominion of God which according to the sources of revelation really exists — I deny it. For the supreme dominion of God is such that true freedom of the creature can be combined with it. Hence in the treatise De Deo uno²² we have said: “The dominion of God must be conceived as it really is, not as anyone might imagine it to himself. But what it really is, is best known from the sources of revelation. In these, indeed, the dominion of God never appears such as would demand the determination of the creature by a divine physical motion prior in nature to the creature's determining itself; on the contrary, they teach the freedom of the creature. Every conception, therefore, of the dominion of God which cannot be combined with the freedom of the creature is erroneous; and so that conception of God's dominion would also be erroneous from which there would logically follow a physical predetermination efficacious by its nature or from within, since this, according to what has been said, would not leave created freedom unharmed.” In these questions it is dangerous to proceed by reason alone, and reason in its inquiries and explanations must always be regulated by what revelation provides. The inmost defect of this system seems to be a defect of method. “Our adversaries a priori fashion some concept of God as supreme lord and first free being, with which the existence of created freedom conflicts; they therefore commit a like fault in method as the Occasionalists, who form that concept of God as first cause to which all created causality is repugnant, or even the Pantheists, who lay down that idea of the absolute being by which the coexistence of contingent beings is excluded”²³.

If finally it is said that the manner in which freedom is reconciled with physical predetermination is a mystery, the answer must be: 1) God has nowhere revealed this mystery, but it is a figment of this system; now we believe mysteries on God's revealing them, not on a theologian's or philosopher's opining; 2) it does not seem to be a mystery but rather a contradiction; for to be determined and undetermined in respect of the same thing in the same sign are contradictories.

Therefore, although certain things are explained in this system, yet because it seems to offend against several truths which are certainly established, it is not to be admitted; therefore the efficacy of grace is not to be explained by physical predetermination.