Tractatus de Gratia Divina Actuali

of St. Thomas, which appears alien enough from their fabrications. I. Concerning the opinion of the Angelic Doctor in this matter there has already been most abundantly disputed by learned and erudite men, some swearing that it is the same as the doctrine of the Thomistic school, others flatly denying it, both parties remaining in their own opinion after six hundred conflicts. Wherefore I at first hesitated in mind whether it would be better to desist from this question; because if one wishes to have regard for both schools, he must confess that the doctrine of St. Thomas in this matter is uncertain to us, either in itself or on account of the labors of interpreters dragging him now this way, now that. Nevertheless, because the treatise on Grace would seem incomplete without the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor being brought forward, and lest anyone think that we fear anything from him, I judged that deference should be shown to custom, so that a discourse be had on the opinion of St. Thomas. Yet we shall so engage in this question that we treat the matter rather thetically than polemically, simply proposing the doctrine of St. Thomas, which will appear from itself to be alien to the opinion of the Thomists. If anyone desires more, let him go to the authors who have treated this question more fully even in our age, e.g., Mazzella, Tract. de Gratia, and Schneemann, Controvv. de div. gratia, etc.

II. Therefore we judge that this is first to be established: when the opinion of some doctor concerning a certain question is sought, that is to be attended to above all, that his certain and clear principles in the matter under discussion be brought forward, if they occur in him, rather than some propositions uttered in passing; for in establishing these the mind of any author is wont to be always more attentive, and by them to express what he himself thinks more fully and more clearly; so that it may rightly be demanded that according to these the other utterances of the same author be explained, insofar as this can be done; but if this cannot be done, it will remain for us to say that he suffered something human and did not always agree with himself. His principles, however, are to be sought from those places where the author expressly treats of the same matter.

This observation is especially valid if the author lived before the rise of the questions for whose solution his authority is invoked. For then you would wrongly expect from him a judgment that is borne directly and immediately to settling those very questions; but the doctrine is to be sought from him according to which the questions that have arisen may be resolved, which comes to this, that we should require principles from him.

III. Now concerning the motion of the will from an extrinsic principle the holy Doctor treats expressly in 1. p. q. CV. a. 4; 1. II. q. IX. a. 4, 6; q. X. a. 4; c. G. III. 89, 99; dispp. de Veritate q. XXII. a. 8; De Potentia q. III. a. 7. Now he teaches this: a) «Everything that is sometimes an agent in act and sometimes in potency needs to be moved by some mover. It is manifest, however, that the will begins to will something, when previously it did not will it; it is necessary, therefore, that it be moved by something to will. And indeed, as was said (in the preceding article), it moves itself insofar as, by the fact that it wills the end, it reduces itself to willing those things that are for the end. But this it cannot do except through counsel; for when someone wills to be healed, he begins to think how he may attain this, and through such thinking he arrives at this, that he can be healed by a physician, and this he wills. But because he did not always actually will health, it is necessary that he began to will to be healed from some mover; and if indeed it moved itself to will, it would have been necessary that it do this through counsel from some presupposed will; but this is not to proceed to infinity. Wherefore it is necessary to posit that in the first motion of the will the will proceeds from the instinct of some exterior mover, as Aristotle concludes in a certain chapter of the Eudemic Books (L. VII. c. 14.)»II. q. IX. a. 4. c.; Gen. III. 89, 6: where again he cites the same doctrine of the Philosopher.

This is the determination to act necessary for every created faculty, when in any series of actions it begins to act, of which we spoke in the preceding Thesis, n. 1, to be distinguished entirely from the Thomistic predetermination. It is that which Aristotle also proved, whose doctrine we adduced in Thesis II. The immediate exterior mover of the will, of which the holy Doctor here speaks, is the counsel of the intellect, which is itself also determined by another, namely by the object; and because it is finally the action of God that proposes the objects, hence Aristotle concluded that the mover of the will to its first act is God. This is all the doctrine of St. Thomas in this place. To this, moreover, insofar as it regards the will, we judge that to be referred which he affirms generally of all causes in 1. p. q. CV. a. 5. ad 3^m: that God applies them to act.

b) «The power of willing is caused by God alone. For to will is nothing other than a certain inclination into the object of the will, which is the universal good. But to incline into the universal good belongs to the first mover, to which the ultimate end is proportioned.... Whence in both ways (namely as object and as causing the power of willing) it is proper to God to move the will, but most of all in the second way, by inwardly inclining it.» Because, namely, objective motion is also from other objects, although only God, as is said here, moves the will sufficiently and efficaciously as object; but the inclination of the will into the good is from God alone, the author of the will itself. «God namely gives the will its own proper inclination», just as a heavy body receives from its generator to be moved downward, as he speaks here in resp. ad 1.

This inclination implanted in the will by God, like the inclination of a heavy body downward implanted in it by its generator, is not a determination to individual acts, but to the love of the good in general, just as is expressly said in corp. artic.

c) God is the efficient cause not only of the power but also of the act of the will: c. G. III. c. 89. This is proved thus, because no thing can act by its own power unless it acts in the power of God; but that in whose power an agent acts is the cause not only of the power, but also of the act. In 1. p. q. CV. a. 5. he teaches that «if there are many ordered agents, the second agent always acts in the power of the first agent. For the first agent moves the second to act, and according to this all things act in the power of God himself, and thus he himself is the cause of all the actions of agents.» If, therefore, the will itself also acts in the power of God, then it is also moved by God, just as a second subordinated agent is moved by the first. We have, therefore, that according to St. Thomas the created will, when it acts, is moved by God, i.e., God is the cause of its action or motion: but the question is how this takes place according to the Doctor himself; for if you only affirm that, we shall all easily concede.

d) «By the fact that the will is moved by another, it is not excluded that it be moved from itself.» 1. p. q. CV. a. 4. ad 3^m. These two things, therefore, are to be reconciled, and it must be true that the will is moved from itself, i.e., moves itself; but how does this happen? I think the following will make it clear.

e) «God moves the will of man as a universal mover to the universal object of the will, which is the good, and without this universal motion man cannot will anything. But man by reason determines himself to will this or that, which is truly good or apparently good.» 1a, 2ae, q. IX. a. 6. ad 3^m. Ibid. q. seq. a. 4.: «because the will is an active principle, not determined to one, but indifferently disposed to many, so God moves it that it does not determine to one of necessity, but its motion remains contingent and not necessary, except in those things to which it is moved naturally.» Here the speech is not about the contingency of the effect, which is also found in those things that are done by natural causes, but about the contingency of the action, insofar as the act depends on the agent, which contingency consists in this, that the act does not necessarily follow, i.e., is not posited. Therefore, with the motion of God existing, the act of the will remains contingent, i.e., does not necessarily follow: but with physical predetermination existing, the act of the will necessarily follows, namely with the necessity of consequence.

De Potentia. q. III. a. 7. ad 13^m. »the will is said to have dominion over its act, not by the exclusion of the first cause, but because the first cause does not so act in the will as to determine it of necessity to one, as it determines nature: but the determination of the act is left in the power of reason and will."

What the holy Doctor denies to the action of God is not the determination of necessity, but the determination of the act, which indeed, according to the holy Doctor, would bring in necessity; he denies, namely, to the action of God that which he teaches is left in the power of the will, and this is the simple determination of the act. Wrongly, therefore, is it said that God indeed predetermines the will, but according to its nature: for this very nature, on the authority of St. Thomas, excludes the determination of God, not to say predetermination. Therefore God so moves the will that it determines itself, that its motion, its act under the motion of God, is contingent, not necessary, and therefore does not follow upon the motion of God with the necessity of consequence, so that the determination of the act is in the power of the will; it is not, therefore, predetermined by another more powerful being to which resistance cannot be made. But in the system of physical predetermination, the act that is called deliberate and free follows with the necessity of consequence upon the motion of God, which is not in our power.

I. II. q. IX. a. 6. ad 3^m. »Sometimes God specially moves some to will something determinate, which is good; as in those whom he moves through grace."

These things are said in the same context in which it was said that God moves the will as a universal mover, and that without this universal motion man cannot will anything. Consider 1º that it is one thing to determine the act of the will, another to move to some determinate good, which anyone does, e.g., when he counsels, urges, etc. something in particular. Consider that this very motion to some determinate good, on the authority of St. Thomas, does not always take place whenever the will acts, but sometimes, namely in the order of salvation, when God through his grace moves the will; for then the illumination and inspiration move the will to a certain determinate good, namely by alluring, urging, delighting. But in the system of physical predetermination, on the contrary, there is had necessarily the motion of God in the will to some determinate good, not only sometimes but always, whenever the will acts; for predetermination to the singular act also moves to the determinate object or good. The doctrine of St. Thomas, therefore, is entirely different from the Bannezian. There is no need to warn that there never occur in St. Thomas expressions of this kind, God determines the will, under the motion of God the act follows with the necessity of consequence, and others similar to these.

From the doctrine of St. Thomas you have that the divine motion by which a man is moved to will something determinate is of itself proper to grace, and that there is not had in nature anything corresponding to it, at least of necessity. But since, whenever God moves the will, he so moves it that he does not determine the act, this motion, already of itself metaphorical, is so to be understood that not even metaphorically does it agree in every part with physical corporeal motion. For the latter always determines the mobile to one motion and one direction of motion: which indeed, according to the holy Doctor, cannot take place in the motion of the divine will except with respect to the motion to the universal good: as is clear from the cited testimonies.

In the q. de Veritate cited above the holy Doctor teaches that God can change the will by causing another inclination to succeed the preceding (actual) inclination. Since we all likewise confess that this can be done through prevenient and exciting graces, and this is a dogma of faith, there is no need for us to dwell on this chapter of the doctrine of St. Thomas.