Chapter VII. The special antinomies relating to freedom

Of all the antinomies brought against us by Agnosticism, the most difficult to solve seem to be those relating to freedom. First of all, how are we to reconcile either divine or human free will with the principle of sufficient reason, which, as we have seen, is the foundation for the proofs of God’s existence? If all that is, has its sufficient reason, a determining sufficient reason without which the determination of what comes into existence would remain unexplained and unintelligible, must we not admit that the free act itself must have a determining sufficient reason? And how is it free under this determination? If to avoid Determinism we maintain that the free act of itself has no determining sufficient reason, we conceive of it, it seems, as an absolute beginning. But this is practically a denial of the necessity and universality of the principle of sufficient reason, which is the foundation for the proofs of God’s existence.

To safeguard the validity of reason and its first principles, some Intellectualists, such as Spinoza, thought they must deny both divine and human freedom.

To safeguard freedom and along with it morality, some Voluntarists, such as Renouvier and Secrétan, thought they must deny the necessity or objectivity of the first principles of reason.

There are other antinomies connected with this principal one: How can we reconcile the freedom of God with His wisdom and immutability? How can we reconcile human freedom with God’s foreknowledge and movement of all things? Above all, how are we to reconcile moral evil or sin with the divine motion? 268

For a full realization of the importance of the problem, we will briefly explain the thesis of Absolute Intellectualism and also that of Libertism; they correspond more or less to the two parts of the third antinomy of Kant.

59. Statement of the problem; absolute Intellectualism and Libertism, the third antinomy of Kant

Absolute Intellectualism is to be found especially in the works of Spinoza, who applies the mathematical method to all the sciences. As mathematics considers neither efficient nor final causes, nor sensible qualities, Spinoza denies the reality of efficiency properly so called, of finality, and of sensible qualities, and admits such a conformity of mathematical reason with being that it makes him completely deny contingency and free will. Everything exists because of the quite geometrical necessity of the divine nature, without any choice on the part of God.

Hegel in his Panlogism goes so far as to say that the real and the rational are identical, what is and what must be, the accomplished fact and right, success and morality. But thus to reduce every contingent fact to the necessity of rational laws, he is obliged to change the meaning of these laws. For him the principle of contradiction is nothing more than a law of minor logic, of the understanding occupied with abstractions. The law of major logic, of reason and reality, is the identification of contradictories in becoming. Absolute Intellectualism or Panlogism is thus itself identified with anti-Intellectualism which denies the necessity of rational principles.

The Intellectualism of Leibniz, though maintaining the necessity of the principles of contradiction and sufficient reason, strives to find a place for freedom. As a matter of fact, it allows only contingency to remain, and a necessary choice of a moral necessity. In God as in man, choice is infallibly determined by the principle of sufficient reason. Leibniz read St. Augustine, St. Thomas,

Bannez, and Alvarez, as well as Molina and Fonseca; he admits with the Thomists that “intelligence is, as it were, the soul of freedom” (Théod. III, sec. 228); that freedom presupposes spontaneity, which means exemption from all external constraint (sec. 301) and also indifference; but he adds: provided we do not understand by indifference anything more than contingency. Contingency is the “exclusion of logical or metaphysical necessity” (sec. 288), but not the exclusion of moral necessity which belongs properly to understanding and which inclines infallibly though without necessity (sec. 310). According to Leibniz, the last practical judgment which terminates a deliberation is indifferent to what is meant by contingent. This is equivalent to saying that the contrary or at least the contradictory judgment is possible, or does not imply a contradiction. But it is not indifferent in this sense, that the contrary or the contradictory judgment would be compatible with the external circumstances and the internal dispositions in which one finds oneself in the act of judging. To admit this compatibility, to admit that in the same circumstances a man can at one time act and at another time not act or act differently, is, according to Leibniz, a denial of the principle of sufficient reason, because that principle requires that nothing happen without a determining reason for it. He says further: “Without this great principle we should never be able to prove the existence of God and we should lose a vast number of very exact and very useful reasonings which ultimately rest upon this principle. It suffers no exception, otherwise its force would be weakened. There is¹ also nothing so weak as those systems in which everything is unstable and replete with exceptions.” (TAéod., I, sec. 84.)

The last practical judgment that terminates a deliberation is therefore not absolutely necessary, like a geometrical conclusion— in that Leibniz differs from Spinoza—but it is necessary, he says, with a moral necessity in virtue of the principle of sufficient reason or that of the better. In such determined circumstances it cannot at the same time be better to act and better not to act; in one and the same situation there can be only one better, not two. And if one judges that it is better to act, the circumstances being the same, one cannot effectively abandon this judgment and judge that it is better not to act. “Everything is certain and predetermined in man as in everything else, and the human soul is a kind of spiritual automaton” Théod., I, sec. 52. This is what is called Psychological Determinism.

If that is true, our activity seems to be no more than a series of acts or phenomena, the connection between them being governed by the laws of association of ideas when we do not reflect, but by the principle of sufficient reason when we do reflect. Can the rational automaton be called a person, is it really master of its acts, sui juris? Is it not rather a part of the universe, a group of phenomena lost in the immense series? Is it not rather limited to the transmission of the received activity? Is it really the source of its own activity, is it truly endowed with initiative? In spite of being endowed with reason, it is not so much acting as acted upon.

According to the author of Monadologte, God, too, finds Himself under the moral necessity of creating rather than not creating; He would be neither good nor wise if He did not create; and of all possible worlds, He is under the moral necessity of choosing the best; therefore the best must exist. Leibniz sees no possible intermediate position between this thesis and that of the Nominalists,

Ockham and Descartes, who make the truth of the principle of contradiction and the first principle of morality depend upon divine freedom. And it is “dishonoring” God, he says, to claim that He has established the distinction between good and evil by a purely arbitrary decree. . . . Why would it not, then, just as well be the Manichaean principle of evil as the orthodox principle of good? ? (Théod., Il, secs. 176 £.)

Consequently Leibniz maintains that God knows future free acts “by the knowledge of simple intelligence before He has decreed to give them existence.” “From this we see,” he says, “that to account for God's foreknowledge, we can do without the scientia media of the Molinists and without Predetermination, as taught by Bannez and Alvarez, who were very profound writers” (Théod,, I, sec. 47). “It is sufficient,” says Leibniz, “for the creature to be by its preceding condition inclined more to one side than the other; and all these combinations of actions of the creature and of all creatures were represented in the divine intellect and known to God by the knowledge of simple intelligence before He decreed to give them existence.” Such is Psychological Determinism, according to which the principle of sufficient reason imposes an infallibly determining moral necessity upon divine and human freedom.

This doctrine of moral necessity has been held, more or less distinctly, by a rather large number of philosophers both before and after Leibniz. It seemed to many to be the inevitable consequence of the principle of sufficient reason and of that of the subordination of the will to the intellect which directs it. In favor of this

2St. Thomas says in equivalent words: “It is blasphemous to hold that the distinction between moral good and evil depends simply upon the free will of God. God would no longer be essentially good." Cf. St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 23, a. 6 (“Whether justice in created things depends simply upon the will of God.”): “To say that justice depends simply upon the will of God, is to say that the divine will does not proceed according to the regulations of wisdom; and this is blasphemous.”

thesis Leibniz quotes Plato,® and generally those in favor of absolute optimism. Afterwards, Rosmini was condemned by the Church for having taught the following proposition: “The love by which God loves Himself even in creatures, and which is the reason determining Him to create, constitutes a moral necessity, which in the most perfect being is always productive of an effect: for necessity of this kind only in the majority of imperfect beings leaves intact bilateral freedom” (Denzinger, n. 1908). Contrary to this, the Vatican Council said: “God, of His own goodness and almighty power, not for the increase or acquirement of His own happiness, but to manifest His perfection by the blessings which He bestows on creatures, and with absolute freedom of counsel, created out of nothing, from the very first beginning of time, both the spiritual and the corporeal creature, to wit, the angelical and the mundane, and afterwards the human creature as partaking, in a sense, of both, consisting of spirit and of body” (Denzinger, n. 1783). “If anyone shall say that God created, not by His will, free from all necessity, but by a necessity equal to the necessity whereby He loves Himself; let him be anathema” (Denzinger, n. 1805).

The Intellectualism and Psychological Determinism of Leibniz which the Church rejected, was followed by a no less excessive voluntarist and libertarian reaction. Between Lebniz and Kant the question at issue is, to know whether we must attribute the supremacy to the will or the intellect. The third Kantian antinomy * presents the difficulty in sufficiently clear terms.

The thesis of this antinomy shows the necessity of admitting a free causality. According to the antithesis, a free causality is contrary to rational principles.

The thesis is formulated by Kant as follows: Causality in con-

8 Leibniz is mistaken in quoting also Aristotle: cf, Perihermenias, Bk. 1, ch. ix; St. Thomas’ comment., lect. 13-15.

4 Critique of Pure Reason (Transcendental Dialectic; Antinomies of Pure Reason), tr. by Meiklejohn, pp. 252-257.

formity with the laws of nature is not the only kind of causality which can explain all the phenomena in the world. To explain them a free causality must also be admitted. Let it be supposed, indeed, that everything happens in the world according to necessary laws; from this it results that a phenomenon can never be considered as fully determined, for its previous condition presupposes another, and so on indefinitely. We do not therefore arrive at that complete determination demanded by the natural law. To satisfy this law the series of causes must therefore be complete, final; it must start from a cause which has no need of being previously determined; it must start from a free cause.

The antithesis maintains, on the contrary, that there is no such thing as freedom and that everything in the world happens solely according to the laws of nature. Granted, indeed, that there is such a thing as free causality, capable of commencing of itself a whole series of connected actions, you thus introduce incoherence into nature and break the unity of experience which demands that all phenomena be interconnected, without any possible gap, by a relation of antecedents and consequents. We must therefore keep to natural necessity and exclude a freedom which introduces disorder into the world and knowledge which is contrary to the principle of sufficient reason and to that of causality.

We know that Kant solved this antinomy by distinguishing between the phenomenal and the intelligible. Certain human actions which, for our senses, are embodied in the inflexible chain of physical causality, can at the same time proceed from a free causality situated in the world of things in themselves. There would thus be “a causality the effects of which (wirkung) are to be met with in the world of phenomena, although it is not itself a phenomenon.” ® Man can discover by his own reasoning a motive capable of determining his conduct independently of all sensuous impulses.

Kant himself avows that this conception “must appear in the highest degree subtle and obscure.” We do not see, indeed, how it solves the difficulty, if the principle of sufficient reason is applied both to the intelligible and the phenomenal world of things. Moreover, are not the things in themselves determined by the divine causality? And how can moral action be necessary in so far as it is a phenomenon, and free in so far as it is a transcendent determination? ê

Without succeeding in finding a place for freedom in the order of phenomena, Kant subordinated metaphysics to morality and thus admitted the principle of Voluntarism. This voluntarist idea prepared the way for him.

The system of Fichte may be called a philosophy of freedom. The absolute is not that which is, but that which must be; and that which must be is freedom. In the philosophy of his last years, quite in opposition to Hegel, Schelling puts the will above reason. Schopenhauer declares the living will to be superior to this Hegelian logic which he considers only a series of abstractions.

Lequier and Secrétan strive, each in his own way, to submit all philosophical problems to this mooted question. Both of them, after the manner of Kant, subordinate metaphysics to morality. The Intellectualist and Voluntarist theses are pushed to their ultimate or so-called ultimate consequences. Is it not true that Intellectualism, which posits as a principle the subordination of the will to the intellect, must admit that all the steps in willing are predetermined by the intellect? Must we not return to the old doctrine of Socrates and Plato, that virtue is a science: that when anybody does what is morally wrong, he does so through ignorance or, as Spinoza said, because of a failure to form clear ideas for himself? Does not Intellectualism normally end in the negation of free will?

According to these same philosophers, if we wish to bring ê Cf, Ruyssen, Kant, p. 204.

back freedom we must in the end reject the absolute necessity of first principles as laws of being, subordinate in all cases intelligence to volition, at least in God, and say with Descartes that if the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles and if there are no mountains without valleys, this is because God willed it to be so. According to Secrétan* and Lequier,® if we do not put freedom in the first place, it has no place anywhere; if it is not everything, it is nothing. Necessity is the result of abstractions of the mind. As Descartes said, God is absolute freedom. That being admitted, Secrétan does not hesitate to sacrifice divine foreknowledge to free will: God wills to be ignorant of future free acts. Lequier, though claiming to remain faithful to Catholicism and to infuse new life into theology, also denies divine foreknowledge.® Do not certain contemporary apologists still cherish the ambition of the author of La recherche d’une premiére vérité to make “freedom the fundamental dogma of Catholicism”? 1° There are many philosophers who have declared themselves

TSecrétan writes as follows: “Long ago I admitted that freedom and necessity are the supreme dilemma. Long ago I said that, in favoring divine freedom, my main purpose was to give a reason for human freedom, the reason for which, in my opinion, is based on the authority of duty.” La philosophie de la liberté, 2d ed., 1, 370. Absolute being, if it is to be ratio sui or causa sui, must be absolute freedom, freedom to be free. “Being substance, it gives itself existence; being alive, it gives itself substance; being a spirit, it gives itself life; being absolute, it gives itself freedom. . . . The finite spirit is both spirit and matter, and not merely spirit. The perfection of spirit would be to be pure spirit, without matter. Pure spirit is only what it is, #.¢., absolute freedom. . . . J am what I will. This formula is therefore the factotum.” Ibid., pp. 361-364,

8 Lequier: “Fundamental truth has been confided to the keeping of human conscience. It is in the ardor of the strife between passion and duty that we contemplate face to face the two terms of the alternative which constitutes its essence.” La Recherche d'une première vérité (fragments posthumes), pp. 82-85. Cf. Revue philosophique, 1898, p. 139.

9 “God Himself has restricted His knowledge concerning our acts; He could not have consented to create man free without consenting to be ignorant at least of the use that man would make of his free will.” Lequier, ibid., pp. 214-216.

10 It is the tite of Book VIII of La Recherche d'une première vérité, more or less completely in favor of this libertarian solution.?* Charles Renouvier and the neo-critics have brought up again in its defence all the arguments of the Pyrrhonists: that nothing is certain, and that every affirmation is a free belief. For a long time the neo-critics have led us back to the famous dilemma by which Lequier thought he could prove that we must choose freely between necessity and freedom, both of them impossible of demonstration. It is frequently said that freedom and necessity cannot rule with equal authority; we must choose between the two. Charles Renouvier decided freely in favor of freedom, because it makes the least demand upon truth and gives the greatest result: (1) It is the foundation of knowledge; for knowledge is the result of an act of free will; for, even considered in detail, no propo-

11 Boutroux writes as follows: “In God power or freedom is infinite; it is the source of His existence which, in a way, is not subject to the restraint of fatality. The divine essence, coeternal with His power, is actual perfection. It is necessary, being a practical necessity, which means that it deserves absolutely to be realized, and can be itself only if it is freely realized.” Contingence des lois de la nature, 2d ed., p. 156.

Brochard (De l'erreur, 2d ed., p. 265) writes: “To say that everything in the world is the object of knowledge, or, what comes to the same, that everything is subject to the law of causality, is to depict the world solely under the form of thought, which means that thought is the measure of being. But what right have we thus to scttle the question and eliminate what has been given us on the same grounds as that which is preferred? Moreover, this makes it impossible for anyone who takes this stand to explain free will which exists, at least in virtue of outward appearances, to say nothing of the problem of error, which, as we have seen is impossible of solution on this hypothesis. . . . True, at first sight it is peculiarly bold to admit the existence of an irreducible and, as the Germans say, illogical element to thought. However, this conception enjoys certain advantages over the preceding. Besides, whereas Intellectualism cannot find any place for free will, the philosophy of freedom can find a place for necessity. . . . There is nothing in existence which is not intelligible; but it is not enough that a thing be intelligible for it to be real; it must yet be realized by a principle other than the idea, i. e., by the will. Furthermore, the will is not determined by the intellectual or aesthetic validity of ideas. It is not the essence of things, but the intelligible united with the will that constitutes the intelligible. We must find a place for the illogical alongside the logical element; in simpler words, we must supplement Intellectualism by the philosophy of freedom.”

sition claimed to be proved is absolutely certain; (2) It makes morality possible, since without it one cannot conceive of duty, It cannot be a question of proving the existence of this duty; but it is one’s duty to believe freely in duty. “I refrain,” Lequier said, “from the pursuit of a work of knowledge which would not be mine. I embrace the certitude of which I am the author. The formula of knowledge is doing. It is not becoming but doing, and in doing to become. . . . Freedom is the condition which renders possible the imperfect and admirable work of human knowledge, and the work of duty which results from it. This is enough perhaps to assure us that it is not a vain conception of our pride.” +?

This thesis is nowadays pressed to its ultimate conclusions by the representatives of the “new philosophy,” Bergson and his disciples Le Roy and Wilbois. Truth is essentially variable; it is freely realized and freely accepted. “The mind is never confronted but by itself, its degrees and moments. The world is its work and it, too, in so far as it is realized, is still its work. In that way, Idealism is truth; I mean the Idealism of thought-action.” 13 Thought-action “is founded upon itself and does not presuppose anything... . In fact, only thought-action is capable of being self-sufficient. Nothing is posited before it, since nothing is posited except by it. It is a positing of itself. If one takes it to be the fundamental reality, it becomes freedom, for there is nothing that conditions it; on the contrary, everything is connected with it. Hence it really seems like a starting-point, a first beginning.” 1* You would think you were reading a translation from Fichte with this difference, however, that Fichte, far less paradoxical than Le Roy, thus defines the absolute and universal, and not the individual ego. According to the new philosophy, “axioms and categories, forms of the under-

18 Le Roy, Bulletin de la Société francaise de philosophie, 1904, p. 166. [Recently Le Roy made his submission to the Holy See, retracting anything he may have written which is contrary to the teaching of the Church. Tr.] 14 Ibid., p. 162, standing or sense perception, all these are submitted to the process of becoming, of evolution. The human mind is plastic and can change its most intimate desires.” 15

The freedom which Bergson admits is nothing else, however, than absolute spontaneity. The free act is that “which emanates from the ego and only from the ego, to the exclusion of any external influence whatever.” ** This doctrine is, in certain respects, reminiscent of Hume who no more believes in freedom in the proper sense of the term than he does in necessity. According to Bergson, freedom is not the power to decide between two alternatives; there is no active indifference between two possible choices; but “if our action seemed free to us, it is because the relation of this action to the state from which it came could not be expressed by a law, this psychic state being unique of its kind and no more needing ever to reproduce itself.” 1" “You do not bathe twice in the same river,” said Heraclitus, and from this point of view should we be surprised that freedom is everywhere? John Weber, who appeals to Bergson, himself admits: “They have criticized this theory, not without some show of reason, in that it escapes the difficulties (of free will) by an arbitrary definition. I call free every act that I accomplish; then I am free, since all my acts, according to the definition, are free.” 18

Weber also deduces the moral consequences of the Libertarian and anti-Intellectualist theory of Bergson. These consequences form the most radical kind of unmorality. This conclusion, previously quoted by us (supra, n. 21), will bear repetition here:

15Le Roy, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1901, p. 305. Cf. Etudes March 1907; “La notion de vérité dans la philosophie nouvelle,” by J. de Tonquédec.

16 Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, ch. iii, pp. 132-138 and 140-151.

18 Revue de mét. et de mor., 1894, p. 539. Maritain, in his recent work (La Philosophie bergsonienne, pp. 263-276), shows clearly how freedom, such as Bergson conceives it, is nothing but spontancity.

“Morality, in planting itself on a terrain from which invention grows in all its vigor, immediately and full of life, in manifesting itself as the most insolent encroachment of the realm of the intellect upon spontaneity, was fated to encounter the continual contradictions of that undeniable reality of dynamism and creation which is our activity. . . . Confronted with these morals of ideas, we outline morality, or, more correctly, the unmorality of the act. . .. We call ‘good’ whatever has triumphed. If the success is fierce and implacable, if the vanquished are completely defeated, destroyed, abolished beyond hope, then success justifies everything. . .. The man of genius is profoundly immoral; but for anyone to be immoral is not the proper thing. In this world of egoisms which are strangers to one another, ‘duty’ is nowhere in particular, yet it is everywhere, for all actions possess absolute value... . The act is a law unto itself, the whole law. . . . The repentant sinner deserves all the anguish of his contrite soul, because he was not strong enough to transgress the law, and unworthy to be a sinner. The criminal still at large, who is tortured by remorse of conscience and gives himself up and confesses his crime, deserves punishment, for he was not strong enough to bear with undisturbed mind the terrible weight of crime.” 19

The philosophers of freedom had to end in such radical nihilism. With Bergson and Le Roy, as Jacob remarked, not only have we no more truth and necessity in the Kantian sense, but neither truth nor necessity in the Spencerian sense: “Here every intellectual norm disappears or ceases to be anything else but an artifice, an unfaithful symbol which betrays what it symbolizes and which cannot be called a true lie, dAnOuvdr yesos,” 2°

We see that the anti-Intellectualism of the champions of the “New Philosophy” again unites with the absolute Intellectualism

19 Revue de mét. et de mor., 1894, pp. 549-560. 20 Jacob, “La Philosophie d’hier et celle d'aujourd'hui,” in Revue de mét. et de mor., 1898, p. 181.

of Hegel. These extreme systems coincide and ought to, for both admit the formula of their common father, Heraclitus, that: “everything is and is not, nothing is, all is becoming.” From this point of view, necessity and freedom are identical. Hegel reduced the real to the rational, fact to right; the anti-Intellectualists reduce the rational to the real, right to “accomplished fact.” Both must grant that success is at the same time truth and goodness. There is no need of saying that might exceeds right; it is right. These two extreme doctrines are the ruination of all morality; absolute Intellectualism suppresses it, because it denies freedom; Libertism, devised to safeguard it, likewise suppresses it because it denies the absolute character of truth and declares itself powerless to establish duty on a solid basis.

Frankly, we do not believe that the problem of free will has made much progress in modern times. Too often people have delighted in dramatic antitheses which seduce the imagination and deceive one with an appearance of profundity; too often also, in claiming to define univocally what is of the very essence of being by one of these two terms: intelligence or will. Moreover, the modern philosophers have not always sufficiently profited by the researches of their predecessors concerning the relations between the will and the object by which it is specified. Occasion, too, will be afforded us of showing that the division of the faculties which has become classic since the time of Kant and the Eclectics (intellect, sense perception, and will), a division which implies the abandonment of the traditional definition of the will (that it is a rational appetite), has led modern philosophers to eliminate in the problem of free will the very principle of its solution, namely, this formal object of the will, goodness under this aspect, or its adequate object, universal goodness.

Contemporary philosophers still need, we think, to profit by the speculations of Aristotle and St. Thomas, by the synthesis realized by this “Christian philosophy,” which Boutroux recently declared to be “so complete, so precise, so logical, so firmly established in its least details that it seemed for ever unchangeable.” 7! Could freedom be eliminated from such a synthesis constructed by theologians from the Intellectualist point of view? The Church affirms the existence of divine and human freedom as well as the absolute character of truth and the nature of God. Every Catholic theologian, even Scotus, must admit with Leibniz, against Ockham and Descartes, that it is “dishonoring” God to claim that He “established the distinction between good and evil by a purely arbitrary decree. . . . Why would it not then just as well be the Manichaean principle of evil as the orthodox principle of good?” (Théod., Il, secs. 176, 177.) Besides, the Church affirms the absolute freedom of the creative act: “God, with absolute freedom of counsel, created out of nothing, from the very first beginning of time, both the spiritual and corporeal creature.”—Vatican Council, Sess. III, ch. i. She likewise affirms the free will of man in her doctrine on merit and demerit and the just punishments of God. It has been defined, at least since the condemnation of Jansenism, that spontaneity alone (freedom from coercion) does not suffice for meriting.?*

Hence it is particularly interesting to study a speculative theologian on this question, since he cannot think of sacrificing either of these two terms: truth and freedom; he is forced to reconcile them. It is a remarkable thing that, contrary to the majority of contemporary philosophers, St. Thomas not only claims to remain faithful to the principle of Intellectualism, but also claims to derive freedom in the true sense from reason itself. That is what we

21 Boutroux, art. “Aristote,” in the Grande Encyclopédie; and Etudes d'histoire de la philosophie, p. 202.

22 Innocent XII and Alexander VII condemned as heretical the following proposition of Jansenius: “For meritorious and demeritorious acts in the state of fallen nature, there is not required in man freedom from necessity; freedom from coercion is sufficient.” Denzinger, n. 1094.

should like to explain. Thus we see the true character of Thomist Intellectualism and in what it differs from Absolute Intellectualism.

The difficulty of the problem of freedom was certainly realized by those who lived in the Middle Ages. St. Thomas gives an Intellectualistic solution, defending the principle that the will follows the direction of the intellect. That given by Duns Scotus was Voluntarist, implying the primacy of the will.?* Suarez, who in most cases seeks a middle course between Scotus and St. Thomas, claims to uphold the superiority of intellect over will, while maintaining with Molina that the will is not in all its acts directed by the intellect 4 and that, confronted by two choices equally good, the will can, without any motive proposed to it by the intellect, choose one and leave the other. The freedom of indifference thus becomes for Suarez and Molina a freedom of equilibrium; there may be an unmotived preference.

To solve the principal antinomy relating to free will, we will examine in the first place how, according to St. Thomas, free will results from intelligence; after that we will consider how it is reconciled with the principle of sufficient reason and therefore with divine wisdom. It will then be easier to defend the reconciliation of the freedom of God with His immutability, and of human freedom with the divine motion. The problem of freedom, stated

23 Scotus (IV Sent., dist. 49, quaestio ex latere 4, 5, 16) says: “The will commanding the intellect is higher cause in this respect; but, if the intellect is the cause of volition, it is a cause supervening upon the will, as being the first act in the generative order.” Hence this explains why, “if two things are presented to the will, although of equal appeal, they are not equally willed.” II Sent., dist. 25, q. 18.

24 Cf, Suarez, Disp. met., XIX, sec. 6: “If the will in all things is guided by the intellect, then there is an end of freedom.”

“If the intellect judges this medium to be useful or eligible, even though at the same time it judges another to be useful, the will can choose one of them; neither is it necessary that the intellect should previously decide upon the choice of another, nor that it is to be preferred to another.” Suarez, loc. cit., sec. 11.

first on the part of man, is seen in all its force when stated as it concerns God. In spite of the irreparable imperfections of our analogical knowledge, we shall see that God’s freedom is incomparably more manifest than man’s, though it is not—as Secrétan and, in a certain sense, Descartes would have it to be—that which formally constitutes the divine nature.

60. Freedom results from intelligence. “Reason is the radical cause of all liberty.” St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 24, a. 2.

The philosophy of St. Thomas, considered in its fundamental aspects, shows itself to be a decisively intellectualistic doctrine. We are confronted by a philosophy which maintains the dependence of intellect on being, the ontological validity of the laws of thought, the subordination of practice to theory, of will to intellect; we will only what we know, apprehend as good nihil volitum nisi praecognitum. In a general way, in a being endowed with knowledge, appetite follows upon knowledge of good (Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 1; q. 80, a. 1) and, according as this knowledge is sensible or intellectual, we must distinguish the sensitive appetite (irascible and concupiscible, principle of the passions) from the rational appetite or the will (Ia, q. 80, a. 2). The will appears thus to be rooted in the intellect. Voluntas consequitur intellectum (la, q. 19, a. 1).

The majority of modern philosophers since the time of Kant and the Eclectics, after adopting the classification of the faculties due to the influence of J. J. Rousseau (intellect, sense perception, will), refuse to identify the rational appetite with the will, and sharply reprove Plato, Aristotle, and Leibniz for having confused them. The principal reason they give in support of their view is that, if the will is confused with the rational appetite, this means the end of freedom, for every appetite is a necessary one. We shall see that, on the contrary, the modern notion of will suppresses the principle in the solution of the problem of free will and prevents us from seeing that liberty is a result of reason.?5

Reid, Kant, Cousin, and Renouvier, in striving to show that the will is not an appetite, have claimed that we can will without desiring. This is manifestly contrary to the facts, for every volition presupposes an end, and the notion of an end implies the notion of goodness. The goodness may be either virtuous, useful, or delectable, but it must always be desirable. The will is nothing else but a rational appetite; this is its definition.

Having thus defined the will, we now consider what is its formal and adequate object. It cannot be a certain and determinate good, such or such kind of delectable, useful, or virtuous good; if the will follows upon the intellect, it can tend toward everything in which the intellect will be able to discover the notion of goodness, toward every reality which the intellect will be able to present to the rational being as something good. The formal object of the will is therefore goodness as such: just as the formal object of the intellect is being or the notion of being, which is the foundation of every idea, the soul of every judgment, the connecting link in every process of reasoning: just as the formal object of sight is color, and the formal object of hearing is sound. The eye perceives nothing except in virtue of color, the intellect nothing but in vir-

25 This is not the only confusion introduced into philosophy by the classification of the faculties of the soul, a classification due to the influence of J. J. Rousseau: intellect, sense perception, and will. Sense perception has taken up a position which it never held before. It was but the ensemble of appetitive faculties directed by the external and internal senses, and proper to the animal; to this have been added intellectual, moral, and aesthetic sentiments, the love of truth, goodness, and beauty, religious sentiments which presuppose the intervention of reason and which are proper to man. The spontancous love of truth is the natural appetite of the intellect for its object; the reflex love of truth is an act of the will; the love of goodness and the inclination to love God above all things constitute the substratum of the will (Ia, q. 60, a. 5). This present-day classical division of the faculties is quite superficial, empirical, and phenomenalistic; it isolates facts most intimately related to one another (love of goodness, volition, joys of con- science) and reunites in one class facts that are most diverse in kind (carnal pleasure and the joy of union with God), tue of being, and the will nothing but in virtue of good; it wills evil only in so far as it finds it to be an apparent good, just as the intellect can conceive nothingness only by comparing it to being. The will can therefore desire or will all that pertains to good, just as the intellect can know all that pertains to being.

But what is of importance here for us clearly to see, is the infinite difference between the intellectual and the sensible knowledge of good, between the idea of good and the common image or sensible remembrance of pleasure, a remembrance which the animal has and which cannot be the basis of freedom.

The idea, as we have said (cf. supra, nn. 15-18), differs essentially from the common image because it contains the intrinsic raison d’étre or the essence of what it represents, rendering it intelligible to us, whereas even the common image, which by its confusion can simulate the universality of the idea, contains only sensible phenomena in juxtaposition, revealing them to us. The common image of the triangle contains in juxtaposition the sensible phenomena of any triangle, without causing these phenomena to become intelligible to us, without bringing out clearly a dominant trait which would be the raison d’étre of all the others. The idea of the triangle, on the contrary, reveals to us this essential trait by which all the properties which necessarily follow from it are made intelligible to us.

From this we see what difference there is between the idea of the good and the common or confused image simultaneously present in the imagination. This confused image recalls merely the sensation of pleasure associated with the presence of this or that pleasurable object. The idea of the good, on the contrary, tells us what good is; it connects all its notes with a fundamental element, and this element with being which is the first object of our intellect. For everyone, good is that which by its nature arouses in us, by our knowledge of it, desire, love, and hope; when it is present, it causes joy, when absent, sadness; in a general way, it arouses all the movements of the appetite. Just as all these movements of the appetite spring from love, so all the characteristics of good are derived from one of them; good is that which is capable of exciting love (bonum est id quod omnia appetunt: good is what all beings seek for). What is the raison d'étre of this “appetibility,” of this power which good possesses of attracting the appetite? Why does good attract us, why is it desirable? It is because good can increase our being, fill up a void in us, perfect us. But to perfect us it must itself be perfection, plenitude of being in which nothing is wanting, capable of diffusing itself. “A thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their own perfection. But everything is perfect so far as it is actual” (Ia, q. 5, a. 1). “The formal notion of good consists in perfection as constituting the basis of appetibility.” ® As we rise by the principle of raison d'étre from the multiplicity of beings to the absolute Being, from the multiplicity of truths to the absolute Truth, so we also rise from the multiplicity of goods which are partial and limited, to the supreme Good in whom no absolute perfection can be wanting. He is plenitude of Being.

If, then, the intellect is directed by the will and not by the imagination, the adequate object by which it is specified can be only good in all its generality, universal good, to speak from the viewpoint of extension. This will enable the will to rise to the love of the supreme Good, the absolute, total, or infinite Good which alone is adequate to its vast capacity for loving, which alone, therefore, can give to it the perfect happiness that it seeks; every partial good will be incapable of fully satisfying it (Ia Ilae. q. 10, a, 2). “That good alone which is perfect and lacking in nothing is such a good that the will cannot not-will it.”

From this definition of the will St. Thomas goes on to deduce liberty, just as a property is deduced from a nature, But as the will has its principle in reason and is directed by this in all acts,

we cannot say that liberty is deduced from the definition of the will and not at the same time from reason. “Forasmuch is it necessary that man has a free will, as he is rational” (Ia, q. 83, a. 1). Freedom must manifest itself as a property of rational being. “The radical cause of all liberty is reason” (De veritate, XXIV, 2), or, according to a more precise formula: “The root of liberty is the will as the subject thereof, but it is the reason as its cause” (Ia Iae, q. 17, a. 1 ad 2). In distinguishing between the radical and the proximate principle either of liberty or of the free act, we shall see: (1) that the radical principle of liberty, as being the power of choosing (potentia ad utrumlibet), is in reason, in so far as this latter knows what causes the good to be so, and its proximate principle is in the vast range of the will which is specified by universal good; (2) that the radical principle of choice or the free act is in the indifference of the practical judgment with regard to such particular good, and its proximate principle is in the dominating indifference of the will with regard to this same good.”

Too often the Thomist proof of liberty is presented without taking into account the radical principle or the immediate condition of choice: the indifference of the judgment. One is satisfied in considering the relation which the will, specified by universal good, bears toward a particular and inadequate good, basing the argument on this major: An inadequate object which does not exhaust the capacity of a faculty leaves it in a state of indifference. Presenting the proof in this way, one forgets that the will tends toward an object only if this object is judged to be good, and not sufficient notice is taken of the fact that the modality of the voluntary act depends upon the modality of the judgment. Thus the formal mean in the demonstration of free will is overlooked, making it impossible for oneself to answer the objections of the De-

27 Sce John of St. Thomas, Cursus phil., De anima, q. 12, a. 1-4; Billuart, De actibus humanis, diss. I, a. 1, sec. 3, multiplex radix libertatis, and sec. 4, multiplex definitio libertatis, terminists who rely upon the presence in us of indeliberate and inevitable voluntary acts which tend toward particular goods. As a matter of fact, it is only through the absence of indifference in the judgment, as we shall see, that these acts are to be explained.

It is in Ia, q. 19, a. 3; q. 59, a. 3; q. 83, a. 1, that St. Thomas asks himself whether God, angels, and man are free, and deduces the reality of liberty from the presence of intelligence. The same doctrine is more fully developed in De veritate, XXIV, 1, 2. Elsewhere (Ia, q. 82, a. 1, 2; Ia Iae, q. 10, a. 2; De veritate, XXII, 5, 6), liberty is discussed, not in relation to its cause (the reason), but in relation to its subject (the will). The two aspects of the question are synthesized in the masterly article of the De malo, q. 6, a. 1.

The essential element in the argument by which the reality of liberty is deduced from the presence of intelligence, is contained in Ta, q. 83, a. 1. This argument resolves itself into the following syllogism: We are free in the same degree as the practico-practical judgment which regulates our choice is of itself indifferent. Now the judgment of reason is of itself indifferent with regard to particular goods which have no necessary connection, hic et nunc evident, with the attainment of complete good. Therefore man, a rational being, is free with regard to these particular goods.

The major of this proof offers no great difficulty. It contains the definition of liberty. A free act is that which the will accomplishes with a freedom or a dominating indifference such that it is able not to accomplish it; so that, although the circumstances remain exactly the same, the will is able on another occasion to suspend its act and not to act. This dominating indifference of the will is safeguarded if the immediate determining principle of volition is itself indifferent. This principle is the practico-practical judgment which precedes the voluntary choice, being the judgment by which we affirm that such an object Aic et nunc is good for us and that it is good to will it. This judgment is called practico-practical because it concerns an act viewed in such fully determined circumstances in which it will be accomplished, in opposition to speculativo-practical judgments (such as the precepts of the moral law), everywhere and always true in themselves, independently of circumstances; for example: that good must be done, that we must do what is right. The purely speculative judgment is that which in no way concerns action; for example, the principle of contradiction, of causality, any sort of judgment on existence.

The practico-practical judgment can be indifferent with an indifference either of specification or of exercise. Its indifference is that of specification when it can affirm the fittingness or unfittingness of a certain object loved under one aspect and hated under another (indifference of specification by way of contraries) or again when it can affirm the fittingness of certain means or others which can be preferred to them in view of one and the same end (indifference of specification by way of disparities). Judgment is said to be indifferent with a simple indifference of exercise when it can affirm or not affirm the fittingness or goodness of a certain object. Only this latter indifference is required for liberty. To be free with regard to an object, it is not necessary to be able to love or hate it, to be able to prefer it to another, or another to it; it suffices to be able to love it or not to love it. To be master of one’s act, it suffices to be able to act or not to act, to go into or refrain from action.

The minor of the argument also needs to be demonstrated. Why is the judgment of reason of itself indifferent with regard to particular goods which have no necessary connection, hic et nunc evident, with the attainment of complete good? To explain this St. Thomas compares man with the animal. The animal tends inevitably toward the object which by its instinct is necessarily and automatically presented to it as suitable. Sometimes it seems to be reasoning, but the acts are merely an experienced succession of images subject to the laws of association, the representation re- maining concrete and individual and never rising to the abstract and the universal. The animal perceives in quite an empirical way that an object is suitable for it at a certain moment and not at a certain other, in proportion as this object does or does not correspond to the concrete and individual actual dispositions of its appetite. Thus it knows some things that are good, without knowing that any one of them is good, which means that it does not know their goodness. The intelligent being, on the other hand, compares particular goods which are presented to it with the universal idea of good. This comparison takes place in the syllogism in which the middle term, that must reunite the extremes, is good without any restriction, without admixture of imperfection or of non-good, it being the only object capable of realizing in all its purity this notion of good which our intellect perceives and of making us perfectly happy.?® It is not necessary for a free act that we distinctly have in mind the complete and absolute good, which is God; it suffices if reason has the idea of good in general and if the will tends naturally to happiness without restriction.”®

The practical syllogism is formulated as follows in the first figure. The middle, major, and minor terms are indicated.

Good (Middle) is what suits me and what I will (Major).

Now, a certain particular object, v. g., a life of pleasure (Mi- nor), hic et nunc is and is not a good, according to the aspect in which I view it (Middle).

Therefore this particular object (Minor) hic et nunc is what

28 “If the will is offered an object which is good universally and from every point of view, the will tends to it of necessity, if it wills anything at all, since it cannot will the opposite. lf, on the other hand, the will is offered an object that is not good from every point of view, it will not tend to it of necessity. And since lack of any good whatever, is a non-good, consequently that good alone which is perfect and lacking in nothing, is such a good that the will cannot not-will it: and this is happiness. Whereas any other particular goods, in so far as they are lacking in some good, can be regarded as non-goods; and from this point of view, they can be set aside or approved by the will, which can tend to one and the same thing from various points of view” (Ia Ilae, q. 10, a. 2).

suits me and also what does not suit me, according to the aspect in which I view it (Major).

The conclusion, like the minor, is indifferent. A life of pleasure may be considered hic et nunc both from the point of view of its advantages and of its disadvantages. It is the same with duty, for it, too, has two sides, the one by which it appears to be in conformity with our higher faculties, the other which shows it to be in opposition with certain of our lower appetites or certain of our bad habits. God Himself, in this life, can be considered under two contrary aspects: as the sovereign Good, alone capable of filling the infinite void in our heart, and also as legislator imposing upon us precepts which are not fulfilled without effort and suffering, and as a judge punishing those who transgress his commands. We can have speculative certitude of the fact that there is no happiness without virtue and the love of God, and that virtue is a good which in itself is obligatory. This speculative certitude persists even in the case of the sinner and constitutes the element of advertence in sin. But if there is question of a hic et nunc practical judgment, that is to say, in certain circumstances and under certain conditions, virtue and the love of God can be considered under two contrary aspects: for we can love God or turn away from Him. Of the two paths of pleasure and of duty which present themselves to one seeking happiness, there is liberty of specification and a fortiori liberty of exercise, so much so that none of these partial goods appears to be in a necessary connection, hic et nunc evident, with the attainment of complete good.

We see that the indifference of the practico-practical judgment is due to the vast disproportion that there is in the practical judgment, between the minor and middle terms; the minor term is finite, the middle term, like the major, is infinite. The basis of liberty is therefore in the intellect which perceives the idea of good, and its judgment of it is consequently indifferent as regards every object and act which is not exempt from every admixture of evil, reluctance, or imperfection.

This derivation of liberty has evidently no meaning unless one admits a natural distinction between the intellect and the senses, between the idea and the image, the universal and the particular. Empirical Nominalism, which denies the specific difference in man, must also deny the property which flows from it. “Forasmuch is it necessary that man has a free will, as he is rational” (Ia, q. 83, a.1).

St. Thomas, in thus deriving liberty of intellect, assigns to it its limits. There is no liberty of specification except with regard to particular goods which have no necessary connection, hic et nunc evident, with the attainment of complete good. Thus it is that, as regards happiness, this liberty disappears; 8° under no aspect can happiness displease us or appear insufficient; in this case there is only liberty of exercise, for we can judge that it is suitable or not suitable Aic et nunc to think of happiness and seek it.” Again this liberty of exercise is sufficiently relative, since we cannot desire and will anything whatever without virtually desiring to be happy (Ia ae, q. 1, a. 6).

And there is not any liberty of specification, at least liberty of contrary specification, with regard to goods which appear evidently Aic et nunc as an indispensable condition of happiness, namely: existence, life, use of our faculties, “being, living, sensa-

80 “There is inborn in man a desire of his ultimate end in general, namely, that he naturally desires to be completely happy. But in what this consists, whether in virtue or knowledge or pleasure or in anything else of this kind, this is not determined for him by nature,” De veritate, q. 22, a. 7; Ia, q. 82, a. r.

81 “Man of necessity desires happiness which, according to Boethius, consists in the perfect state of the assembly of all good things. I say, however, of necessity, as regards the determination of the act because he cannot will the opposite; but not as regards the exercise of the act because anyone can then not will to think of happiness; for also the very acts of the intellect and will are particular ones.” De malo, q. 6, a. 1.

tion, understanding” (Ia, q. 82, a. 2; Ia Ilae, q. 10, a. 1). Considered in themselves, these goods cannot displease us or seem useless. He who kills himself does not hate life, but only the evils which make it unbearable. We might say that he kills himself only because he wishes, too much so, to enjoy life. With regard to certain of these goods there is only liberty of specification by way of disparities. If the martyr prefers rather to die than to renounce the faith, this is not because life is displeasing; at the very moment in which he sacrifices it, he still loves it by a previous act of the will, just as in another order, says St. Thomas, a merchant, to avoid shipwreck, throws his merchandise into the sea in spite of his desire to keep it.

Starting from this principle, that there is no liberty of specification with regard to goods which appear to be invincibly and necessarily connected with happiness, the majority of Thomists ê? hold as probable that a pure spirit, an angel, cannot sin directly against the natural law of his being which he intuitively sees inscribed in his own essence. From every point of view duty must appear to him to be in conformity with his purely spiritual nature; here the occasions of practical error vanish, since there are no passions or sensitive appetite in the angel. The possibility of sinning presents itself only when the angel is raised to the supernatural order and must act according to the light of faith. The precepts of the supernatural order, the acts to be performed by grace, through the beneficence of another, may be displeasing to one who takes delight in the perfection of his own nature and in his own manner of acting (Ia, q. 63, a. 3). Thus Socrates and Plato were right in saying that the clearer one’s intellect is, the more difficult it is to do what is wrong, to sin in any way, through ignorance. St. Thomas was able to retain a considerable part of Platonism in

82 Billuart, De angelis, diss. V, a. 1. This opinion, common among the Thomists, is based upon two texts of St. Thomas: Ia, q. 63, a. 1 ad 3um; De malo, q. 16, a. 3.

his treatise on the angels. From this it does not follow that a pure spirit is not free; if an angel is not free in the natural order to do good or evil, in the moral order he is free with regard to the different means which have no necessary connection with the end in view. It is the same for the blessed who are supernaturally rooted in good, and for God who is absolutely impeccable by nature and is in possession of supreme liberty.

Such are the limits of a liberty derived from intelligence. There is no indifference in the presence of partial goods which evidently appear hic et nunc as an indispensable condition of happiness. But liberty of exercise, the only kind required for liberty, vanishes, according to St. Thomas, only when confronted by the divine essence intuitively known as the plenitude of all good (Ia, q. 82, a.2). Not only can the absolute Good, viewed such as it is, not appear in any aspect as bad or insufficient, but in the act of love that it excites there is no trace of evil, reluctance, weariness, inconvenience, and to the eye of the intellect it is but one in a certain way with the possession of the absolute Good. There is, then, in this case no indifference of judgment concerning the exercise of the act. Consequently, there is no indifference in the will, strictly speaking, from the point of view of the exercise of the act which comes from the will. The absolute Good thus presented is adequate to the infinite capacity of the will in loving. By its very nature, the will tends toward this Good to the utmost of its inclination and power; there is no available energy left for the suspension of its act; there is nothing else but spontaneity of act, as the liberty of exercise disappears. This faculty of loving, the extent of which is unlimited, cannot but surrender itself to the attraction of the infinite Good which is intuitively known.

With regard to every other object, there is, from the point of view of exercise, indifference of judgment and consequently indifference of the will. The will is mistress of itself in yielding or not to the attraction of a good, the actual possession of which is presented to it as advantageous, but only in certain respects. Man is free because the practical judgment that he forms about particular goods is of itself indifferent. “Particular works that can be done, are contingent and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and 1s not determinate to one. And forasmuch is it necessary that man has a free will, as he is rational” (la, q. 83, a. 1; q. 59, a. 3; Il Contra Gentes, 48). Having started from this principle, that the appetite of a being endowed with knowledge is dependent on this knowledge, St. Thomas had to conclude that the free or independent appetite depends upon the indifference of the judgment. But is this indeterminate judgment which can be formulated either in the affirmative or the negative, sufficient on the part of the intellect so that the will may proceed to the act of election? Those who uphold the liberty of indifference in the sense of liberty of equilibrium, think so. The Molinists, and after them the Cartesians and Reid, maintain that the will can choose without having a motive for doing so, or when there are equal grounds for and against the choice. Suarez stated very clearly that it is not necessary for the intellect to have judged that the choice about to be made is the best Aic et nunc.38 Liberty is defined by these theologians as the faculty which, for action, can either act or not act. This means to say that, even after the final judgment which terminates deliberation, it is possible for the will (in sensu composito) not to perform the act in question. The disciples of St. Thomas, è+ appealing to the most

88 “Tf the intellect judges that this particular means is useful or eligible, even though at the same time it judges something else to be useful, the will can choose one of the two; neither is it necessary previous to this that the intellect definitely decide that the other is to be chosen, nor even rather to be preferred.” Suarez, Disp. Met., XIX, sec. 6, n. 11.

84 “It is not enough for the intellect to judge that each extreme is open to one’s choice, but it must definitely decide that it is absolutely proper Aic et nunc, all things considered, for what is chosen, to be chosen rather than its opposite: just as the will by a reflex act absolutely wills all this.” Salmanticenses, Cursus theol, 1878, V, 125; Billuart, De actibus humanis, diss. Ill, a. 6, sec. 4.

formal texts of their master,” teach, on the other hand, that there must always be a motive for the choice (“nothing is willed unless foreknown”), that there must be a determinate and positively final practico-practical judgment which is infallibly followed by the free act.3¢

Let us illustrate this by an example. According to St. Thomas, the one who sins judges speculatively that virtue is a good which in itself is of obligation; it is this speculative judgment which constitutes the element of advertence in sin. The sinner judges even practically that Aic et nunc virtue may be considered from two points of view: under one aspect it is good, under the other it admits of a distinction, being partly good and partly not good. But precisely at the moment of sinning, the sinner judges practically that it is fitting to sin, saying to himself: this act is simply good

85 “When the appetite appears not to follow upon knowledge, this is because the appetite and the judgment of reasoning are not concerned about the same thing; for the appetite is concerned about particular operable things, but the judgment of reason, at times, is concerned with something universal which is sometimes contrary to the appetite. But a judgment concerning this particular thing that may be done at the present moment, never can be contrary to the appetite; for he who wishes to fornicate, although he knows in a general way that fornication is wrong, yet, at that moment, he judges that fornication is a good act, and under the aspect of good chooses it.” De veritate, q. 24, a. 3. And if we have presented to us two means equally good, “nothing hinders us from considering in one of them some particular point of superiority, so that the will has a bent toward that one rather than toward the other.” Ia Hae, q. 13, a. 6 ad 3um. In this case, if we wish to choose, nothing prevents our considering in one of the two objects a certain condition which gives it the preference over the other. To realize this condition in favor of one of the two objects, the Thomists find judgment to be sufficient: liberty stands for reason. Cf. Billuart, loc. cit.

36 The Thomists accept the Molinist definition of liberty, but with the following distinction: “a faculty, granted all that is required by a priority of time for acting, can act or not in sensu composito; a faculty, granted all that is required by a priority of nature for acting, can act or not, only in sensu diviso.” In the case of choice, both the divine premotion and the final judgment are prerequired by a priority of nature. Cf. Billuart, De actibus humanis, art. 1, sec. 4.

On this question of free will, see especially the Thomist John of St. Thomas, in his Cursus phil., de anima, q. 12, a. 1~4. If we quote Billuart more frequently, this is because he generally sums up the doctrine very clearly, and because he is better known.

hic et nunc. This is the way St. Thomas understood the words of St. Paul: “I see and approve of the better things, but I do what ts worse.” “I see and approve of the better things” (with a speculative and even a practical judgment which as yet is undetermined); “J do what is worse” (with a practico-practical judgment and by choice). It remains for us to examine how the intellect from an indifferent judgment arrives at a determinate final judgment.

To say that the intellect is indifferent, is to say that it is not here, as it were, confronted by a first principle or a necessary conclusion from which it cannot withhold its consent. Here, as in faith, the object does not sufficiently determine it; and in this case there could be no intellectual determination, if the will did not intervene to make up for the insufficiency in the order of specification. St. Thomas employs exactly the same terms when it is a question of explaining the rôle of the will in faith and in the final practical judgment. Concerning faith he writes: “The intellect of the believer is determined to one object, not by the reason but by the will; wherefore assent is taken here for an act of the intellect as determined to one object by the will” (Ila Iae, q. 2, a. 1 ad 3). “The act of faith is an act of the intellect determinate to one object by the command of the will” (IIa Iae, q. 4, a. 1). In the question which treats especially of the command of the will (Ia Ilae, q. 17, a. 6), he explains in what case “assent or dissent is in our power and is subject to our command.” This is so not only with faith, but in all cases in which the object does not sufficiently determine the intellect. If it is a question of adhering to a first principle, or a demonstrated conclusion, the will intervenes only in the order of exercise that it may apply the intellect to consider and judge; but if it is a question of formulating a definite judgment when the motive is objectively insufficient, the will must also intervene in order to make up for this objective insufficiency. “But some things are apprehended which do not convince the intellect so that one cannot assent or dissent, or at least suspend one’s assent or dissent, on account of some cause or other: and in such things assent or dissent is in our power, and is subject to our command” (Ia Iae, q. 17, a. 6). That is what St. Thomas understands by being master of one’s judgment. He affirms in many places that man is free, master of his choice, because he is master of his practico-practical judgment. “If the judgment of the cognitive faculty is not in one’s power, but is determined by another, neither the appetite will be in one’s power, and consequently neither motion nor operation in the strict sense” (De veritate, q. 24, a. 2). “Man is the cause not only of his own motion, but also of his judgment; and therefore he has free will; it is as if one said that in point of judgment he is free to act or not to act” (De veritate, q. 24, a. 1), Concerning the liberty of the angels, we read (Ia, q. 59, a. 3): “There are some things which act, not from any previous judgment but, as it were, moved and made to act by others, just as the arrow is directed to the target by the archer. Others act from some kind of judgment, but not from free will, such as irrational animals; for the sheep flees from the wolf by the instinctive judgment whereby it esteems the latter to be hurtful to itself; such a judgment is not a free one, but implanted by nature. Only an agent endowed with an intellect can act with a judgment which is free, in so far as it apprehends the common note of goodness, from which it can judge this or the other thing to be good. Consequently, wherever there is intellect, there is free will.” Therefore the will determines the practical judgment which without it would remain indifferent.?*

Besides, if the will intervenes here only as regards the exercise of the act, evidently we would not escape determinism of the

8T“Concerning particular things capable of being done, the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determined to one” (Ia, q. 83, a. 1). “Since the intelligible form has a relation to opposite things, inasmuch as the same knowledge relates to opposites, it would not produce a determinate effect unless it were determined to one thing by the appetite, as the Philosopher says in the ninth book of his Metaphysics, text 10" (Ia, q. 14, a. 3).

circumstances. The circumstances being the same, man could not one time judge that it is suitable to act and another time that it is not (indifference of exercise). If in such circumstances the action was judged preferable, it will be of no use for the will to apply the intellect to consider the advantages of not acting; the intellect could never judge, the circumstances being the same, that it is better not to act. If the will intervenes only as regards the exerecise of the act in the positively final judgment, the spontaneity of the Jansenists is safeguarded, but not liberty of exercise.

St. Thomas, too, following Aristotle, always affirms (Ia Iae, q. 58, a. 5) that the truth of the practico-practical judgment contrary to truth of the speculative and the speculativo-practical judgments depends “not on its conformity with the thing but with right appetite.” The appetite is rectified by virtue, and the intervention of the will in the order of specification is then explained by its tendency, by reason of which the object enters into a relation of either fittingness or unfittingness with the subject. But to explain this intervention of the will by appealing to its tendency, is merely to leave the question still unanswered. Tendency does not infallibly determine our free act, any more than the external circumstances do. Moreover, we cannot appeal to it to explain the first free act of the psychological life, as discussed by theologians with regard to the sin of the angels. How, then, are we to explain this intervention of the will? The answer to this question will be given in the following division (n. 61): How to reconcile free choice with the principle of sufficient reason. This will lead us to state more precisely the nature of this intervention on the part of the will, and we shall see that it is nothing else but choice itself which must follow judgment as regards formal causality and which precedes it as regards efficient causality. This relation of mutual priority will present itself to us as one of the most interesting applications of the Aristotelian axiom, in which we have briefly summarized the whole theory about the four causes, namely, causae ad invicem sunt causae. For the present let it suffice to say that St. Thomas gives no other explanation of the voluntary inadvertence to the sense of obligation accompanying the sin of the angels. The angel willed not to consider; what is the cause of this? “But in an action of this kind, which consists in not following the rule of reason and the divine law, there is no need to seek for any cause because the liberty itself of the will is sufficient for this, by means of which it can act or not act” (De malo, q. 1, a. 3). “He would not understand that he might do well” (Ps. 35: 4).

This intervention on the part of the will, necessary for overcoming the indifference of the practical judgment, could not be itself infallibly determined by the intellect since it comes into action precisely for the purpose of determining the intellect. It remains for us to prove against Leibniz—and we are not unmindful of the fact—that the influence of the circumstances and the interior dispositions are not sufficient for determining judgment when it is a question of acting or not acting. We have deemed it sufficient here to examine the thesis of St. Thomas without concerning ourselves with the Intellectualist objection. We shall see that the answer to this objection is deduced from the very principle of our theory, namely, that there is an infinite distance between universal and particular good, between total and partial good; and we will conclude that the intelligent being is free because it is master of its final judgment, because, at the very moment when it judges, by a reflex act it judges that it could judge otherwise or at least not judge (a judgment on judgment) 5*

This is how the most faithful disciples of St. Thomas have understood the doctrine of their master. Cajetan has explained with the greatest care that the truth of the practico-practical judgment

38 “Judgment is in the power of the one judging in that one can pass judgment on one’s judgment: for we can judge of that which is in our power. But to pass judgment on one’s judgment belongs only to reason which reflects on its act and knows the ways in which those things that it judges are related. Hence all liberty has its root in reason” (De veritate, q. 24, a. 2).

depends “on its conformity with right appetite, not on its conformity with the object”; on this point he shows how the appetite may intervene as regards the specification of the object.*® Elsewhere he expressly teaches that it is the will that determines the intellect “to judge that one of two opposites is to be done. . . . It is the will alone which, as it wishes, inclines the judgment.” ° The Salmanticenses speak in the same way: “The will freely applies the intellect to judge thus; and because the total efficacy of that judgment is the result of this free application, liberty leaves it intact.” ** This doctrine reappears in Billuart’s works.?

John of St. Thomas formulates as accurately as possible the Thomist thesis when he writes: “Indifference of liberty consists in the dominating power which the will has not only over its act originating from it, but also over the judgment by which it is moved to act. And this is necessary so that the will may have complete dominion over its actions” (De anima, XII, 2).*8

39 “In accordance with the self-assertiveness of the appetite, there arises in the intellect the conviction of its reasonableness; (because from the disposition of the appetite) in its very self-assertiveness there arises with regard to such appetite a relation of fittingness’ (On Ia Ifae, q. 58, a. 5).

40 “Speaking unconditionally of the determination of the intellect, it must simply be said that the will determines the intellect to judge that one of two opposites is to be done; but the judgment differs according as things are good or evil. Because, when neither of two opposites denotes something morally evil, ## is the will alone which, as it wishes, inclines the judgment; but, when one of the opposites is morally evil, the will itself inclines the judgment, yet not unless some other defect of the intellect is found to accompany this inclination, at least that of not considering all things that ought to be considered; and this sufficiently explains why every evil act is done through ignorance, as was said concerning the sin of the angels” (On Ia Ilae, q. 77, a. 2, n. 4).

#1 Salmant., op. cit., V, 426. “You may ask what act of the will causes such an application. We answer that it can be caused by the same act which that judgment directs on account of the mutual causality of different orders usually to be found in that application.” Ibid.

42 Billuart, De actibus humanis, diss. Ill, a. 6, sec. 4, solv. obj.

t3 A Thomist may thus interpret in a favorable sense these words of Lequier: “Liberty is applied to the final judgment which suggests the free act, and not only to the act strictly speaking of the will.” “We can,” so also Renouvier says, “stop, suspend, or banish a representation.” The suggestion in a sense is an “auto-

Through want of sufficient consideration of this indifference of judgment which is the principle of the indifference of volition, objections have been raised against the Thomist doctrine, such as the following one: “There is nothing more open to question than the alleged postulate that inadequate objects, which do not exhaust the capacity of a psychological faculty, leave it in a state of indifference. I contemplate a masterpiece of art, for instance, the Moses of Michelangelo; it is a real but limited beauty which does not exhaust the ideal of the beautful nor the capacity of my aesthetic faculties. In all the fine arts there are some works worthy of admiration, such as a Gothic cathedral, the picture of the Transfiguration, the Aeneid. ... The statue of Moses does not realize in itself all the forms of beauty; it is but a partial expression of beauty, and yet I admire it of necessity; it is not in my power to refuse this admiration. Here we have a contradiction of the general principle.” 44 The objector may just as well say of a certain rigorous conclusion in geometry that it does not realize all forms of truth, that it is but a partial expression of the same; and yet I must accept it. St. Thomas has already answered this objection as follows: “The intellect is moved of necessity by an object which is such as to be always and necessarily true: but not by that which may be either true or false, viz., by that which is contingent, as we have said of the good” (Ia Iae, q. 10, a. 2 ad 2um). It is a general principle that a simple probable reason is not sufficient for determining the intellect; an object the beauty of which is open to question, does not necessarily call forth our admiration; also an object whose beauty, taking it Aic et nunc and considering the suggestion” of which our will is in a way the cause. Ravaisson saw in this doctrine what has been said to be more profound concerning the free will,

In Christ, who was comprehensor and viator, this intervention of the will was always what it ought to have been, because His will was essentially upright. It was that of the Word made flesh, and the beatific vision directed it. He merited, however, because His practico-practical judgment remained indifferent as regards the merits of the object. CÉ. Ila, q. 18, a. 4 ad 3um, Also Billuart, III, 57.

44 Alibert, La psychologie thomiste et les théories modernes, p. 320.

304 GOD: HIS EXISTENCE AND HI$ NATURE dispositions of the will, is open to question, does not invincibly attract this will.

But the objection claims to be based on facts. “Is it true that partial goods leave our will in a state of indifference and do not determine that its act is one of necessity? To claim this would be to fail to recognize the existence of sensation. . . . Some partial goods of the suprasensible order arouse in us emotional feelings, indeliberate acts which precede the free determination, which begin as attractions and are transformed into desires, such as the attractions to perform an act of virtue, to visit a friend, to read something philosophical.” *5 In addition to this it is said that, according to the Thomist division of the faculties, the only possible subject of these sensations is the will.

Every Thomist will answer that these are indeliberate and not free acts of the will, which are produced precisely when there is not sufficient reflection to assure indifference of judgment by a consideration of the two possible alternatives. “Hence we see that when there is no indifference in the judgment and it is solely restricted to one thing, the movement resulting in the will is indeliberate and not free.” John of St. Thomas, De anima, q. 12, a. 2. The indeliberate movements have never been overlooked by theologians; they occupy a rather important place in every theory on actual grace, both sufficient and efficacious.

Nominalists, since they cannot distinguish between sensible and intellectual knowledge of good, have sought to ridicule the metaphysical proof of human liberty by saying that, if this proof were of any value, we should have to conclude that a hungry dog, from the very fact that his hunger is insatiable, is free to eat or not to eat a morsel of bread which he may find is not enough. Nominalism, if it is of the radical kind, leads in fact to Sensualistic Empiricism and is unable to discern what is the foundation of liberty.

In the doctrine of St. Thomas, the basis or the radical principle

8 Ibid, of liberty is in the intellect which knows what good is; its judgment therefore remains indifferent as regards any object and any act which is not free from every admixture of evil or imperfection. The proximate principle of liberty is in the vast scope of the will by which man as master determines his own judgment. A partial good can never be an invincible attraction for us so long as it does not appear to the intellect as a means absolutely necessary in view of an end which is absolutely imposed upon us.

In the final analysis, man is free only because he rises to the knowledge of the universal founded on the abstract; or better still (abstraction being a property of the human idea in so far as it is an idea), every intelligent being is free because it rises to the perception of the raison d’étre and particularly of the raison d’étre of good: because it knows what makes good to be such, the quod quid est or ratio boni: because it perceives this ratio boni which it finds again variously expressed in the delectable, the useful, and the upright. This ratio boni is the norm of its judgment when it is a question of affirming whether Aic et nunc a certain thing is good; hence it is only in the presence of goodness that there must be an absence of all indifference, “a goodness not waxing and waning,” as Diotima would have said in reply to Socrates, “not good in one point of view and bad in another, good in one place, bad in another, good for some, bad for others, . . . a goodness which is not to be found in any other being, as for example, in an animal or in earth or in heaven or in any other place, but which exists eternally and absolutely by itself and in itself; a goodness which is imparted to that of all other things, the appearance or disappearance of which does not bring about in it the least decrease or increase or change whatsoever.” 4°

This derivation of liberty is based, as we see, upon the very principle of the philosophy of being, which is opposed to the philosophy of the phenomenon. It ceases to have any meaning for the Em-

piric Nominalist who refers the abstract and universal concept to a common image which remains, for the purpose of consideration, concrete and singular. According to the Empiric, man has a common image of good, just as the grazing animal has an image of grass. This common image is but a medium between particular goods made known to us by experience; it is not of a higher order than these goods and does not at all represent this ratio boni which can be realized in all its purity only in the perfect and unlimited Good. Such a completely empiric representation cannot be the basis of liberty; it does not presuppose in the appetite which it specifies an unlimited range, and the practical syllogism in which it appears as a mean term is for the Empiric merely a tautology, since the universal is an illusion. With us as with the animal there is only a transition from the particular to the particular, subject to the laws of association. Empiricism, in point of liberty, must rest satisfied with the clinamen of Epicurus, that is to say with chance, or with simple spontaneity as Hume conceived it, or as Bergson views it at the present day.

It remains for us to see whether this theory of liberty which we have just explained, enables us to solve the fundamental objection of Determinism, that derived from the principle of sufficient reason, without at the same time abandoning the Intellectualist axiom that “nothing is willed unless foreknown as suitable,” as the defenders of the liberty of equilibrium do.

61. Liberty and the principle of sufficient reason (the sufficient motive).

“Not every cause produces its effect, although the cause be sufficient: for the cause can sometimes be prevented from attaining its effect.” St. Thomas, De malo, q. 6, a. 1 ad 15.

We have deduced liberty of intellect. We have stated that the intelligent being is free because it possessses not only the intermediate image of sensible good, but also the idea of good; be- cause it does not rest satisfied, like the animal, in perceiving things that are good, but because it knows of each of them that it is good, and why. Our intellect knows the reason for the good, that which makes good to be so; from that it rises to the idea of the perfect Good. Then, as we have shown, its practico-practical judgment remains indifferent (at least with an indifference of exercise) as regards every object and every act which is not without some element of evil, pain, or imperfection. An intervention of the will is necessary for overcoming this indifference of judgment, and this intervention could not be itself infallibly determined by the intellect, since the only purpose of the intervention is precisely to determine the intellect. That is why a man, placed twice in the same circumstances, can one time act and the other time not act. Liberty is deduced from the relation which our will bears to the universal, 7. e., to reason.

Does the theory of liberty enable us to solve the fundamental objection of Determinism, that derived from the principle of sufficient reason? The principle of Determinism which is also, in the physical order, the principle of induction, is stated as follows: The same cause in the same circumstances necessarily produces the same effect. This principle is one which is derived from the principle of sufficient reason that the change of effect would be absolutely without a sufficient reason if it were produced without there having been previously introduced into the cause or into the circumstances a change to determine it. Let the cause be A, and its effect B; if once from A could result, not effect B, but effect B’, this change from B to B’ would be without a cause and without a reason. The principle of Determinism seems, then, like the principle of sufficient reason from which it is derived, to be certain a priori, i.e the same cause in the same circumstances necessarily produces the same effect. But liberty, such as we have defined it, is a violation of this principle. Therefore liberty, such as we have defined it, is impossible.

We may answer this objection by a distinction as to the meaning of the word “cause.” The same cause which by nature is determined to one thing, produces necessarily in the same circumstances the same effect, as for example, heat, electricity, magnetism. But the case is not the same with the will, which by nature is determined only to universal and not to some particular good. We are not called upon here to refute physiological Determinism: its refutation is included in that of Empiricism. St. Thomas merely says that physical or physiological influences cannot directly determine the act of the will; like our passions and our habits, they are previously submitted to the judgment of reason, which remains indifferent because its norm is universal good.**

But then the objection narrows down to this: even if the will is not by nature determined to a certain particular good, the difficulty remains. The will in all its acts must follow the judgment of the intellect. But the will would be judging without sufficient reason, if, without any change of circumstances, it were to change its judgment. Hence, with the circumstances unaltered, the will cannot change its choice.

The usual answer to this objection is that the will in all its acts must follow the judgment as to the specification of the object; but it precedes judgment as to the exercise of the act. Conse-

47 “On the part of the body and its powers man may be such by virtue of a natural quality, inasmuch as he is of such a temperament or disposition due to any affection whatever produced by corporeal causes, which cannot affect the intellectual part, since it is not the act of a corporeal organ. And such as man is by virtue of a corporeal quality, such also does his end seem to him, because from such a disposition a man is inclined to choose or reject something. But these inclinations are subject to the judgment of reason, which the lower appetite obeys, as we have said (q. 81, a. 3). Wherefore this is in no way prejudicial to free will.

“The adventitious qualities are habits and passions by virtue of which a man is inclined to one thing rather than to another. And yet, even these inclinations are subject to the judgment of reason. Such qualities, too, are subject to reason, as it is in our power either to acquire them, whether by causing them or disposing ourselves to them, or to reject them. And so there is nothing in this that is repugnant to free will” (la, q. 83, a. 1 ad sum), quently, in judging or not judging, the intellect is dependent on the will, and this suffices for liberty of exercise.

This answer is not final. The objection again presses the point more closely. Even if the will precedes the intellect as to the exercise of the act, liberty of exercise is not safeguarded, but merely the spontaneity of the Jansenists. It is indeed an evident fact that, if the mere exercise of the act takes place, it depends upon the will; but it does not depend upon the will whether there is or not an act which is exercised; that is precisely the object of our deliberation. That must depend upon the intellect, and the intellect can in no case withdraw itself from the demands of the principle of sufficient reason.

This principle seems, indeed, to be derived from the principle of identity, which itself is based immediately on the notion of being. It states that “everything which exists has its sufficient reason,” or “everything is intelligible.” It is connected with the principle of identity by means of the principle of contradiction. (Cf. supra, n. 24.) From it are derived the principles of efficient and final causality. (Cf. nn. 25, 26, 27.)

If such is the connection between the principle of sufficient reason and being, which is the formal object of our intellect, must we not affirm a priori that this principle, as well as that of identity, governs all the modes of being and that nothing escapes it; so that an absolute beginning without a sufficient reason is repugnant, and that liberty such as we have defined it is manifestly impossible?

Such is, we think, the full force of the objection. Nothing is intelligible except as a function of being, of the principles of identity and of sufficient reason. But the free act as we understand it, implying as it does the initiative of voluntary intervention, would be an act without a reason and therefore in itself unintelligible and absurd. If we admit the primacy of the intellect, we must forever give up the idea of again finding liberty. If, then, we wish to render morality possible, we must reject the absolute necessity of first principles as laws of the real, in all things subordinate the intellect to volition, in God at least, and say with Descartes that the truth of the principle of contradiction depends upon the caprice of the absolute Will. “If we do not put liberty in the first place, it has no place whatever; if it is not everything, it is nothing.” Secrétan conferred on choice, either the formula of Parmenides which is the principle of identity, or the philosophy of liberty.*8

Does our explanation of the theory of liberty enable us to answer this objection? On first consideration it seems not. We have seen that Thomist liberty steers a middle course between liberty of indifference in the sense of liberty of equilibrium—as conceived by the Molinists,*® a few Cartesians and Reid who follow Scotus and certain Nominalists—and Psychological Determinism as conceived by Leibniz. Is this middle course possible? Is it possible to affirm against Scotus the prinicple of Intellectualism which is the subordination of the will to the intellect, without going so far as to admit Leibnizian Determinism? If the will by its definition is subordinate, must we not say that all its acts are determined by the intellect? The possibility of an intermediate position is denied by the advocates of both extreme views in virtue of the same principle, that Determinism is the inevitable consequence of Intellectualism.

Fundamentally, a Leibnizian will say, you do not differ from those who advocate liberty of equilibrium. It is this very liberty of equilibrium which you place before the final judgment instead

#9 Concerning the stand taken by these theologians, cf. Salmanticenses, op. cit., V, 424. They refuse to admit that choice infallibly follows the final practical judgment. After the formulation of this final judgment, the will can (even in sensu composito) act otherwise. If it were not so, say these Scholastics, there would be no more liberty. If the will is guided in all things by the intellect, liberty is destroyed.

of placing it after the judgment. The will to appeal to, to entertain, or to set aside a certain motive, to consider what is one’s duty under this or that aspect, cannot be itself without a motive. The middle course which you seek is illusive. An Intellectualist philosopher cannot admit a dominating indifference of the will which implies in the last analysis a free play of this faculty under the influence of the intellect. It is useless for us to limit these initiatives of the will; is it not an admission of these absolute beginnings, of these “victorious advances of the will” which Libertarians speak of?

The Molinists and Suarez likewise declare that there is no middle course between their view and the negation of liberty. Your solution, said Suarez to the Thomists, only defers the question at issue: that the act of the will preceding the final judgment must itself be preceded by another judgment in virtue of your alleged principle (that nothing is willed unless foreknown as suitable), and so on indefinitely.5° Hence we have Determinism, for if the will in all things is guided by the intellect, liberty is destroyed.

St. Thomas (De malo, q. 6, a. 1, obj. 15) 5* brings out the full force of this objection. In replying to it, he merely recalls the prin-

51 “If the will is not of necessity moved to will some things that it wills, we must say that it is free to choose; because what need not necessarily exist, can possibly not exist. But everything which is in potentiality and free to choose, is not reduced to act as regards the object of its choice except by some being that is in act, and this causes what was potential to become actual. But what makes anything become actual, we call its cause. Therefore, if the will determinately wills something, there must be some cause which makes it will this thing. But when the cause is placed, the effect must follow, as Avicenna proves (Bk. VI, Met., chs, 1, 2), because if, the cause being placed, it is still possible for the effect not to follow, then there will still be need of another cause reducing this one from potentiality to act; and thus the first was not a sufficient cause. Therefore the will is of necessity moved to will something.” De malo, q. 6, a. 1, obj. 15. This same objection is more briefly expressed in Ia Ilae, q. 10, a. 2: “The object of the will is compared to the will as mover to movable, as stated in De anima, iii (tex. 54). But a mover, if it be sufficient, moves the movable of necessity. Therefore the will can be moved of necessity by its object.”

ciples of his thesis; indeed we shall see that in them we have a solution of the problem that Intellectualism prepares the way for true liberty.

First of all we will show that Thomist liberty is not at all liberty of equilibrium which immediately precedes practical judgment. True to the principle of Intellectualism, this theory admits of no act of the will which is not formally determined by the intellect.

A. Thomist liberty is not liberty of equilibrium; all its acts are formally determined by the intellect. In replying to Suarez, the Thomists say that the act of the will, by which the intellect is applied to judge in a certain way, is that very act which follows judgment.” There is no contradiction if we properly understand Aristotle’s axiom concerning the ways in which the different kinds of causes are interrelated. Causes mutually interact, though in a different order, cat dAAAwy airia5® Here we willingly acknowledge that there is an element of truth in the analyses of

52 “The infallible connection between the act of the will and the final practical judgment of the intellect does not interfere with its liberty; because, although it is not in the power of the will consequent to the act to refuse to assent to such a judgment, yet previous to the act it truly has this power by which it freely applied the intellect to form such a judgment. And because the total efficacy of the judgment comes from this free application, liberty remains intact. You may ask what act of the will causes such an application, We answer that it can be caused by the same act which that judgment directs on account of the mutual causality of different orders usually to be found in that application: for judgment in the order of extrinsic formal causality directs the will to determine its choice thus; and the will in the order of efficient causality applies the intellect as to the exercise of the act so as to come thus to a decisive judgment. But this result can be verified only when both in the intellect and in the will certain acts have preceded, from which the above-mentioned causality can be deduced.” Salmant., V, 426. This concluding sentence refers to the very first act of the psychological life. The intellect cannot be applied to its very first judgment by the will which is as yet in a state of pure potentiality; there is need here of a special intervention on the part of God, who is the prime mover of intellects. We say that for this act God Himself gives the dictamen (Ia, q. 82, a. 4 ad 3um). In this first instant the creature cannot sin; it is not in complete possession of liberty (non est plenum dominium). The liberty of this first act seems very much like Leibnizian liberty.

Bergson and Le Roy when they affirm that everything is in everything. For us, too, in a sense, everything is in everything, but without confusion, and the real does not escape the intellect. It is solely due to these conceptual and real distinctions that this becomes possible of comprehension. These distinctions have been distorted by the “new philosophies” which always seek to view them, very incorrectly so, as quantitative and spatial distinctions. The Bergsonians are fond of speaking of those “reciprocal conditionings, those mutually prior relations, those discursively unsolyable riddles which characterize the march of life at every stage.” 54 There is nothing truer than the existence of these mutually prior relations; but must we regard them as so many unsolvable riddles for discursive reasoning, declare the real to be unintelligible, and take refuge in a philosophy of action? Aristotle and the defenders of the philosophy of the concept do not think so. Having rendered becoming intelligible as a function of being by means of the distinction of the four causes, Aristotle recognizes and explains how these causes are mutually related. Becoming presupposes an undetermined being (potency or matter) which acquires a determination (act or form). This progressive determination of potency presupposes a determining principle (efficient cause), and this active potency of the agent gives this determination rather than another only because it is ordained to such an act and not to a certain other. With Aristotle, that potency refers to act, is one of the simplest formulas of the principle of finality. From this it follows that causes mutually interact from different points of view, xat dAAnAwy airia, Matter receives and limits the form, the form determines and contains the matter. The efficient cause brings about that which makes it a finality. The desire of some good arouses the agent to action, and the action causes it to acquire the desired good.55 št Le Roy, Annales de philosophie chrétienne, December, 1906. 55 “The efficient cause is the cause of the end as regards its existence, indeed,

These mutually prior relations must reappear wherever the four causes intervene, which means that “they characterize the march of life at every stage.” The living being takes its food, but the food reacts upon it and reinvigorates it. The cognitive being assimilates to itself its object and yet allows itself to be assimilated by it. The intellect would have no knowledge of first princples if the object of first ideas were not materially presented to it by the senses, and yet the intellect, in virtue of the purely intellectual evidence of first principles, can judge formally of the validity of sensation and of sensible evidence. There is in this no vicious circle but a mutual relation between different species of cause. In like manner we would not assent by an act of divine faith to the dogmas of revealed truth unless these were proposed to us by the Church. It is an indispensable condition, Yet by this same faith, in virtue of the authority of God revealing, which is the formal motive of faith, we can believe supernaturally in the infallibility of the Church. There is no vicious circle in this but a mutual relation between the formal motive and the indispensable condition. Thus, in the physical order, fire burns straw by reason of its combustible property, provided that the straw is near enough to it. But the progress itself of combustion causes the fire to draw nearer and nearer to it.

In the order of grace there are classical examples cited by theologians. In the justification of the sinner which takes place in one instant, the remission of sin is the result of the infusion of grace, although on the part of the sinner deliverance from sin precedes the reception of grace, according to priority of nature.5® because the action of the efficient cause is for this that it be the end; but the end is the cause of the efficient cause, not in the existential order but is the order of cansality.” St. Thomas, Is Met., V, lect. 2.

38 “On the part of the thing moved, the withdrawal from a term naturally precedes the approach to a term. since in the subject af movement the opposite which is put away is prior to the opposite which the subject moved, attains to by its movement. But on the part of the agent it is the other way about, since the agent, by the form pre-existing in it. acts for the removal of the opposite form;

Light dispels darkness, but darkness is no longer present when light makes its appearance. “You would not be secking me if you had not already found me.” 5 Our Lord said of Magdalen: “Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much. But to whom less is forgiven, he loveth less” (Luke 7: 47). As justification is the work of God in us, we must first of all consider the divine efficient cause and say purely and simply that the remission of sin is the result of the infusion of grace. We obtain from God the remission of sin, and it is not because we are freed from sin that we receive the grace of God. Pelagianism was an utterly material concept of justification.

In the reverse order, the moment that man sins mortally and loses habitual grace, his falling away from grace, in the order of material causality, precedes God’s refusal of efficacious actual grace and is the reason of this. In causality of another kind, however, this falling away presupposes the absence of efficient grace and would not happen without it.5* Final perserverance is also a free gift granted to the predestined (Council of Trent, Sess. VI, ch. xiii). But, contrary to justification, sin as such is the work of the creature who becomes deficient and is not the work of God; it is therefore true to say that purely and simply sin precedes the refusal of God’s efficacious grace. In other words, God does not abandon the just before He is abandoned by them. “God forsakes as the sun by its light acts for the removal of darkness, and hence on the part of the sun, illumination is prior to the removal of darkness; but on the part of the atmosphere to be illuminated, to be freed from darkness is, in the order of nature, prior to being illuminated, although both are simultancous in time. And since the infusion of grace and the remission of sin regard God who justifies, hence in the order of nature, the infusion of grace is prior to the freeing from sin. But if we look at what is on the part of the man justified, it is the other way about, since in the order of nature, the being freed from sin is prior to the obtaining of justifying grace” (Ia Ilae, q. 113, a. 8 ad rum).

6T Pascal, Mystère de Jésus.

58 “Help is refused only to the one who becomes deficient, not before the deficiency, and yet the defection follows from the refusal of help.” John of St. Thomas, on Ia, q. 19, disp. 5, a. 6, sec. 61.

not those who have been once justified by His grace, unless He be first forsaken by them” (Council of Trent, Sess. VI, ch. xi). All receive sufficient grace and all have sufficient grounds for doing what is right, and this gives them the power to do what is right, but not to do so effectively.

The same law of mutual relations between various kinds of cause must regulate the relations between the intellect and the will at the completion of deliberation. The answer of the Thomists is not a crafty device; it is based upon the very definition of becoming. In the case of the final practical judgment and the act of the will which precedes and follows it, there is no priority of time.®® At one and the same time the will applies the intellect to judge what it must choose, and is directed by the intellect in its choice. There is here only priority of nature and reciprocal priority according to the point of view that one takes of it. In the order of extrinsic formal causality (directive idea), there is priority of judgment, since the judgment actually directs the will that it may choose in a certain manner; but in the order of efficient causality there is priority of volition which applies the intellect to judge in such a way, priority of volition which can suspend the inquiry of the intellect or let it proceed. The will is thus the cause of the attraction itself that it experiences, in this sense, that it depends upon the will to cause the intellect to judge that a certain good is by nature disposed to move it; it is the cause of the direction that it receives, in so far as it moves the intellect to impress upon it this direction.

Kant says that empirical causality, which is realized in time, implies Determinism; but where we find intelligible causality in operation, there is neither before nor after; this causality is liberty

58 To will and not to will—the movements of free will—are not successive, but instantaneous, Hence the justification of the ungodly must not be successive.” Ia Hae, q. 113, a. 7 ad gum: Whether the justification of the ungodly takes place in an instant or successively, Cf. Ia, q. 95, a. 1 ad 5um, 89 Salmant., op. cit.. V, 426.

itself.°* The Thomists do not believe that they get out of the difficulty so easily as this, and they do not think that the whole problem is solved after eliminating priority of time.

It remains to be seen whether efficient causality, though bearing a relation of dependence to extrinsic formal causality (idea), would not retain an absolute priority over the other causes when it is under the necessity of acting. It cannot be doubted. The formal causality of the idea actually exerts its influence only in virtue of an application which depends upon efficient causality. If the artist wishes to act, he has need of a directive idea; but this idea exerts its formal causality only if the artist by his action makes use of it as the director of his action.6* When it is question of an act to be performed, it is efficient causality that is positively the first, and it must take the initiative. It is, in truth, only by entering into a relation of dependence upon the idea that it comes into action; but to come into action or not to come into action, depends upon itself. The act of coming into action cannot be commanded by the formal determination to do so. “Causes are to one another causes, though in a different order; but the efficient cause is absolutely prior to other causes in act.” When there is question of an act to be performed, it is the efficient cause that purely and simply has priority.

By this answer the Thomists distinctly separate from the advocates of the liberty of equilibrium. They affirm that there can be no efficient causality in action without a formal determination,

6l Critique of Pure Reason (‘Transcendental Dialectic), ch. ii, sec. 9.

62 “Any cause whatever is, of its kind, partly prior to another; but the causality of the efficient cause is absolutely prior to both the material and the formal causes in their act of causation, . . . Hence the aforesaid volition is absolutely prior; for, indeed, the extrinsic formal cause does not cause in the second act any operation unless it is applied to this by what makes use of it, producing as efficient cause the aforesaid operation; so it results, indeed, that the influence of the efficient cause upon the aforesaid operation is absolutely prior . . . because the extrinsic formal cause does not actually cause the operation of its kind unless it be applied to this by the efficient cause, as is evident in the case of the artificer and his idea.” Salmant., IV, 680.

that there can be no act of the will which is not formally determined by the intellect. The will in all its acts is guided by the intellect. But it is for the will to enter into this relation of dependence as regards the motive of its action, and the same act of volition which follows judgment, in a sense precedes it.

This Thomist thesis is but an application of the general theory of the subordination of the total causes of one effect. One single effect can be entirely the result of the First Cause and entirely that of the subordinate secondary cause. Thus our choice, in so far as it is good, is entirely from God and entirely from ourselves; it is equally the result both of our intellect and of our will.

Suarez in this question as in many other questions, substitutes for the subordinate total causes of which St. Thomas speaks, coordinate partial causes. According to him, God is only the partial cause of our acts; similarly, in the act of deliberation, the intellect and the will would also be co-ordinate partial causes, like two separate persons towing a boat.

B. In the princtples of Thomist Intellectualism we have a refutation of Psychological Determinism. We avoid liberty of equilibrium, but do we avoid Psychological Determinism? It seems not. Too many psychologists think they have refuted Leibniz by saying: “The intellect is by its nature representative, contemplative, and not an active and motive power. It illumines the will, pointing out the end; but it is the will that tends to the end by its own motive power.” ê Leibniz would reply: “Priority of efficient causality admitted and understood, according to the principle that causes are to one another causes, safeguards only spontaneity, the mere exercise of the act, but not liberty in your sense of the term. I agree that the will is the first principle as regards the exercise of the act, and it is clear that if it did not apply the intellect to the act of consideration there would never be any e3 Rabier, Psychologie, 2d ed., p. 549.

volition. But you do not at all explain how, placed twice in the same circumstances, we could in one case judge that it is fitting to act and in the other that it is not. Priority of efficient causality does not imply this initiative which would be a violation of the principle of sufficient reason.” Let us recall that if the principle of sufficient reason is inseparable from the principle of identity which governs all the modes of being, it must itself govern all the modes of being. A thing without a sufficient reason is a contradiction; a thing is what it is either by reason of itself or of something else. An absolute beginning is something repugnant.

In De malo, q. 6, a 1 ad 15, St. Thomas answers this objection as follows: The will always has a sufficient reason for acting, but it cannot have an infallibly determinative sufficient reason. “It must be said that not every cause necessarily produces an effect, even though it be a sufficient cause, for this reason, that the cause can be prevented sometimes from attaining its effect; such are natural causes which only in most cases necessarily produce their effects, because in a few cases they are prevented from so doing. Thus therefore, it need not necessarily be so that the cause makes the will wish something; for the will itself can put an obstacle in the way, either by discarding such consideration as induces it to will, or by considering the opposite: namely, that this which is proposed as good, in some aspect is not good.” This answer would be meaningless unless it were interpreted in accordance with the fundamental principle of the Aristotelian and Thomist theory of liberty, namely: that there is essentially a lack of proportion between universal and particular good, between total and partial good, that there is an infinite distance between them, It has been said in the body of this article that liberty of exercise still holds good as regards happiness, “because anyone is able not to will then to think of happiness; because even the acts themselves of the intellect and of the will are particular ones.” Does not Leibniz forget to take into consideration the fact that the indifference of our judgment has its final reason in the absolute universality of the will and in the infinite capacity we have for loving? The exterior circumstances and the interior dispositions are powerless to determine infallibly this final practical judgment, namely, that it is better to act than not to act. So long as “to act,” as well as “not to act,” has its advantages and disadvantages, we are concerned with two finite goods in which there is a mingling of non-good. But two finite goods, however unequal, are both at an infinite distance from the pure Good, in whom there is no admixture of imperfection.

If there are two unequal infinite distances, this will never be so except in so far as they are finite on one side, in ratione finiti. Hence there cannot be an absolutely determining sufficient reason for the transition from the Infinite to a certain finite quantity or quality rather than to a certain other; or, what comes to the same thing, there cannot be an infallibly determining sufficient reason for the transition from the one to the multiple, from the universal to the particular. In this case there is an insurmountable obstacle which no principle of the intelligible order can overcome, neither the principle of sufficient reason nor that of contradiction. We shall see this disproportion to be far more pronounced when we come to consider the divine liberty, the sovereign independence of God who, with regard to everything created, is both Being itself and Good itself, and who, as regards everything created, infinitely transcends all possible worlds. But the same problem presents itself in man: the problem of the relation existing between the one and the multiple, the pure and the mixed, the universal and the particular, the infinite and the finite.

Two partial goods, however unequal they may be, are both compounded of potentiality and act, and hence both are infinitely removed from the perfect Good who alone is pure Act. There can be a relatively sufficient, but not an absolutely sufficient and actually determinative reason for preferring the one to the other. The reason is relatively sufficient as regards the inequality of the means; it is not absolutely so, that is to say, as regards the general end of all human activity, which is unlimited good or perfect happiness. Therefore, like sufficient grace, it gives the power to act, but not to act effectively.

In the Summa (la Hae, q. 10, a. 2), St. Thomas answers this objection as follows: “The sufficient mover of a power is none but that object that in every respect presents the aspect of the mover of that power, and as regards the will this is perfect good in which nothing is lacking. If, on the other hand, it is lacking in any respect, it will not move of necessity.” We see that St. Thomas sometimes says that the motive is sufficient and sometimes that it is not so. It is really sufficient in its order; it gives the power to act, though not to act effectively.

To grasp the meaning of this reply and see how psychological liberty is established without compromising the necessity of the principles and conclusions of the moral law, we must distinguish clearly, as we have done, between the speculative-practical judgment (we must do what is right) which dictates what is good in itself at all times and in all places, independently of circumstances, and the practico-practical judgment which dictates what is good for us hic et nunc (it is good for me at this moment to perform this act of justice). The truth of the first judgment, says Aristotle, is an absolute truth, its truth depends upon its conformity with the thing; the second judgment is a relative truth dependent upon the actual rectitude of the appetite, veritas ejus accipitur per conformitatem ad appetitum rectum.®* The specu-

64 Ethic., VI, ch. ii, St. Thomas, lect. 2. St. Thomas, Ia Hae, q. 57, a. 4, and 5 ad 3um; “The truth of the speculative intellect depends upon conformity between the intellect and the thing (and it cannot infallibly be in conformity with things, in contingent matters); but the truth of the practical intellect depends upon conformity with a right appetite (and this conformity, indeed, is found only in contingent matters which can be effected by us}.”

322° GOD: HIS EXISTENCE AND HIS NATURE lative-practical judgment is concerned with the order of specification, namely, that in itself the act of justice is a good in conformity with right reason, that the act of injustice can be only an apparent good. The practico-practical judgment, on the contrary, at least that one which is absolutely required for liberty,® is concerned with the order of exercise; and this, we say, is an indifferent judgment, in spite of the urgent appeal made by interior dispositions and actual exterior circumstances. Thus, Aic et nunc, for me the act of justice is and also is not a good: I can place the act and also refrain from so doing; is this not because I consider that it is good to try out my liberty, by refusing to respond to the motives which attract me? ê So long as “not to act” and “to act” each has its advantages and disadvantages, I am concerned with two finite goods compounded with non-good. However unequal the two parts may be, the practico-practical judgment which is concerned with the exercise of the act, inasmuch as it depends entirely on the intellect, remains in a sense indifferent. An intervention of the will is necessary to overcome this indifference. The will intervenes in this case not only for the pure and simple exercise of the act (it would only be spontaneity, freedom from coercion), but for the fittingness of the exercise, that there may or may not be an act performed. It is in this that the essence of liberty consists, and this alone is required for liberty.®

66 Only liberty of exercise ‘pertains to the essence of liberty. To be free with regard to an object, it is not necessary for us to be able to love or hate it, to prefer it to another, or another to it; it is sufficient if we are able to love or not to love it. To be master of our act, it is enough if we can act or not act.

66 In this case the statement that the will is on the side of reason, becomes the motive, the object of a judgment. It is not, as the advocates of liberty of equilibrium maintain, merely an initiative of the will. Cf. Billuart, De actibus Aumanis, diss. III, a. 4, sec. 4.

87 Let us call to mind the text of St. Thomas already quoted, in which he defines what it is to be master of one's judgment. It is not in our power to adhere or not to a first principle, a demonstrated conclusion; here the will merely intervenes for the pure and simple exercise of the act in order to apply the intel-

There is evidently a great difference between these two judgments. We can accept the speculative-practical judgment of one who teaches us the moral law or who gives us advice; but the practico-practical judgment is exclusively our own and absolutely incommunicable. To confound the second with the first is equivalent to saying with Plato, that virtue is a science (Ia Iae, q. 58, a. 5); it is also claiming for science moral dispositions (civ 6Ay rH YexH) which it does not necessarily call for (ibid.).

Let us take as example a man who is on the point of yielding to temptation, Placed twice in the same circumstances, he can one time judge that it is right to sin, another time that it is right to do his duty or at least not to act. The practico-practical judgment remains undetermined, even under the influence of the circumstances. By its speculative-practical judgment, the intellect affirms that virtuous good is superior in itself to delectable good; it can still see that, granted our habitually good dispositions, virtuous good is ever preferable not only in itself, but for us. But, if it is a question of deciding Aic et nunc concerning the exercise of this particular act by which we are about to will effectively this virtuous good, then the intellect left to itself remains undetermined.

lect to consider and to judge. But, if it is a question of formulating a determinate judgment with an insufficient objective motive, the will must also intervene in a special manner in order to make up for this objective insufficiency, In this case we are masters of our judgment. “Some things are apprehended which do not convince the intellect so that one cannot assent or dissent, or at least suspend one's assent or dissent, on account of some cause or other; and in such things assent or dissent is in our power, and is subject to our command” (Ia Iae, q. 17, a. 6). In explaining the Thomist theory of liberty, we have quoted (n. 60) other not less convincing texts of St. Thomas and his commentators. Here the case is similar to that of faith. “The intellect of the believer is determined to one object, not by the reason, but by the will; wherefore assent is taken here for an act of the intellect as determined to one object by the will” (Ila Iae, q. 2, a. 1 ad 3um). “The act of faith is an act of the intellect determined to one object by the command of the will” (Ila Ilae, q. 4, a. 1). There is only this difference, that in faith the movement of the will has as extrinsic cause the judgments of credibility and of credentity which precede it; here the movement of the will has no other motive than that to which it gives the prevalence in virtue of the principle, that causes are to oze another causes in a different order.

Why? Because here it is no longer a question of considering this partial good, from the point of view of specification, as it is related to the principles of right reason, or as it is related to habits which are, so to speak, on the surface of our will. But, since it is a question of exercise, we must consider this partial good in its relation to the will itself and in what is basic to it, since the will has to concern itself entirely with the act to be performed. Now, this virtuous good, not being free from all admixture of evil or trouble, inadequately corresponds to the capacity of the will, and is just as much inadequate as delectable good would be; the difference is all on the finite side. The intellect cannot, therefore, have an absolutely determinate sufficient reason when it is a question of formulating a final practical judgment; for there is no absolutely determinate reason which allows of the transition from the Infinite to a certain finite quantity or quality rather than to a certain other.

Pascal would have it that “it is a sufficient reason which is not sufficient,” as in the case of grace. This expression, which he considered a criticism of the Thomists, affords, in its way, a ray of light. In all cases of mutual causes have we not the same fact of causes sufficient in their order, though not of themselves effective? Still more so is this the case when it concerns the transition from the Infinite to the finite. The question of the sufficiency of grace must be solved by the same principles as that of sufficiency of motive.® Sufficient grace can make us truly act, but from the deficiency of our nature an obstacle may be placed in the way, by reason of which God will deprive us of efficient grace which

68 Cf. John of St. Thomas, on Ia, q. 19, disp. 5, a. 6, sec. 61, “Soleuntur argumenta ex defectu auxilii.” Sufficient actual grace is a transitory grace, prevenient and impelling, which produces in us indeliberate movements of the will, pious emotions, good aspirations, which incline the will to choose. Thus it immediately disposes us to perform a deliberate, salutary act, without, however, making us perform this act effectively. Like the motive, it gives only the power to act. Cf. Bil- luart, De gratia, diss, V, art. 4. See infra, n. 65: Moral evil and the divine universal causality, would have caused us to act effectively. Thus the flower suffices for producing the fruit; to produce it effectively, it is necessary that it be not destroyed by hail, and that it receive the light of the sun.

This answer to the Determinist objection is taken from the very principle of our theory, namely, that the will, being specified by universal good, cannot be invincibly attracted by any good which is mingled with non-good, so long as this is presented to it as such. It is, so to speak, of infinite profundity, an abyss which only the absolute Good can fill; it has a capacity for loving which only the attractions of God seen face to face can move to its very depths and invincibly hold captive. It can tend with all its ardor and all its being toward the object which obviously and practically presents itself as the plenitude of all being. Apart from the intuitive knowledge of the divine essence, there is no sufficient reason which infallibly determines the exercise of volition. Judgment which regulates this exercise remains indifferent in this sense, that the attraction of a finite good, whether virtuous, useful, or delectable, appeals to the will without being able to reach its depths. It belongs to the will to meet this attraction half-way, for the attraction itself is incapable of coming all the way to the will. Iż is thus the will determines the judgment which must in turn determine the will: causes are to one another causes. For the same reason it holds the intellect to the consideration pleasing to it, suspending the intellectual inquiry or allowing this to pursue its course. In the final analysis it depends upon the will that a certain judgment is the last. The free act is a gratuitous answer, drawn from the infinite depths of the will, to the impotent solicitation of a finite good.

Not enough attention is paid to the fact that the certitude, derived from the sensus communis which we have of our liberty and which is called the consciousness of our free will, is but the metaphysical proof of liberty in a confused state, just as the nominal definition of free will contains its real definition in a confused manner. Previous to all philosophical research, natural reason, which has universal being as its primary, formal, and adequate object, and which therefore has knowledge of universal good, is assured by reflection of the existence of our free will. This reflection is intellectual consciousness. And in what objective medium does natural reason thus come to know of our liberty, unless it be in that of universal good and the infinite disproportion between it and a particular good? We have thus a confused but absolutely certain knowledge of the infinite amplitude of our will and of its dominating indifference with regard to every finite good.

This consideration made Descartes say: “The will is infinite. . . « It is only the will or only the liberty of free will that I experience to be so great that I do not conceive the idea of one ampler or more extensive, so that it is mainly by this that I know I am made to the image and likeness of God” (Fourth Meditation). From our point of view an Intellectualist may say in a sense with the Libertarian Lequier ® that, “by liberty not (only) becoming, but doing and in doing we realize ourselves... . Who has not felt with a mingling of pleasure and astonishment that this power is exerted within him and upon him*® ... to establish his personality? Is there a man who has not been overwhelmed at catching a glimpse of the grandeur and majesty .. . of man when the true notion of liberty, which is the outburst of consciousness, suddenly made known to him the depths of his being? It is an illumination which reveals an abyss.”

69 Lequier, Recherche d'une vérité première, frag., p. 85.

70 On this point Lequier writes: “A creative power and one establishing his personality”; further on we read: “the majesty and the divinity of man.” An exaggerated sense is evidently given to these metaphorical expressions in the Libertism of Lequier who went farther than the Pelagian error did in the glorification of man, who denied both foreknowledge and premotion, and who conceived our liberty to be rather primary than secondary.

Thus we recognize the element of truth hidden in the philosophy of liberty. We admit in a sense some initiatives of volition, and we affirm that if the human will is not creative, it is at least in the order of secondary causes the source of action. It is not only moved for the purpose of becoming what it was not, but does itself act and move and causes one to act. It brings into the world a series of facts which do not necessarily result from those previously posited. Such is the possible rôle for one who is not satisfied with knowing, but who at the same time knows how to will.

Here we come back to what constitutes the basis of our thesis, that the radical principle of Liberty is the intellect in so far as it knows in what good truly consists; the proximate principle is the infinite amplitude of the will which is specified by universal good. The radical principle of choice or the free act is the indifference of judgment: the proximate principle is the dominating indifference of the will with regard to it as mingled with non-good.

But there is still another difficulty. If you admit, as we understand it, a sufficient and determinate reason which does not infallibly determine, are you not admitting a contradiction? Is not the principle of sufficient reason inseparably connected with the principle of identity and, like it, without exception or possible restriction?

Let us remark, first of all, that if our theory restricted the principle of sufficient reason, this restriction would not merely be imposed as the Libertarians say, because of the necessity of safeguarding the moral law, but also because of the disproportion between the finite and infinite, between the particular and the universal.

Besides, this restriction is only apparent. More than this, it is but a consequence of the apparent restriction which is placed upon the principle of identity when, with Plato and Aristotle, it is affirmed that a certain non-being in a certain way is. This nonbeing is potency which is not actual being but undetermined being, an intermediary between actual being and pure nothingness. If we can speak of a sufficient and determinate reason which does not infallibly determine, this is because it was previously possible to affirm that a certain being in a sense is not. If there can be a reason for acting, which of itself does not actually and necessarily determine the action, this is because there can be, apart from nothingness, undetermined being, which of itself is not actual being. The nature of the action is according to the nature of the being. The principle of sufficient reason which is connected with the principle of identity is based, like this latter, on the notion of being; but this notion is analogous and not univocal; it applies both to undetermined and to determined being. There are, therefore, necessarily determinate sufficient reasons and others that are not so.

This reality of non-being or potency was perforce admitted as we have seen (n. 21), by Plato and Aristotle when they were under the necessity of rendering intelligible as a function of being the opposition between the one and the multiple, the pure and the mixed, the perfect and the imperfect, the universal and the particular, the infinite in perfection and the finite, i.¢., opposition of terms between which liberty finds its exact place and also sufficient reason which gives us the power of determining but not of actually determining, just as suffictent grace, according to the Thomists, gives us the power to act, but not to act effectively.

Plato, in the Sophist,"* establishes the existence of non-being for the purpose of explaining the multiplicity of beings all of which are being and which, therefore, differ from one another

12 Plato, Sophist, 241 D, 257 A, 259 E. Cf. Brochard, De l'erreur, ad ed., pp. 15-27.

by something else than being. Multiplicity, which is an established fact, obliges him to “lay hands on the formula of Parmenides and affirm that non-being is,” an intermediary between being and pure nothingness which is the limit of being. The opposition between pure being and that which is compounded of being and non-being also explains the opposition between the perfect and the imperfect, between the universal and the particular. Aristotle gives precision to this concept by his analysis of becoming; relative non-being becomes the potency which alone permits of rendering becoming intelligible as a function of being: being is not produced from being, because it is already being; out of nothing, nothing is made, and yet being is made. Whence does it come? From a certain medium between nothing and being, and we call this medium potency.’? From now on matter is conceived as a potency which is both the subject of substantial becoming and the principle of individuation; a multiplicity of individuals of the same species cannot be explained except by admitting potency (matter) as the limit of the act which is common to them (the form). Later on we will say that the multiplicity of beings in general cannot be explained except by admitting potency (essence) as the limit of the act which is common to them (existence).

The concept of potency is a fundamental tenet of Aristotelianism. It constitutes the basis in the theory of the four causes, in the theory of the union of the soul with the body; it is the principle in the theory of the faculties,” in the theory of knowledge (intellectual potency is by nature intentional, essentially related to being), and in the theory of the will which is essentially related to universal good and superior to particular good.

Potential being, which is intermediate between actual being

12 See I Phys., ch. viii, commentary of St. Thomas, lect. 14.

73 Far from being artificial and quite meaningless, as the Nominalists say, the theory of faculties, presupposed by our thesis, is the only one which renders psychological activity intelligible as a function of being.

and pure nothingness, is therefore of absolute necessity in order to render intelligible, as a function of being, both multiplicity and becoming, which seem at first sight to be a violation of the principle of identity. This multiple and changing world in a certain way is not, said Plato, and that is why it cannot exist of itself. The principle of identity and the principles derived from it oblige us to connect it with pure Being or with “the most dazzling part of being,” pure Good without admixture of nongood. It is only in this “pure Good” that we find completely verified the formula of Parmenides that “Being is.” God, revealing Himself to men, said: “Z am who am.”

Necessary for rendering intelligible both multiplicity and becoming, this intermediary between actual being and pure nothingness imposes a limit upon Intellectualism. Potency is not positively intelligible in itself but only in its relation to act: “Everything is knowable according as it is actual” (Ia, q 12, a. 1). Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle held that the individual is ineffable, that the only science is that of the universal; this is because the principle of individuation is matter, that is to say, the undetermined. Wherever there is potency, that is to say in everything created, which is a compound of being and non-being, of good and non-good, there is also indetermination. This means that there is a relative absence of intelligibility.

We must also not be surprised if the determination of the free will, which is situated precisely between the universal and the particular, the one and the multiple, pure good and mixed good, is not positively intelligible as to all that it is. How could there be an infallibly determinate sufficient reason for performing the free act, for passing from the universal to a certain particular, rather than to a certain other, from the infinite to a certain finite quantity or quality, rather than to a certain other?

There is indetermination in volition because there is indetermination in the intellect (indifference of judgment). There is determination in the intellect, because there is indetermination or potentiality in being, because being is divided into potentiality and act. The problem of liberty is thus brought back to the primary division of being.

To the indetermination in the wished-for good there must be a corresponding indetermination in the will which wishes it. Relatively to the created will, no possible being has a right to existence. If then a possible being, amongst many others, comes into existence, that is due to the ineffable and more than mysterious liberty which is analogous in the order of action to what is essence and matter in the order of being. Just as the finite essence limiting existence is a non-being which is, just as matter limiting the form is also a non-being which is, so also the motive of liberty is a sufficient reason which can determine, but does not determine infallibly. It is the inevitable mystery of the relations prevailing between right and fact. There is even in this more than a mystery. Why?

“A free action of the future,” says St. Thomas (IIa Hae, q. 171, a. 3), “is, in a sense, more beyond human knowledge than is the mystery of the Trinity.” This mystery, indeed, is perfectly knowable in itself, but it is not naturally so for us, on account of the weakness of our created intellect. The free actions of the future in themselves are not knowable, because the truth of them is not determined. “Certain things in themselves are not knowable, as future contingent things, the truth of which is not determined.” Aristotle said the same thing in the Perihermenias, Bk. I, ch. ix, comment. of St. Thomas, lect. 14.

Liberty is more than mysterious, for we can say of it what St. Thomas said of prime matter, that God Himself cannot know matter in itself, independently of its composites. “For matter in itself can neither exist nor be known” (Ia, q. 15, a. 3 ad 3um). The supercomprehension of causes invoked by Molina could never enable God to foresee with certainty how a certain created liberty will decide in certain precise circumstances, unless He Himself decreed to premove it in a certain way rather than a certain other. There is in this something undetermined which is unintelligible even for God. To hold, with Molina and Suarez, that there is a foreknowledge without predetermining decrees, is to end fatally in determinism of circumstances. Here only Leibniz is true to his principles, as he pointed out to the Molinists (Théod., I, sec. 48)."*

“It is above all peculiarly bold,” wrote V. Brochard, “to admit the existence of an irreducible and, as the Germans say, an illogical element in the thought. However, this conception presents certain advantages ... (it allows of the admission of) free will which exists at least on apparent grounds and for which Intel- Jectualism can find no place.” 75

This element, call it what you will, is nothing else but the nonbeing of Plato or, better still, the Svvayis of Aristotle. Brochard himself has shown several times that the existence of non-being is “one of the dominant ideas of the Platonic system. Only nonbeing makes possible the communication in the participation of ideas between them, and consequently the existence of the world, the possibility of affirmative judgment and that of error.” 18

Aristotle, by his division of being into potency and act (Metaph., Bk. IX), fixed with marvelous precision what must be understood by this non-being which in a certain way is: potency or being as yet undetermined. Leibniz did not understand the possibility of this intermediary between pure nothingness and act; he substituted force for potency, and he considered it to be

T4 “It is amusing to see how the Molinists torment themselves to make their way out of a labyrinth from which there is absolutely no escape. . . . They will never, therefore, get out of trouble unless they admit a predetermination in the preceding act of the free creature which inclines it to determine itself.” The Thomists have always said that the scientia media of necessity leads to Psychological Determinism. Cf. Billuart, De Deo, diss. VI, a. 6, secs. 5, 6.

but a prevented act. All indetermination thus disappeared, and this should have led him to admit the determinism of absolute Intellectualism. Contrary to this, the affirmation of undetermined being contains implicitly the solution of the problem of liberty. Far from being excluded by Intellectualism, liberty is thus based upon it; whereas only spontaneity or chance will ever find a place in Empiricism.

This solution will appear in a somewhat clearer light when we state the problem in God, when we study the sovereign independence of the self-subsisting Being with regard to everything created, and the liberty of the creative act in the choice of the world and of the elect. By this we shall see more clearly that every compound of being and non-being, however perfect this may be, is infinitely far from pure being which receives no further perfection by its realization. We shall see that there can be no infallibly determinate sufficient reason which entails the realization of a certain finite thing rather than a certain other; everything finite is infinitely far from the Infinite. To endeavor, like Spinoza and even Leibniz, to give a perfectly intelligible and, as it were, geometrical explanation of the co-existence of the finite and the Infinite, is to posit the principle of Determinism and consequently of Pantheism, which is the absurd identification of the finite with the Infinite.

But does not our solution now seem acceptable to all those who, with Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas, admit the priority of being over intellect? Secrétan believed he had safeguarded liberty by denying the objectivity of first principles. Quite to the contrary, there is no place for liberty in an Intellectualism which is not at the same time realistic. If there is priority of being, conceived as an absolute over intellect conceived as relative to being, it is not necessary that everything in the real be positively intelligible, that it be possible to deduce from the principle of reason the transition from the uncreated Being to the created, from the Infinite to the finite, from the One to the multiple, from the universal to the particular. Intellectualism limits itself by positing itself as a realism and by distinguishing in being, which it recognizes as having priority over thought, an element fully intelligible, namely, act and another element profoundly obscure for the intellect, but necessary for solving the arguments of Parmenides and explaining as a function of being both multiplicity and becoming.

Leibniz rejects this solution, because at bottom, as Boutroux remarks, “Leibniz does not, like Plato, make the intellect dependent on truth, but, having adopted the modern viewpoint of the glorification of personality, he sees an intellect and a will to be the indispensable support of truth (Erdm., 562).”77

That can truly be said of logical truth which is to be found only in judgment, but not of ontological truth which is identical with knowable being. It is only in a cognitive being and in one that relates to knowable being that we can conceive of intellect. Being, on the contrary can be conceived without it. Leibniz failed to realize the priority of being over intellect just as he confounded potency with force which according to him is a prevented act; for him this must inevitably end in absolute Intellectualism and Determinism.

We may even ask ourselves if his dynamic philosophy does not logically lead to the evolutionist intellectualism of Hegel which refers being to thought, what is to what must be, the actual fact to right, success to morality.’ From this point of view, we must

TT Boutroux, La Monadologie; Review, p. 84. Ollé-Laprune likewise says that the Rationalist thesis presents itself to us under five aspects: “being refers back to thought, volition to thought; reason does not presuppose anything else as its basis; natural or supernatura! faith reduces itself to reason; reason exercises a supreme control over all knowledge.” Cf. La Raison et le Rationalisme, quoted in the Annales de philos. chrétienne, April 1907.

78 As Boutroux remarks in his criticism of the Monadologie, p. 129: “The dominant idea of Leibniz is that of tendency considered as intermediary between potency and action. Constituting the substratum of things, tendency, thus con- affirm that the fundamental reality is becoming, and we must necessarily exclude the principle of contradiction from reason and reality, in order to make a law of minor logic, of the understanding which is concerned with abstractions. To make of becoming the fundamental reality is to deny the principle of identity as the fundamental law of the real, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to affirm that the intrinsic nature of things is a realized contradiction. To deny the pure Act or the pure Good which is to being as A is to A, is to posit absurdity as the root of everything. On this point the absolute Libertarians, such as Bergson and Le Roy, join hands with Hegel in his absolute Intellectualism.’7® These two extreme systems establish a point of contact in so far as both identify contradictories in becoming.

In maintaining the subordination of will to intellect St. Thomas escapes Psychological Determinism, because he affirms more vehemently than Leibniz the dependence of intellect on being. The only possible intermediary between the absolute Intellectualism of Hegel and the absolute Libertism of Secrétan and the fol- ceived, unites and harmonizes these contrary properties, the co-existence of which could not be explained.” Mere possibles are themselves defined in the Leibnizian system by this positive tendency to existence, from which arises the moral necessity imposed upon God to create and to create a certain possible world, rather than a certain other. As Boutroux points out (ibid., p. 131): “The sufficient reason of Leibniz ends by becoming, with Hegel, the identity of contradictories.”

79 A similar contradiction is to be found in the works of Secrétan. He writes: “A liberty without intelligence is impossible; it would be confounded with chance which is not a form of causality, but its negation. Now it is, indeed, the idea of liberty that we have obtained, A potency which would determine itself without knowing the law according to which it is realized! These are but words that contradict each other. No, the free being is intelligent; it is useless to insist on this point.” La philosophie de la liberté, 2d ed., I, 403.

“But quite the contrary,” says Pillon on this point; “we must strongly insist on it,” for we should have to say whether the intellect in the Absolute conditions liberty as with us, which would mean the ruination of Secrétan’s system, or whether the reverse is the case and “absolute liberty is confounded with this radical contingency which they tell us is the negation of causality. There is the dilemma which presents itself and which certainly is deserving of some notice. Secrétan pays no attention to it, not making the least effort to escape it.” Pillon, La philosophie de Ch. Secrétan, p. 33.

lowers of “the new philosophy” is not Leibnizian Intellectualism, but this philosophy of the concept first and foremost realistic, which was prepared by Socrates, developed by Plato, and systematized by Aristotle; it may be called the philosophy of being in opposition to the philosophy of the phenomenon or that of becoming. Theologians who affirm the existence of both divine and human liberty, appealing to revelation, claim to remain faithful to the principles of true Intellectualism, which is nothing else but this philosophy of being in which the order of specification and of essences pertains to the intellect, the order of exercise or of existences and individuals to the will. There is no antinomy between Intellectualism and Liberty, if Intellectualism is at the same time a realism, if the intellect consents to be measured by being and does not claim to be the measure of being, if it proves conclusively the infinite disproportion between the universal and the particular and does not claim to deduce the latter from the former, the multiple from the one, or the finite from the infinite.

This whole discussion against Determinism can be summed up as follows:

Objection: The principle of Determinism is that one and the same cause in the same circumstances always produces the same effect; a change in the effect without a predisposing change in the cause or circumstances would be an effect without a raison tre, which is impossible. But liberty of indifference placed twice in the same circumstances could one time accept the proposed object and the other time refuse it. Therefore liberty of indifference would be a violation of the principle of raison d'étre, which cannot be violated.

Reply: The major must be distinguished. This principle is true of a cause determined to but one effect, such as a natural cause, although it must be actually operating in the two cases. This principle does not apply immediately to a cause which is undetermined, such as the will. This latter is determined, of course, as regards universal] good, but not as regards particular goods.

1st instance: But the will cannot choose a particular good unless it be determined by the intellect. The intellect, however, having the same particular good presented to it twice in the same circumstances, cannot change its judgment; this would be contrary to the principle of raison d'étre. Therefore the will, having the same particular good presented to it twice in the same circumstances, cannot change its choice.

Reply: The Major must be distinguished. The will is determined by the intellect in the order of specification or formal causality; but it determines the intellect in the order of efficient causality for this particular reason rather than for a certain other. And when it is a question of an act to be performed, priority is to be attributed purely and simply to efficient causality. It pertains therefore to the will to act or not to act.

2d instance: But even in the order of exercise liberty does not differ from spontaneity and cannot prefer to act rather than to refrain from acting, unless it be determined formally by the intellect. The intellect, however, being confronted twice with the same action to be performed in the same circumstances, cannot judge one time that it is suitable to act and the other time that it is not so; the change in this judgment would be contrary to the principle of raison d'étre. Therefore liberty of exercise, if it differs from mere spontaneity, is impossible. It can be only a spontaneity enlightened by reason or misled by the imagination.

Reply: The minor must be distinguished. I agree that this change of judgment would be contrary to the principle of raison d'être, if there were an infallibly determinate raison d'étre for the transition from desiring universal good to willing a certain particular good rather than a certain other; on the other hand, this change is not repugnant if there is no infallibly determinate raison d'être for the transition from the infinite to a certain finite quantity or quality rather than to a certain other.

3d instance: The principle of raison d’étre which can be demonstrated by the method of reduction to absurdity, extends, like the principle of contradiction, to all modes of being and action. But it would not be so, if there were no determinate raison d'étre for the choice. Hence there must be a determinate raison d'être for the transition from desiring universal good to willing a certain particular good rather than a certain other.

Reply: The major must be distinguished. This principle extends not univocally but analogically, to all modes of being and action; thus the notion itself of being, which is analogous, applies proportionately both to actual and potential being. A similar distinction is to be made in the minor. Choice presupposes a sufficient reason which of itself can determine it; it does not presuppose a sufficient reason which of itself determines it effectively. Thus being is either actual or potential.

62. The divine attributes of liberty and wisdom.

From what we know of the relations between the human intellect and the will in the free act, it is possible for us to solve the antinomies which, according to the Determinists and the Libertarians, would seem to exist between the necessity of the truths contemplated by divine wisdom and creative liberty.

Spinoza refuses to acknowledge liberty in God, his purpose being to have all things exist by the entirely geometrical necessity of the divine nature. Consequently, all possibles are realized; good and evil happen necessarily, and concern us alone, having nothing to do with God.

The Cartesians, on the contrary, under the pretext of freeing the divine will from the yoke of necessity, have made it completely indifferent, with an indifference of equilibrium. According to their view, God by an arbitrary decree, has established the distinction between good and evil, between eternal truths and the essences of things. The Nominalists with Ockham had upheld the same view. On the other hand, St. Thomas said: “To maintain that justice depends simply on the will of God (ex simplici voluntate), is to say that the divine will is not directed by wisdom; and this is a blasphemy.” 8°

Leibniz *! disapproves of the absolute Determinism of Spinoza, looking upon it as an absurd and ignoble system, in which neither understanding nor will is left to the author of nature. He has no difficulty in showing that everything is not geometrically necessary in creation. The geometrically necessary proposition is that one, the contrary of which implies a contradiction, e. g., 2-+ 2= 4. But no contradiction is implied for Spinoza to have died somewhere else than at The Hague; the proposition, “Spinoza died at The Hague,” is not, therefore, geometrically necessary. Moreover, Leibniz declares, against the Cartesians, that it is dishonoring God to make Him indifferent to good and evil, to say, for instance, that if God had not positively forbidden murder, this act would not be sinful. This doctrine, he adds, plunges the just and the unjust into hopeless scepticism, for nothing would oblige God to keep His word. Between the true and the false, the just and the unjust, there is no choice for God. Leibniz claims to solve the antinomy caused by the doctrines of Spinoza and Descartes by his conception of moral necessity, the intermediary between absolute necessity and the liberty of equilibrium. This moral necessity is that proper to the sufficient reason in its application to existences; it consists in the choice of the better. It inclines the divine will infallibly without necessitating it. The divine choice is thus freed from geometrical necessity, but it would be an arbitrary selection of either the irrational or chance, and therefore as unworthy of God. Hence we must conclude, according to the author of Théodicée, that God would be neither good

80 St, Thomas, De veritate, q. 23, a. 6: “Whether justice in created things depends simply on the will of God.”

81 Concerning this point in discussion, cf. Œuvres de Leibnitz (Erdmann ed.), 139, 558, 563; and Théodicée (Janet ed.), secs. 36, 43-54, 104, 196, 201, 309, 360.

nor wise, if He had not created.8? and if He had not created the best of possible worlds. All the divine decrees are morally necessary, that of the Incarnation as well as that of Creation, and even that by which God has chosen and predestined a certain man, rather than a certain other (Théod., sec. 104).

In the philosophy of Leibniz this divine determinism is associated with his dynamist theory of possibles. Every possible, according to Leibniz,®* has pent up within it a tendency to existence which is proportionate to its perfection, its wealth of integrity, order, or compossibility. Existence, moreover, can be only the demand (exigentia) of the essence to develop and unfold itself. From this it follows that, of the infinity of possible combinations, that one exists necessarily by which the greatest quantity of essence or possibility is brought into existence. The divine fiat thus gives existence to the best of possible worlds. “If there had not been a world which was the best, God would not have created one,” since He does nothing without a reason (Théod., secs. 8, 201). Everything, even to the least detail, is necessarily ordained in the world, according to the principle of the best; nothing can change in the universe without everything being changed at the same time (Erdm., 506). It is the best that is possible of conception, because it realizes the highest degree of variety in unity, and of unity in variety. Evil is explained in the following manner: every creature is by its essence necessarily imperfect, less perfect than God, and variety requires that all creatures should not have the same degree of perfection; to have a thousand well-bound copies of Virgil in one’s library, would not be called reasonable. Pain and sin are the result of the imperfection of creatures and the condition of a greater good. The shadows set off the colors; a discord inserted where necessary

82 Œuvres de Leibnitz (Erdmann ed.), 563 a. 83 Op. cit., 147 b, 148 a. In our exposition of this Leibnizian theory we are following Boutroux's criticism of the Monadologie, p. 91.

makes the harmony more conspicuous; we want tragedies to move us to tears. In the intellectual order, divine grace has been given to us superabundantly where sin had abounded. God certainly can in no way be the cause of sin, but it is fitting for Him to permit it. Leibniz says (TAéod., sec. 10): “On Holy Saturday, in the churches of the Roman rite, we sing:

O truly necessary sin of Adam,

Which the death of Christ has blotted out! O blessed sin, that merited Such and so great a Redeemer!”

“Thus,” concludes Leibniz, “if the world were without the least of the evils which happen in it, the world would no longer be, all things taken into consideration, the one which was found to be the best, by the Creator who chose it” (Théod., sec. 9). Such are the exigencies of “universal mathematics”! But is divine wisdom merely mathematics?

Does this Leibnizian doctrine of moral necessity and absolute optimism leave God truly free? Does it not reduce His action to the influence of an impersonal reason? The Church, as we have seen in the previous pages, rejects this thesis of moral necessity and defines that God has created with absolute liberty free from all necessity.“* A Rosminian proposition affirming the moral necessity of creation was condemned,*® also one of Abelard’s theses which states that God can do only what He has done and as He has done, and that in particular He must not and cannot

84 Vatican Council (Denzinger, n, 1783): “God... with absolute freedom of counsel . . . created the creature.” “If anyone shall say that God created, not by His will free from all necessity, but by-a necessity equal to the necessity whereby He loves Himself: let him be anathema.” Denzinger, n. 1805.

85 “The love by which God loves Himself even in creatures, and which is the motive that determines Him to create, constitutes a moral necessity which in the most perfect being always brings forth the effect; for it is only in the many imperfect beings that necessity of this kind leaves liberty intact on either side.” Denzinger, n. 1908.

prevent evil.®® It is only by sacrificing liberty that Leibniz solves the antinomy between wisdom and liberty,

The true solution is set forth by St. Thomas in Part I of the Theological Summa; it results from his general theory on liberty. We can sum up this teaching in four propositions. (1) God necessarily loves Himself; (2) He creates freely without moral necessity according to a real fittingness which does not urge Him infallibly, and which He could leave out of consideration, still remaining good and wise; (3) God could have chosen a better world, but He could not have arranged its elements better than those of the actual world or shown greater wisdom in their arrangement; (4) there are in God free preferences which are their own raison d’être, and in which His supreme and absolute liberty shines forth.

It is easy to see how these conclusions are derived from the Thomist doctrine of liberty, and how they safeguard at once the divine wisdom and its free choice.

1. God necessarily loves Himself. “The divine will,” says St. Thomas, “has a necessary relation to the divine goodness, since that is its proper object. Hence God wills or loves His own goodness necessarily, even as we will our own happiness necessarily, and as any other faculty has a necessary relation to its proper and principal object; for instance, the sight to color, since it is of the very essence of this faculty to tend toward the object which specifies it” (Ia, q. 19, a. 3). Moreover, if man can cease thinking of happiness and actually willing it, which constitutes the liberty of exercise of this act, God cannot cease knowing and loving Himself, all liberty hereby disappearing, both that of exercise and that of specification. It is the same with the blessed who un-

86 “That God can do or not do only those things, or only in the manner or time in which He does them and not otherwise. . . . That God neither could nor should prevent evil.” Denzinger, n. 374 É. See also the errors of Eckhard. Denzinger, nn, 501 É.

ceasingly see God as He is in Himself and cannot cease loving Him.

2. God creates freely. In fact, St. Thomas goes on to say: “But God wills things apart from Himself in so far as they are ordered to His own goodness as their end. Now in willing an end, we do not necessarily will things that conduce to it, unless they are such that the end cannot be attained without them; as we will to take food to preserve life, or to take a ship in order to cross the sea. But we do not necessarily will things without which the end is attainable, such as a horse for a journey which we can make on foot, for we can make the journey without one. The same applies to other means. Hence, since the goodness of God is perfect, and can exist without other things inasmuch as no perfection can accrue to Him from them, it follows that His willing things apart from Himself is not absolutely necessary. Yet it can be necessary by supposition, for supposing that He wills a thing, then He is unable not to will it, as His will cannot change.”

The creative act is free as regards liberty of exercise, and we may even add that it has liberty of specification. Does this mean that it is without either motive or sufficient reason? Not at all. It is most proper for God to create. St. Thomas explains this by means of the following comparison: “Natural things,” he says, “have a natural inclination not only towards their proper good, to acquire it if not possessed, and, if possessed, to rest therein, but also to spread abroad their own good among others so far as possible. Hence we see that every agent, in so far as it is perfect and in act, produces its like. It pertains therefore, to the nature of the will to communicate as far as possible to others the good possessed; and especially does this pertain to the divine will, from which all perfection is derived in some kind of likeness. Hence, if natural things, in so far as they are perfect, communicate their good to others, much more does it pertain to the divine will to communicate by likeness its own good to others as much as is possible. Thus then, He wills both Himself to be, and other things to be; but Himself as the end, and other things as ordained to that end, inasmuch as it befits the divine goodness that other things should be partakers therein” (Ia, q. 19, a. 2).

Is this fittingness so forceful as to constitute, according to Leibniz, a moral necessity? Does it follow that God would be neither good nor wise if He did not create, and that a necessary perfection would be wanting to Him? Not at all. Cajetan explains this as follows in his commentary on the article of St. Thomas just quoted. He shows how the principle: good is diffusive of itself, must be understood analogically or proportionately, like the notion itself of being on which it is based, and that of appetite or will. It is a natural and necessary perfection for natural beings to reproduce themselves. It is a free perfection for free beings to give of their plenitude. Truly a created spirit would be neither good nor wise, if it claimed to isolate itself in its interior life and love only itself, without thinking of others; its perfection increases when it loves them, and it must love them. On the other hand, there can be no increase of perfection in God; it is already of itself essentially infinite. All created perfections preexist eminently in it, in a light and a life which are incomparably more beautiful and richer than created life or light. If God had not created, He would be none the less infinitely good in His interior life. Revelation even adds that He would be none the less diffusive of Himself, through the communication of the whole of His nature both to His Son generated from all eternity and to the Spirit of love. It is not, therefore, morally necessary for God to create.

The real expediency of creation is such that it would not have been improper for God not to create. It is expedient at times for a rich man to give most liberally to a poor man, though he could have refrained from so doing, without any imperfection, and the gratitude of the poor man must respond to the gratuity of the gift. In this sense Cajetan (loc. cit.) says: “The creative act is a free perfection, the absence of which would be no imperfection.” But as this act (cf. infra, n. 63), is not superadded, by way of an accident, to the necessary act by which God loves Himself, the other Thomists prefer to say that the creative act does not add to God’s perfection; it presupposes merely that of pure Act and is only extrinsically defectible on account of the object willed.

The action of God ad extra depends immediately upon His mysterious liberty, so much so that the divine knowledge itself cannot, without a divine decree, foresee whether or not creation will take place.

3. God could have chosen a better world, but He could not have arranged its elements better than those of the present world. Refuting in advance the theories of Leibniz and Malebranche, St. Thomas (Ia, q. 25, a. 5) wrote as follows: “Some think that the divine power is restricted to this present course of events through the order of the divine wisdom and justice, so that another world could not come into existence. But since the power of God, which is His essence, is nothing else but His wisdom, it can indeed be fittingly said that there is nothing in the divine power which is not in the order of divine wisdom; for the divine wisdom includes the whole potency of the divine power. Yet the order placed in creation by divine wisdom, in which order the notion of his justice consists, is not so adequate to the divine wisdom that the divine wisdom should be restricted to this present order of things. Now it is clear that the whole idea of order which a wise man puts into things made by him is taken from their end. So, when the end is proportionate to the things made for that end, the wisdom of the maker is restricted to some definite order. But the divine goodness is an end exceeding beyond all proportion things created. Hence the divine wisdom is not so restricted to any particular order that no other course of events could happen.” Leibniz considered this problem too much as a problem of mathematics in which there is a fixed proportion between the different elements; he did not sufficiently take into account the end itself of the creative act, that is, the infinite goodness which manifests itself in the communication of its riches; he failed to understand the import of these words of St. Thomas: “The divine goodness is the end which exceeds beyond all proportion created things.”

Leibniz says further: “Supreme wisdom could not fail to choose the best ... and there would be something to correct in the actions of God if there were a better way of doing things” (Théod., 8).

St. Thomas (Ia, q. 25, a. 6 ad 1um.) provided an answer in advance for this objection, when he wrote: “The proposition: God can make a thing better than He makes it, can be understood in two ways. If the word ‘better’ is taken substantively, as meaning a better object, this proposition is true; for God can make better the things that exist and make better things than those which He has made. But if the word ‘better’ is taken as an adverb, implying in a more perfect manner, then we cannot say that God can make anything better than He makes it, for He cannot make it from greater wisdom and goodness.” His answer to the third objection is as follows: “The universe, the present creation being supposed, cannot be better, on account of the most beautiful order given to things by God, in which the good of the universe consists. For if any one thing were bettered, the proportion of order would be destroyed as, if one string were stretched more than it ought to be, the melody of a harp would be destroyed.”

This is tantamount to saying that the world is a masterpiece, but another divine masterpiece is possible. The organism of the plant is less perfect than that of the animal, and yet, granted its parts and the end that it must attain, there could not be a better arrangement of its parts. A certain symphony of Beethoven is a masterpiece without any fault in it; however, it does not exclude the possibility of a masterpiece of the same kind or of another order. The holiness of the Apostle Peter does not exclude that of St. Paul; both are infinitely far from the holiness of God. The Incarnation alone represents to us the highest possible union of the divine with a created nature, but the problem remains for the degree of grace and glory of the human soul of Christ; however high the degree, there is still an infinite difference between the intensity of the beatific vision which the soul of Jesus enjoyed and the comprehensive vision which cannot belong to any but the divine nature (IIa, q. 7, a. 12 ad 2um).

4. Finally there are divine predilections which are their own raison d'étre. Sovereign and absolute liberty shines forth from them without in the least detracting from divine wisdom. “Why He draws one, and another He draws not, seek not to judge,” says St. Augustine, “if thou dost not wish to err.” 8? St. Thomas adds: “In the things of nature, a reason can be assigned, since primary matter is altogether uniform, why one part of it was fashioned by God from the beginning under the form of fire, another under the form of earth, that there might be a diversity of species in things of nature. Yet why this particular part of matter is under this particular form, and that under another, depends upon the simple will of God; as from the simple will of the artificer it depends that this stone is in this part of the wall, and that in another; although the plan requires that some stones should be in this place, and some in that place.” 8° Thus there are in God free preferences, which are their own raison d'être; here divine liberty shows itself to be supreme. These are none the less made with infinite wisdom: the absolute dominating indifference

of the divine volition with regard to both sides equally convincing, is based precisely upon the divine wisdom which manifests the equality of both sides and their infinite distance from the divine goodness which is the end of all things. Wisdom shows therefore that, in this case, the free determination can come only from liberty itself, and judges that it is fitting for it to be so. There is always self-determination in free acts, but here selfdetermination is as complete as can be.

What reconciles this all the more so with divine wisdom is that election in God presupposes love, whereas with us the reverse is the case. “In us,” says St. Thomas (la, q. 23, a. 4), “the will in loving does not cause good, but we are incited to love by the good which already exists; and therefore we choose someone to love, and so election in us precedes love. In God, however, it is the reverse. For His will, by which in loving He wishes good to someone, is the cause of that good (of grace) possessed by some in preference to others. Thus in God love precedes election.” A free predilection which is its own sufficient reason, is not, therefore, contrary to divine wisdom. Moreover, supreme wisdom judges that it is fitting for it to be so.

“The Spirit breatheth where He will” (John 3:8); why does the Lord call this soul and not that other to the highest degree of sanctity? Why is it that this soul will not rest satisfied until it has become a victim of love like the Crucified? There is only one answer to this, the answer of St. Paul: “It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy” (Rom. 9:16). The sovereign wisdom, far from preventing them, delights in these entirely gratuitous, absolutely free predilections for which nothing in us could be the impelling motive.

It would be blasphemous, says St. Thomas,®® to maintain that the order of justice or the distinction between good and evil depends solely upon the will of God. God would cease to be

necessarily good. His essential glory depends upon His sovereign goodness which He necessarily loves above all things. In this supreme order He necessarily wills what is best in se, infinite perfection which He Himself is. He is also the primary object of charity in us.

But there are other goods, which are external and secondary, upon which the goodness of God does not depend. The glory that He derives from them is external. And this glory is all the greater according as these freely willed goods manifest to a greater extent the liberty of His good pleasure. They are not always materially the best in themselves, but they are formally the best for God}? precisely because they express His sovereign liberty,

90 Op. cit., q. 6, a. 2; q. 23, a. 6. John of St. Thomas (De voluntate Dei, on Ia, q 19, disp. 4, a. 5, and a. 7, n. 21) replies as follows to the objection resumed by Leibniz, Malebranche, and all the mathematicians who defend the theory of absolute Intellectualism: “God loves Himself most perfectly and in the highest degree. But he who perfectly loves someone wishes him that which is better according to the good pleasure of the beloved, not as if it were absolutely better in itself, or as if it seems better to us. But of all the goods which contribute to the glory of God, some contribute to the internal and essential glory of God, which consists of His goodness and all His attributes, and these God necessarily wills, not as better, but as dest. Other goods are extrinsic and secondary on which the former in no way depend, and the glory accruing to God from them is extrinsic and so much the better for Him, the more He operates in them according to the free counsel of His will.

“Hence, since God wills for Himself good perfectly and most ardently, and it is in His power voluntarily to choose whatsoever of these extrinsic goods, He always wills for Himself the better, so long as He chooses from all these goods that which is more in conformity with His will.

“Hence, not only does God will for Himself the better of divine goods, but also of created goods, He wills Himself what is formally better, that is to say, what is more according to His will, although on the part of the thing chosen, for itself it is not always that which is absolutely better; but because this very thing is that which He willed and a complete expression of His will, this very thing is better formally and more for His glory.

“Neither can he who loves someone most perfectly love more for his glory, than by leaving all things to his good pleasure and to the fulfilment of his will in all things. In no other way do the just will the greater glory of God, than by willing that His will be done on earth as in heaven, whether the things are in themselves better or not.”

Thus religious obedience commands us always to do, if not what is materially

His absolute independence with regard to everything created. “By the grace of God I am what I am,” said St. Paul (I Cor. 15:10). Why have I been chosen rather than another? “Because it pleased the Most High; according to His good pleasure” (Eph. 1:9).

We should not seek mathematical exactness in the divine choice; it is of infinite suavity, being counterbalanced only by divine supremacy of which it is the expression. Thus a singer, although carefully observing the rules of singing, retains a spontaneity and freedom which prove the very command he has of his art. He is not a slave to his principles, but in his singing dominates them.

Sovereign wisdom plays in creating the world (“playing in the world,” Prov. 8:31). In souls it plants divine seeds more or less beautiful according to its good pleasure.

The song of divine love is perfectly flawless and absolutely free. It is the profound unity of these diverse qualities which constitutes its sublime harmony.®?

Absolute Intellectualism and Voluntarism are narrow views; they ignore the beauty of God. We see that the spirit of their system is the destruction of all synthesis. Like heresy, which means a choosing, they choose only a part of the truth. The solution of the antinomy is to be found in a higher harmony which is the closest unity in a completeness of diversity.

the best in itself, at least what is formally the best, in accordance with God’s good pleasure.

81 This sovereign liberty of divine wisdom is chanted in Prov. 8:23. “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He had made any thing from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet and I was already conceived. .. . When He prepared the heavens I was present; when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths; when He established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters; when He compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits; when He balanced the foundations of the earth. 1 was with Him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times; playing in the world. And my delights were to be with the children of men.”

63. The divine attributes of liberty and immutability.

There is another apparent antinomy mentioned at times by the modern philosophers; but they generally ignore the profound study made of it by the theologians ®* who could furnish them with a series of objections logically arranged in Scholastic form. Spencer is often clumsy in the difficulties that he raises against the theology of the Schools. The classical objections examined by the Scholastics were deeper and more plausible.

The preceding difficulty had to do with the motive of the free act in God; this one concerns the exercise of this act. If this act is free, it is contingent, and could as well not be; there is therefore something defectible in God, something that might be wanting. Hence God is no longer pure Act, absolutely immutable and perfect. He is only in act as far as this is possible and retains potentialities which are actualized by the very determinations of His liberty. His will, objects St. Thomas,°® is of itself undetermined and consequently imperfect; it is capable of being further determined; and by what motion of a higher order could it be determined? That the divine free act is eternal and irrevocable is of little consequence; from all eternity it was possible for Him not to be; there is in God a contingent and superadded reality which is contrary to the immutability of pure Act. If in answer to this we say that the reality of this act in God is necessary, then this very act is no longer free.

St. Thomas (Ia, q. 19, a. 3 ad gum) replies as follows: “Sometimes a necessary cause has a non-necessary relation to an effect, owing to a deficiency in the effect and not in the cause. Even so, the sun’s power has a non-necessary relation to some contingent events on this earth, owing to a defect not in the solar power, but

92 Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 19, a. 3, 73 Contra Gentes, Bk. I, ch. Ixxxii; De veritate, q. 23, a. 4. See the commentaries of Cajetan, Bannez, John of St. Thomas, Salmanticenses, Gonet, Billuart, on Ia, q. 19, a 3.

23 See Ia, q. 19, a. 3, 4a and 5a, in the effect that proceeds not necessarily from the cause. In the same way, that God does not necessarily will some of the things that He wills, does not result from defect in the divine will, but from a defect belonging to the nature of the thing willed; for all finite things cannot add anything to infinite perfection, and supreme goodness has no need of diffusing itself in them in order to be infinite goodness.”

“A naturally contingent cause,” adds St. Thomas, “must be determined to act by some external power. The divine will, which by its nature is necessary, determines itself to will things to which it has no necessary relation.”

Is there a plurality of voluntary acts in God; the necessary act by which He loves Himself and the creative free act? “The divine will,” replies St. Thomas, “by one and the same act, wills Himself and other things. Now his relation to Himself is necessary and natural; whereas His relation to other things is by way of a kind of fittingness, not necessary and natural, nor violent and unnatural, but free” (Contra Gentes, Bk. I, ch. Lxxxii).

There is therefore nothing defectible in God; His free act is the necessary act of the love of Himself in so far as it terminates in an object which is able not to be loved and not to be willed.** The defectibility is merely in thts object, not in God. It is useless to examine more at length the above-mentioned classical objections solved by the commentators of St. Thomas.

The apparent antinomy which is noted by the Agnostics is due to the fact that they consider the divine free act as a human free act, without rising to the analogous notion of liberty com-

84 The divine free act is not, according to the Thomists, a logical relation to creatures. We cannot, indeed, conceive of it being without this logical relation, but in itself it is the unique act of the divine will upon which the existence of creatures really depends. There is therefore a real relation of creatures to the creative free act, and a logical relation of this latter to creatures, Thus sight bears a real relation to the object seen upon which it depends, whereas this latter which does not depend on it and receives from it no perfection, bears to it only a logical relation, that is to say, one which exists only in our mind, mon to God and the intellectual creature. In us, since our will is only a power or faculty relative to good, the free act of election is added to it after the manner of a defectible accident, and it is really distinct from the first act of intention by which we necessarily will happiness. Our liberty is but the dominating indifference of a potency or faculty with regard to particular goods, and that because our will is not goodness itself but only a faculty which relates to goodness.

Divine liberty, on the contrary, is the dominating indifference not of a potency but of a pure act of subsistent love. It follows from this that defectibility is found only in the case of particular goods or creatures which can as well not be willed by God, since He already possesses, without them, the sovereign Good which is identical with His ever actual and eternally subsisting love.

Moreover, in God, the free act is eternal and is not subject to change. God does not begin to will what He did not will yesterday. It is without change of will that He wills and produces the change which is accomplished in things at the time fixed from all eternity (cf. n. 47). Mutability of the divine will is inconecivable. Says St. Thomas: “Since the will regards good, a man may in two ways begin to will a thing. In one way when that thing begins to be good for him, and this does not take place without a change in him. Thus when the cold weather begins, it becomes good to sit by the fire, though it was not so before. In another way, when he knows for the first time that a thing is good for him, though he did not know it before. Now it has already been shown that both the substance of God and His knowledge are entirely unchangeable” (Ia, q. 19, a. 7).

The angelic free will participates in the immutability of the divine free will on account of the perfection of knowledge in the pure spirit. He sees simultaneously and not successively, as we do, everything about a decision to be made. When he comes to a decision, he has seen everything, weighed all the motives for or against. The knowledge acquired from the fortunate or unfortunate events of the future can in no way cause him to alter his decision made with full deliberation. Whatever may be said to make him change his mind, he can answer: I knew it. Thus the angel, by his first deliberate act concerning his last end is confirmed in either good or evil.®° There can be no question in the angel of the possibility of the forgiveness of either venial or mortal sin; he sees too clearly. Intrinsic sanctity or perversity, such is the alternative for him. Right away, he goes to the essence of things and determines his state for all eternity. The philosophy of becoming must seem to him to be a very trifling error, born of the human imagination,®® but unworthy of a pure spirit.

In the angel, however, as in man, free choice is still but the accidental act of a faculty or potency. If we conceive the pure act purified of all potentiality or imperfection, then only is it identical with the necessary act of the will, and that is to be found only in God. In this identification, liberty is not destroyed; rather it exists in a pure state, since it is the dominating indifference of pure Act itself with regard to everything created,

64. Human liberty and the divine universal causality.

As we have said, liberty in general is not incompatible with the principle of sufficient reason; the sufficient motive can determine (like sufficient grace), but does not determine effectively according to a moral necessity. Consequently the divine free will is compatible with sovereign wisdom, and is not contrary to the absolute immutability of pure Act. What shall we say now of human liberty, which is but an analogical resemblance of the

95 Cf, Ia, q. 62, a. 5; q. 64, a. 2: “Man’s free will is flexible to the opposite both before and after choice; but the angel's free will is flexible to either opposite before the choice, but not after.”

96 See Aristotle, Metaph., Bk, IV, ch. v.

divine free will, although it is still truly liberty? Is it compatible with the universal causality of God?

Let us remark first of all that human liberty, although more knowable for us (quoad nos) than the primary liberty, is in itself (quoad se) more obscure. The mystery of free will in general is here involved in the obscurity belonging properly to everything that is unstable, versatile, and inconsistent. The liberty of the angel, whose act is irrevocable, since the motive is higher than the motives drawn from the passions, once this has been performed with the full light of the intellect, is already less obscure in itself than our liberty, although it seems to us more diffcult to conceive because it is removed from our experience (Ia, q. 64, a. 2).

What shall we think, as regards the method, of a theological system which would take for its primary idea, not that of God, the pure Act and first universal cause, but the “grossly formed notion of liberty furnished by the brute fact of psychological consciousness,” °? a notion which, according to its particular exigencies, would limit the universal principle of causality and that of the universal causality of the primary Agent? Proceeding in this way, how can we avoid the reproach of anthropomorphism and of symbolism?

Such is not St. Thomas’ method. He studies first the universal exigencies of first principles of reason and of being, then the essential exigencies of the divine nature known by reason and faith. The formal object of metaphysics is being and the first principles of being; the formal object of theology is God. It is therefore by the light of these principles that St. Thomas examines all the problems and must consider the problem of human liberty, and not in the reverse order.

97 Gardeil, O.P., Le donné révélé et la théologie, p. 275; a comparison between Thomism and Molinism,

We have already set forth at sufficient length (nn. 49, b, and 52, c), with regard to foreknowledge and the divine motion, the Thomist solution of this problem. It may be summed up in these three texts of St. Thomas: “Since the divine will is perfectly efficacious, it follows not only that things are done which God wills to be done, but also that they are done in the way that He wills” (Ia, q. 19, a. 8). “Our free will is the cause of its act, but it does not of necessity have to be the first cause of its act. God is the first cause, who moves both natural and voluntary causes. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts from being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary; but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature that He has given it” (Ia, q. 83, a. 1 ad 3um). Thus a great teacher communicates to his pupils not only his knowledge, but also his mentality and method. “God immutably (immutabiliter) moves our will, because of the sovereign efficacy of His power which cannot fail. But liberty remains, because of the nature (and amplitude) of our will which is indifferent with regard to what it chooses. Thus in all things Providence operates infallibly, and yet contingent causes produce their effects contingently, for God moves all things proportionately according to the very mode of the nature of each being: Deus omnia movet proportionabiliter, unumquodque secundum suum modum” (De malo, q. 6, a. 1 ad 3um).

Thus the free mode of our acts not only is safeguarded, but is produced by God in us and with us. The divine motion does not force the will, because it operates according to the natural inclination of the latter. First of all, it directs the will to its adequate object which is universal good, and only after that to an inadequate object which is some particular good. Under the first aspect the divine motion constitutes the free mode of the act; it operates internally as we have already said, upon the very essence of the will taken in all the vastness of its range, and directs it, in a sense, to good in all its grades before inclining it to tend toward some particular good.®*

Thus God moves our free will suavely and firmly. If the divine motion were to lose its force, it would at once lose its suavity; being unable to reach what is especially delicate and intimate in us, it would remain outside us, as it were, overlaid upon our created activity; and this is unworthy of creative activity which is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves.

Our free act is therefore entirely our own as second cause, and entirely from God as first cause. When we perform the act, in virtue of the universal scope of our will and the indifference of our judgment we retain the power not to perform it (Ia Iae, q. 10, a. 4 ad rum). It so indeed results at the end of deliberation, when all is in readiness for a free act, that our will thus prepared, demands, in a way, to be moved to determine itself exactly as God will move it. If the will could determine itself alone, our liberty would be the liberty of the primary liberty; the resemblance between the two would be univocal.?®

There still remains the mystery which underlies all the great theological questions, the mystery of God, of the creative act, of the co-existence of the finite and the Infinite, and in this case the co-existence of uncreated action and created activity, of primary and secondary liberty. It is the very absence of mystery that

99 The motion by which God moves our will to determine itself is, moreover, correlative with objective motions such as are good cxample, good advice, good aspirations, all of which come under the providence of God, Previous to choice, there are also in us indeliberate movements which incline us to act one way rather than another, without infallibly entailing our choice. The will, thus disposed and prepared by all these inefficacious but sufficient motions (like the motive), demands somehow to do what God wishes to make it do freely. If in the acts which precede the definite choice there occurs a defect, a bad movement which inclines the will to make a bad choice, God is not the cause of this defect; the essentially defectible creature suffices to explain this. Cf. Guillermin, Revue thomiste, 1902, pp. 383-387.

would be surprising in this case. The seeming clearness of a simplist explanation is obtained only at the cost of an error. There must be a mystery in this, for our knowledge of the divine causality is merely analogical, and it is only relatively and negatively (supreme cause, non-premoved cause) that we come to know what properly constitutes it. We cannot therefore see how God suavely and firmly moves our liberty to determine itself, but we see that if He could not move it He would cease to be the universal cause; there would be a reality produced, that of our free determination, which would not depend upon the first Being, and which would be in us an absolute beginning, which is contrary to the principle of causality.

The opponents of the Thomist thesis would have it that we say: “God determines our choice,” whereas we say: “God moves our will to determine itself freely in a certain manner.” After thus misrepresenting our thesis, they find it easy to add that, like Calvinism, it destroys liberty because it leads to the conclusion that free will, moved and prompted by God, cannot resist. This thesis of the pseudo-Reformers was condemned by the Council of Trent, which defined (Sess. VI, ch. iv) that “the free will, moved and prompted by God, can dissent if it wishes,” and that “God’s inspiration can be rejected” (ibid., ch. v).

This objection and others like it were made to St. Augustine by the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians.?°° St. Thomas often refers to them and solves them.!°! Liberty remains because the divine causality produces in us and with us the free mode of our act, so that our will, under the influence of the divine motion and the indifference of our judgment, at the end of the deliberation, retains the power of not willing, for its scope extends beyond the

100 Cf, Epist. Prosperi ad S. Augustinum. These objections will be found in Gonet (on Ia, disp. V, a. 4, sec. 2).

101 See Ia, q. 19, a. 8; q. 105, a. 4; Ia Iae, q. 10, a. 4; De veritate, q. 6, a. 3,

5; q. 23, a. 5; Contra Gentes, Bk. Ill, chs. 88, 89, 90, 94. De malo, q. 6, a. 1; De potentia, q. 3, a 7.

finite good which it chooses. “The divine will extends not only to the doing of something by the thing which it moves, but also to its being done in a way which is fitting to the nature of that thing. And therefore it would be more repugnant to the divine motion for the will to be moved of necessity (i.e. without being in potentiality for its opposite), which is not fitting to its nature, than for it to be moved freely, which is becoming to its nature” (Ia Ilae, q. 10, a. 4 ad rum). In willing, we co-operate with the divine action and determine ourselves as secondary cause, although we are moved to determine ourselves by the primary Cause.

This thesis is entirely different from that of the pseudo- Reformers, which was condemned in the fourth canon of the Council of Trent. The mere reading of this canon is enough to convince anyone of this fact: “If anyone shall say that man’s free will, moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates toward disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of justification that it cannot refuse its consent if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive: let him be anathema.” 1°?

That we may say the will can resist, it is sufficient, according to St. Thomas, that the will, under the efficacious motion of God, retain the real power of not acting. “But,” he adds, “the act of resisting is incompossible with the efficacy of the divine motion.” 4°? Otherwise God would cease to be omnipotent, as St.

102 Concerning the agreement of this canon with the Thomist thesis, cf. Reginaldus, O.P., De mente Concilii Tridentini; and Massouli¢é, O.P., Divus Thomas sui interpres, Vol. I, diss. 2, q. 9.

108 St, Thomas, Ia Hae, q. 10, a. 4 ad 3um: “If God moves the will to anything, it is incompossible with this supposition, that the will be not moved thereto. But it is not impossible simply. Consequently it does not follow that the will is moved by God necessarily.”

Still we must fully understand what is meant by the word “resistance.” "Not according to the resistance offered to the agent, but according to the impediment of the effect,” says St, Thomas (4, d. 11, q. 1, a. 3, quaestiunc. 3 ad 2um).

Augustine says in the Enchiridion (ch. xcvi). It is what St. Thomas and the Thomists continue to express by saying that the will, under the influence of grace, can resist in sensu diviso, but not in sensu composito ?°*

St. Thomas explains this classical distinction.1°> “The effect efficaciously willed by God is able not to be, but its non-existence is incompossible with the divine will. It is not incompossible that God should efficaciously will the salvation of Peter, and yet that Peter can be damned; but it is incompossible that God should efficaciously will the salvation of Peter, and yet that Peter be damned.”

Thus we say, remarks St. Thomas,!°* that a white wall can be black, although white cannot be black and although the wall that is white cannot at the same time be black. A fortiori is this distinction verified when there is not only contingency, but liberty, on account of the predominating indifference of our will. It is this predominating indifference that Calvin denied.’

104 St. Thomas writes (De veritate, q. 6, a. 4 ad 8um): “It is commonly said of this, that God is able to predestine one who is not predestined, or not to predestine one who is predestined; in sensu composito this is false, but in sensu diviso true. And therefore all those assertions which imply a composite sense are simply false.” Cf. I Sent, dist. 38, q. 1, a. 5 ad 3um; Ia, q. 14, a. 13 ad 3um.

105 De veritate, q. 23, a. 5 ad 3um: “Although the non-existence of the effect of the divine will is incompatible with the divine will, yet the possibility of the effect failing is compatible with the divine will; for these two statements are not incompatible: God wills to save this individual and he can be damned. But these two statements are incompatible: God wills this one to be saved and the same one is damned.”

107 Calvin admitted this distinction, but in a sense different from the sensus divisus and sensus compositus. In his opinion, man ander the influence of the divine motion does not even retain the power of not acting, but it is only afterwards that he regains this power. Thus, he said, he whose feet are chained has not the power to run,

Calvin admitted this distinction not to prove that free will remains: that he denied. But his purpose in admitting it was to show that simple contingency is unaffected. In his opinion, the human act is not a necessary one, because it is not derived necessarily from human nature; but it proceeds of necessity, either from

In other words, there is necessity of consequence and not of consequent +°’ as in a rigorous syllogism, in which one premise is contingent, the conclusion is contingent although it follows necessarily from the premises. The following is an example: Every virtuous man is truthful; now the Apostles were models of virtue; therefore the Apostles were truthful. The minor is contingent, for the Apostles could fail in their duty, Judas being a traitor. The conclusion is contingent, although it follows necessarily from the premises. The Apostles, while speaking the truth, were able not to do so; they affirmed it freely at the peril of their lives. There is, on the contrary, necessity of consequent, if the two premises of a syllogism are necessary, for instance: God is sovereign perfection; now sin is absolutely contrary to perfection; therefore God is impeccable. He not only does not sin, but He cannot sin. He is free only when it is a question of goodness.

We see that this classical distinction of the sensus compositus concupiscence or from the divine motion, Cf. Billuart, De Deo, diss. VIII, a. 4, sec. 4; and a. 5.

In the Psychological Determinism of Leibniz, liberty is also reduced to contingency and spontaneity. The Church has condemned this doctrine, declaring heretical the Jansenistic proposition that: “For meritorious and unmeritorious acts in the state of failen nature there is not required in man liberty from necessity, but liberty from coercion suffices.” Denzinger, n. 1094. “Liberty from coercion” is merely the spontaneity which even the animals have.

On the other hand, Molinism defines human liberty as: “A faculty which, granted all the prerequisites for action, can act and not act even in the composite sense.” lt is of such a nature that, granted all that is required for the free act, even according to a simple priority of nature and not of time, liberty can still de facto not place the act in sensu composito. Actual resistance would be compatible with God's cfficacious motion. How then can this latter still be called efficacious? As the Thomists remark, this definition of liberty is based upon a petitio principii, and we object to it preciscly on account of the universal and transcendent super-eminence of divine causality. Cf, Billuart, De Deo, diss. VIII, a. 4, sec. 2 ad 6um; De actibus humanis, diss. Ul, a. 1, sec. 4, definition 5. See also Guillermin, Revue thomiste, 1902, p. 75, “De la grace suffisante.”

and sensus divisus, like that of necessity of consequence and of consequent, is not a subterfuge devised for the purpose of getting out of a difficulty. “It is simply,” as Father Gardeil says,°* “the verification of the non-contradiction of the system which pursues the logic of the exigencies of the absolutely first Being in all orders of things, causality included, in its application to the special terrain of liberty. It is the vigorous refusal to abandon a doctrine, approved in all branches of theological knowledge, because of a difficulty of detail. It is the affirmation of a mystery which is quite in order and which reappears every time there is question of reconciling the Infinite with the finite, as well in the order of existence as in that of operation. What would be strange is that the solution should be as simple as Molina +° naively claimed, and that the agreement between free will and divine omnipotence should be definitely accounted for by a simple explanation which is based on the conception that good people have of God instead of being based on the philosophy of an Aristotle, a Plato, a St. Augustine, or a St. Thomas, which Molina claims to be explaining.”

Molinism insists that it is in our power to choose only if we are masters of whatever conditions our choice; in this way we are ‘masters of the final practical judgment. Now we are not masters of the predetermining divine decree nor of the divine motion, which condition our choice. Therefore, if Thomism is true, it is not in our power to choose. St. Thomas states this objection in Ta, q. 19, a. 8, obj. 3: “What is necessary by its antecedent cause is necessary absolutely. Now created things depend necessarily upon the divine will as upon their antecedent cause. Therefore all that God wills is absolutely necessary.”

St. Thomas answers it as follows: “Consequents have necessity from their antecedents according to the mode of the antecedents.

109 Le donné révélé et la théologie, p. 277. 110 Concordia, on Ia, q. 23, a. 4, 5, disp. 1.

Hence things effected by the divine will have that kind of necessity that God wills them to have, either absolute or conditional. Not all things, therefore, are absolute necessities.” Item, Ia, q. 105, a. 4 ad 2um and 3um.

In other words, for choice to be in our power we must be masters of what conditions our choice in the order of secondary causes. It is not necessary for us to be masters of the divine decree or of the divine motion, if this latter causes in us and with us the free mode of our act, Divine causality contains our own causality eminently, and God is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. We should not conceive His motion as a constraint exerted externally by a created agent; it is entirely the interior causality of Him who creates and preserves us in being. The mystery in this case is not greater than that of creation, and is but the result of it. A person whom we love makes us will freely what he desires. Why could not God do so in a nobler, more certain, and very intimate manner that belongs to Him alone?

Even the best people are distrustful of the divine action, either denying or limiting it. The Thomist in his moments of difficulty forgets his own doctrine. We fear that we are no longer free if God becomes the complete master of us. We fail to understand that we are really free only in proportion as God dwells and reigns in us. Nevertheless we say every day: “Our Father who art in heaven, Thy kingdom come.” It is even metaphysically true to say: To serve God is to reign. God alone can grant us to be truly masters of ourselves, of our passions, of the attraction of the goods of this world. This latter phrase comes naturally to the lips of every preacher regardless of the theological school to which he belongs. It is so simple that nobody would venture to deny it. It is the very doctrine of St. Thomas that gives this phrase its fullest meaning. This doctrine admits from the metaphysical point of view what the Christian admits from the moral point of view. Has not morality its foundation in metaphysics, just as action has in being?

In the fullest sense it is true that only the saint, who has made a complete surrender of all autonomy to God, is perfectly free, because he is always in the hands of God; he possesses the holy liberty of the children of God. Intrinsically efficient grace, instead of forcing us, makes us free in the sense in which St. Thomas understands it (Ia, q. 83, a. 1 ad 3um). What human liberty was more perfect than that of Christ? Because of the fact He could not sin, we are sometimes inclined to think that He was not so free as we are. What a wretched presumption. Never was there a human liberty that was more voluntary under the influence of grace, that was more master of itself in proportion as it was impeccable. The will was essentially upright because it was the will of the Word made flesh, and because it was directed by the beatific vision. It could in no way be captivated by apparent goods; it maintained toward them an attitude of most absolute dominating indifference (IIIa, q. 15, a. 1; q. 18, a. 4). Is there anything sweeter than the infallibly efficacious grace of God? It diffuses itself gently in the soul that begins to will; the more this soul wills, the more it thirsts for God, the more it is overwhelmed by Him. The day when the Lord becomes most urgent in His demands, when He prefers the pure crystal to what was before sin, then He will give His grace in abundance in order that the soul may comply with His demands. It will be able to say to Him with St. Augustine: “Lord, grant what Thou dost command, and command what Thou wilt.”

God is the first Being, and all modes of being depend upon Him. He is pure Act supremely determined, and therefore all determination depends upon Him. He is the first cause, and therefore all causality and all action depend upon Him. He is the first liberty, and therefore all determination of secondary liberty depends upon Him.'" He is omniscient, and His knowledge is the cause of everything external to Himself. He is omnipotent; how could He be powerless to convert a hardened sinner? Ought He then to await our choice so as to arrest the plan of His providence? In this case created liberties would be determining the definite order of the noblest part of creation. Liberalism may lend an ear to this doctrine. There is no teaching more opposed to that of St. Thomas, who completely defends the glorious and supreme dominion of God over all created things. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us: but to Thy name give glory” (Ps. 113: 1).

65. Moral evil and the divine universal causality: (a) sufficient grace; (b) sin.

There remains, however, a final objection. If the divine motion is required for man to determine himself, and if it is infallibly although freely followed by its effect, the sinner who actually does not will what is good, does not seem to have received sufficient help to do so, and moreover seems to be determined by God Himself to will what is evil. Thomism seemingly leads to the admission of the Jansenist thesis, namely: “Some of God's precepts are impossible of fulfilment for just men willing and attempting to fulfil them according to their present powers: they stand in need, too, of that grace by which they become possible” (Denzinger, n. 1092). The Council of Trent says, on the contrary, against the pseudo-Reformers: “God commands not impossibilities but, by commanding, both admonishes thee to do what thou art able, and to pray for what thou art not able to do” (Denzinger, n. 804). And it adds: “For God forsakes not those who have been once justified by His grace, unless He be first forsaken by them” (ibid.). God gives to all sufficient help to do the good that conscience dictates to us, and He forsakes the just man

only if He has been forsaken by him. See also Denzinger, n. 1296.

This same difficulty is stated by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, 9: 19-24. After asking: “Is there injustice with God?” he replies: “God forbid, for He saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.” St. Paul adds: “Thou wilt say therefore to me: Why doth He then find fault? For who resisteth His will? O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to shew His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction, that He might shew the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy which He hath prepared unto glory?” Where is the injustice???

St. Augustine in his De correptione et gratia (chs. v, vi, xi), in which he makes a special study of this question, answers likewise that God in His mercy gives to some the efficacious grace by means of which they are saved, and in justice refuses it to others, permitting them to be damned because of their culpable neglect. His judgments are incomprehensible. Man has it within his power to fail; but how could he entirely by his own efforts cause God’s grace to be efficacious?

If Molinism is right, St. Paul and St. Augustine should have replied that versatile grace is given indifferently to all, and each one at will makes it efficacious or inefficacious by the consent of the will, and this consent depends only on the will. God places only some persons in circumstances in which He foresees that they will will what is good, and others in circumstances in which

112 On this passage of St. Paul, see the commentary of St. Thomas on the Epistle to the Romans, ch. ix.

He foresees that they will will what is evil. But then God is no longer the first universal Cause of all things in existence, and in the work of salvation the noblest part does not come from Him,

Let us not forget that man, who of himself alone is incapable of doing what is good, has it within his power to fail, to sint? Incapable of making divine grace efficactous, he can, through his own fault, make void the divine prevenient graces, and thus deserve that God refuse him the efficacious grace which would have saved him.

Evidently it was not God who urged Judas to betray Jesus. He merely permits the crime, though condemning it. He is not bound to prevent it. It is natural that what is defectible should sometimes fail, and the crime of Judas will be the means of bringing about a good which is greater than the salvation of the traitor. Can we say the wretched man did not receive sufficient help to avoid evil? Only the day before, Christ washed the traitor’s feet; Judas, through his own fault, resisted the divine prevenient graces abundantly bestowed on him; the Lord was not the first to forsake him. At the last moment, Judas could have repented, if he had not doubted the divine mercy.

Neither did God urge Peter to deny Christ. St. Peter had received sufficient helps and warnings to avoid this fall. But he relied too much on his own strength; he learnt by experience that of himself alone he could do nothing but fall, and henceforth he placed all his trust in the grace of the Savior.

We see, according to St. Paul and St. Augustine, what must be

118 The Second Council of Orange (canon 20) says, against the Semi-Pelagians: “God effects much good in man which is not of man’s doing. But no good works are performed by man which God does not help him to perform.” And canon 22 states: “No one has of his own anything but lying and sin.” Denzinger, nn. 193, 195.

This does not mean that all the acts of infidels are sins, as the Jansenists maintained. For God co-operates in the natural order with infidels that they may perform naturally good acts, and He also gives actual graces to prompt them to be converted.

the answer to the objection that the sinner who actually does what is evil, does not receive sufficient help. What can theology add to this?

In fact, there is a mystery in this incomparably more profound than Molinism admits. It is the mystery of grace, the mystery of iniquity. The rôle of the theologian is to show, not its possibility or intrinsic non-repugnance, but only that we must admit its existence, and that it does not contain an evident contradiction. It will always remain obscure for us, because we have not an adequate knowledge of grace or of liberty. It is as though we were asked: “What exactly does a little more than 10 -+ 1 make?” Now let us see what St. Thomas teaches: (4) about the suffciency of grace; (B) about the divine motion and sin.

A. Sufficient grace. The difficulty exists not only for the Thomists, but for all those who depart from Molinism and, like the Congruists, hold that, previous to the consent of our will, there is a difference between efficacious and sufficient grace. Six years after the appointment of the Congregations De Auzxiliis, in December 1613, the General of the Jesuits, Father Aquaviva, in a decree which has become famous, ordered the theologians of the Society to teach Congruism, “which was explained and defended in the discussions of the Congregations De Auxiliis as being more in conformity with the teachings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas.” 14

This decree says: “Henceforth let our Fathers always teach that efficacious and sufficient grace do not differ merely in actu secundo, because the one obtains its effect by the co-operation of the free will and not the other; but that they differ also in actu primo, in this sense that, scientia media presupposed, God

114 According to this same decree of Father Aquaviva, it is therefore this system and not Molinism, “which was explained and defended in the discussions of the Congregations De Axuxiliis as being more in conformity with the teachings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas.” This is of great significance.

with the fixed intention of producing good in us chooses Himself designedly those determinate means and employs them in the manner and at the moment at which He knows that the effect will be infallibly produced; so that, if He had foreseen the inefficacy of these means, God would have made use of other means. That is why, morally speaking, and considering it as a favor, there is something more in efficacious than in sufficient grace, even in actu primo. It is in this way that God causes us to perform the act, instead of merely giving us the grace by which we can act. The same kind of reasoning applies to perserverance, which undoubtedly is a gift of God.”

Concerning this decree referred to by the Molinist, Father de Regnon, S.J.,12° this latter remarks: “It is difficult to explain more precisely the opposition between Molinism and Congruism, . .. In Molinism God gives the grace which He knows to be efficacious; in Congruism God gives the grace because He knows it to be efficacious.”

But then the difficulty raised against Thomism reappears against Congruism. According to this system, how can we prove that souls who do not receive congruent grace, adapted to their character, have, nevertheless, sufficient help to do good and avoid evil? Does not God ask more of them than He gives?

St. Thomas (Ila Iae, q. 2, a. 5 objection 1) states this objection

115 De Regnon, Bannez et Molina, p. 127. We know that the Molinists, in order to avoid being in direct opposition to the teaching of St. Thomas, call it Bannezianism. We have avoided the quotation of a single text from Bannez, which would, moreover, be quite useless, for there is an abundance of texts from the works of St. Thomas. See Del Prado, O.P., De gratia et libero arbitrio, 1907, Pars Illa, ch. xi: Utrum Bannezianismus sit vera comoedia a Moltnistis inventa. See also Billuart (De gratia, diss. V, a. 7, sec. 3), who shows how Molina (Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, disp. 26) recognized that St. Thomas himself (la, q. 105, a. 5) had taught the necessity of a motion which applies the secondary cause to act. It is directly against St. Thomas and not against Bannez that Molina wrote: “Candidly I confess that it is extremely difficult for me to understand this motion and application which St. Thomas demands in secondary causes.” The Jesuits of Coimbra (IL, 1, Phys., ch. vii, q. 15) also recognize that St. Thomas taught physical premotion, and Capreolus after him, long before Bannez.

in all its force: Why punish man for his sin, if he has not received the necessary divine help for conversion? He replies: “Man is bound to do many things which can be accomplished only by the aid of grace, such as to believe with divine faith and to love God and one’s neighbor in a supernatural way. Now the aid of grace is given to certain persons, and if it is not given to others that is because of a just judgment of previous sin or at least of original sin, as St. Augustine says (De correptione et gratia, chs. v, vi).”

But, they insist, this merely pushes the question further back and does not answer the question in respect to the first sin. To this St. Thomas replies that, if efficacious grace is not refused because of a previous sin, it is refused at least because of an accompanying defect. Apart from the first sin, the created liberty through its own defectibility resists sufficient graces, such as good inspirations or good advice, and thus puts an obstacle in the way of efficacious grace which was somehow offered in the sufficient help. Thus the fruit is promised in the flower, but if the hail falls upon a tree in bloom there will never be any fruit. This reply is developed by St. Thomas in the Contra Gentes, Bk. II, ch. clix. “But those alone are deprived of grace who place in themselves an obstacle to grace; thus he who shuts his eyes while the sun is shining is to be blamed if an accident occurs, although he is unable to see unless the light of the sun enable him to do so.... It is said of sinners (Job 21:14): “They have said to God: Depart from us. We desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. ... They have been rebellious to the light’ (Job 24: 13).” Contra Gentes, Bk. III, ch. clx.

The holy doctor states his mind more clearly in the following chapter: “He who has never sinned and still retains his state of innocence, has it in his power not to place an obstacle to grace. But the sinner is no longer free so that he can avoid placing every obstacle to grace; he can, indeed, by his own power, for a certain time avoid sin (for it is not necessary for him always to sin), but if he be left to himself for long, he will fall into sin, and he will thus place a new obstacle to grace.” 116

“The free will,” says St. Augustine,!!? “is self-sufficient for evil, but it is effective of no good unless it be aided by omnipotent Goodness.” “Without me you can do nothing,” says the Lord (John 15:5). “The first cause of the defect of grace and of the presence of sin, is on our part,” remarks St. Thomas; 118 “but the first cause of the bestowal of grace is on God's, according to Osee (13:9): Destruction is thy own, O Israel, thy help is only in me.”

Molinism comes again with the objection: Why claim that effcacious grace is refused when the first sin is committed, because of an accompanying defect or resistance? Quite to the contrary, the reason of this resistance, it seems, is because efficacious grace is refused. Resistance, far from preceding the refusal of efficacious grace, follows it. Hence the sinner is not responsible.

According to St. Thomas, it is not necessary that man’s failure precede the refusal of grace according to a priority of time; a priority of nature suffices. It is an application of the general principle which, among other questions, throws light upon the question of the justification of the ungodly (Ia Ilae, q. 113, a. 8, ad rum). This principle is that of the mutual relation of causes to one another: “Causes mutually interact though in a different order.” It is enunciated by Aristotle in his Metaphysics (Bk. IV, ch. xi), and we have already explained (n. 61, 4) how it enables us to understand that, at the end of deliberation, the choice of the will precedes the final practical judgment in the order of efficient causality, although following it in the order of formal causality.

116 See also St. Thomas, De malo, q. 3, a. 1 ad 8um; on II Sent., d. 37, q. 2; see Ia Iae, q. 109, a. 6-10; on Epistle to the Hebrews, ch. xii, lect. 2,

117 De correptione et gratia, ch. xi.

Thus the artist by Ais action makes use of his idea as directive of his action. Thus, too, the bird holds out its wings, and the wings hold up the bird.

St. Thomas appeals to this general principle in explaining how, in the justification of the ungodly, which takes place instantaneously, the remission of sin is the result of the infusion of grace, although on the part of the sinner the deliverance from sin precedes, according to a priority of nature, the reception of grace. “The subject moved loses the quality that it had before acquiring a new one, whereas the agent in giving it this new quality acts for the removal of the other, which disappears. Thus the sun by its light acts for the removal of darkness, and hence on the part of the sun, illumination is prior to the removal of darkness; but on the part of the atmosphere to be illuminated, to be freed from darkness is, in the order of nature, prior to being illuminated, although both are simultaneous in time. And since the infusion of grace and the remission of sin regard God who justifies, hence in the order of nature the infusion of grace is prior to the freeing from sin. But on the part of the man justified, the being freed from sin is prior to the obtaining of justifying grace,” 119

The Pelagian idea of justification was entirely a material one when it affirmed that it is because man prepares himself for grace that he receives it; he merits it by his naturally good works.

If justification is explained by the principle of the mutual relation of causes to one another, then it must be the same for the loss of grace which is the reverse process of conversion. Immediately that man falls into mortal sin and loses habitual grace, Ais failure, in the order of material causality, precedes the refusal that God extends to him of actual efficacious grace and is the reason for this tailure.'*° In another order of causality, however,

119 St, Thomas, Ia Hae, q. 113, a. 8 ad tum. 120 On this point John of St, Thomas (on Ia, q. 19, disp. 5, a. 6, n. 61) says:

this failure presupposes the divine permission of sin and the absence of efficacious grace, without which there would be no sin. Thus final perseverance is a gratuitous gift to the predestined (Council of Trent, Sess. VI, ch. xiii). But in opposition to justification, sin as such is the work of the deficient creature, and not the work of God. It is, then, true to say purely and simply that sin precedes the refusal of the efficacious grace which God offers us. In other words, God does not forsake the just unless He is forsaken by them, as the Council of Trent says (Sess. VI, ch. xi). “We are deprived of grace,” remarks St. Thomas, “only if we have been unwilling to receive it. God, in fact, can will only the good, and it is but right that, if anyone does not wish or neglects to prepare himself for grace, he should be deprived of it.” 121

“Guilt at least accompanies and in some order of causality, at least material, precedes the refusal of the help, and this suffices for saying that man voluntarily puts an obstacle to God’s operation even with regard to the first refusal of efficacious help. For truly, when efficacious help is refused to a man, as far as the man is concerned there is sin or inadvertence, and each is voluntary, and thus there is concomitantly a voluntary obstacle.

“But that there is also previous culpability according to some kind of causality is evident, because for whatever sin there is required the permissive will of God and there follows defect on the part of man, or a slipping through his own frailty, which leads to nothingness and defect, just as by the absence of the sun the sky becomes by its very nature dark.

“And when it is said that our defect as a disposing and material cause precedes the refusal of help, this does not mean that it precedes by way of previous dis- Position, as remote dispositions precede the form, as heat or dryness, for instance, precedes fire, but after the manner that the corruption of one form and generation of another precede each other. For corruption is, as it were, a disposition preceding the introduction of the form, as we showed in Book I (q. 1, 2, De generatione), because it is only in a subject without form that the opposite is introduced, although formally or effectively generation is prior to corruption, Thus the refusal of help is only in the deficient subject, not before the deficiency; and yet the defect follows upon the refusal of help. In that priority, therefore, of material and disposing cause, the defect which accompanies the refusal of help is the cause and reason why God forsakes us, because, namely we freely put an obstacle in the way, concomitant with God's abandonment of us.” Cf. St. Thomas, on Epistle to the Hebrews, ch. xii, lect. 3; and Contra Gentes, Ill, ch. clix. See also infra, n. 65, B.

121 St, Thomas, on I Sent., dist. 40, q. 4, a. 2 ad 3um. Cf. De veritate, q. 24, a. 14 ad 2um; on II Sent., dist. 37, a. 2; De malo, q. 1, a 4; q. 3, & I.

Without God’s permission of sin and the absence of efficacious grace, there would be no sin; but this permission and this absence of grace are not the cause of sin; its cause is due solely to our own frailty. Action follows being; of ourselves we are nothing and return to nothing; consequently our action suffices in itself for us to fail; this failure is the result of our own frailty, which God is not bound to remedy. He often remedies the defect, byt not always. That ts a mystery.

What then is sufficient grace, according to the teaching of St. Thomas and the Thomists? It is a grace which, as being the motive of our choice, gives the proximate power to act; it does not give the action. Only efficacious grace moves us effectively to action.!2?

Among sufficient graces we must include: (1) external helps, such as the preaching of the Gospel, good example and good advice, miracles, salutary humiliations, favors, the providential disposal of the circumstances in our life: (2) among interior graces: habitual grace, the infused supernatural virtues (such as faith, hope, and charity), which give us the habitual proximate power to act in a supernatural way; (3) transitory actual graces, prevenient and inspiring, which produce in us indeliberate movements of the will, pious emotions, and good aspirations, which incline us to make a salutary choice. Remote sufficient grace disposes

122 See Ia Ilac, q. 109, a. I, 2, 9, 10; q. 113, a. 7, 10; Contra Gentes, Bk. Ill, chs, Ixxxviii, [xxxix, clix. In Ais commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians he says: “God gives the power to act by infusing virtue and grace by which man is made capable and apt for operation. But He confers the same operation inasmuch as He operates in us, interiorly moving and urging us to good. And it is therefore in this sense that the Apostle says with regard to the former: ‘I am made a minister,” With regard to the latter he says: ‘According to the operation of His power,’ inasmuch as His power worketh in us ‘both to will and to accomplish according to His good will.’” St. Thomas uses the expression “sufficient help” in Ia Ilac, q. 106, a, 2 ad 2um,

It is a common saying with the Thomists that: “Sufficient grace gives the possibility to do good if we will, but efficacious grace makes us will it.” St. Augustine called sufficient grace a help without which we do not do good, and efficient grace a help by which we do good.

us at least to pray for the power to overcome temptation and do good. Proximate sufficient grace disposes us immediately to perform a deliberate salutary act, without, however, making us do it effectively.

Like the motive, it gives only the power to act. Now the motive which decides us to act seems to us so sufficient that Leibniz thought it caused us infallibly to act, according to a moral necessity. Why should sufficient grace not be really sufficient? (CE. supra, n. 61, B.)

It is certain that inefficacious grace, such as conceived by the Jansenists, does not suffice; they called it a little grace. According to Jansenius, indeed, Molinism expresses the truth for the state of innocence. Before original sin man received only sufficient graces, and it depended only on his will to make them efficacious. But since original sin, the free will, which has been wounded and corrupted, can no longer accomplish the good without an efficacious grace. It is solely due to this weakness of our will that efficacious grace is required, according to Jansenius, and without it we have not the power to do good. It confers not only the act, but even the power to act. If celestial delectation is inferior to terrestrial, the scales necessarily incline toward evil. Man with little graces is incapable of overcoming his covetousness, just as the blind man is incapable of seeing the light of the sun. It is only by efficacious grace that the power to do good is given along with the action itself.

On the other hand, sufficient grace, in the Molinist sense, cannot be reconciled with the principle of the divine universal causality, since it would depend entirely upon ourselves to make this grace efficacious by our consent. Our will would not be moved by God to determine itself. Molinism, as a matter of fact, restricts the merciful action of God since, according to this system, God would be giving us only sufficient graces, leaving it to us to make them efficacious.

We must therefore admit sufficient grace in the Thomist sense. It is truly sufficient in itself; it gives us the power to act, although efficacious grace is required in another order, so that we may act effectively. Wherever we find several causes concurring in an effect, have we not this same fact of causes sufficient in themselves, which however do not result in becoming effective each by itself? The good which attracts us is sufficient in the order of finality. We usually say that the flower suffices for producing the fruit, yet for the fruit to be produced, the flower must not be destroyed by hail and must not be deprived of sunlight. Bread suffices for my sustenance, yet it must be digested; intelligence suffices for knowing the principal natural virtues, yet there must be application of the intellect; the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ suffices for the salvation of all men, yet we must allow its merits to be applied to us.'?%

The most rigid Thomists ?** say that sufficient grace is so truly sufficient that, if the salutary act is not forthcoming, that is not due to the insufficiency of the divine help, but to the failure of the free will which in itself is sufficient for this failure. A failure requires but a defective cause. So speaks the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, ch. xiii): “God, unless men be themselves wanting to His grace, as He has begun the good work, so will He perfect it, working (in them) to will and to accomplish.” (Denzinger, n. 806.)

Sufficient grace in the Thomist sense is neither something useless and sterile nor, a fortiori, something harmful. The good grain committed to the earth is not sterile; it will bear its fruit if the impoverishment of the soil does not resist it. Thus sufficient grace is of itself very useful and becomes accidentally useless, on account of our failure which is not to be attributed to it. Habitual grace and all supernatural virtues are incomparably precious and

123 St, Thomas, la Iae, q. 109, a. 1; Ila, q. 61, a. 1 ad 3um. 124 Lemos, Panoplia, Vol. IV, Bk. IV, p. 2, tr. III, ch. ii. Alvares, De auxiliis, Bk. XI, disp. 113, n. 10.

supremely useful for salvation, although actual efficacious grace is also required so that we may make use of them.

To hold that merely sufficient grace is harmful because it makes man responsible for his sin, would oblige us to maintain that reason itself is harmful and that it would be better to be deprived of it, like the animals that cannot sin.

Just as it is in man’s power not to yield to the sufficient and reasonable motive for good behavior, so he can resist sufficient grace, and thus deprive himself of efficacious grace which would have been given him had he not resisted, and which was offered to him in sufficient grace, just as the act is included in the power, the fruit in the flower.

We see that this serious problem of the sufficiency of the divine help given to all men is solved by the general principle which is the dominating element in all Thomistic doctrine. It is the principle that being is divided into potency and act. All the great problems of being, of knowledge, of action, are clarified by the light of this principle which constitutes the very essence of the whole philosophy of Aristotle and of the natural metaphysics of the human intellect.1*5

Those who do not admit a real distinction of potency and act

125 To get at the root of the problem of sufficient grace or of the proximate power, we should have to grasp fully the meaning of the Aristotelian notion of potency. We should see that, from the metaphysical point of view, the error of the Jansenists harks back to that of the Megarians, disciples of Parmenides, who were refuted by Aristotle at the end of the ninth book of the Metaphysics. These philosophers, who were Determinists, maintained that potency does not exist previous to act, but only together with act. Hence it would follow that the architect has the power to build only when he does so. Similarly, the Jansenists maintained that there is a proximate power to do good only when one actually does so. It is the negation of potency, which is affirmed by common sense and philosophic reason.

On the other hand, Molinism scarcely differs from the Indeterminism of Heraclitus which denied determination or act, and maintained that everything was possible, not being concerned with the principles of contradiction and causality. Molinism affirms that the secondary cause passes de facto to act without being moved by the first cause, as if act were nothing more than potency, as if determination could come from indetermination, in the order of being between created essence and its existence, are naturally inclined not to admit it in the order of operation between the potency to act and the action itself, between sufficient and efficacious grace. If, on the contrary, the creature does not exist of itself, neither can it act of itself alone. It is dependent on God both in its being and in its action.

It has been said that the Thomist must abandon his doctrine when he enters his oratory.'*® On the contrary, it is during his

126 De Regnon, S.J. (Bannez et Molina, p. 162) says: “Be convinced then of this that, however firm Thomists you may be in the enclosure of your schools, everywhere else, in the pulpit, in the confessional, in your oratory, you are with us, you are with all Christian people, humble Molinists.”

Were St. Augustine and St. Thomas, in their hours of prayer and adoration, “humble Molinists’? Humility does not consist in diminishing God's glory or His supremacy, but in recognizing our nothingness before Him.

A theologian who was wont to deduce practical conclusions from the most speculative of theses, has pointed out what the prayer of the Molinist should be, if his piety and humility were not the means of correcting his doctrine. It is as follows: “Lord, I give Thee thanks, because when Thou dost stand at the door of my heart, as at the door of the hearts of other men where Thou dost knock perhaps harder than at mine, I alone however without Thee, open the door of my heart that Thou mayst enter with Thy grace to justify me; the rest of men, unwilling to open to Thee, are unjust and extortioners; in the affair of my salvation not all is from Thee. I give Thee thanks because, since I am already justified, even by my own free will I distinguish myself from other just men who, agitated by the same temptation as I had, and given equally the same help as I had, and perhaps more, they fell into temptation, and standing refused to fall... . I was able and willed to persevere in the grace of justification, and others did not persevere. I give Thee thanks because, on account of these foreseen merits in me, in preference to others Thou hast chosen and predestined me for Thy glory.” Del Prado, De gratia et libero arbitrio, Pars Illa, p. 149.

Prayer, preaching, and the direction of souls, the more elevated and supernatural they become, the more they use the very terms of the two great doctors of grace, St. Thomas and St. Augustine. The Molinist in his hours of intense prayer, forgets his doctrine and says with the Scripture: “Have mercy on me, O God. Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within my bowels. Convert me, O Lord, to thee and I shall be converted.” There is no sin committed by another that we could not commit on account of our own frailty; if we have not fallen, if we have persevered, it is undoubtedly because we have labored and struggled; but without God we should have done nothing; and when, with and by His grace, we have acted, we must still say in all truth: “We are unprofitable servants. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Thy name give glory.”

moments of insubordination and pride that he forgets his doctrine of the subordination of causes. Freed from all illusion, he must say that of himself he is nothing. The Apostle Peter who at first relied somewhat on his own strength, realized his weakness and he learned to put all his trust in God’s grace. It would be a great illusion to think that what is better in us and of a salutary nature, the good use of our liberty and of grace, our free determination, is exclusively our work and does not come from God. How could St. Paul have said: By the grace of God I am what I am, that it is by God’s grace and not my feeble powers that I am what I am? How could any Christian soul say sincerely, that of itself it is nothing?

This soul, questioned concerning the reconciliation of the efficacy of grace with free will, often will not know how to express itself. But if it happens to answer in the Molinist sense, this is because it is unable to find words to express its most profound thought. In truth, when the Molinist prays he thinks like us that it is an old and absurd dream to believe that we are or do something good of ourselves and independently of God. What is the prayer of the publican? Of ourselves we are nothing. If we deduct from ourselves what we have received from God and what He unceasingly preserves in us, in strictness of terminology, without any metaphor, there is nothing left. The sun’s ray illumines only because of the light imparted to it by the sun; left to itself it returns to darkness. Thus of ourselves we return to nothingness. “What have you which you have not received?” asks St. Paul. How can our free determination be exclusively our act? How can it depend solely upon ourselves that the grace of God is made either efficacious or sterile? Of ourselves we are less than nothing, for our defectibility tends to make us fail, and sin is less than even nothing, like error when there is no consideration: “Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.” (II Cor. 3:5.)

B) The divine motion and sin. Granted that all receive sufficient grace, there remains one more difficulty. How can we claim that God can move one to the sinful act itself, viewed as a physical entity? Would He not be the cause of sin, and then what would we have to say of God's sanctity? God, who loves His divine goodness above all things, can in no way will sin, which turns us away from the sovereign Good. The sinner. can will what is sinful, because of the pleasure he finds in it. God can in no way will that we should turn away from Him. In Himself He cannot will even physical evil or that of punishment, but only accidentally, as the result of a good to be preferred to that of which physical evil is the privation. He wills accidentally the death of the antelope that the lion may live, and the punishment inflicted on the sinner for his salutary correction and as a manifestation of His own justice. As for the evil of sin, He cannot will it at all; but He merely permits it, for it is natural that what is defectible should sometimes fail. God is not bound to remedy this failure; He permits it, on the contrary, for the purpose of manifesting His mercy and justice (Ia, q. 19, a. 9; q. 23, a. 3; Ia Ilae, q. 79, a. 1).327

It is no less true, as St. Thomas says (Ia Ilae, q. 79, a. 2), that: “the act of sin is both a being and an act; and in both respects it is from God. Every being, whatever the mode of its being, must be derived from the First Being. Every action is caused by something existing in act, since nothing produces an action save in so far as it is in act: and every being in act is reduced to the First Act (God) as to its cause, who is act by His essence. Therefore God is the cause of every action in so far as it is an action. But sin denotes a being and an action with a defect. This defect is from a created defectible cause (free will), as falling away from

127 The expression “God permits evil” is elliptical. Clearly it does not mean that God authorizes evil; but He allows evil to happen. St. Thomas often says (v. g., Ia, q. 1, a. 3 ad 3um): “God allows evil to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom.” God, though disapproving it, allows evil to happen, in view of a greater good.

the order of the First Agent (God). This defect is not attrikuted to God as its cause, but to free will: even as the defect of limping it attributed to a crooked leg as its cause, but not to the motive power which nevertheless causes whatever movement there is in the limping. Accordingly God is the cause of the act of sin, but He is not the cause of sin, because He does not cause the act to have a defect.” St. Augustine says the same in the City of God (Bk. XII, ch. vii).1*8

St. Thomas brings forward this objection: There are acts which are essentially bad, such as blasphemy and hatred of God; and God cannot be the cause of their physical entity without being the cause of their moral deformity.

The holy Doctor replies as follows: “These acts do not take their species from the privation itself, wherein consists the nature of evil, but from some object to which that privation is united” (Ia Ilae, q. 79, a. 2 ad gum). In the De malo (q. 3, a. 2 ad 2um), he adds: “The deformity of sin is derived from the specification of this act, not in so far as the act is physical, for as such it is caused by God; but in so far as the act is moral, it is to be attributed solely to the free will.” The physical or intellectual energy which is expended in the act of sin is not itself bad.

But Molinism insists upon asking how God can move the will to this determinate act rather than to a certain other, without being the cause of its malice?

If it were entirely God’s action, as when He gives operating grace which produces the first movemnt of the will,!*® the ob-

128 “Let no one seek for the efficient cause of an evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient; neither is it an effect, but a defect.”

129 Cf, St. Thomas, la Ilae, q. 111, a. 2: “In that effect in which our mind is moved and does not move, but in which God is the sole mover, the operation is attributed to God, and it is with reference to this that we speak of operating grace. In that effect in which our mind both moves and is moved, the operation is not only attributed to God, but also to the soul; and it is with reference to this that we speak of co-operating grace.” Cf. Ia llac, q. 9, a. 6 ad 3um, jection would be impossible of solution; '*° but He moves the will to determine itself, and it is in this determination that the defect is realized. For a better understanding of this, we must call to mind that the divine motion inclines the will first of all toward its adequate object, which is universal good, and only after that toward an inadequate object, which is a certain particular good. In the first kind of good the divine motion constitutes the free mode of the act; it operates interiorly in the very depths of the will taken in its widest extent and, so to say, directs it through all the degrees of good, the proffered efficacious grace included. And it is only after a voluntary inadvertence to our duty +°? that our will, through its defection, is inclined toward a certain particular good which is contrary to God’s law, and it is then that God moves it to the physical act of sin.

This voluntary inconsideration precedes the culpable choice according to a priority of nature, if not of time. The will, which is naturally inclined to good and not to evil, does not tend and is not straightway drawn to evil; it inclines to an apparent good only after turning away from true goods. Therefore when God moves it to the physical act of sin, it has already virtually refused the grace offered to it.!®?

180 Thus it is that St. Thomas teaches that the devil could not sin at the first moment of his creation, for his first act came from God, and he had not as yet determined himself under the influence of the divine motion. Ia, q. 63, a. 5.

181 St. Thomas (Ia, q. 63, a. 1 ad gum) investigates how a first sin is committed when there is no previous bad inclination, It is the case of sin in the angels. He replies that this sin presupposes merely the absence of consideration of that which should be considered: “Such a sin does not presuppose ignorance, but merely the absence of consideration of the things which ought to be considered, In this way the angel sinned, by secking his own good, of his own free will, insubordinately to the rule of the divine will.”

182 Billuart (De angelis, diss. V, a. 1) thus sums up the general teaching of the Thomists: “This want of consideration is a part of sin. For the intellectual creature sins in the first place by not considering what can and should be considered; the sin is completed when, through want of consideration on the part of the intellect, the will moves itself to perform the act. But this want of consideration is interpretatively voluntary, in that the intellect, proposing the object

This is what the Thomists explain especially with regard to the sin of the angels, which was preceded by no other.!#8 They point out that for every act of the will two motions are required. The one, which presents an object, is objective; the other, which inclines the will toward this object, is subjective. For the good act these two motions come from God. For the bad act, the objective motion, which proposes an apparent good mingled with evil, is not from God as to what there is defective about it; this comes either from bad advice given or from our own cupidity. The presence of this objective and defective motion produces in the soul of anybody about to sin a voluntary lack of consideration for his duty, and only then does the divine influence, which is the cause of the physical reality of the sinful act and not of its malice, make itself felt.134 without taking the rule into due consideration, whilst the will applies itself to act, is drawn to will at least interpretatively this want of consideration, And thus there is integrally one sin resulting from this want of consideration indirectly and interpretatively voluntary and from the bad choice expressly and directly voluntary; just as in all cases there is integrally one sin resulting from the defect of reason in directing and of the will in choosing.” By the interpretative or indirect voluntary is meant here the virtual voluntary, as Billuart says further on (diss. V, a. 3, dico 4).

183 Qn Ia, q. 63, a. 1, 5, cf. Cajetan, Bannez, John of Saint Thomas, Salmanticenses, Gonet, Billuart. Consult these same commentators on Ja Ilae, q. 79, a. 1, 2, Whether God is the cause of sin. Whether the act of sin is from God; and De malo, q. 3, a. 1, 2. Cf. especially John of St. Thomas, on Ia, q. 19, disp. 5, a. 6, “Solvitur argumentum ex influxu Dei in materiale peccati,” nn, 65-70; also Billuart, De Deo, diss. V, a. 5.

184 John of St. Thomas (on Ia, q. 19, disp. 5, a. 6, n. 67) writes as follows: “The proposal of the object and the moral motion to the act of sin, because it is defective and consequent upon the defect, originates from a deficient cause... although what entity there is in such motion and proposal is entirely from God; but at the same time we distinguish between the moral mode of the motion, and the causation of the entity as an entity. Such = moral motion being admitted, resulting from a lack of consideration and a defect, the causality and influence of God begins to be exerted on the will, upon what is effective, not defective, in that God operates as first cause and first being, and thus whatever He accomplishes pertains to being and effect and not to defect because a being, inasmuch as it is defective, is non-existent.” How does the will pass from an already guilty complacency to the bad choice? St. Thomas explains this in Ia Iac, q. 77, a. 2, © and ad 3um.

Hence the divine motion does not surprise the innocent man, who would find himself poised between good and evil, so as to incline him to evil. God never determines to the material act of sin unless the creature has already determined itself to what formally constitutes sin2*®® He moves the wills according to their dispositions; consequently He moves to the physical act of sin only the will already badly disposed and demanding, so to speak, to be thus moved. Let us take a sin in which the responsibility is quite evident, a sin of malice, such as that of Judas. He disposes himself for it and takes pleasure in it beforehand. The Lord says to him afterwards: “That which thou dost, do quickly” (John 13:27). The Lord neither ordains, nor advises, but permits the accomplishment of the premeditated crime,'*® although He must permit this evil while disapproving of it. Before sinning, the sinner himself refuses the light and grace coming to him from God. “They have said to God: Depart from us. We desire not the knowledge of thy ways” (Job 21: 14). “They have been rebellious to the light” (Job 24: 13). It is also said of the sinner in the Psalms: “He would not understand that he might do well” (Ps. 35: 4).

Conclusion. Such is the solution of the principal difficulties presented by the doctrine of St. Thomas. If things still remain obscure and mysterious, we are inclined to think that in all this there is no contradiction, for it is by a rigorous process of reasoning that St. Thomas advances from the known to the unknown.

1. He starts from the fundamental truths in the order of in-

135 Billuart, De Deo, diss. VIII, a. 5, ad obj. 3: “God never determines one to the material element in sin unless the creature previously in some way has determined itself to the formal element in sin, For God, who foresees all things, moves cach thing according to its exigency and disposition; consequently He moves to the bad action only the will which is of itself badly disposed and demands to be so moved.

On the contrary, Calvin is induced by his principles to make God the author of sin, because according to his doctrine the divine motion, instead of producing in us and with us the free mode of our act, is something necessitating.

vention, from the first principles of reason and of being: the principle of identity or of contradiction, the principle of causality; everything that passes from potentiality to act is set in motion by a being in act, and in the first place by the Being who is pure Act. It is on this principle that the proofs for the existence of God are based. Why should human liberty be an exception to this fundamental law of being and of action?

2. In the order of the ultimate reasons of things (in via judicii), St. Thomas starts from this supreme truth, that God is His being and His action. From this are deduced the absolute exigencies of the divine nature, especially the principle of the universal causality of the first agent. Why should the determination of human liberty be an exception to this principle?

3. Finally, from the supernatural point of view of faith, St. Thomas as a theologian starts from this first of revealed principles, that God ts the first cause of our salvation, “Without Me you can do nothing,” said the Lord (John 15:5). Hence the necessity of prayer to implore the help of Him who converts the wills and without whose grace they are not converted. What is of main importance in the work of salvation is our free choice of the good. How could this be exclusively our own and not come from God, the Author of salvation? “Iz is God,” says St. Paul, “who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish” (Phil. 2: 13).

As an eminent theologian ** says: “The Church in her liturgy, the saints, mystical writers, all Christian people, do not ask merely to be enlightened as to their duties by illuminations of the intellect, to be aroused to action by good impressions and impulses of the will. What disturbs them more than anything else is the frailty, the inconstancy, the caprice, the sluggishness of their own free will; and they beg God to stabilize and direct the activity of their will. Can we believe that St. Paul was awaiting the outcome of the struggle with a determination springing from his free will

187 Guillermin, Revue thomiste, 1902, p. 75: “De la grace suffisante.”

alone, when he boldly proclaimed (Rom. 8: 35): ‘Wao shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? . . . But in all these things we overcome, because of Him that hath loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities . . . nor any creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ And let us recall these other words (II Cor. 12:9): “The Lord said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee, for power is made perfect in infirmity. Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. . . . For when I am weak then am I powerful.’ Certainly he knew that he could lose this grace, resist it, and so doing even render it vain and useless. But when he enumerated the marvelous results which he hoped for with so much assurance, certainly he did not suppose their positive realization depended ultimately on his own will, which would have to decide everything by itself, and not through the efficacy of grace.” 138

Such are the first rational and revealed principles in the light of which St. Thomas examines the question of the relations of God to human action. There are and must be obscurities in his solution of them; but nothing justifies us in saying that it implies a contradiction, since it results from these very first principles and since

188 On this point Billuart (De Deo, diss, VIII, a. 5, in fine) says: “Whether grace per se efficacious in the order of salvation ought to be explained by pAysical predetermination, and whether this predetermination ought to be extended to natural acts and to the material element in sin, these two questions are merely philosophical and incidental to the main dogma of grace per se efficacious. . . . But grace per se efficacious independently of the consent of the creature and of middle knowledge, we defend as a theological dogma which is connected with the principles of faith and which is approximately definable. And so almost all the otner Schools are with us, if we except the Molinist. The adversaries, however, attempt to confuse these two philosophical questions with the dogma of efficacious grace, in order that by this means they may make God to be the author of sin and thus render Him hateful to the common people and simple-minded women.”

it is by these principles that the Thomist synthesis has established its proofs on all points of theological knowledge.

Molinism is not a general synthesis and is not philosophical; nor is it a theological system, but merely an opinion in a particular controversy; # and in its manner of development it is entirely opposed to the teaching of St. Thomas. Instead of starting with necessary and universal principles, so as to go from the known to the unknown, it starts with a difficulty which has to be solved: how to reconcile God's foreknowledge with human freedom. And the solution is based entirely on a definition of human freedom which cannot be proved, either by experience or a priori, and which is nothing else but a begging of the question.*° This definition must lead Molinism to deny the absolute universality and necessity of the first principles.of reason and theology, without succeeding in safeguarding liberty, which is destroyed by the determinism of the circumstances implied in the scientia media. (CE. supra, n. 49, b.)

“Certainly,” writes Father Guillermin,'*! “philosophic reason must not ignore the very many divergences and inequalities which distinguish the numerous degrees of created being. But it is absolutely imperative for reason to bring back all things to unity, to rediscover, synthesize, and unify all things in one infinitely simple

139 Cf, Gardeil, Le Donné révélé et la science théologique (Les systèmes théologiques), p. 274.

140 Conscience perceives only one thing, that we are the immediate principle of our free determinations. It does not attest that we are the first principle independently of God. On this latter point conscience can vouch for nothing. It no more perceives either the presence or the absence of the divine motion, than it does the presence or the absence of the preservative act by which God communicates existence to us incessantly.

As for reason, it affirms that the activity of every secondary cause, whatever it may be, depends upon the first cause, and every secondary liberty on the first liberty; for our liberty could not have all the perfection and independence of God's liberty, between which and itself there can be only an analogical similarity,

and infinitely comprehensive first principle. Now Molinism goes right against this indestructible instinct of our reason. It brings into the relations between God and the world a sort of transcendental dualism which nothing justifies... . The Molinists affirm that it is of the essence of a free act that its immediate cause, the created will, does not depend on any higher influences as to the determination of its choice. That is an affirmation which, according to our opinion, rests upon a begging of the question, and we protest against it on the score of the universal and transcendental supereminence of divine causality.”

Finally, how can we maintain that, as faith teaches us, God is the first cause, if He produces in us only good movements, good aspirations? “It is not he who has good aspirations who will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who, by a free act, does the will of the heavenly Father.” How is God still the first cause of our salvation, “If He only takes a part and not the most important part in the work . . . if He remains a stranger to the determination of the free will, in which is completed and concentrated the whole work of salvation”? ** The conversion of St. Paul, of Magdalen, of the good thief, every true conversion is in the first place the work of God in the soul drawing it to Himself. Our faith, our reason, and our heart beseech God, the Author of all good, who began the work of our salvation, that He Himself complete it. “He who hath begun a good work in you, will perfect it” (Phil. 1:6). “God, unless men be themselves wanting to His grace, as He has begun the good work, so will He perfect it, working in them to will and accomplish,” says the Council of Trent (Denzinger, n. 806). Holy Scripture unceasingly proclaims it: “But the salvation of the just is from the Lord” (Ps. 36: 39). “By the grace of God I am what I am” (I Cor. 15:10). “The grace of God life everlasting” (Rom. 6:23). “For of Him and by Him and in Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “What hast thou that thou hast not re-

ceived?” (I Cor. 4:7). “It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. g: 16). “Who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish” (Phil. 2:13). “Who worketh all in all” (I Cor. 12:6). “For in Him we live and move and are” (Acts 17:28).

The Council of Orange insists on these texts.14 And does not the Council of Trent define that the grace of final perseverance is a free gift, as predestination is? 1*4 Why is it that one sinner is converted a few moments before death, whereas another dies suddenly in a state of sin? It is the mystery of the divine predilections for which there is no extrinsic reason.

How could this teaching of faith, such as St. Thomas interprets it, incline us to quietism, as some have claimed? Certainly it bids us not to disturb ourselves, to be recollected and attentive to the operation of grace in us, but it does not dispense us from endeavoring, under the influence of the grace given us, to struggle and be victorious. It does not tell us to wait for a sign of divine assistance; on the contrary, it incites us to pray that we may be ready to act as soon as our conscience bids us or obliges us to do so. God moves us, St. Augustine repeatedly says, not that we should do nothing, but precisely that we should act. And often, if we demand too little from ourselves, it is because we do not count sufficiently on the grace which God has promised and wishes to give us in order to have us fulfil His precepts. If the level of our spiritual life becomes lowered, and if we are satisfied with leading an entirely

143 “God works many good things in man, that man does not work; but man works no good deeds that God does not give him the strength to do.” Denzinger, n. 193.

44 “If anyone saith that a man who is born again and justified is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate: let him be anathema.” Denzinger, n. 825 (cf. n. 805).

“If anyone saith that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless he have learned this by special revelation: let him be anathema.” Denzinger, n. 826 (cf. n. 806). See also, on the divine motion, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part I, ch. 1, art. 1, sec. 6, “Providence.” Cf. infra, Appendix IV, ch. iv, a. 4.

human life, this is because we believe ourselves to be alone when acting; we forget that God is in us and with us, It is said at times that the doctrine of St. Thomas could not be preached; on the: contrary, the more sublime the preaching is, the more it resembles the very terminology employed by the holy doctor who follows St. Augustine and St. Paul.

Molinism criticizes Thomism for being a harsh doctrine which diminishes hope in us. “It is not true, as some suppose, that Molinism opens up more abundant sources of God’s mercy and grace and that it proposes to give us a more efficacious grace. On the contrary, it is because it asks less from God, that it leaves more to man. When God has stirred up in the soul indeliberate knowledge and impulses, His work is finished. It is now for man to complete the work by adding his consent, or, by not doing so, to make the grace become useless and barren.” 148

Thomism, far from entrusting our salvation to human frailty, places it in the hands of God our Savior. Far indeed from being opposed to the virtue of hope, it inclines us to put all our trust in God and not in ourselves. Hope is a theological virtue, and its formal motive is the help of God (Deus auxilians), and not our will powert Should we not have to despair of attaining our supernatural end if we had to rely upon our own strength? 147

147 Our Lord (Luke 18:1) “spoke also a parable to his disciples that we ought always to pray and not to faint. . . . And to some who trusted in themselves as just and despised others, he spoke also this parable: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee and the other a publican, The Pharisee standing prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess. The publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven, but struck his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. I say to you, this man went down into his house justified rather than the other; for everyone that exalteth himself shall be humbled and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Cf. Bossuet, Elévations,

18th week, 15th elevation, “The mystery of grace.” Concerning this parable, St. Augustine (Sermon 145, ch. iii) remarks against

Although we are not certain 18 that God will deign always to point out our faults to us and give us the grace of final perseverance, yet we are much less certain of our own will, which so often is indifferent to true good and seeks what is merely apparent good. The rectitude of God’s ways is of a different certainty from that of our own heart. On this point one may read Bossuet’s fine exposition of the doctrine of grace.!®

Immediately when great difficulties arise, let us have recourse to this expedient and say to ourselves: I must pray and watch out not to fall, and God in His good time, at the hour when duty calls upon me to act, will give me His supremely efficacious grace, and I shall act without fail. This will be the confirmation of our hope.

the Pelagians: “Let them see now, let them listen to their impious chatter, whoever they may be, presuming on their own strength; let them listen to what they say: God made me a man, I made myself just.”

148 The certitude of hope must not be confounded with that of faith. It is the teaching of the Council of Trent against the Protestants: “If anyone saith that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless he have learned this by special revelation: let him be anathema.” Denzinger, n. 826; cf. n. 806. On the certitude of hope, cf, Ila Iae, q. 18, a. 4.

149 Bossuet, Elévations, 18th weck, sth elevation: “Man says to himself: I have my free will; God made me free, and I wish to make myself just. I wish the act which decides my eternal salvation to come originally from myself. Thus one wishes in some way to glory in oneself. Where are you going, frail vessel? You are going to dash against the rocks and deprive yoursclf of the help of God, who gives it only to the humble, and who makes them humble in order to help them. .. . God wishes you to ask Him to help you in all the good actions you have to perform; when you have performed them, God wishes you to thank Him for having performed them. He does not wish, however, that you should remain inactive and make no effort; but in the efforts you make He wishes you to be as if you had to do everything by yourself and not glory in yourself, but be as if you had done nothing.

“I cannot: I wish to find something that I attribute to myself in my free will, which I cannot grant in this abandonment to grace. Proud contradictor, do you wish to grant these things or truly believe that God grants them? He grants them in such a way that He wishes, without any lessening of activity on your part, that you should attribute finally to Him the entire work of your salvation; for He is the Savior and He says: ‘Besides me there is no God’ (Is. 44:6). Believe, indeed, that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and all contradictions will disappear.”

What must a priest do who is unsuccessful in converting a dying sinner? If the priest is persuaded that God is the master of this sinful will, above all things Ae will pray.'®° If, on the other hand, he imagines that God exerts only an external influence on this will by means of circumstances, good thoughts, and good inspirations, external to the salutary consent of the will, the priest may lose too much time in employing superficial means; his prayer may lack that holy boldness which we admire in the saints.

Scripture teaches us to place all our trust, not in ourselves, but in God: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy” (Ps. 50). “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit” (Ps. 30:6). “Create a clean heart in me, O God; and renew a right spirit within my bowels” (Ps. 50:12). “Convert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted” (Lam. 5:21; Jerem. 31:18).

In concluding this chapter, it is of importance for us to connect the solution of the antinomies relating to liberty with that of the fundamental antinomy previously examined (nn, 54, 57).

The mystery of salvation brings us back to that of the reconciliation of God’s mercy with His justice. St. Augustine (De correptione et gratia, chs. v, vi, xi) says repeatedly that it is by reason of His mercy that God gives to some the efficacious grace of final perseverance by which they are saved; it is by reason of His justice that He refuses this to others on account of their culpable and frequent failures which He permits for very sublime reasons of which His wisdom is the judge. The predestined must none the less, following the example of the Crucified and by His power, pay their debt to divine justice; the others are the object of God’s mercy, since they receive the necessary and superabundant graces that their frequent failures finally render sterile. The least favored receive sufficient grace to pray, and if they did not resist it,

150 The purpose of prayer is not to change the dispositions of divine Providence. On the contrary, from all eternity God wishes us to pray so that we may obtain the grace which He has decided to give us. Ila Iae, q. 83, a. 2.

by means of a series of graces they would arrive at justification.

Therefore this mystery of salvation brings us back then to that of the reconciliation of God’s mercy with His justice. We have seen that these two attributes are identical with divine love and that this identification does not destroy them, but reinforces them and enables them to exist in a pure state, freed from all imperfection.'*! It is by the divine goodness that St. Thomas throws light upon the mystery of predestination. The sovereign Good has two subordinate aspects which demand their manifestation. It is above all essentially communicative, diffusive of itself: this is the principle of mercy. But it has also an absolute right to be loved above all things: this is the principle of avenging justice, proclaiming against those who deny it, this supreme and inalienable right which is the principle of all obligation. “The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others,” says St. Thomas,?®? “must be sought for in the goodness of God. Thus He is said to have made all things through His goodness, so that the divine goodness might be represented in things. Now, it is necessary that God’s goodness, which in itself is one and undivided, should be manifested in many ways in His creation, because creatures in themselves cannot attain to the simplicity of God. Thus it is that for the completion of the universe different grades of being are required, some of which hold a high and some a low place in the universe. That this multiformity of grades may be preserved in things, God allows certain evils, so as to give occasion for many good things to happen. Let us then consider the whole human race, as we consider the whole universe. God wills to manifest His goodness in men; in respect of those whom He predestines, by means of His mercy, in sparing them; and in respect of others, whom He reprobates, by means of His justice, in punishing them. This is the reason why God elects some and rejects

151 N, 51 and n. 57, 5. 152 See Ia, q. 23, a. 5 ad 3um, others. To this the Apostle refers, saying (Rom. 9:22): “What if God, willing to show His wrath (that is, the vengeance of His justice), and to make His power known, endured (that is, permitted), with much patience, vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction, that He might show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy which He hath prepared unto glory.’”

So speaks St. Thomas, following St. Paul. For a complete understanding of their statements, it must be said that the sinner is selfsufficient for the purpose of sinning and remaining in sin. It is God who inspires the saints; He does not, to be sure, urge the persecutors to attack Christ and His Church. Their wilful malice, at times of a refined nature, comes only from themselves. God merely permits it, though He condemns it. It will contribute to the manifestation of His justice and consequently of His goodness.

Such is the final answer to the problem of evil. Far from opposing the existence of God, it presupposes that existence, and has its foundation in the two fundamental aspects of the sovereign Good. But it must be said that this is within the reach only of the perfect, as St. Paul declares (I Cor. 2: 6-14): “We speak wisdom among the perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, neither of the princes of this world that come to nought. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is halden, which God ordained before the world, unto our glory. . . . But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the spirit of God. For it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand because it is spiritually examined.”

When in this life the wicked seem to triumph, when we contemplate this doctrine of salvation with simplicity and purity of heart, after praying, then, as Pascal says concerning the Passion, “we shall find it so great, that we shall have no reason to be scandalized at a baseness that is not there. But there are some who can admire only carnal types of grandeur, as if there were none of the spiritual order; and there are others who admire only types that are spiritual, as if there were not infinitely loftier ones in wisdom.”

Many obscurities remain, because we do not know the intimate mode in which mercy and justice are identified in divine love. As our knowledge is of necessity incomplete, justice seems to us too rigid, and mercy arbitrary. It is a profound mystery which adds to the transcendent obscurity of divine Being, which is that of divine liberty and its most hidden predilections. In this life our analogical notions are peculiarly deficient, being too determinate. The more they determine the primary notion of being, the less they manifest the plenitude of the divine Being (Ia, q. 13, a. 11). In reality, divine mercy and justice never operate separately; the most sublime graces accompany the greatest of divine requirements, as we see in the life of Christ and of the saints. On the other hand, afflictions are always tempered by mercy (la, q. 21, a. 4).

Hence divine love cannot be the love of the sovereign Good without being at the same time a holy hatred of evil. Great contemplatives, like Blessed Angela of Foligno, have caught a glimpse in this life, of the intimate reconciliation which we fail to recognize. Raised to a higher degree of prayer than any she had previously known, Blessed Angela arrived at such a knowledge of God's justice and of the rectitude of His judgments that she wrote: “I Jove all good things and all evil things, benefactions and malefactions. Nothing disrupts the harmony for me. I enjoy great peace and have great veneration for the divine judgments. ... I do not see more clearly the goodness of God in a saint or in all the saints than in one of the damned or in all the damned. But this abyss of goodness was shown to me but once; it left in me a remembrance and a joy that are eternal. . . . The soul that, having gone down into the abyss, has caught a glimpse of the justice of God's ways, will henceforth look upon creatures as the servants of His glory.” 153 St. Thomas says that in the punishment of the

153 Le livre des visions et des instructions de la Bienheureuse Angèle de Foligno, damned is to be seen the order of divine justice, and the absolute right of the sovereign Goodness to be loved above all things.'®4 “Love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell” (Cant. 8:6). Love is strong as death, its holy hatred of evil unchangeable as hell, its ardor is as the burning of fire, it is a flame of Jehovah. Torrents of iniquity cannot quench love. It will always have the last word. Bk. I, ch. xxiv, Hello’s French translation. But these words must be taken in their mystical sense so as to avoid Eckhard’s proposition that: “In every deed, even an evil one, evil I say both of sin and punishment, the glory of God is equally manifested and reflected.” Denzinger, n. 504. The truth of the matter is that God's justice is as infinite as His mercy, and that they manifest, each in its way, the holiness and goodness of God. Cf. Ia, q. 23, a. 5 ad 3um. 154 Supplement to the Summa, q. 94, a. 3; Quodlibet VIII, q. 7, a. 1.

Footnotes

1. “So far we have enumerated the two conditions of freedom of which Aristotle speaks, i.¢., spontaneity and intelligence, which are found united in us in deliberation, whereas the second condition is wanting to beasts. But the Scholastics require still a third condition which they call indifference. And we must admit it if indifference means as much as contingency; for I have already said that freedom must exclude an absolute and metaphysical or logical necessity.” Théod., HI, sec. 302; I, sec. 46. ↩