Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

The present Question is entangled in so many and such great rough places of difficulties that St. Augustine justly called it, in Epist. 1., most difficult and intelligible to few; the reason for this difficulty he gives in lib. De gratia Christi cap. 4: This question, in which free choice, the will and the grace of God are disputed, is so difficult to discern, that when free choice is defended, the grace of God seems to be denied; when, however, the grace of God is asserted, free choice is thought to be taken away. Hence in lib. 2. De peccatorum meritis et remissione cap. 18. he affirms that he is so hemmed in by these middle perplexities that he hardly finds wherefrom to extricate himself: Reason itself, he says, most vehemently distresses any one of us who seeks, lest we so defend grace that we seem to take away free choice. Again: lest we so take away free choice that by proud impiety we seem ungrateful to the grace of God. Nevertheless, since the resolution of the present Question contributes most greatly to overthrowing the false opinion of the heretics concerning the fatality and absolute necessity of divine Predestination, and also to calming the agitations of mind of certain devout persons, which ignorance of the present resolution stirs up: therefore one must strive with all one's might to establish this concord of divine Predestination with human freedom, which, that it may be done more clearly

Note 1. Four things especially concur to complete and fully, entirely form predestination. The first is divine foreknowledge, by which God from eternity clearly and openly beholds whatever is to come to be, not only in every circumstance of time, but even through eternity itself, and that by one indivisible, simple and unvaried gaze of His divine intellect; and so He knows how many men, and which, can be created, with what helps they are to be advanced to eternal beatitude, and which will use the divine helps well or badly even unto death. The second is the very act of the divine will, by which God from eternity decreed that He would create these and not those possible men in such and such a circumstance of time, and would supply them such suitable means, by which they could attain eternal life, if they willed; and that finally He would bestow eternal glory on those who will use these means well. The third is the preparation and gift of grace, which is made in us without us: For God makes the unjust just, without any merit of their preceding will, says St. Augustine, lib. De Bono perseverantiae capite 24. Finally, the fourth is man's free choice itself, concurring with grace itself exciting or sanctifying, to establish man's salvation and to merit eternal glory; for as St. Augustine says, Serm. 15. De verbis Apostoli: without your will there will not be in you the justice of God; He who made you without you does not justify you without you.

Note 2. Concerning the resolution of the present Question, there are three maximally opposed opinions. Of these, the First detracts too much from free choice: the Second grants too much to it: the Third weighs both on an equal scale and reconciles them. The first indeed was that of the Praedestinatians, who affirmed that through the infallible certainty and invariable firmness of predestination all freedom is taken away from men, and the human choice is so closed off, that it is no longer in the power of the predestined man to deviate from his salvation. This impious opinion, long since extinct, Calvin raised up again from the dead, lib. 3. Institutionum, affirming that the Predestined and the Reprobate are so destined and bound from eternity to good or to evil, that they can in no way recoil from it, but are held necessarily to assent to it or to resist it; this inevitable necessity he partly traces back to the infallibility of foreknowledge and of the divine decree, partly to the efficacy of grace, as will appear in the following Article. — The Pelagians and the Semipelagians embraced another wholly opposite opinion; the former indeed affirming that predestination is nothing other than that general will of God, by which God decreed from eternity that men, endowed with free choice and capable by the proper powers of nature of embracing good or rejecting evil, would be illumined by the light of faith and the preaching of the Gospel, and that the law would be proposed to them; those who are foreseen as going to keep it will certainly obtain eternal life, but otherwise they will incur eternal damnation. The Semipelagians, however, contended that divine Predestination supposes in God a general will of conferring the grace of regeneration, and also eternal glory, on all those who by their own natural powers would want to attain these goods by praying, knocking and seeking; so that God specially chose for glory those whom He foreknew would use well, by their own freedom, the goods and gifts of nature, by which they could attain the goods and gifts of grace. — The third opinion, however, holding the middle between this Scylla and Charybdis, contends that the infallibility of predestination in no way extinguishes man's free choice, although it requires the concurrence of grace in all things and affirms the infallibility of the decree and of foreknowledge; which opinion, that we may defend it

Note 3. Freedom is customarily defined, a power which, with all things required for acting being posited, can act or not act. Hence a twofold indifference is required in it: one indeed on the part of the object, which can be proposed by the intellect under a different notion as lovable or hateful; and this is called objective, or radical, indifference, because the root of freedom is the intellect itself proposing the object with indifference: the other on the part of the will, which of itself is indifferent not only to either act of love or of hatred, but also to the election or suspension of either act; and this is called indifference as to specification and as to exercise. — Again, the Thomists distinguish another twofold indifference: one which they call versatile, vague, indeterminate, potential and in actu primo, which consists in potentia or faculty by which the will can will to choose, or not choose, and determine itself to loving, or not loving, this or that object, the divine motion and the application of that will to act not yet being considered. The other actual, exercised and attempered, which, they say, is the actual election itself and determination of the will through the divine motion, which they therefore call premotion, or predetermination; not that, they say, the particle pre designates a priority of duration or of time; but only a priority of nature, or of causality and dependence, by which that is said to be prior, on which another depends as on a cause, which is also called priority of the instant, not in which, but from which. In this latter indifference indeed they will that the essence of freedom be formally placed, which they say is not harmed, but perfected, by the predetermining decree itself and by premotion itself: and so both are rightly reconciled in this way; whether these things are true, will be discussed below.

Therefore three things are to be resolved in this Question: First, whether divine Predestination truly obstructs created freedom. Second, whether the Thomists set forth a legitimate concord of both. Third, how in the end both truly ought to be reconciled.

First conclusion. — The certainty of divine Predestination does not obstruct human freedom. This is common among Catholics, and it is proved: If the certainty of divine Predestination were to take anything away from man's choice, it would do so most of all either by reason of the eternal foreknowledge of God, by which God foresees all things with a certain and unvaried gaze; or by reason of the immovable and invariably standing eternal decree of God, by which He also determined that the predestined man would infallibly consent to grace calling him, and would end his life in sanctifying grace; or finally by reason of the exciting grace, which in time He is to give to the predestined man, to which he will not be able to resist: but from neither side can this be inferred: therefore, etc. The major is established from the first note. The minor, however, has already been sufficiently proved as to the first part in the Disputation on the Knowledge of God, where we demonstrated that divine Foreknowledge does not offend freedom. And again it is confirmed: divine Foreknowledge also bears upon sinful actions: but it brings no necessity upon the will to sin, as is established from St. Augustine lib. 3. De vera Innocentia cap. 379.

God, he says, compels no one to sin; yet He foresees those who will sin by their own will. Why, then, does the just one not punish those things which, foreseeing, He does not compel? For just as no one by his memory compels the deeds that have passed; so God by His foreknowledge does not compel the deeds that are to come: and just as a man remembers some things which he does, yet did not do all the things which he remembers: so God foreknows all things of which He Himself is the author; yet He is not the author of all the things which He foreknows; of those, however, of which He is not the evil author, He is the just avenger: therefore neither does He impose any necessity upon the will, so that it operate justly and uprightly.

It is confirmed 2. From the fact that God in fact knows and sees me speaking, I speak no less freely: therefore from the fact that He foresees that I shall speak, I shall speak no less freely. The consequence is evident; because all things are most present to God from eternity: For not, says St. Augustine lib. 11. De Civitat. cap. 20.¹ after our manner does He look ahead to what is future, or behold what is present, or look back upon what is past; nor, as he adds in lib. De Praedestinatione et gratia capite 3., remembering, is He rolled back into the past, nor, hoping, does He proceed into the future; or as he writes in Sermone 2. in Ps. 101., There is not there 'was' and 'will be', because both what He made is not, and what will be is not yet: but whatever is there is nothing other than 'is'; or finally as he says lib. 1. Confessionum, c. 6.² Your years are one day: and your day is not daily, but today; because your today does not yield to tomorrow, nor succeed yesterday: therefore since God has all things present, and all things which are to be,

have already been accomplished for God; it plainly stands that just as one who sees a craftsman working at some work is not said to preclude his free working, nor to determine him to operating necessarily, so neither does foreknowledge impose necessity upon the things known, especially since, as we have already proved more than enough, things are not for this reason future, because God foresaw them, but rather God certainly foresaw them because they are future.

It is confirmed 3. So far is it from being the case that divine foreknowledge harms human freedom, that rather it presupposes and perfects it; for as St. Augustine himself speaks, lib. 3. De libero arbitrio cap. 3.: Since God is prescient of our will, that will of which He is prescient will itself be: therefore He will also be prescient of the power; not therefore through His foreknowledge is power taken away from me, which for that reason will be present to me more certainly, because He whose foreknowledge is not deceived foreknew that it would be present to me.

The same minor is evident as to the second part: namely, that the eternal decree of moving the predestined man to consent to exciting grace does not obstruct man's free choice. The reason for this our Alexander of Hales sets forth in the first part, q. 26. memb. 6. art. 2. And the Seraphic Bonaventure in 1. distinctione 12. art. 2. quaest. 1. And the Subtle Doctor in distinctione 41, quaestione unica, namely that God from eternity decrees nothing to be accomplished by the predestined man in time without the foreseen and pre-known determination of his will: therefore when He decrees, in that preparation and gift of grace, the future consent of the predestined man, He does not predetermine that consent without the free cooperation of his will: or as St. Bonaventure speaks: Predestination is not the cause of salvation except by including merit, and so by saving free choice. For predestination imports two things, both the notion of foreknowledge and the notion of cause. Insofar as it expresses the notion of cause, it does not necessarily posit the effect, because it is not a necessitating cause, but one through the will: and again it is not the whole cause, but with another contingent cause, namely with free choice: and the rule is, that whenever an effect depends on a necessary and variable cause, the necessary is denominated from the variable as from the particular, because the denomination is from the particular cause; moreover, the effect which depends on a contingent cause is also contingent. Hence these will appear more evidently from what will be said in the following Article, treating of the causes and the mode of predestination.

Finally, the same minor is evident as to the third part, namely, that exciting grace brings no necessity upon freedom: for the Council of Trent openly defined this, sess. 6. canone 4., saying:

If anyone shall say that man's free choice cooperates in nothing by assenting to God exciting and calling, whereby it disposes and prepares itself to obtain the grace of justification; and that it cannot dissent, if it will, but like some inanimate thing does nothing at all and behaves merely passively, let him be anathema.

This will appear more fully in the treatise on Grace, where we shall prove that exciting grace produces consent, not by compelling and necessitating the will, but by gently alluring and moving it; nevertheless — It is confirmed: If grace and predestination necessarily determined the will of the predestined man to consent, it would follow that he could never sin and fall away from grace: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The Calvinists admit the major: whence the minor is proved: the will of the predestined man, as long as it acts among the living, is always indifferent to sinning or not sinning, and so can fall away from grace: whence the Apostle warns: Let him who stands take heed lest he fall; indeed Christ Himself exhorts the Apostles: Walk while you have the light of Grace, lest perchance the darkness of sin overtake you. — Next; it is established by experience that even the most eminent of the Predestined have fallen into the gravest sins; as is evident concerning David, Peter, Paul, Magdalene, Augustine and the rest: therefore the consequence is that neither predestination, nor exciting or sanctifying grace, induces an impossibility of sinning. — Finally, perseverance and assiduous continuance in the state of sanctifying grace is not per se required for the attainment of eternal glory; for it suffices for this, that the predestined man persevere for some time in grace and end his life with it: therefore, etc.

You will say 1. He who is truly predestined does not sin, nor can he sin: therefore predestination brings necessity upon the will and induces an impossibility of sinning. The antecedent is proved from that passage of the first Epistle of John, cap. 3.: Whoever is born of God does not commit sin: because His seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God, which context indeed is understood of the predestined, as almost all of its Interpreters affirm: therefore, etc.

I deny the antecedent. To its proof I say; First, that St. Jerome in lib. 2. contra Iovinianum asserts that that impossibility of sinning is to be understood in the composite sense, so that the predestined man, as long as he subsists in the state of grace and of the adoption of the sons of God, does not sin, nor can he sin, because there is no agreement of Christ with Belial, nor any concord of the darkness of sin with the light of grace. — Second, St. Augustine in lib. De peccatorum meritis cap. 8. explains this impeccability in a formal sense, so that the faculty of sinning does not come from divine filiation itself, but from the versatile, weak and free human will:

We perfect, he says, because we are not yet saved, therefore not yet fully renewed, not yet even sons of God, but sons of the world; we perfect therefore the renewal, and the just life, through that by which we are sons of God, and by this we cannot sin at all, until even that by which we are still sons of the world is wholly transmuted in us: for by this we can still sin, and so it comes about that he who is born of God does not sin, and if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us; let that therefore be brought to completion by which we are sons of the flesh and of the world, and let that be perfected by which we are sons of God and renewed by the Spirit.

— Third, St. Bernard interprets that impossibility of sinning of the ease with which the predestined rise again from sins:

For neither can we here, he says in the book De Gratia, et libero arbitrio cap. 9., be entirely without sin and misery; yet with grace helping, we can be neither overcome by sin, nor by misery; although however Scripture speaks, that everything born of God does not sin, but this is said of those predestined to life: not that they do not sin at all, but that sin is not imputed to them, which is either punished by condign penance; or is hidden in Charity, for Charity covers a multitude of sins.

— Finally I say, that this impeccability is to be taken for the greatest difficulty, so that the predestined man, having considered and examined all those benefits with which he is most abundantly heaped and enriched by God, cannot be led to offend Him; in almost that sense in which the most holy Patriarch Joseph, having weighed with attentive mind all the goods with which he had been gifted by his Lord, said in Genesis 39.: How then can I do this evil, and sin against my God? Therefore, whichever of these solutions you accept, it does not follow that predestination induces necessity and forecloses human freedom.

You will say. Every cause which is necessary in itself, and necessarily posits its effect, also simpliciter induces necessity in the effect: but predestination in respect of salvation is such: therefore, etc. The minor is evident: for predestination, since it is an internal act of God, is altogether necessary; for nothing intrinsic to God, a supremely necessary being, can be contingent. Moreover it also necessarily brings about the effect; for it necessarily follows: if Peter is predestined, he will be saved: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the major. Every cause which is necessary both as to entity and as to operation, and which necessarily posits its effect with an absolute and antecedent necessity, excluding every free determination of the will, induces necessity in the effect, I concede: every cause which is indeed necessary as to entity, but not as to extrinsic operation, and which necessarily posits its effect with only a consequent necessity and from a presupposed free determination of the will, produces its effect with a necessity excluding freedom, I deny. To the minor I say, that predestination is indeed necessary as to entity, but contingent and free as to its termination; likewise it is necessary only with a consequent necessity and from the presupposed divine decree, as well as from the foreseen free determination of man; and so it does not obstruct freedom.

Second conclusion. — Human freedom is not rightly reconciled by the Thomists with the infallible certainty of divine Predestination through the predetermining decree.

Proof 1. Through that by which the indifference of the will is destroyed and dissolved, human freedom does not agree with predestination: but through that premoving and predetermining decree the indifference of the will is dissolved and destroyed: therefore, etc. The major is evident, for it is certain that the freedom of the will is placed in indifference, as was said in the 3rd Note. The minor is proved: the indifference of the will is dissolved through that by which the will is absolutely determined and bound to one: but by the premoving and predetermining decree the will is so determined to one act, or to one object, that it cannot elicit the opposite act, or tend toward another object: therefore, etc.

The Thomists reply. By the predetermining decree, indeed, the vague and potential indifference is dissolved; but not the exercised and attempered indifference through the motion and determination of the first cause, under which the will indeed retains the potency for dissenting, although it cannot compose or conjoin actual dissent with it.

On the contrary. It is of the notion of a free and indifferent will, that with all things prerequired for acting being posited, the will can act or not act, consent or dissent: therefore, whatever motion is posited, either the will can refuse consent, or it does not remain formally free.

The Thomists distinguish the minor. That it belongs to the notion of a free will that, all prerequisites on the part of the potency being in place, it can act or not act, they concede; but that this holds with the prerequisites on the part of the application of the potency and of the second act, they deny. Thus in the opinion of the Thomists, the prerequisites for acting are of a twofold kind: for some belong to the part of the potency and of the first act, such as habits, operative virtues, and sufficient helps; and since these constitute only the habitual principle of operation, they can be indifferently combined with action or with non-action. Others belong to the part of the application of the potency, and are related as reducing the first act to the second; and these, they say, since they constitute the actual principle of operation, cannot be separated from it, nor combined with its negation. Hence when it is said that that is free which, all the prerequisites for acting being in place, can act, if by the word "prerequisites" are understood those things which are prerequired on the part of the potency and of the first act, they concede; if those things are meant which are prerequired only on the part of the application of the potency, they deny. For once these are in place, the free agent cannot act or not act; but it in fact acts, while nonetheless retaining the potency for not acting, that is, for not continuing the action which it elicits; hence it is a contradiction that it combine the negation of the action with those prerequisites; otherwise it would at once act and not act.

Against, first. With this reply the Thomists speak contradictions, things not coherent with their own principles; for they teach that predetermination precedes the second act with a priority of nature and of causality: therefore it would not be the second act itself, that is, the actual application and action of the will: for it is a contradiction that the same thing, in respect of the same thing, be at once first and second, cause and effect. Next: that predetermination, in their view, is the principle of freedom, that is, of free operation: but a principle has the notion of a first act in respect of that of which it is the principle: therefore predetermination too has the notion of a first act in respect of free operation, and so does not coincide with the second act. Finally: whatever belongs to the operative order, not as an action, nor as a pure condition for acting, must belong to it as a power of acting, and consequently must have the notion of a first act: but predetermination belongs to the operative order: not indeed as an action, since it is determinative and applicative of the potency to action and operation; nor as a pure condition for acting, because it, they say, truly influences together with the potency into the action: therefore it is necessary that it have the notion of a power of acting, and consequently that it hold itself on the part of the first act; and so the Thomists incongruously reduce this predetermination to the second act.

Against, second. It belongs to the notion of a free agent that, the prerequisites for acting being in place on the part of the act, it can act: therefore also that it can not act. The Thomists concede the antecedent; but they deny the consequence, which I prove as follows. First indeed, from the common usage of the authors, who, when they affirm that to be a free agent which can act and not act, take both in the same way and in the same respect: therefore if a free agent, the prerequisites for acting being in place on the part of the act and in the composite sense, can act, it must also, in the same way, be able not to act. Next, when it is said that a free agent can act or not act, that both, namely to be able to act and to be able not to act, is understood either in the composite sense or in the divided sense: if the first, we have what was intended; for to be able not to act in the composite sense is to bring it about that for the same instant of time the prerequisites can exist together, and yet the action can not exist: if the second, then that definition of a free agent will have this sense: a free agent is that which has the power of acting for the time at which the prerequisites for acting are present; and at the same time has also the power of not acting, but for the time preceding the positing of the prerequisites; which not only appears ridiculous and manifestly contrary to the definition of a free agent, but also by this every distinction between a free agent and a necessary one is dissolved; for there is no agent so necessary of which the same thing may not be affirmed, namely that its power of acting, by which together with the prerequisites it puts the action, is equally a power of not acting for the time at which the prerequisites will not be present; for fire has the power of burning the straw for the time at which it is joined to it, but it cannot burn it for the time immediately preceding the application of the tow to the fire.

Against, third. A free agent is sometimes bound not to put its action, with all the prerequisites for acting in place: therefore it must be able to do this. The consequence is clear; for God does not command impossibilities, or, as it is commonly said, no one is bound to the impossible. The antecedent is proved: when someone sins, he is bound to combine the negation of the sin with the prerequisites for acting, so that in the very instant in which those prerequisites are present on the part of the act — e.g., the moving object, the pressing temptation, and the passion exciting the will to consent to the sinful act — he is bound to deny his consent; for if he were not bound to this then, he would not sin in that same instant; therefore man is bound to combine the negation of the sin with the prerequisites on the part of the act for sinning, and consequently, those prerequisites being in place even on the part of the act, man can act or not act, consent or dissent, in that very instant in which those prerequisites are supposed to be in place.

The Thomists distinguish. That it can consent or dissent in the same material instant in which those prerequisites are supposed to be in place, they concede; in the same formal instant, they deny. By material instant they call the thing's duration itself; by formal, the measure of the duration itself; so that, they say, just as the just man can sin in the same instant in which he is in grace — yet not formally and reduplicatively insofar as he is in grace, or inasmuch as grace occupies and measures that instant, because sin and grace cannot be together; and just as he who elicits an act of love can, in the same instant, materially not love, because he loves freely, yet not in the same instant formally; for it is a contradiction that the same instant measure the coexistence of love and non-love at once; otherwise the same thing could at once be and not be, and contradictories be verified of the same thing at once; the same, they say, is by parity to be said of the premotion to the act of love, which is in the same instant of time and of duration with it, and precedes it only with a priority of nature and of causality: for although the will, in the same instant in which it is premoved to the act of love, can put a dissent, that is, a lack of love; yet it cannot in fact dissent, that is, not love, in the composite sense, because it cannot put non-love, the premotion to loving being in place.

Against. Not only in the same instant taken materially, but even taken formally, can the free agent not put the action, even with the motion in place; therefore the replication is of no avail. The antecedent is proved: truly the free agent will be able not to combine the action with the premotion in the same formal instant, if truly it can dissent from and resist the premotion itself: but this it can. It is proved: first indeed from the Council of Trent, Session 6, Canon 4.³ where anathema is pronounced upon him who has said, The free choice of man, moved and excited by God, cannot dissent if it wills. For what, I ask, is it to dissent other than to put a dissent? And it belongs to the notion of dissent that it be put for the same instant for which one is moved and incited to consent: for no one is said to dissent before he is moved, nor after he was moved and obeyed the motion: therefore to be able to dissent is to be able to put a dissent for the same instant in which the motion itself is. Therefore since this is put in a formal instant, the dissent too will be able to be put in the same formal instant in which that is put. — Next: St. Augustine confirms and teaches the same thing, above all in lib. De Spir. et Litt. cap. 34., where, after he had said that God moves and excites our will extrinsically through the Law and the preaching of the Gospel, and intrinsically through the exciting grace, he adds: In these ways, therefore, when God acts with the rational soul so that it may believe in him — for it cannot believe by any free choice whatsoever, if there is no persuasion or calling to which it may believe: certainly God works in men even the very willing to believe, and in all things his mercy prevents us; for to consent to the calling of God, or to dissent from it, as I have said, belongs properly to the will; and in the same book cap. 31., after he had said at the beginning of the chapter: Faith is in our power; since when it wills, it believes, and when it believes, it believes willingly; he concludes: See now whether anyone believes if he is unwilling, or does not believe if he is willing? And in lib. 3. De Libero arbitrio cap. 1. The movement by which the will is turned this way or that, unless it were voluntary and in our power, man would be neither to be praised, when it is turned to higher things, nor to be blamed, when it is turned to lower things — as it were a certain hinge of the will, etc. He judges, therefore, that the divine motion is in our power, so that we can accept it or reject it. He has many things similar to these scattered about, which it would be long to write out.

— Finally: a free agent has a dominative power over its acts, for as St. Augustine says in lib. 3. De Libero arbitrio cap. 3.

Our will would not even be a will, unless it were in our power. Moreover, because it is in our power, it is free for us; for that is not free which we do not have in our power, or which can fail to be, though we have it; but it would not have such a power unless, with any extrinsic thing whatsoever being posited, it could put its act, or not put it.

Therefore, in order that the free will preserve this dominative power, it is necessary that, even with the divine premotion posited, the will be able to put the act or not put it. It is confirmed: and at the same time our premises are strengthened and reinforced: the determination of the will must be voluntary and free: therefore it must suppose nothing prior to its operation by which it would be terminated toward it with a priority of nature: all concede the antecedent. The consequence is proved: nothing can formally be voluntary and free, except what either supposes an act of the will, or is itself the act of the will: therefore if the determination of the will is free and voluntary, it must not presuppose something prior to its operation, such that, once it is posited, it could not put the action or not put it. It is confirmed from St. Anselm, lib. 2. Cur Deus homo c. 18., where he distinguishes a twofold necessity, one antecedent, which takes away freedom, the other consequent, which does not harm freedom: This, he says, is the preceding necessity, which is the cause that the thing is, and the following necessity, which the thing makes. The preceding and efficient necessity is when the Heaven is said to revolve, because it is necessary that it revolve; the following one, however, effects nothing, but is so when I say that you speak of necessity, because you speak; not that anything compels you to speak; for the violence of the natural condition compels the Heaven to revolve, but no necessity makes you speak; but wherever there is a preceding necessity, there is also a following one, etc. By these words St. Anselm openly acknowledges that the necessity which makes the thing be, and which is the cause that the thing is, is a preceding necessity and hostile to freedom; but that necessity which follows from predetermination and premotion makes the action of the will be, for it is its cause, and is prior to it with a priority of nature, as the Thomists affirm: therefore they must equally concede that that premotion brings in a preceding necessity hostile to freedom. — Nor does it avail to reply that predetermination does not harm freedom, because it does not determine the will after the manner of nature, but after the manner of a free cause; nor does it impede, but effects the determination and cooperation of free choice; for St. Anselm openly affirms that every preceding necessity is hostile to freedom, in whatever way it determines the will. Add that that premotion could not freely determine the will, if it so directed it into one thing that it is not in its freedom to tend to another, or not to tend.

They object 1. That the Doctor, in 1. dist. 19. qu. 6. num. 15., says that it is not simpliciter contrary to the nature of the will that it be determined by a superior cause; that is, that it is not contrary to its nature to do the opposite: as it would be contrary to its nature to be determined by a habit, or by an inferior nature: therefore the Doctor judges that the will can be determined by God without prejudice to its freedom: therefore, freedom being safe, it will also be able to be predetermined.

I deny the consequence. For as his most learned commentator observes in the same place, the Doctor does not say that the will remains simpliciter free even when it is determined by a superior cause; for he affirms the opposite in the same place, number 12., saying that the will of the Blessed does not remain proximately free to sin, on account of an extrinsic cause, namely, the will of God preventing that will, so that it always continues the act of fruition, and so can never reduce to act its remote potency of not enjoying or of sinning: since indeed a second cause, prevented by a superior cause acting for one opposite, can never with proximate potency go out into the other opposite. But the Doctor only contends that the will can indeed be determined by a superior cause, but not by any inferior cause. — Or I say that the Doctor is to be understood of objective determination, not however formal or efficient. For in the present case a threefold determination can be distinguished: one indeed objective, which is made through the most excellent object, attracting the will to itself and morally drawing it with supreme and wondrous sweetness; in which manner the Blessed are determined by the beatific object. Another formal, which is made through something intrinsic inclining the will to the act; such is the determination which is made through the habits of virtues or of vices. Finally, another efficient, which is made through an efficient cause influencing the will itself, so as to determine and apply it to operating; in which manner the Thomists judge our will to be predetermined by God: therefore nothing favors them; rather the Subtle Doctor militates directly against them.

They object 2. Since God is the first free being and such by essence, and has supreme dominion over our wills, he contains in himself, in the most eminent and most perfect manner, every free determination of them, which is freedom by participation: therefore he can cause and effect it without detriment to freedom, so that the human will, insofar as it is a secondary free being and a secondary determining one, determines itself to its free acts. The consequence is clear; for an efficient cause can produce the effects which it precontains virtually or eminently. — It is confirmed: the divine dominion is so supreme and perfect that whatever created power and dominion can do, God can also do, and much more, and in a more perfect manner: but the created will, by reason of the dominion which it has over its free acts, can, freedom being safe, determine and apply itself to eliciting its free acts: therefore a fortiori God will be able to accomplish this.

I distinguish the antecedent. That God, as the supreme free being, contains virtually and eminently the free operations of our will, to be caused by him through a simultaneous concurrence and after the manner of a general and independent cause, I concede; through physical premotion and predetermination, I deny. Similarly I distinguish the consequent: that he can cause the determination of our will through something prior and antecedent, with a priority of nature and of causality, to that active determination of our will, I deny; through something concomitant and concurring with the will itself determining itself, I concede: for God does not have such an absolute and despotic dominion over our wills that he turns them, even resisting, this way or that; for thus he would also necessitate them, which is repugnant to the nature of the will itself, intrinsically free, and also to the divine ordination: since indeed Ecclesiasticus 15.: God from the beginning constituted man, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. And I have set before you fire and water: stretch forth your hand to whichever you will.

To the confirmation. The major could be denied: for if God could do whatever created power and free dominion can do, it would follow that he himself could sin and swerve from the true good; for the created will can do this by its own power and freedom. But I distinguish it: God can do whatever created power can do in the notion of a moving and cooperating cause, I concede; in the notion of a precurrent and predetermining cause, I deny: and the minor being conceded, the consequent is likewise to be distinguished.

You will insist. But God truly and absolutely can predetermine our wills and prevent their determination: therefore there is no solution. The antecedent is proved from St. Augustine, lib. De correptione et gratia c. 14., where, after he had proved in various ways that God bends the wills of men wherever he pleases through his most omnipotent will, as he shows by various examples, above all by the example of the Jewish people electing and establishing Saul and David as kings by God's ordination; he finally concludes: If therefore, when God wills to constitute kings on earth, he has the wills of men more in his power than they have their own, who else makes it that the correction be wholesome, and that a correction be made in the corrected heart, so that he be constituted in the heavenly kingdom? Therefore, etc.

I deny the antecedent. And as to its proof I say that that was not the opinion of St. Augustine there; for Augustine only contends there that God, at his pleasure and from his infinite authority and wisdom, orders even the wills of men that resist him to a fitting end, as he himself indicates there; for after he had said: To will or not to will is so in the power of the one willing or unwilling, that it neither impedes the divine will, nor overcomes its power, he adds: for of those who do what he does not will, he himself does what he wills. So that from this St. Augustine may demonstrate that men, even when harassed by wicked and most depraved men, ought to act patiently and bravely, since nothing happens to them beyond the divine will, which, since it rejoices in supreme command over men, also brings it about that their wicked strivings of will redound even to his own glory and to the salvation of men. — Or I say that Augustine is to be understood thus when he says that of those who do what he does not will, he does what he wills: that is, as to those who resist his will inviting them to the correction of their morals, of which he speaks there, he subjects them to his punishing will, condemning them to the eternal fire; hence he thus does with them what he wills. This, in other words, St. Thomas explains 1. p. q. 19. art. 9.

It is impossible, he says, that the divine will not attain its effect; hence what seems to recede from the divine will according to one order falls back into it according to another: just as the sinner who, as far as in him lies, recedes from the divine will by sinning according to one order, falls into the order of the divine will while he is punished through its justice.

Thus, therefore, St. Augustine can be understood to mean that no choice resists God willing to save: because namely, if he does not carry out his will by saving him whom he invites to salvation, he carries it out by punishing him who does not will to be saved. This is confirmed from the same Augustine; for he had said earlier:

Let men therefore think that they are corrected when they sin, and neither argue from the correction itself against grace, nor from grace against correction: because both a just punishment is owed to sins, and to that itself, namely the just punishment, belongs the just correction which is applied medicinally, even if the health of the sick one is uncertain; so that if he who is corrected belongs to the number of the predestined, the correction may be for him a wholesome medicine; but if he does not belong, the correction may be a penal torment.

You will say 3. Inferior things are perfected through subordination and conjunction to superior things; as is evident in the Moon, which is illuminated and perfected through its conjunction to the Sun; in rivers, which grow and increase while they flow back into the Ocean; and in intellectual creatures, which are sanctified and beatified through love and conjunction to God: but through the predetermining decree and the efficacious motion, our will is subordinated and conjoined to God as the first free being, the font and principle of all created freedom; namely, of the infinite efficacy of the divine will. Therefore so far is human freedom from being harmed through premotion and predetermination, that rather it is preserved and perfected.

I distinguish the major. That inferior things are perfected through a real and physical conjunction to superior things, I deny; through a certain imitation and adumbration of them, I concede. As to the minor I say that the created will is conjoined to God as the first free being not through a prior motion and physical determination of God; but through an imitation of the divine freedom, of which created freedom is a certain participation; so that, just as the divine freedom consists in this, that God so determines himself that he cannot be determined by any extrinsic agent: whence St. Thomas, in 2. dist. 25 q. 1. art. 1. ad 1., proves that there is free choice in God: Because the determination of his own act is not from another for him, but from himself: so it will belong to the notion of created freedom that the will so determines itself that it cannot be predetermined by any other, nor efficaciously premoved. The Thomists object many other things, but we have already satisfied them sufficiently in the Physics.

Third conclusion. — The free choice of man can rightly be reconciled with the infallible certainty of divine Predestination, by affirming that it is made through a decree presupposing the divine foreknowledge of man's future cooperation and final perseverance in grace. This is evident per se, and is proved: By that does human freedom easily agree with the certainty of Predestination, through which the choice of man stands safe and intact: but it is so made through the aforesaid decree: therefore, etc. The minor is proved: for through that decree presupposing foreknowledge, God from eternity decreed nothing to be infallibly future from the human will, except its free determination and cooperation having been foreknown and foreseen: but through this the choice of man stands free, and is not prevented, nor in any way constrained: therefore, etc.

St. Anselm expressly defends and affirms this same truth in lib. De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis Dei cum libero arbitrio cap. 2., where, after he had said: Some things are plainly foreknown as future through free choice without any repugnance; whence also evident truth and reason teach that some future things are likewise predestined through free choice without inconvenience; he adds: Although it is necessary that those things which are foreknown and those which are predestined come to be, some foreknown and predestined things nevertheless do not come about from the necessity which precedes the thing and makes it, but from that which follows the thing; and below:

Just as foreknowledge, which is not deceived, foreknows nothing except the true; but it will be either necessary or spontaneous; so Predestination, which is not changed, predestines nothing except as it is in foreknowledge. And just as what is foreknown, although it is immutable in eternity, yet in time can be changed before it comes to be; so it is in all things concerning Predestination. It is evident, therefore, from these things which have been said, if they are well considered, that neither does Predestination exclude free choice, nor does free choice oppose Predestination.

These things will appear more evidently and will be confirmed in the following Section, where we shall demonstrate that Predestination is made in view of and from the prevision of good works.