Chapter XVIII. Predestination according to the teaching of the post-tridentine thomists

PRINCIPLES ON WHICH THEY AGREE

ABSOLUTELY all the Thomists who wrote after Molina’s time are opposed to his theory of the scientia media. In their opinion it posits a dependence or passivity in God’s foreknowledge with regard to a determination that is independent of His action. The whole controversy brings us back to the dilemma: “God determining or determined, there is no other alternative.” We cannot admit, say the Thomists, any dependence or passivity in pure Act. Hence they maintain that the only way in which God can know conditionally free acts of the future is in an objectively conditionate decree, and free acts of the future only in a conditionate decree that is positive in the case of good acts, and permissive in the case of sin. They add that the determining decree with regard to our salutary acts is intrinsically and infallibly efficacious, but that it is not necessitating, for it extends even to the free mode of our acts which God wills and produces in us and with us, God willed efficaciously from all eternity that the good thief should be converted of his own free will on Calvary, and this divine efficacious will, far from destroying the freedom of this act of conversion, produces this in him because God, who preserves our will in existence, is more intimate to it than it is to itself.

Thus all Thomists defend the intrinsic and infallible efficacy of the divine decrees. It is a question of the decrees that concern our salutary acts and of the grace by which these acts are performed, whether these salutary acts are easy or difficult to perform. There is no exception to the absolute universality of these principles, since they are indeed of the metaphysical order. They concern the creature’s act considered as a free act, and not as a difficult act. From this point of view, intrinsically and infallibly efficacious grace was required for the salutary act as well in the state of innocence for men and angels, as in the present state. In other words, it is required not only on the ground of infirmity, but also on the ground of dependence, by reason of the creature’s dependence in each of its acts upon God, who is the most universal cause of all things that come into existence, as to whatever reality and goodness is in them.

St. Thomas had affirmed this intrinsic efficacy of the divine decrees when he said that the divine consequent or efficacious will concerns the good that happens or will happen at the present moment, and that everything that God wills by this will happens infallibly, whether it is a question of acts easy or difficult to perform: “Whatever God simply wills takes place; although what He wills antecedently may not take place.” *

This intrinsic and infallible efficacy of grace is to be understood, according to the teaching of the Thomists, not as a moral motion that influences the will by way of objective attraction (for only God seen face to face could infallibly attract our will), but it is to be understood as a motion that applies our will to posit its act vitally and freely,? and for this reason in opposition to moral motion, it is called physical premotion.* The Thomists even say that this motion is predetermining, in so far as it infallibly guarantees the execution¹

8 Consult God, His Existence and His Nature, II, 152, no. 85, for the meaning given by Father Sertillanges, O.P., to these two words, “physical premotion.”

of the predetermining eternal decree. It is not a formal but a causal determination, which means that it infallibly moves the will to determine itself in such a way that the result of the deliberation is a salutary act. Then the determination of the will is no longer causal, but formal and completed. What would be a contradiction, would be to say that the will is formally determined before it is formally determined.‘

On these points all the Thomists are agreed, from the strictest, such as Bannez, Lemos, and Alvarez, to the mildest among them, such as Gonzalez de Albeda, who defended a special theory about sufficient grace.* We can inform ourselves of their views by reading their commentaries on St. Thomas.’ Of more recent date are the articles on sufficient grace by Father Guillermin, O.P., who, with Gonzalez de Albeda and Massoulié, goes as far as he can in eliminating the difference between sufficient grace and efficient grace, maintaining, however, that only this latter infallibly removes the obstacles to the good consent of the will.

THE PRINCIPLE OF PREDILECTION

All the Thomists. even Gonzalez, Massoulié, and Father Guillermin, defend most firmly and as a necessary consequence the principle of predilection, that “no one thing would be better than another unless it were loved more and helped more by God.” All admit the absolute universality of this principle both for the state of innocence and for the present state, and this whether it be a question of acts easy or difficult to perform, of the initial or final act, or whether

#On this point see the third part of this book, chap. 8

@ Consult in particular John of St. Thomas, Gonet, Contenson, Massoulié, Salmanticenses, Gotti, Goudin, and Billuart on the Summa theologica, la, q-14, 2.8, 13: q.19, 2.6, 8; q.23, a.4, 5; Ia Iae, q.109 F.

8 See also Father V. Carro, O.P., “De Soto a Bannez” in the Ciencia Tomista, 1928, pp. 145-78. Dr. Fred. Stegmüller: “Francisco de Victoria y la doctrina de la gracia en la escuela salmantina,” Barcelona, pp. 227-44.

it be for the beginning or continuation of the act. We cannot dwell longer here on this point, which we have discussed at length elsewhere.’

THE GRATUITY OF PREDESTINATION

It is by the light of the foregoing principles that the Thomists who wrote after the Council of Trent explain the articles of St. Thomas on predestination.*® They defend the interpretation given by St. Augustine and St. Thomas of St. Paul’s teaching on this question, as St. Robert Bellarmine did in his works, but they insist more than he does on the words of St. Paul, who says: “It is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish.” 1! And again when he says: “For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?” 1? Thus they consider the doctrine of the absolute gratuity of predestination to glory as directly founded on the Scripture.

In the explanation of this doctrine they all agree in admitting that predestination to glory is prior to the foreseeing of merits, as the willing of the end is prior to the choice of the means; but that in the order of execution God gives glory as the reward of merits, and in this they combat the opinion of the Protestants and the Jansenists. God freely wills to give glory to His elect, but He does not will to give it gratuitously. They all hold, too, that negative reprobation, by which God wills to permit sin that deprives one of glory, is prior to the foreseeing of demerits. Furthermore, several of them say that original sin fails to explain it in the case of those in whom this sin is remitted. On the contrary, positive reprobation,

®Cf. “La grace infailliblement efficace par elle-même et les actes salutaires faciles," Revue Thomiste (Nov.—Dec., 1925, and March-April, 1926). See Appendix I at the end of this book.

which inflicts the penalty of damnation, is subsequent to the foreseeing of sin, which the penalty presupposes.

The Thomists therefore generally arrange the divine decrees in the following order: (1) God wills by His antecedent will to save all men, even after original sin was committed; and He puts at their disposal graces that are truly sufficient, so that they may keep the commandments; for He never commands what is impossible.” (2) God has a special love for and chooses a certain number of angels and men whom He wills efficaciously to save.’* Predestination to glory thus precedes in the order of intention the foreseeing of merits.’ (3) God puts at the disposal of the elect intrinsically and infallibly efficacious graces whereby infallibly, although freely, they will merit eternal life and attain it. (4) God, foreseeing in His decrees that His elect will persevere until the end, decides in the order of execution preconceived by Him to grant them glory as a reward of their merits. (5) But as He also foresees in His permissive decrees that others will complete their time of probation in a state of mortal sin, He positively casts them off as reprobates on account of their sins. This order of decrees is founded on the following principles that are admitted not only by the Thomists, but also by Scotus, Bellarmine, and Suarez: that the wise person wills the end before the means, and that if the end is first in the order of intention, it is last in the order of execution.

POINT ON WHICH THE THOMISTS DIFFER

The Thomists agree on these principal theses, and it is only on the notion of negative reprobation that there is a slight difference between them.

Alvarez, the Carmelites of Salamanca, John of St. Thomas,

Gonet, and Contenson admitted that negative reprobation, which applies both to angels and to men and which is prior to the foreseeing of merits, consists in the positive exclusion from glory, in this sense that God would have refused them glory as a gift not due to them; then He would have permitted their sins and decided finally to inflict on them the penalty of damnation on account of their sins, which is positive reprobation.+® We still have in this, in contradistinction to the Protestants, a certain difference between positive and negative reprobation, in that the former is a penalty and the latter is not, but merely the refusal of a pure gift.

However, many Thomists, such as Goudin, Graveson, Billuart, and nearly all at the present day, reject this interpretation of it, and they give three principal reasons for this: (1) because it is too harsh a view and can only with difficulty be reconciled with the divine antecedent will to save all men; (2) because it establishes an extreme parallelism between the two orders of good and evil: God first wills glory to the elect as a pure gift; then, in the order of execution preconceived by Him, He wills it as a reward of their merits; but He cannot will to exclude the others from glory before He foresaw their demerits; for this exclusion cannot be in itself a good and can be willed by God only as a punishment after He foresaw their demerits; (3) this theory of the positive exclusion from glory as being a gift not due, is not to be found in the works of St. Thomas or in those of Capreolus, Cajetan, and Sylvester of Ferrara, who were his first commentators. St. Thomas wrote: “It is part of that providence to permit some to fall away from the end (glory), and this is called reprobation.” Toward the end of the argument in this article he says: “Reprobation includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin (negative reprobation), and to impose the punish-

16 See Pohle-Preuss, Grace, pp. 217-20, for a criticism of this view especially as regards Gonet, (Tr.)

ment of damnation on account of that sin (positive reprobabation).” 17

Also these last mentioned Thomists and nearly all at the present day make negative reprobation to consist in the divine will to permit sin, which merits exclusion from the glory of heaven. God is not bound, indeed, to conduct effectively all angels and men to the glory of heaven and to prevent a creature, of itself defectible, from sometimes failing. He can permit this evil of which He is by no means the cause, and He permits it in view of a greater good, as being a manifestation of His infinite justice.

THE CLEAR AND OBSCURE POINTS IN THOMISM

The Thomists deduce their doctrine on predestination entirely from the principle of predilection: “Since God’s love is the cause of all good, no one thing would be better than another unless it were loved more by God.” * This principle seems in the philosophical order to be an evident corollary from the principles of causality and of the universal causality of God who is the author of all good. This same principle is found variously expressed in the revelation of both the Old and New Testaments, as for instance: “I will have mercy on whom I will, and I will be merciful to whom it shall please Me. . . . For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?” 1°

Thus Thomism remains absolutely faithful to St. Augustine’s interpretation of St. Paul’s texts. It represents the luminous side of this doctrine, which fully safeguards the truth, and the absolute universality of the principle of causality in its relations to the transcendent causality of God who is the

17 Loc. cit., Ia, q.23, 2.3. 18 bid., Ia, q. 20, a.3. 19 Ex. 33: 19; I Cor. 4:7.

author of nature, grace, and salvation. Thomism absolutely refuses to violate these principles by a conception of human liberty that cannot be proved either by experience or a priori. It vigorously refuses to deny or limit the universal laws of being and action which clarify the whole doctrinal synthesis of philosophy and theology, inasmuch as the proper object of theology is God Himself, and it must therefore consider all things, our liberty included, guided by the true concept of God and not by one the reverse of this.

The obscurity in this doctrine is to be found when we consider the mystery from the other angle. This presents itself when it is a question of explaining God’s universal will to save, the real possibility for those not elected to keep the commandments, and God's permission of sin, especially of the sin of final impenitence.

To this the Thomists reply that God most certainly wills to save all men, in the sense that He wills to make it really possible for them to fulfil His precepts; but this real possibility or this real power remains obscure for two reasons:

1. Everything is knowable according as it is actual. In every doctrine that admits the principle of potency and act, the act or determination is knowable in itself, although it may not always be easily knowable for us, because of its elevation or spirituality, which escapes our sense perception. On the contrary, undetermined potency, like an undeveloped germ, is not knowable in itself, but only in its relation to act. That is true of prime matter in its relation to form, of the essence of things in its relation to existence, of the intellect not yet informed by the knowable object, of the created free will that can choose this or that, of the real power of doing good which, however real it may be, does not pass over into act. We have fully discussed elsewhere * the reason for the obscurity in everything that remains potential.

20 Cf. Le sens commun, la philosophie de Vétre et les formules dogmatiques, 4th ed, Paris, 1935, pp. 149-53.

2. This real power of doing good, which does not pass over into act, remains obscure because it includes the divine permission to sin, and sin is a mystery of iniquity more obscure in itself than the mysteries of grace. Whereas these latter are in themselves light, truth, and goodness, the evil of sin is a privation of being, truth, and good.

Nevertheless we see that God, who is the sovereign Good and omnipotent, is by no means the cause of moral evil. As St. Thomas shows,” God cannot directly incite us to it without this being a denial of Himself, and neither can it be said that He is indirectly responsible for not having given us sufficient help. He does give this help, but the sinner resists it, and so merits to be deprived of efficacious help, as implied by the prophet Osee speaking in God’s name, when he says: “Destruction is thy own, O Israel: thy help is only in Me.” ?? Even if, by supposing an impossibility, God willed to be the direct or indirect cause of sin, He could not do so, for deficiency and disorder are not included in the adequate object of His omnipotence. As the eye cannot see sounds, nor the ear hear colors, still more so sovereign Goodness and Omnipotence cannot be the direct or indirect cause of moral evil. God can only permit it, let it happen, and this for a greater good, which we often fail to perceive.

Undoubtedly there is a very great obscurity in the mystery of God permitting the sin of final impenitence. But no one can prove that God by reason of His universal providence is bound to prevent the failure and the irrevocable failure of a creature that is by its nature defectible. God in His justice gives the very real power to avoid this irrevocable failure, but He does not give to all the power to avoid it de facto. It is not impossible for Him to permit, especially after many previous sins, that one should resist the final sufficient grace, a resistance whereby the sinner merits to be deprived of the last

efficacious help. This is the great mystery in which is involved the whole obscurity of non-actuated real potency, of free potency, and the whole obscurity of the evil of sin, which is by its nature darkness, privation of light, truth, and goodness.

The solution to the problem of evil is to be found in the following words of St. Augustine: “Since God is supremely good, by no means would He permit any evil in His works unless He were powerful enough and good enough to bring good out of evil.” ** God can permit evil only for a greater good. The manifestation of the splendor of God’s infinite justice and mercy is such a greater good that in many respects is beyond our power of comprehension. This is certainly an obscurity, but it is the very one of Christian faith, the obscurity that results from the light being too strong for our weak eyes, “the light inaccessible which God inhabits.” **

The objections raised against the Thomist doctrine of predestination state in equivalent words that this doctrine destroys human liberty, that it is discouraging, and that it makes God out to be an accepter of persons, which is a kind of injustice. These objections were raised by the Semipelagians against St. Augustine. St. Paul puts the same question in one of his epistles, when he says: “Is there injustice with God? . . . O man, who art thou that repliest against God? . . . Hath not the potter power to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?” *

Contrary to what the Protestants and the Jansenists say, the Thomists reply that the transcendent efficacy of the divine decrees and grace, far from destroying our liberty or our dominating indifference, actualizes it by causing in us and with us that our acts be performed freely; for this latter is an entity and a good, which comes as a necessary consequence from the source of all reality and good.?*

To the second objection the Thomists reply that the doctrine of St. Thomas, far from being discouraging, brings out into bold relief the formal motive of hope, which is not human effort but God’s infinite power to help. The formal motive of a theological virtue cannot indeed be something created; and the supernatural effort we make, aroused to this by the efficacy of grace, cannot make this latter efficacious. It is better, therefore, as St. Augustine said, to trust in God, who is sovereignly good and omnipotent, rather than in ourselves, and in our inconstancy and weakness; for, notwithstanding the obscurity in the mystery, we are far surer of the rectitude of the omnipotent God’s intentions than of our own. Bossuet laid special stress on this point.*”

Let no one, therefore, say: If I am predestined, whatever I do I shall be saved; if not, whatever I do | shall be damned. To speak thus is as false and absurd as it is for a farmer to say: If the time for harvest is bound to come, whether I work and sow the seed or not, it will come. The reason for this is that predestination, like providence, concerns not only the end but also the means that will enable us to obtain the end. The Augustinian and Thomist doctrines, far from turning us away from good works, as the Protestant doctrine does, urges us to labor and strive so as to merit eternal life, telling us to put our trust above all things in God, who alone can give us the grace to persevere until the end, as the Council of Trent says.

There would be acceptation of persons and therefore injustice on God's part, if He gave to one more help than to the other, and refused what is due to the latter. But it is not so. Grace is a gratuitous gift and God grants sufficient grace to all those who have the obligation to keep His commandments. If they resist it, they merit thus to be deprived of the efficacious help which was virtually offered to them in the pre-

27 Cf, Méditations sur l'Fvangile, Ile part., 72° jour: La prédestination des saints, ceding grace. Thus, as St. Augustine said, if efficacious grace is granted to a certain one, it is because of God’s mercy; if it is refused to a certain other, it is because of His justice.**

It remains for us to consider the impenetrable mystery of the intimate reconciliation of the two principles that clarify all these problems. On the one hand, we have the principle of predilection: no one thing would be better than another, unless it were loved more by God; on the other hand, is the principle that God never commands what is impossible, but wills to make it possible for all to keep His commandments.

How are these two principles intimately reconciled? This is beyond the natural powers of either the human or the angelic intellect. It would be necessary for the intellect to have received the light of glory so as to see how infinite justice, mercy, and sovereign liberty are really identified, without being destructive of one another, in the eminence of the Deity, or in the intimate life of God.

The exposition we gave in the beginning of this work *° of the different theological opinions and their difficulties will enable us the better to understand their classification and comparison. It remains for us to combine the results of those researches, and in this we shall be guided by the light of revelation and the definitions of the Church.

SYNTHESIS

By way of synthesis we shall combine here the notions, principles, and leading conclusions relative to predestination. In formulating them we shall follow the terminology of St. Thomas + and consider as he did: (1) the definition of predestination; (2) its cause; (3) its certainty.

For reprobation we shall also follow his example. With great insight he discusses it not in a question apart, as often was done since his time, but in the very question on predestination. One would destroy the harmonious blend of colors in a picture, and the picture itself, by seeking to separate the black from the white, the light from the shade.

Footnotes

1. Summa theol., la, q.19, a.6 ad 1um. The eighth article of this question completes the doctrine of this article as regards the transcendent efficacy of the divine will, which extends even to the free mode of our acts. ↩