Chapter XIV. How is the witt movenp? (q. 10) preliminaries

WE Have determined the cause whereby the will is moved, both objectively and subjectively. Now we have to treat of the modes under which the will is moved, one mode being that of necessity, the other that of freedom.

In summary, these four articles run thus. Looked at objectively, the will is moved of necessity: first, by God clearly seen; secondly, by beatitude in common; thirdly, by a particular good where the judgment does not remain indifferent. And it is moved freely, first, by a particular good where the judgment remains indifferent; secondly by passion. Looked at subjectively, the will is moved of necessity: first by beatitude in common; secondly by God seen clearly. And it is moved freely by a particular good, a good which, here and now, is not necessarily connected with beatitude in common.

ART. 1. IS THE WILL MOVED TO ANY ACT NATURALLY, L.E., NOT FREELY?

Thesis. The will desires naturally, by the necessity of objective specification. Elements which are not per se and naturally intrinsic are reduced to something that is intrinsic by nature. Now the will has free motions, which are not there necessarily and naturally. Nature comes first, on all levels of reality. Thus, as we speak of the nature of God, of the nature¹ of the soul, of the nature of the intellect, so we speak here of the nature of the will. Further, on every level of reality we reduce all that is diverse and mutable to a source that is one, uniform, and immutable, otherwise we have an infinite process. As the intellect has an act that is natural and necessary, so must the will itself have some natural act.

Corollary

We must look at the will as nature and as free. Will as nature desires a necessary good. Will as free desires freely any good that is not necessary. This same distinction we find in the divine will, which necessarily loves divine goodness, but freely loves created goodness.

What, then, does the will naturally and necessarily desire? Three things: first, good in common; secondly, its ultimate end or goal, that is, beatitude in common, independently of any explicit notion of God; thirdly, existence, life, truth, and other natural goods, considered in themselves, though these goods may, by accidental circumstances, be seen as evils.

ART. 2. IS THE WILL MOVED NECESSARILY BY ITS OBJECT? Definition of Liberty

Liberty in general is exemption from necessity. Freedom from legal necessity gives us moral liberty, namely, the absence of obligation. Freedom from elicitive necessity gives us psychological liberty, i.e., free will itself. Let us look at this distinction more in detail.

1. Moral liberty means, first, exemption from law, either from civil law (e.g., the right of possessing, testating, buying, selling, marrying); or secondly, from political law (the right to participate in the government of our country); or thirdly, from restrictions on liberty of conscience and of thought (the right of professing one’s own religious faith).

2. Moral liberty may also mean, secondly, exemption from servitude, either from external servitude (slavery, imprisonment), or from the internal servitude of sin (“he who sins is the slave of sin”).

3- Psychological liberty is, first, exemption from necessity, whether of acting at all (I can will or not), or from acting under specific differentiation (to love or to hate, to pray or to study). Psychological liberty is, secondly, exemption from external violence.

Freedom from necessity is also called the freedom of indifference, since under the very act of willing (under obedience, say) there remains real power to the opposite. Since this liberty of choice is based on freedom of judgment, indifference of judgment, it is called liberum arbitrium (free judgment).

God's freedom is not a faculty, not a potentiality which goes over into act. It is an act of choice which retains full freedom to the opposite. Freedom remains under the act already elicited, otherwise God, whose act is eternal, could never create freely. The free act, even after it is determined, remains free. Molinists disregard this truth.

Errors Regarding the Freedom of the Will

These errors are of two opposite kinds: determinism and indeterminism. Let us look, first, at the divisions of determinism, Here we find, first, divine determinism. Protestant determinism says that grace compels the will after original sin. Thus Wiclif, Luther, Calvin, Baius, and Jansenius. The only liberty that remains is freedom from external force. Pantheistic determinism holds that all things proceed under necessity from the substance of God. Thus the Stoics, Spinoza, and Hegel.

Human determinism has three forms, First, psychological determinism, which holds that the last practical judgment is determined infallibly by the strongest motive. Thus Leibnitz. Second, physical and physiological determinism (from tem- perament, from physical circumstances, from the principle of causality, from the principle of the conservation of energy). Third, statistic determinism, which claims to foresee the number of future homicides, suicides, thefts, marriages.

Divisions of Indeterminism

Pelagian indeterminism holds that human freedom is inclined equally to good or evil; that human liberty would be unreasonably limited if we affirmed the necessity of prevenient grace for conversion; that human liberty was not harmed by original sin.

Libertinarian indeterminism holds that freedom can choose without any motive; or that the primary distinction between good and evil comes from the free will of God; or that the primary distinction between good and evil rests on God’s free will; or that impeccability would destroy liberty, since liberty contains essentially the power of sinning.

Question. Did St. Thomas know these errors against free will? The answer is affirmative, as is clear from the objections in this article, and from the twenty-four questions in his treatise De malo.

Preliminaries

We are here treating of natural necessity, namely, whether the will is moved necessarily by its object, as a physical thing is changed and moved by a physical cause, or as the faculty of sight is moved by its object. Now it might seem that the will is moved necessarily by its object. First, the object is a suffcient motive, and any sufficient motive moves of necessity, a necessity, not indeed metaphysical or physical, but moral. Secondly, since the intellect is necessarily moved by its object, even by a particular truth, the will too must be moved of necessity by a particular good which, here and now, is evidently connected with beatitude. Thirdly, since the last end in common is necessarily desired, and the end is the reason for willing the means, the means also are desired of necessity.

Our Authorities

Aristotle says that the will, since it is a rational power, is related to opposites, and hence is not of necessity moved toward one or the other.* God speaks to Cain: The lust thereof (of sin) shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it.* God leaves man in the hand of his own counsel.* The Church condemned this Jansenistic proposition: For merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature, there is required, not freedom from necessity, but only freedom from coercion.’

First thesis. The will is moved to act of necessity by no object except God seen clearly. This conclusion is clear from experience. We are not bound even to think of any one object, much less to will it. But if we do will anything, then, at least virtually, we will it by reason of beatitude in common.

Second thesis. Objectively (and a fortiori subjectively) the will cannot be moved necessarily by any good proposed by reason as particular and limited.

The proof that will here follow is a metaphysical proof, based on experience. Moderns tend to ignore the foundation of the solution, namely, that the adequate object of the will is universal good. Further, they do not look on the will as a rational appetite, since they divide faculties into three, namely, intellect, will, and sensibility, and under sensibility they place, not only the passions of the sense-appetite, but also the higher inclinations of the rational appetites. This division, originating from Rousseau, is merely phenomenal, and is false, since it no longer observes the distinction between intellectual life and sense life.

The Argument

The will is not moved necessarily, as regards differentiation, except by an object here and now proposed as univer-

21X Metaph.

sally good, in no way evil. Now all particular goods, since they are in some way limited, can be looked upon as not good. The principle here invoked has two foundations. First, the relation of faculty to adequate and differentiating object; secondly, from analogy with sight and intellect. Sight is differentiated specifically only by an object completely and actually colored. The intellect is differentiated specifically only by necessary and evident truth, not by mere probability. Only manifest evidence necessitates the intellect. Since mysteries remain obscure, it is possible to doubt the truths of faith.

A particular good may be good-in-itself, but also difficult and arduous. Or it may be delightful or useful, not good-initself. And even if it is in itself entirely good (existence, life, intelligence), it can still be seen as not good because of attendant evils. Such particular and limited goods cannot necessarily move a faculty of unlimited capacity.

First Corollary

Here on earth God Himself is, under one aspect, good, but under another is evil (to the sinner, e.g., who is displeased by God’s commands). Here man’s judgment is mutable and free. Only God clearly seen can invincibly attract our will, down to its deepest roots, whereas particular goods can attract it only superficially.

In a purely natural order, man, we may suppose, would, after probation, be preserved from practical error, and would not depart from God known in the mirror of creation. In illustration, we may point to those saints who, while still on earth, were confirmed in grace.

The dominating indifference of the will in relation to particular goods is first potential and then actual. The act, elicited and determined, still remains free, because its object is particular, not universal. Thus the man who is seated retains, even while he sits, the power to stand, though he cannot simultaneously sit and stand. Similarly, under efficacious grace, where there is transition from potential indifference to actual indifference, the mode of freedom remains under the act itself. In God there is actual dominating indifference, but not potential. If potential indifference were of the essence of freedom, God could not be free, since His act is both free and eternal.

Second Corollary

Our will has a quasi-infinity, since only the infinite God seen clearly can adequately fill its capacity. The will’s free act is man’s response to the impotent solicitation coming from finite good. A particular good, augmented as far as conceivable, will never become a universal good, good under every aspect, a good that necessarily attracts our will.

Question. What is the demonstrative medium in proving free will? Answer: This demonstrative medium is the infinite disproportion between particular good and universal good. In other words, there is no objective reason infallibly determining the transition of the will from universal good to particular good. Though on earth we do not possess God as seen, we are nevertheless destined for Him, so that it is impossible to find our beatitude in any finite good. Thus the martyrs showed their freedom by despising all finite goods and overcoming all torments.

Four Doubts

First. Wherein does this metaphysical demonstration differ from the spontaneous knowledge of common sense? Answer: The difference is the distinction between confused and distinct, between natural intelligence and philosophical reason. Natural intelligence recognizes, confusedly, the disproportion between the particular good and the universal good. Thus we experience that this particular good cannot in every way satisfy our rational appetite.

Objection. But consciousness recognizes only the act already elicited which is already determined. Hence we can have no consciousness of potential liberty. Answer: Con- sciousness knows, not only the elicited choice after it has been made, but also the entire course of deliberation, wherein choice is the terminus. Knowing this successive deliberation, consciousness perceives, confusedly at least, the infinite disproportion between the particular and the universal. Even in cases where there is no antecedent deliberation, but docile and free acceptance of divine inspiration, we should still have experience of liberty, of freedom, that is, either to accept or to reject that inspiration. Thus we experience that we stand freely, because we know that we can choose the opposite, namely, not to stand. And God knows experimentally He is free, though His choice never passes from potentiality to act.

Second. What is the relation of the last practical judgment to the act of choice? Answer: Among the Thomistic theses one runs as follows: “The will does not precede, but follows, the intellect. The will necessarily desires only what is presented as being in every way good. Thus among the various goods, desired by mutable judgment, the will chooses freely. Choice therefore follows the ultimate practical judgment. But the will itself makes that judgment to be the last.”

This proposition, a compendium of our thesis, is, in its first part, against Suarez, who holds, as we shall see later, that when two equal goods are proposed to the will, the will can choose one of them without any ultimate practical judgment directing this choice rather than the opposite. His view cannot stand, because it is against the principle that nothing is willed unless foreknown, and that nothing can be more loved than another unless it is foreknown as more suitable here and now, though only, it may be, for an accidental reason and the subjective disposition of the man who chooses. The last part of the proposition is against Leibnitz, that is, against psychological determinism, which denies that the last practical judgment comes from the will itself.

Third. By what act does the will make this judgment to be the last? Many Thomists answer (e.g., the Salmanticenses) that this act of the will is free, otherwise the judgment itself would not be free. Hence the act of the will which thus determines the ultimate judgment, regarding this particular medium, is not the intention of the goal, nor the consent given in globo to different ways and means. But it is the very choice of this determined medium, because choice in general acts as formal extrinsic cause, anteceding the ultimate practical judgment. This judgment does not direct the will unless the will chooses thus to be directed. Causes are reciprocal, since they are in various genera of causality.

But if the last practical judgment comes from a special inspiration of the gift of counsel, it is still free and mutable, not in the sense that it is fully and completely in our power, but in the sense that it deals with an object not in every way good, an object which man freely accepts.

Fourth. What about motions of the will that are altogether sudden or imperfectly free? Are they sins, at least venial sins? One answer is that these acts are not free. But the proper answer demands a distinction. Most certainly these acts are not fully deliberate, but an act can be non-deliberate and still free. We note some instances. The first act in the life of an angel where, without deliberation, there is an indifferent judgment and a certain domination, though not complete. Again, human acts under the gifts of the Holy Ghost are not deliberate, but still free and meritorious. Hence the proper answer to the question runs thus: These sudden motions are imperfectly free, if indifference of judgment still remains, that is, attention to the twofold aspect of the object, good in the one way, not good in another. If this attention is absent, these acts are not even imperfectly free.

But there remains a difficult question. Is man bound to be always attentive to sudden motions that arise, let us say from sensuality or temptations against faith? The answer of St. ‘Thomas runs thus: “The corruption remaining from original sin does not impede rational man from repressing any single inordinate motion of sensuality if he foresees it: he can divert his thought to something else, some other inordinate motion may arise. For instance, when a man changes his thought from carnal delight to the study of knowledge, there may arise an emotion of unpremeditated vainglory. Hence by reason of this corruption man cannot avoid all these motions. But such emotion is in some way sinful, since he is able to avoid each single motion that arises.” è If he does not avoid each single motion, there is at least a negligence against prudence. And a fortiori, if the sudden motion is not in sensuality but in the will. “A sudden motion of infidelity is a venial sin.”

The Roots of Freedom

Here we must distinguish extrinsic roots of liberty from intrinsic. The extrinsic root of liberty is the supreme efficacy of the divine will, which is the cause of created things and of all their modes. The intrinsic roots are two, one remote, the other proximate. The remote root of liberty is the immateriality of intellectual natures: human, angelic, divine. The proximate root is either causal or subjective. The causal root is the intellect’s knowledge of universal good. The subjective root is the will’s amplitude and capacity for universal and absolute good, the will’s pre-eminence above all particular and limited good.

Definitions of Liberty

First: Liberty is self-control, self-mastery, dominion over self. Second: Free will is a faculty of will and of reason. It belongs to reason as origin and norm; but formally to the will, because only the will can choose. Third: Liberty is a rational power related to opposites, to act or not to act. Fourth: Free will is a faculty elective of means, presupposing direction with relation to the goal. The phrase, direction “with relation to the goal” shows that turning away from the goal is a defect of liberty. Free will is more perfect in God and Christ and the angels than it is in those who can sin. Power to sin is not of the essence of liberty, but a defect of liberty, just as error is not essential to reason, but a defect of reason.

The Molinistic Definition

Liberty is a faculty which, presupposing all elements necessary for action, can either act or not act. This definition is, first, novel; secondly, ambiguous; thirdly, when explained Molinistically, a begging of the question; fourthly, contrary to the universal causality of God; fifthly, an offense against the very principle of causality. |

As to novelty, it is not found among the scholastic doctors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As to ambiguity, note, first, the word “presupposing,” which does not distinguish the order of time from the order of nature. A prerequisite of a free act, not in time but in nature, is the divine premotion and the last practical judgment. Another ambiguous expression is “can act or not act,” which expresses, either the divided sense, i.e., antecedent power, or then the composite sense, i.e., consequent power.

Molinists and Congruists interpret in the following fashion. Liberty is a faculty which, presupposing all things necessary, not only in time but also in nature, can still act or not act even in the composite sense. They explain: Supposing a congruous grace inclining to act, and supposing the ultimate practical judgment, the will not only retains the power of acting, but can even cause the nonexistence of the act. Molina, against the principle of predilection, speaks thus: “Under equal aid, one man is converted and another not. Yes, even under a smaller aid, one can rise, whereas the other, even under a greater aid, does not rise but remains obdurate.” * Thomists on the contrary, understand as follows: Liberty is a faculty which, presupposing in time all things necessary for acting, can still act or not act in the composite sense; but which, presupposing all things required by nature, can act or

1T Concordia, s. v, Auxilium.

not act, only in the divided sense. They explain. Under efficacious grace and the last practical judgment, we retain the power of not acting, but we cannot make the act nonexistent. An example is the man who is sitting: he retains the power to stand, but he cannot simultaneously sit and stand.

This definition, as it stands, holds good only in regard to prerequisites in time, otherwise it begs the question, and denies the principle of predilection, which declares that no one can be better than another unless he is more loved by God. “What hast thou that thou hast not received?” Further, it would deny the universal causality of God.

Two Doubts

First. Can the will, placed twice under the same circumstances and dispositions prerequired in time, act differently in each case? The response is affirmative. It is commonly admitted by theologians, as a corollary of the preceding definition, as there explained.

Second. Can the liberty of indifference be harmonized with scientia media? No. Scientia media presupposes a circumstantial determinism, because in this theory God can foresee the future infallibly only by examining the circumstances in which a man will be placed. This theory involves a threefold impossibility. First, the free determination would be a good not proceeding from God. Secondly, God’s intelligence would be that of passive spectator, whose knowledge is not cause but effect. Thirdly, human liberty would be destroyed, by its subjection to circumstantial determinism. But, says Thomas, no created being can be better than another if it be not loved more by God.: He who labors more has more of grace, but that he does labor more is an effect of some higher cause,

Dominating Indifference

The constituting element of free will is its full dominion over its own acts. This dominating indifference may be con- 8 Ia, q.20, a.g.

sidered in relation, either to the object or to the act. In relation to the object, we have either objective indifference (in the object) or formal indifference (in the will itself). In relation to act, we have either passive and potential indifference (in the faculty), or active, actual indifference (in the act of choice itself).

Potential indifference is the state of the will, when the will is idle and inactive. This inactive indifference is not essential to liberty as such. It is rather an imperfection, since every potentiality is perfected by the act for which it exists. Otherwise it would follow that God, who is always in act, would not be free. Further, it would follow that our will, as often as it acts, would lose liberty, by losing potential and passive indifference.

Actual and active indifference appears when the will acts, but still retains power not to act. This indifference is not taken away by grace, but is given by grace. Grace moves, not only that the act take place, but that it take place freely. Potential indifference, on which Molinists insist, is not of such great importance, since it does not exist in God, nor in us when we freely choose.

Question: Which kind of indifference is essential to freedom? Our answer is fivefold.

1. Freedom of choice demands that indifference which excludes natural necessity, determined to one course. Freedom of will differs from that spontaneity which brutes have by natural instinct. Nature causes by being what it is, but the will causes, not by its natural form, but by its own superadded determination, mediated by the intellect. Jansenists reply that the mere light of reason suffices to lift the will above nature, and thus indifference is not required. But they fail to see that the will has, not only free acts, but also necessary acts, determined by its essence, for instance, the love of beatitude. “The longing for the last goal is not of those things which we are masters of.” ®

2. Objective indifference is required for freedom of will. It is impossible for the will to aim freely at an object proposed to it as altogether good and lovable. It can aim freely only at those goods which are proposed, under one aspect as good, under another at least as apparently deficient. Further, the act of the will is free only so far as the judgment from which liberty proceeds is itself free, i.e., in the power of the will. And this judgment is not in the power of the will if objective indifference is absent. But, so runs the question, can we not reflect on the act even without objective indifference? Answer: The intellect can reflect upon a necessary judgment by a cognitive reflection, yes; by a judicative and deliberative cognition, no. To illustrate. We cannot dissent from the principle of contradiction, or from a geometrical conclusion. Assent or dissent is in our power when the thing apprehended does not sufficiently convince the intellect.

3. Formal and subjective indifference is required for liberty, because it follows objective indifference. Otherwise the will would not tend with indifference to the object; it would not determine itself, but would be determined by its nature.

4. Moral indifference is not the essence of liberty, but rather its imperfection. To follow evil is not of the very nature of a power destined for good. The free will is destined to follow good, just as reason is destined to pursue truth. In God, in Christ, in the blessed, we find the most perfect freedom united with supreme impeccability.

5. Freedom of will does not necessarily require differentiating indifference, but it does demand indifference toward placing the act. The will brings forth this act, not because it exists, not by a determination of nature, but because, by its own counsel, it chooses to perform this act.

Objection. The desire for the last goal does not belong to those things of which we are masters. Still we are free to exercise this act. Answer: Free, yes, but only so far as we can refuse to think of beatitude. If we do think of it, the judgment is not indifferent, and the will of its own nature is necessitated toward this act.

Is Equilibrium Necessary for Freedom?

Some say that subjective indifference means equilibrium, and that efficacious grace, by determining the will to one thing, takes away this equilibrium. Answer: We do not find this term, either in Scripture, or in the definitions of the Church, or in St. Augustine, or in St. Thomas. Further, if by equilibrium we are to understand equality of inclination and facility, and even of faculty in the Molinistic sense, then the notion is false. Molina says, we remember, that under equal aid, one may be converted and another not. Or, again, that by the aid of a smaller grace one man can rise, whereas another, under a greater aid does not rise, and remains obdurate. Now these sentences are against the principle of predilection: “What hast thou that thou hast not received?” and also against the principle of the universal causality of God. But if by equilibrium we understand the power of resisting any grace, and the power of conquering any temptation with God's help, in this sense we admit equilibrium, because it is then nothing else but the active indifference which is not taken away by efficacious grace, since under efficacious grace there remains a real power to the opposite. But the term is not well chosen.

Analysis of Psychological Determinism

So far we have seen that human liberty is based on reason, and have also seen the various kinds of indifference. Now we pass to the second part of the article, which harmonizes human liberty with the influence of sufficient motive. The main objection, proposed by Leibnitz, is found already in St. Thomas.

Analysis of Difficulties

A truly sufficient motive moves by necessity. But a particular good is related to the will as a sufficient motive. Answer: If it fills the entire capacity of the mobile thing, then it moves by necessity, granted. But if it is only relatively suffi- cient, if it does not fill the entire capacity of the mobile thing, then we deny that it moves by necessity.

Eight Replies

1. The will is moved by its object, as sense-appetite by its object. Now the appetite of a hungry dog does not, by the fact that it is insatiable, remain free while eating a morsel of bread. In parallel manner, then, the will does not, by the fact that it is destined for universal good, remain free in relation to a particular good. Answer: The will is moved by its object, if you presuppose the indifference of judgment founded on the cognition of universal good, granted: otherwise, denied. This nominalistic objection shows that sensualism cannot admit liberty, but only spontaneity.

2. The will is moved by good, as the intellect is by truth. Now the intellect, though destined for universal truth, is not free regarding a particular truth. Answer: The intellect is not free in relation to demonstrated truth, I grant; in relation to mere opinion, I deny. Note, further, that the intellect draws things to itself and thus reduces many truths to the necessity of prime principles. The will, on the contrary, is drawn to the thing wherein the good exists. That good is always finite, unless it be God.

3- But that liberty or indifference of judgment in relation to particular good does not remain. Proof: Aesthetic admiration, though destined for universal beauty, is of necessity aroused by particular works of art, Michelangelo’s statue of Moses, say, or by one of Beethoven’s symphonies. In parallel manner, then, the will, though destined for universal good, is drawn necessarily by certain particular goods. We distinguish: Drawn by particular goods in any way imperfect, we deny. By particular goods, in every way good (existence, life, intelligence), per se, we grant; but note that these goods can, per accidens, be refused.

4. But the natural desire of the end takes away indifference of judgment. I grant, as regards specification. But, granting likewise that the end is the reason for necessarily willing the means, here and now necessary for beatitude, (as existence, life, intelligence), I deny such necessity toward other means and ways.

5. But the practical judgment must always be necessary, otherwise ethics would be a system not necessary, but arbitrary. Answer: The standard of the will must be necessary as regards principles and conclusions, but not as regards the practical judgment of prudence. And I explain. The judgment that is speculativo-practical belongs to moral science, and proceeds from the awareness of the sinner. But the judgment that is practico-practical is determined by prudence, and is not here and now psychologically necessary. To illustrate. The sinner, though speculatively he admits that justice must be observed by all men, especially toward himself, nevertheless, in practice, judges that his injustice toward another is simply good for himself. He can repeat the words of the poet: I see the better way, and I approve, but nevertheless I follow the worse.

6. By the principles of causality and sufficient reason this indifference is taken away. A cause, under one and the same set of circumstances, cannot produce different effects. Answer: A cause determined by nature to one line of causality, granted; otherwise denied.

7- But the will cannot choose unless it is determined by the intellect, and the intellect, granted the same circumstances, cannot change its judgment. Answer: Cannot, if the circumstances of the object are here and now infallibly determined, granted; otherwise denied.

8. Individual circumstances infallibly determine the act, because the object cannot be chosen unless it is judged to be better than another. Answer: Unless it is judged absolutely better, I deny. Better in relation to the will which is here and now acting, I grant. The last practical judgment depends on the actual disposition, good or bad, of liberty itself. He who wills an object can also non-will it, to manifest his liberty.

Particular good furnishes no motive that infallibly determines the will. This truth is especially apparent in acts where we find the greatest liberty, particularly in God.

Two Doubts

1. Must choice be always governed by the last practical judgment? Thomists answer in the affirmative, against Suarez. The last judgment immediately directing election is prerequired, because nothing can be willed unless it can be preknown as good and suitable. But, says Suarez, when two goods are proposed as here and now equal, the will can choose one without any reason, simply because it wills. Stat pro ratione voluntas. Answer: The phrase ‘because it wills” modifies, not only the agent, but also the object. The will always chooses “because it wills,” if you look at the act subjectively, even when it chooses a greater or an equal good. The phrase “‘because it wills” concurs as an objective motive. If the man is asked why he selects this minor good in preference to a major good, he will give for the reason and motive “because I will.” His motive for the choice is his own pleasure which he applies to one object and not to another. Stat pro ratione voluntas.

Man’s pleasure, we note, is often against the rule of reason, whereas God’s pleasure, though infinitely free, is always conformed to infinite wisdom, and wisdom judges that, in matters which cannot necessarily be determined, it is right to act according to one’s pleasure. To illustrate. God creates a man at this instant rather than before or after; or He gives to one a degree of glory which He does not give to another.

But, Suarez insists, God, without any last practical judgment, chooses this world in preference to a better world. Answer: God chooses a world, less good objectively, granted; by a motive less good, no. To explain. This world, though intrinsically less good than other worlds which God could have chosen, is nevertheless better, if you look at God’s motive, since it shows God's pleasure applied to this world and not to another. In matters of liberality and grace, the will of the donor becomes objective motive.

Further, the divine will does not, as does our will, presuppose goodness, but makes and creates that goodness, by loving and choosing it. God pours the goodness of His own choice into our free choice. God does not choose creatures because they are more or less good, but creatures are more or less good because God loves them more or less. God has greater love for better things, but better things are better because they are more loved by God.

Answering Leibnitz

God would be neither wise nor good, says Leibnitz, had He not created the best possible world. The answer is that God cannot make any created good absolutely better, because no created good is the highest possible good. God can always make something better than the thing He has already made. But He cannot act better, that is, He cannot act with greater wisdom and power. The external glory of God rests on the free counsel of His will. Supreme wisdom “delights to play in the universe.” 1° What God chooses among created goods is formally better, that is, more according to His will, but it is not always materially better. To illustrate. What obedience commands is not always materially the better course; but it is formally the better.

A Final Doubt

Supposing a free and efficacious intention of the goal, and only one medium to reach this goal, is the act of the will in such cases necessary or free? For example, a man wills health, and sees that it can be attained only by amputation. The answer is that, as the case is here stated, the man’s decision for amputation is a necessary act, because the will cannot efficaciously will the impossible. If he refuses, then he has withdrawn his free and efficacious intention to attain health,

ART. 3. IS THE WILL MOVED NECESSARILY BY THE SENSE-APPETITE?

Preliminaries

This article is against physical and physiological determinism. The objections are thus proposed by St. Thomas.

1. The authority of St. Paul: “Not the good which I will do I do, but the evil which I will not, that I do.” St. Paul is speaking of the concupiscence which follows original sin.

2. Aristotle says: “As man is, so does man choose.” Now it is not in the power of the will immediately to cast off passion.

The thesis is negative. In the Sed contra we have God’s words to Cain: “Why art thou angry? Under thee shall be thy appetite, and thou shalt control it.” * Then follow three conclusions.

1. A man whose reason is totally bound by passion is necessarily moved by the sense-appetite. Where reason is bound, we cannot have indifference of judgment, and hence no voluntary act. Man is then like a brute animal.

2. When the judgment of reason is not entirely impeded by passion, man is moved by sense-appetite, not necessarily, but freely. The object attracts him strongly, but leaves his judgment indifferent and mutable. But the liberty decreases as the impulse of passion increases.

g. If an act of the will is present it does not of necessity follow passion. From this third conclusion it is clear that St. Thomas does not admit that sudden motions of the will are necessary.

Difficulties Analyzed

1. St. Thomas, explaining the Pauline phrase, “the evil which I will not, that I do,” notes that the will cannot prevent movements of concupiscence from arising. The first motions of sensuality are not sins, if man immediately resists and turns his thought elsewhere. The following proposition has 11 Gen. 4:11.

been condemned: “Evil desires, which reason does not consent to, which man suffers against his will, are nevertheless prohibited by the precept “thou shalt not covet.” 12

In an opposite direction Molinos says: “Under temptations, even furious temptations, the soul is not bound to resist.” ** Condemned is likewise another proposition of Molinos wherein he denies that first motions of sensuality can exist after the purification of the soul.’ This condemnation of Baius and Quesnel shows that concupiscence, being a habit (fomes), is not properly speaking sin, and that the first motions of sensuality are not sins if man resists and turns his thought elsewhere.

2. Our will has not the power to banish passion immediately. Answer: The judgment of reason remains in some way free, and hence can refrain from following passion.

3- The will can be moved to a particular good, without any passion in the sense-appetite. A sick man, with no appetite, nevertheless wills to eat in order to sustain life, or to drink bitter medicine though it nauseates him.

We have solved the objections raised by physical or physiological determinism by recalling the source of free will, i.e., the indifference, the mutability, of judgment. If such judgment is absent, the act is no longer voluntary. Thus we see the harmony between free will and motive objectively sufficient. This motive is relatively sufficient for a free choice, but not absolutely sufficient to necessitate the will. Two finite goods, however unequal, are both equally distant from infinite good.

ART. 4. MUST THE WILL BE MOVED BY GOD TO ITS ACT? Preliminaries Here we are to solve the objections of Calvin and Luther against efficacious grace, objections renewed by Molinists

against Thomists, objections already stated by St. Thomas. For in this article we are treating not only of liberty from coercion, that is, of spontaneity, but also of freedom from necessity.

Objections

1. An irresistible agent moves of necessity. But God is an irresistible agent. This objection is raised by Calvinists and Lutherans. Molinists agree on the principle involved, namely, that God, moving by intrinsically efficacious grace, would move of necessity. But they differ from heretics in the application, namely, that grace is intrinsically efficacious. This is affirmed by the heretics, denied by the Molinists. We, however, reject the principle, admitted by Protestants and Molinists.

Protestantism says: God, moving by intrinsically efficacious grace, moves of necessity. But grace is intrinsically efficacious. Molinism says: God, moving by intrinsically efficacious grace, moves of necessity. But God does not move by necessity. Hence grace is not intrinsically efficacious. Thomism says: God, moving by intrinsically efficacious grace, moves not of necessity, But grace is intrinsically efficacious. Hence God moves not of necessity.

2. The operation of God would be inefficacious if the will refused that to which God is moving. But the operation of God is not inefficacious.

Thesis

God moves the will, yet so that He does not determine it to necessity. We prove this first by authority. “God from the beginning created man, and left him in the hand of his own counsel.” #* Again, we have the definition of the Council of Trent against the early Protestants: If anyone says that the free will of man, moved by God, does not cooperate by assenting to God's calling, whereby man prepares himself for the grace of justification, or says that man cannot dissent if he wills, but that, like something inanimate, he does nothing at all and is merely passive, A.S.1¢

Molinists say that the Council is here treating of efficacious grace, first, because the grace in question is one with which man de facto cooperates, and secondly, because the Council is treating of that grace which, according to Luther and Calvin, would destroy liberty. From this conception of the Council’s meaning, they argue that man can resist efficacious grace in the composite sense, thereby rendering it inefficacious.

A Manifold Reply

1. Were this position true, the Council would have also condemned Thomism. But the supreme pontiffs, especially Benedict XV and Clement XII, declared that the Thomistic doctrine was in no way condemned by the Council of Trent, nor by the bull Unigenitus against the Jansenists.

2. This Molinistic objection was proposed already by Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians against Augustine.

3. Among the fathers of the Council were many Thomists and Augustinians, who certainly did not wish to condemn Thomism, And in the redaction of these canons on justification, one of the collaborators was the Thomistic Soto.

4. We grant that in this canon there is question of efficacious grace, and we answer that, according to the Molinists, man under that grace which is efficacious, though he can indeed dissent, does not in fact dissent. Otherwise this grace would no longer be efficacious, not even by extrinsic denomination, but would be merely sufficient. In the Molinistic view this grace is indeed not efficacious except by our consent foreknown by God through scientia media. But this prevision, depending on our consent, posits a dependence in God, which we cannot admit.

5. The fathers of the Council are probably speaking, not only of efficacious grace, but of grace intrinsically efficacious.

The meaning of the canon would be, against Luther, that this grace, intrinsically efficacious, does not take away free will, since man can dissent, i.e., he retains power for the opposite; he is not an inanimate thing, merely passive.

The fathers of the Council certainly knew that Luther and Calvin defended grace per se efficacious, and from this principle inferred the destruction of liberty. Hence arises a dilemma. The fathers of the Council judged, either that the doctrine of antecedent grace, that is, grace per se efficacious, is heretical, or that the Protestant consequence, namely, that efficacious grace destroys liberty, is heretical. That the first alternative is not their meaning is clear. They would have had to proscribe such a traditional doctrine in express terms; this they did not. Hence the second alternative holds good, namely, the fathers of the Council say that it is heretical to affirm that intrinsically efficacious grace destroys liberty.

Now from this conciliar condemnation it does not follow that Molinism, in its positive part, is a heresy; but it does follow that its objections against Thomism do not preserve the meaning of the Council. It is an illegitimate heretical conclusion to say that efficacious grace destroys liberty.

Again, the Council, treating of perseverance, declares: “God, unless men fail in corresponding to His grace, just as He began the good work, so will He bring it to perfection, since ‘He works both to will and to do.’” 2* How can this proposition of the Council be harmonized with the proposition of Molina, namely, that under equal aid, or even smaller aid, one man is converted and another not. Were it so, God would have begun equally in these two men a good work, and one of these would of himself bring the work to completion.

To see the mind of the Church, let us return to ancient times, and particularly to the Second Council of Orange, against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians. The twentieth canon of the Council says: “No one has of his own anything

except deceit and sin. But if man has anything of truth and justice, it must come from that fountain which we thirst for here in the wilderness, in order that, bedewed by its drops, we may not faint in the way.” 18 The many texts cited by the Council against the Semi-Pelagians hold good likewise against Molinists.

In favor of grace intrinsically efficacious, many other texts are cited, not only by Thomists, but also by Augustinians. St. Augustine himself, commenting on the words, “I will take from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh,” speaks thus: “This grace, given secretly to human hearts by divine generosity, has as first purpose to take away hardness of heart.” 12 Now God cannot infallibly attain this purpose by concurring indifferently, by a decree which awaits or presupposes consent given by man, since according to Scripture, it is God who takes away the hardness of the human heart. Divine Providence, says St. Thomas, works in all things infallibly.?°

Against Lessius

Lessius speaks thus: “When of two men similarly called, one accepts the grace offered and the other refuses, then we say rightly that the decision comes from liberty alone. Not that he who accepts, accepts only by his liberty, but because by his liberty alone does this difference arise, not from the diversity of the aid which precedes.” 21

This view, Thomists repeat, is against the principle of predilection: “I will have mercy on whom I will.” 22 It is also against St. Paul’s word: “What hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received?” Listen to St. Augustine: “Why God draws this man and not that man, judge not unless you would

19 De praedest. sanctorum, c.8.

misjudge.” ?* Thomists add that, according to St. Paul, God Himself, by His election and grace, distinguishes one man from the other, whereas Molinism supposes that one, Peter, say, is distinguished from Judas by liberty alone, so that God's role is reduced to placing Peter in circumstances wherein God foresees, by scientia media, that Peter will consent.

Who distinguishes thee? * To this question St. ‘Thomas replies: “Thou canst not distinguish thyself from the mass of lost men. Hence thou hast no reason for being proud against another, or for making thyself superior to another.” Again, “No created thing could be better than another unless it were more loved by God, whose love is the cause of all created goodness.”

Here enter some beautiful words of Bossuet: “We must bring our intellect into captivity before the great mystery of grace, and admit that there is a twofold grace, one sufficient, the other efficacious, the first of which leaves our will inexcusable before God, while the second hinders us from glorying in ourselves.” ?5

“O God, I thank Thee that I am not like the rest of men.” 2 These words St. Augustine often quoted against the Semi-Pelagians. Del Prado,” quoting the same text against the Molinists, shows how men should pray if the principles of Molina were true.

The Thesis

God, moving the will to choose, does not determine it to necessity, but so that its motion remains contingent, except in its natural movements. God moves all creatures according to their condition, necessary causes to necessary effects, contingent causes to contingent effects. But the will is an active principle, not determined by nature to one line of activity.

Notice that St. Thomas does not say that God moves the will according to scientia media. Neither does Leo XIII. St. Thomas had spoken thus: “Since the divine will is most efficacious, that which God wills not only follows, but follows in that manner in which God wishes it to follow. But God wills that some things follow necessarily and some things contingently.” 28

Harmony between the infallible divine decree and our liberty is founded on the transcendent efficacy of the divine causality. The mystery lies, not in man, but in God. This efficacy of divine causality transcends all created causality, even angelic causality, just as free determination is predicated only analogically of God, angel, and man.

St. Thomas leads our intellect toward this mystery when he says that, already in the created order, “the more a cause is efficacious, the more does effect follow cause, not only substantially, but also modally.” 29° To illustrate. Dissimilarity of son to father is on account of weakness in the father, whereas, if the father is strong and sound, his son is similar to him also in modes and accidents. In certain families we find that the son is the living image of the father. A great military leader (Themistocles, Caesar, Napoleon) communicates to his soldiers his own victorious modes. Michelangelo, Beethoven, Dante, Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas, each in his own line, communicates to his disciples the mode and spirit of his power. A mother leads her son, a wife leads her husband, to choose freely what she wills and as she wills. Hence the ironical proverb: What the wife wills, God wills.

Passages from St. Thomas

1. “Since the will of God is most efficacious, not only does that follow which God wills to follow, but it follows in the manner which God wills. But God wills certain things to happen necessarily, others contingently, that there be order in

28 Ja, q.19, a.8. Cf. Ia, q.22, a.4; Periherm. I, lect. 14; Metaph. LV, lect. $- 29 Ibid.

things, to complete the beauty of the universe.” * Hence for some effects He creates necessary causes, and for other things, contingent causes.

2. “Necessary and contingent are characteristics that follow being as being. Hence these modes, contingency and necessity, fall under the provision of God, the universal provider, but not under the provision of particular causes. Not only the power of freedom, but the very act of freedom, is reduced to God as its cause.” °!

g. “The divine will must be understood as transcending the entire order of the universe, as a cause that penetrates the depths of reality and all its differences. But the fundamental differences of reality are possibility and necessity, which, therefore, are caused by the divine will itself.” 3?

4. “Free will is indeed the cause of its own motion, because man by free will moves himself to act. But free will need not be the first cause of that which is free, just as a cause need not be a first cause in order to be a cause. God, the first cause, moves both natural causes and voluntary causes. As He does not take away from natural causes their naturalness, so by moving voluntary causes He does not take away their voluntariness, rather He produces their voluntariness. He works in each being according to its nature.” °°

Question. How does God, moving thus, produce this free mode? Answer: The will tends to a particular good, with actual and active dominating indifference, and this indifference is based on the destination of the will to universal good, to beatitude in common. But God moves the will, first, by priority of nature, by arousing in it the desire of beatitude in common; secondly, by posteriority of nature, by moving the will to determine itself by its own deliberation, with dominating indifference to the particular good. Thus God is the cause, not only of potential indifference, but also of actual

indifference. He actuates liberty, does not destroy it. He moves the will from within, according to its natural inclination toward its adequate object, before He moves it to determine itself by way of deliberation to an inadequate object.

Two Further Fundamental Arguments

1. Every good that is in us comes from God as its cause. But nothing in us is better than our free consent to good deeds. Therefore this free consent comes from God as cause.

2. Were it not so, our will would be the first source of its choice, and God would depend on our will, known by scientia media. God's indifferent concursus would be determined by our liberty, and our liberty would be the sole cause of discrimination between good consent and evil consent.

Difficulties Analyzed

1. When God moves efficaciously, nothing can resist Him and therefore God moves of necessity. St. Thomas does not answer as does Cardinal Billot. The latter answers that God moves only to universal good, not to particular good. Nor does St. Thomas say that the divine motion is fallibly efficacious. What St. Thomas does say is this: “The will of God extends, not only to the deed, but also to the mode which suits the nature of the thing moved. It would be more contradictory to divine motion if the will were moved of necessity, which does not belong to its nature, than if it were moved freely as suits its nature.” *

2. But, say our adversaries, grace, if it is per se efficacious, destroys liberty. St. Thomas replies: “On the contrary, grace, precisely because it is most efficacious, makes our action to be free, produces the free mode of our action.” * God actualizes our liberty, does not destroy it. To illustrate this doctrine, think of the conversion of Magdalen, of the good thief, or better still, of the consent given by the Blessed Virgin on the

day of the Annunciation. God touches our created liberty with a virginal contact, which contains no violence. Just as, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Virgin conceived and brought forth without damage to her virginity, so under the grace of the Holy Spirit our liberty remains unharmed. God does not violate liberty, but preserves, elevates, vivifies, sanctifies, and strengthens liberty. To depreciate the strength of efficacious grace would be to reduce its sweetness, because the two, strength and sweetness, are intimately connected in the most profound harmony.

3. It is impossible that the will should not will the object toward which God moves it, since God’s operation cannot be inefficacious. We answer with St. Thomas, not that the motion of God is indifferent and moves only to universal good, or that grace is only fallibly efficacious, but that, in St. Thomas’ own words: “If God moves the will to a certain act, it is incompatible with this position that the will shall not be moved. Yet it is not simply impossible.” The will cannot resist in the composite sense, namely, it cannot combine actual resistance with efficacious grace. But it can resist in the divided sense, because there remains a real power to the opposite. While, as the Council of Trent says, “it can resist if it wills,” yet, under efficacious grace it never as a fact resists, just as a man sitting can stand, but not sit and stand simultaneously. i

Further Objections Analyzed

1. “God, moving the will, does not force it, because He gives to the will its own inclination.” **

2. “To be moved voluntarily is to be moved intrinsically, yes; but this intrinsic principle can come from another and extrinsic principle.” 3

3. “If the will were so moved by another as not to be moved by itself, then the works of the will would not count

as merits or demerits, But since the fact that it is moved by another does not exclude self-motion, merit or demerit is not taken away.” 38

4. “God moves the will immutably by the efficacy of His moving power, which cannot fail. But by the nature of the will which is moved, a will which is indifferent to various lines of activity, we do not have necessity but liberty.” 3°

5. “When the Holy Spirit moves the soul to love God, charity has impeccability, since the Holy Spirit infallibly does whatever He wills. Hence these two things can never be simultaneous: the Holy Spirit moves to an act of charity and the will simultaneously loses charity by sin. For the gift of perseverance is one of the benefits of God, benefits whereby all who are liberated are most certainly liberated.” 40

6. “Every action of the will, so far as it is action, is not only from the will as immediate agent, but from God as the first agent, who is more powerful than the will. If, then, the will can change its act, much more can God.” #4

7- “Only God can change the inclination of the will to another line as He wills.” 4? But even God, we may add, cannot make simultaneous these two things: an indifferent judgment in the intellect and a necessary act in the will. As it is a contradiction that the will should will an unknown object, so it is a contradiction that the will should will it in any other way than as it is known. If the will necessarily willed that which is proposed by an indifferent judgment, the will would no longer be a rational appetite. It is a contradiction that the will adhere necessarily to an object which is not proposed as good from every angle.

But then, says the objector, even sinful acts would come from God. Answer: God is the cause of the physical entity of sin, but not of sin itself. Sin is a defect, a deformity. But de-

fect comes from a deficient cause, not an efficient cause. Lameness has its cause in the crooked bone, not in the lame man’s motive power.**

But would there be sin if God did not permit it? No, but God permits it, does not impede it; first, because it is not wonderful that if a thing is defectible it should at times really fail; secondly, it belongs to the universal provider to permit certain evils, in order that from them there may arise greater good. The treason of Judas, the pagan persecutions, are permitted in order that the patience of Christ and the martyrs may infallibly manifest God's attributes of mercy and justice.

The Nature of Premotion

We distinguish two questions, one principal, the other secondary. The principal doctrine is that divine decrees are of themselves efficacious, that grace is of itself efficacious. This efficacy of grace comes from the omnipotent will of God, independently of the consent of the creature and of scientia media. This truth we defend as a theological doctrine, connected with the principles of faith, a doctrine proximately definable, and with us agree nearly all theological schools, the Molinistic school excepted. Thus certain Augustinians explain the intrinsic efficacy of grace, not by physical premotion, but by victorious delectation.

The second doctrine runs thus: Efficacious grace must be explained by premotion, i.e., physical predetermination. This is a philosophical thesis, since it cannot be proved by revelation alone. In this secondary thesis we dissent, not only from Molinists and Congruists, but also from many other theologians who, while rejecting scientia media and admitting intrinsically efficacious grace, explain that efficaciousness by a multitude of moral aids, or by moral causality, or by indeliberate acts, or by victorious delectation, not by physical premotion.

43 [a-Ilae, q.22, a.2, ad gum. 44 De Deo, diss. 8, a.5; De gratia, diss. 5, a.7.

Molinists confound this secondary question with the primary question on grace of itself efficacious. Billuart answers: “Let Molinists finally acknowledge that the grace necessary for salvation is not indifferent and determinable by the human will, but that, on the contrary, the human will is thereby infallibly determined, independently of scientia media. If they admit this, then they may reject physical predetermination, either absolutely, or at least in relation to acts that are materially sinful. Then, while as philosophers we will continue to oppose them, we will be their friends as theologians, and will not call for a new Congregatio de Auxiliis.” * After these essential declarations let us see what this divine motion is on the part of God and what it is on the part of the creature.

1. The divine action by which God influences second causes is really identified with the divine essence. It is an action formally immanent and virtually transitive. The proof runs as follows. There can be no accident in God. God is His own intelligence, His own will, His own activity. Hence His action ad extra is formally immanent, because identified with the divine essence.** But it is virtually transitive, because it places an effect ad extra. God’s power is the source of created effects, but not the source of God’s action. In God there is no novelty of action, but only a novelty of effects outside of God.

In creatures, on the contrary, an act that is formally transitive, e.g., heating, is an accident proceeding from the agent and terminating in the patient. God’s action on second causes, transcending the action of created things, is really a superaction, just as God is supertruth and supergood. This position is admitted by all theologians, though they do not define analogy in the same way.

Hence divine action is in itself just as unknowable as is the divine essence. We know it analogically, in what it shares with creative action, and we know it negatively and

45 Ta, q.25, a.1, ad gum; Cf. Contra Gentes, II, 23, 31, 35. 46 Ja—IIae, q.110, a.2.

relatively in its characteristics, namely, that it is an action uncaused, a supreme action, the source of all created action, a self-subsisting action. We know what it is not, rather than what it is. Molinists impugn this view, calling it Bannesianism, as if divine motion agreed with created motion univocally.

2. What is divine motion as found in the creature? Is it a created thing? Some theologians deny this, saying that the extrinsic assistance of God is sufficient, and that the free creature simply wills what divine liberty wills by a certain sympathy with the divine will. Thus those who follow Scotus. Others say that moral causality suffices, that is, either God's attraction by a celestial delectation, or by many moral aids, or by arousing indeliberate acts which dispose us to choose.

Thomists respond: You do not explain how God obtains infallibly the good effect He wills. Nothing attracts the will infallibly except God seen clearly. Even without victorious delectation men often desire good, even supernatural good, in aridity of the spirit, say, or in the dark night of the soul. Actual grace, operative or cooperative, is not God, but an effect of God, and it is not our act, but it is the cause of our act. This is the doctrine of St. Thomas. Listen to the texts that here follow.

“By the gratuitous will of God man is aided by being moved to know, to will, to do. This gratuitous effect in man is not a quality, but a motion of the soul. The act of the mover, in the thing moved, is motion.” *7

“That divine effect whereby a created thing acts, has a passing and incomplete existence, like the existence of colors in the air, and the existence of art in the instrument of the artist. It is a power, a vis, whereby the second cause, as instrument of the first cause, brings its act into existence. Just as a created thing cannot preserve itself, neither can it operate without a divine operation.” 4

3. “The motion of the mover precedes the motion of the movable thing, both in idea and in reality. Our advance in good works is owing to the divine aid which antecedes our works.” +°

4. “The ultimate in goodness and perfection to be attained by a second agent is that which it can do by power of the first agent. The fullest reach of the second agent comes from the first agent.” 5°

Created transitive action has three elements. Motion-action (heating proceeding from fire); motion-passion (heating as a passion in the thing that is heated); consequent operation (whereby the heated wood itself heats another piece of wood).

Created immanent operation also has three elements: Motion-action (a colored object moves sight); motion-passion (the sense of sight receives species impressa); consequent operation (the act of sight).

Created action becomes an analogy of divine action. As wood does not heat unless it is itself preheated, and as sense does not act unless it previously receives an impression from the object, so no second cause can work unless premoved by God. And so it is that here too three elements must be distinguished: motion-action (the divine action, formally immanent and virtually transitive); motion-passion (when will is moved from potential willing to actual willing); the elicited operation of the will (which under the motion of God elicits vitally and freely its own act of volition).

To explain. The divine motion, considered outside of God, is in the created thing moved. And this motion-passion, whatever adversaries say, is not to be confounded with the operation elicited by the will. In motion-passion the will is moved, whereas in operation the will itself operates.

But then, runs the objection, the will is not the mistress of its act, because this motion-passion is produced in it by God without it. Answer: This motion received from God can

49 Ibid., 66. 50 De potentia, q.3, a.7- be called a motion of the soul, but it is not an act of the will. The will is not mistress of its own passive power, but it is mistress of its own active volition. The divine motion is not in our power, but we are in the power of God.

We must not, then, confuse the passive actualization of the will by God with the action elicited by the will. And note well that God adapts His divine motion to the freedom of our will. God does not determine our choice, as if the will would in no way determine itself. God infallibly moves the will to self-determination. God, says St. Thomas, “is the cause of every created action in four ways. First, He gives the power of action; secondly, He preserves that power; thirdly, He applies the power to action; fourthly, by His power all other powers act. Created causes concur as it were instrumentally to produce existence which is the proper effect of God.” 51

Question: Does premotion precede our act, or is it a mere simultaneous concursus? Answer: The divine premotion precedes our act, not in time, but in causality. To move and to be moved are simultaneous in time because one and the same reality is from the mover and in the movable thing. But the priority of causality is evident. The patient would not be moved if the agent did not move. And the patient cannot act unless it is premoved to act. Wood cannot heat unless it is first heated. The eye cannot see unless it is moved by the object. But the divine motion which first operates, then cooperates, Is, even as Cooperating, prior in causality to our action with which it cooperates.*?

St. Thomas uses the word “motion,” not “premotion,” because in his mind all motion by priority of causality is premotion. The particle “pre” is tautological, but we retain it in order to distinguish the divine motion from the merely simultaneous concursus of Molina, which indeed precedes its effect, but in no way precedes the production of our operation. God and the will, according to Molina, are like two

horses drawing a cart. One horse does not move the other, but both move the cart. This conception, however, does not in any way explain how the will passes from potentiality to act. Our will is not its own act, and therefore needs to be premoved in order to act.

Here we must note an error in terminology. Father Sertillanges, O.P., says that many Thomists use the word “premotio physica” to signify the action of God. This usage, according to him, involves a triple verbal heresy: the particle “pre” is improper, because there is no priority of time; motion, because we are dealing, not with motion but with creation; physical, because the action is not physical, but rather metaphysical. We have answered this difficulty above. ‘The particle “pre” signifies merely priority of nature. Motion is well chosen; it is the term used by St. Thomas. And it is false to say that the action is creation, because creation presupposes nothing as its terminus a quo. If our acts were created, they would in no way come from us vitally, and we would have to admit occasionalism, because only God would be the agent. Finally, the term “physical” is in opposition, not to metaphysical, but to moral.

Question: Is the divine premotion the same thing as predetermination? Listen to Zigliara: “There are some who grant premotion, but are horrified at the term ‘predetermination.’ Now these authors tremble with fear where there is no fear. They do not understand the premotion which they admit, nor the predetermination which they refuse.” * Premotion is identical with predetermination. It expresses relation to the divine omnipotence which moves; predetermination expresses the divine will, the predetermining decree which precedes the act, by priority, not of time, but of causality, and that from eternity. The divine intellect conceives, the divine will predetermines, omnipotence premoves.

The word “predetermination” is not an invention of Thomists, but is found in St. Thomas himself. Here are his words: ‘“Damascene, following St. Gregory of Nyssa, says that God foreknows our deeds, but does not predetermine them. These words have this meaning: Our deeds are subject to the determination of divine providence, but not in such fashion as to receive necessity from this determination.” * The saint’s mind is that God predetermines, not only our free future actions, especially meritorious actions, but also their free mode. Eternity precedes time by a priority, not of time, but of causality and order.

A Middle Interpretation

This interpretation was proposed by three cardinals: Pecci, Satolli, and Lorenzelli.

Preliminaries

Molinism says that God’s grace is efficacious, not of itself, but from its effect, namely, from our consent, preknown by scientia media. Congruism retains from Molinism the term scientia media, but distinguishes congruous grace from incongruous. Congruous grace, though not infallibly efficacious, agrees with the temperament and disposition of the subject, and thus, as moral benefit, surpasses incongruous grace. Finally, syncretism, as proposed by the three cardinals and their disciples, joins Thomism in rejecting scientia media and admitting grace intrinsically efficacious, but does not allow to grace even a priority of nature,

Against this syncretism, we have elsewhere * discussed this dilemma: “God either determines or is determined; there is no middle way. If God does not determine, then He is determined by our foreknown consent. Hence theologians who will not admit predetermining decrees, must, willy-nilly, admit scientia media.”

For the moment let the following synopsis suffice.

Thomism

Paquet

Satolli

Suarez

Occasionalism Molinism Pantheism Atheistic Evolutionism

This synopsis shows that Thomism is an elevation, rising not only above grave errors and heresies contrary to one another, but also above the opinions of theologians, and in particular, against eclecticism, which tries to find a medium, but does not reach the summit. Satolli rejects scientia media, but, while he admits intrinsically efficacious grace, he denies to that grace any priority, even that of nature. Paquet follows the same road, but comes more closely to real Thomism.

A Summary

These authors are mistaken in trying to find this doctrine in Cajetan. St. Thomas does not use the word “premotion” because for him every motion is premotion. Cooperating grace has a priority of causality in relation to our act. This syncretism leads to scientia media, whether they will or no.

But they say, God, without any predetermining decree, can know a free futuribility. Answer: God, without predetermining decree, could not know which of two possible contradictories would come to pass, whether Peter, in such and such circumstances, would sin or not. The futuribile is more than the simply possible thing, because of two possible things, contradictorily opposed, it expresses the definite outcome in such and such circumstances.

Conclusion

In the words of St. Augustine, cited by the Council of Trent: “God does not command impossibilities, but by com- manding He admonishes thee to do what thou canst, and to ask for what thou canst not.” * God’s saving will is universal. Sin never arises from the insufficiency of the divine aid. Such insufficiency would presuppose divine negligence, which would be a contradiction in terms, a negation of divine providence and of God Himself. On the other hand no one could be in any way better than another had he not received more from God: “What hast thou that thou hast not received?” ** The mystery remains, namely, the intimate harmony of infinite justice, infinite mercy, and supreme liberty. This harmony, this transcendent eminence of God, this intimate life of God, cannot be seen except in the Fatherland.

Footnotes

1. Throughout this question the phrase “non ex necessitate” means “freely.” St. Thomas writes: “determinat non ex necessitate.” He does not write (pace P. D’Ales, S.J.): “non ad unum determinat.” ↩