Chapter XXVII. what puysical premotion actually is according to classic thomism

For a proper understanding of this expression, we need merely make use of the very words of St. Thomas in explaining the terms: motion, premotion, physical, and predeterminating.

1. It is a motion that is passively received in the secondary cause so as to induce it to act, and, if the secondary cause is vital and free, so as to induce it to act vitally and freely, as we have seen St. Thomas said. This motion which, in the supernatural order is called actual grace, is really distinct both from God’s uncreated action upon which it depends, and from the salutary act to which it is directed.t On this point all the Thomists are agreed. They say, as for instance John of St. Thomas does: “This motion cannot be the very action of the created cause, since this motion is prior to such action and brings it about; it is not, therefore, the action of the created cause, for it cannot move the cause as agent but as patient.” ?

We can explain this divine motion that is received in the secondary cause by comparing it with creation in the passive sense, about which St. Thomas spoke at considerable length.* By this we do not mean, as at times it has been said, that the motion in question here is creation, for our acts are not created in us ex nihilo, as is the case with the spiritual soul¹ when it is united with the body. They are vital acts, produced by our faculties or operative powers, and these powers, created and preserved in being by God, need to be moved so as to receive the complement of causality of which St. Thomas speaks. Neither indeed is grace, whether habitual or actual, created ex nihilo; but it is drawn from the obediential potentiality of the soul, upon which it depends as an accident.‘

But if the divine motion in question here is not creation, in the strict sense of the term, then it can come only from the creative cause, for only this latter is capable of producing the whole being of a given effect and all its modes, whether the effect be necessary or free. On this point St. Thomas, commenting on Aristotle, says: “The divine will is to be understood as existing outside the order of beings, like a cause that profoundly pervades all being and all its differentiae; and since the possible and the necessary are differentiae of being, therefore necessity and contingency in things originate from this same divine will.” $

Furthermore, although the motion that applies us to act is not creation, yet for several reasons it is not unlike it. Active creation and active motion are analogous, as also are passively considered creation and passive motion by which the secondary cause, as St. Thomas says, is applied to its act. Let us see in what this twofold analogy consists.

If creation in the active sense is a divine and eternal action, which is formally immanent and virtually transitive, creation in the passive sense is the real relation of dependence upon God on the part of the creature that comes into existence; for “creation imports a relation of the creature to the Creator, with a certain newness or beginning.” ° Jn like manner, preservation in the active sense is continued creative

4 Ibid., 1a Tae, q.113, a.9; De virtutibus in commune, a.10 ad 2um et gum, 5 Perihermenias, I, lect. 14; cf. Com. in Met., V1, lect. 3; Ia, q.19, a.8. 6 Loc. cit., la, q.45, 2.3 ad gum.

action and, in the passive sense, it is the real relation of constant dependence of the being of the creature upon God.

Now just as the being of the creature is really dependent upon the divine creative and conservative action, so also is the action of the creature really dependent upon the divine action that is called motion. We do not say that God creates our acts of knowing and willing; He does not produce them ex nihilo; for, in such event, these acts would no longer be either vital or free. Nor do we say that God merely sustains these acts which begin at a precise moment, though before they did not exist. We say that God moves us to perform them ourselves vitally and freely.

To avoid all equivocation, just as we distinguish between active and passive creation, so we must distinguish here’ between two similar acceptations of the word “motion.” We have: (1) the active motion that in God, as we have said, is a formally immanent and virtually transitive action; (2) the passive motion by which the creature, though it had only the power to act, is passively moved by God to become actually in act; then there is: (3) the action itself of the creature, which in us is the vital and free act of the will.

This distinction is commonly made to explain the influence of one created agent over another, of fire, for instance, over water. In this case we have: (1) the action of the fire: actual heating of water; (2) the effect of this action upon the water: it is heated; (3) the action of the heated water upon surrounding objects.

In like manner, external objects and light exert an influence on the eye that is aroused to action, then the eye receives an impression, a likeness of the object, and finally it reacts by the vital act of vision. Again, in like manner, our immaterial will, by an immaterial action that is formally immanent and virtually transitive, exerts an influence upon our sensitive faculties and bodily organs so as to cause them

to act. This is what St. Thomas calls the active use of the will, which is followed by the passive use of the faculties moved to act, and finally we have the act of these faculties, an act that is immediately produced, elicited by them, and commanded by the will,

We must not, therefore, confuse the divine motion that is passively received in the secondary cause, either with the divine active motion which is God Himself, or with the action produced by the secondary cause. Now this confusion is made by those who say, as Satolli does,’ that the will cannot be determined by God to act and yet determine itself to this act. It would be a contradiction, if the will received from God its voluntary act complete in itself, as if it had been created ex nihilo; then it would no longer be possible for the will to produce this act. But what the will receives is merely a passive motion by which it is applied to act according to its nature, which means that it acts vitally and freely. This motion, however, cannot be given to it by any created or creatable spirit, however powerful it may be, but only by God, the Author of its nature and inclination to universal good, by God who preserves it in existence, and who is more intimate to it than it is to itself. As Zigliara points out,’ when persons object to physical premotion, they generally take in an active sense what Thomists take in a passive sense; they confound physical premotion either with the divine uncreated action, which we are incapable of receiving, or else with our own action that supposes premotion instead of being identical with it.

The Thomists commonly define the motion received by our will as “a divine motion by which our will is reduced from the potency of willing to the act of willing.” “ These last words do not mean that God produces in us and without

10 Zigliara, loc. cit.

us the act of willing, but that our will is moved by Him to perform itself, and vitally, this act which is called volition. And therefore, as Zigliara remarks,?? the act which the will is passively brought to perform is not its own vital and free operation, as the opponents of this doctrine suppose. It is a supernatural movement or impulse, an actual efficacious grace by which it performs its act, whether this be its first vital though indeliberate act, or successive acts that terminate a discursive deliberation. Thus it is that the actual efficacious grace, which inclines our will to perform the salutary act, is called “the first proximate act,” and the salutary act itself is called “the second act,” even if it be a question of the first salutary act.

Just as water does not heat unless it is heated, so every secondary cause, our will, for instance, acts only if it is premoved by God, the very first cause. If it were otherwise, then this something of reality in the transition to act, which is required for the performance of vital and free actions, would be withdrawn from God’s universal causality that includes everything of reality and goodness external to Himself.

Only by confusing physical premotion with our voluntary act can anyone conclude that our will under the influence of this motion, which is said to be in conformity with its nature, is no longer mistress of its act,

2. In what sense is the divine motion called premotion? To move and to be moved are correlative and synchronous terms. There is no priority of time of active over passive motion; they are coincident, for it is the same thing that is produced by the mover and that is received in the movable object, namely, the movement that proceeds from the mover into the movable object.”

We must get away, therefore, from imaginations which picture physical premotion as an entity which, like a small

winch placed by God in our will, would precede in time our voluntary act: “The motion of the mover precedes the movement of the movable object both intellectually and causally.” ** We have here only a priority of causality, as in the case of the eternal decree, which transcends time, and the divine motion of this decree assures its execution. But with regard to this decree, we must say that it is measured by the unique instant of immobile eternity, which corresponds unchangeably to every successive instant of time, as the apex of a pyramid corresponds to all the points of its base and to each of its sides. With regard to the motion received in the created will, it is received at the very moment of time in which the voluntary act is produced. In the case of the angels, it is discrete time that is measured by its successive acts, and this has nothing to do with the sun’s movement. In the case of human beings, it is the continuous time of day and hours, because of the sensible movement of our imagination and organism, and this is inseparable from our intellectual and volitional acts.

From this we see that physical premotion and the free act following it instantaneously, do not depend infallibly upon what precedes them in time—that is, in the past—but only upon what precedes them in the ever unchangeable present (nunc stans) of eternity, which is the measure of the divine decrees.

The Thomists, too, cannot admit without a distinction the Molinist definition of liberty, that it is a faculty which, if we presuppose all that is required for the will to act, it can still act or not act. If, by the words “presupposed all that is required for it to act” is meant only what is required as a prerequisite by a priority of time, then this definition is absolutely true; but if, by these words, is meant what is required as a prerequisite by a simple priority of causality— namely, the divine motion and the final practical judgment

that precedes the voluntary election—then the definition is no longer true except by the aid of a distinction. Under the influence of the divine efficacious motion that extends even to the free mode of our acts, our will, in performing the act efficaciously willed by God, by reason of its unlimited scope, in that it is specified by universal good, retains the real power not to perform the act and to perform even the contrary act (remanet potentia ad oppositum); but it is impossible for the will, under the influence of the divine efficacious motion, actually to omit the performance of the act efficaciously willed by God, or actually to perform the contrary act. St. Thomas is explicit on this point. Of various texts it suffices to quote the following: “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.” 1 Bannez did not say anything more forcible than this.

The potential indifference which the faculty had before performing its act has been replaced by the actual indifference of the act itself that is already determined, and it tends with a dominating indifference toward a particular good that is absolutely out of all proportion to the universal scope of the will that is specified by universal good. The act does not cease to be free because it is determined; otherwise no act of the divine will would be free, since these acts are determined from all eternity and are unchangeable. Potential indifference is not essential to liberty, and is not to be found in divine liberty, in which there is no actual indifference of pure Act with regard to any finite good; it is not to be found in the freest of our acts that still remain free after their determination.

The word “premotion” indicates therefore a priority not of time but merely of reason and causality, and, if this

priority did not exist, there would no longer be motion but merely simultaneous concurrence, such, says Molina, as of two men drawing a boat, the first exerting no influence over the second, but each acting independently on the boat. That is not the way God concurs in the action of the secondary cause; for He applies this latter to perform its act without which this reality, which is the transition from the state of inactive potency to the performance of the act, would be excluded from the divine universal causality.

3. The premotion is called physical not by reason of its opposition to the metaphysical or spiritual, but to distinguish it from moral motion, which moves the will by way of an objective attraction, by proposing a good to it.

St. Thomas often distinguished between these two motions: the movement of the will as to the specification of its act being called thus since it is derived from the object or end, and the other as to the exercise of its act which is derived from the agent.?* He pointed this out particularly in another passage ™ where it is stated that God moves every secondary cause: (1) as final end, for every operation is for the sake of some good, real or apparent, which participates in a likeness to the supreme Good; (2) as first Agent from whom every subordinated agent receives its power to act. Applying this to the will, he had just said: “Wherefore in both ways it belongs to God to move the will; but especially in the second way by an interior inclination of the will.” +8

In this preceding article St. Thomas explains these two kinds of motion with reference to the intellect and the will, saying that these two faculties are moved both by the object proposed to them and, as to the exercise of their act, by God. St. Thomas adds that God alone seen face to face can irresistibly attract our will, because it is only He who can adequately `

satisfy our capacity for loving.’ As for the motion that concerns the exercise of the act, this can be received only from the will itself, and this by a prior act from God, who alone is capable of creating from nothing the spiritual soul and directing it to universal good. The order of agents must correspond to the order of ends.”°

This explains, then, how God, in thus moving our will, by interiorly inclining it, does not force it; for He moves it in accordance with its inclination to universal good; He actualizes this general inclination and causes it powerfully and suavely to confine itself with a dominating indifference to a certain particular good, thus freely willed with a view to happiness, since man naturally wills to be happy and secks happiness in everything he wills.

St. Thomas observes that our acts would be neither free nor meritorious, if the will were moved by God in such manner that it nowise would move itself; but it is not so. He says: “But since its being moved by another does not prevent its being moved from within itself, as we have stated (ad gum), it does not therefore forfeit the motive for merit or demerit.” #4

This last point is explained in another article,” in which it is stated that the will, in so far as it wills the end, moves itself to will the means. St. Thomas remarks that, if the will could not move itself, if it were only moved by God, then it would never will what is sinful. The complete reply, which has been so much discussed, is as follows: “God moves man’s will, as the universal Mover to the universal object of the will which is good. And without this universal motion man cannot will anything. But man determines himself by his reason to will this or that, which is true or apparent good.

Nevertheless, sometimes God moves some specially to the willing of something determinate, which is good; as in the case of those whom He moves by grace, as we shall see later on (q. 109, a. 2).” 3

Some Molinists claimed, according to this text, that for St. Thomas the divine motion is not predetermining, and that by the same motion which incites a person to will happiness, one would perform a good act (at least naturally good), whereas another would commit sin.

This interpretation contradicts many texts of St. Thomas, and in the first place it is against the principle of predilection on several occasions formulated by him, according to which, “since God’s love is the cause of goodness in things, no one thing would be better than another, if God did not will greater good for one than for another.” * Now in the Molinist interpretation of the text with which we are concerned,” it would happen that of two men equally helped and loved by God, one would become better than the other by this naturally good act, for instance, which consists in paying one’s debts. He would become better without having received more from God. It would not depend on the free Cause of all good that there is more of good in this man rather than in that other.

Moreover, this Molinist interpretation is contrary to what St. Thomas explicitly states in many texts,** and to the concluding words of the text we are discussing, which are: “Nevertheless, sometimes God moves some specially to the act of willing something determinate, which is good; as in the case of those whom He moves by grace, as we shall see later on.” 77

The commentators ® of St. Thomas generally admit that it is a question of operating grace, which St. Thomas discusses later on.?? We shall see that it is so when we come to explain the three propositions of this text just quoted. In doing so we shall appeal to the three principal modes by which God moves us: (1) before we deliberate: to will happiness in general; (2) after we deliberate: to will a certain particular good about which we deliberated; if the act is supernatural it is in this case performed under the influence of co-operating grace; (3) above and independent of our deliberation: by the special inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which is an operating grace; of such a nature are the acts which are performed by means of the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

Several Molinists recognize that, according to St. Thomas, in this last case there is a predetermining premotion, but they add: then the act is neither free nor meritorious.° Contrary to this, St. Thomas holds that the acts performed by means of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, by the gift of piety, for instance, are free and meritorious.* The purpose of the gifts is precisely to dispose us to receive in a docile manner the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that it may be a means of merit for us. Thus the Blessed Virgin was moved powerfully and suavely to utter infallibly and freely her “fiat” on the day of the annunciation in view of the redemptive purpose of the incarnation, which was destined most certainly to come to pass.**

28 Cf. Billuart, De actibus humanis, diss. TII, a. 3: N. del Prado, O.P., De gratia et lib. arb., I, 236; II, 228, 256; Garrigou-Lagrange, God, Il, 80, no. 35, a cit, Ia Iae, q.3, a.2.

30 Cf. Father de Guibert, S.J., Etudes de théologie mystique, p. 170.

82 The teaching of St. Thomas on operating grace (la Ilae, q.3. a.2) and on the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost received by the gifts gives special trouble to the Molinists. That is why they are led to modify it considerably, and to say that this special inspiration inclines one to an act that is not free and not meritorious, which, in its turn, prompts one (like actual grace) to

4. In what sense is premotion said to be predetermining, although not necessitating, that is, although in conformity with the nature of our free will which must remain mistress of its act? It is a question here not of a formal but of a causal predetermination.** The Molinists generally say that if God by His motion determines the will to will this rather than that, then it can no more determine itself. This confounds causal predetermination, which inclines us strongly and suavely to determine ourselves, with formal determination, which is that of the voluntary act already determined, and which follows the other according to a posteriority not of time but of causality.

Some authors ** admit physical premotion, but by no means predetermination, And yet, as Cardinal Zigliara said,* pre- perform an act that is subsequently meritorious and that is produced by means of the virtues.

Hence in that the gifts of the Holy Ghost do not immediately tend toward the performance of meritorious acts, it follows that the mystic life or infused contemplation (which is the result of faith illumined by the gilts of understanding and wisdom) is not the formal way of sanctity, but is a gift in itself of an extraordinary kind like visions and revelations; for sanctity cannot consist of acts that are not meritorious,

As besides, the seven gifts are in all the just, these theologians are led to admit two modes of operation for the acts performed by means of the gifts; there is the ordinary mode dependent upon graces called medicinal, by which the non-meritorious acts that precede justification are performed; the other mode is extraordinary, and it is such that the first has no connection with the second. Hence we cannot see how acts so dilferent and heterogencous, between which there is no subordination of inferior to superior, can proceed from the same habit. Several of these theologians go so far as to deny the principle of the specification of the habits by their formal objects and the specific difference between the gifts of the Holy Ghost and the infused virtues, This completely changes the teaching of St. Thomas about the gifts, and they strive to show that in the Theological Summa he even modified what he had said on this point in his Commentary on the Sentences

In other words, the Molinists are hard put to it by the teaching of St. Thomas on operating grace (la Iae, q.3, a.2), whether this refers to the acts performed by means of the gifts or to the justification of the adult or to the first voluntary act of the angel or to the liberty of the blessed or to the liberty of Christ’s impeccability.

motion and predetermination mean the same thing; but premotion refers to omnipotence, and predetermination to the predetermining decree of the divine will. The divine will predetermines that a certain salutary act, for instance, Mary’s fiat, St. Paul’s conversion, Magdalene’s or the good thief’s, shall be accomplished in time, on a certain day, at a certain hour, and that it shall be accomplished freely; then Omnipotence interiorly moves the human will without in the least forcing it, so as to assure the execution of the decree.

St. Augustine wrote on this as follows: “Certainly we observe His commandments, if we will... . Certainly we will, when we will; but He causes us to will what is good, of this it being said that it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish (Phil. 2: 13). Certainly it is we who act when we act; but He causes us to act by enabling the will to act efficaciously, who says ‘I will cause you to walk in My commandments and to keep My judgments, and do them’ (Ezech. 36: 27). . . . For it is He who operates first that we may will, and who co-operates with us when we will, bringing what we will to completion.” **

The divine motion received in the secondary cause is predetermining in so far as it gives infallible assurance of the execution of a divine decree. It is not a formal but a causal predetermination; whereas that of the decree is both formal and causal. Finally, the determination of our voluntary act already performed is formal and not causal; but, as we said, far from excluding the actual dominating indifference, it implies this; for the free act already determined remains free; even the immutable act of divine liberty remains free in spite of its immutability. This is what St. Thomas says: “God alone can move the will, as an agent, without violence. Hence it is said: “The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever He will He shall turn it’ (Prov. 21: 1). And: ‘It is God who worketh in you both to will and

to accomplish, according to His good will’ (Phil. 2: 13).

“Some, nevertheless, unable to understand how God can cause in us the movement of the will without prejudice to liberty, have endeavoured to give a false exposition to the authorities quoted. They say, in fact, that God causes in us the power to will, and not by causing us to will this or that. This is the exposition of Origen (3 Peri Archon) who defended free will in a sense contrary to the aforesaid authorities. . . . But the authority of Scripture is in manifest opposition to all this; for it is said: ‘O Lord, Thou hast wrought all our works in us’ (Is. 26: 12). Hence we receive from God not only the power to will, but also our very operations. Further, the very words of Solomon: ‘Whithersoever He will He shall turn it’ (Prov. 21: 1) show that the divine causality extends not only to the will, but also to its act. . . . Therefore in spiritual things every movement of the will must be caused by the first will.

“The saying of Damascene in the Second Book (De orthod. fide, c. 30), that God foreknows but does not predetermine the things which are in our power, is to be understood as meaning that the things which are in our power are not subject to the divine predetermination in such a way as to be necessitated thereby.” 37

In this interpretation given by St. Thomas of this text of St. John Damascene we have non-necessitating predetermination declared to be the very teaching of St. Thomas; otherwise he would have purely and simply admitted the words of Damascene: “He does not predetermine.” In the construction of the phrase by St. Thomas, “non” refers directly to “quasi,” which means that our elections or free acts are submitted to the determination of Providence, but not as though imposing necessity on them. In other words, this predetermination is non-necessitating, for it extends even to the free mode of our acts which, pertaining to being, comes under

the adequate object of Omnipotence; and what is not so included is only evil, since it comes from the deficient cause.**

On this subject St. Thomas writes: “Acts of choice and will are under the immediate governance of God (that is, not through angelic intermediaries). . . . God alone is the cause of our willing and choosing.” * “Although God's action alone has a direct bearing on man’s choice, nevertheless the angel’s action has a certain bearing on man’s choice by way of persuasion.” * “The operation of an angel and of a heavenly body disposes a man to choose; whereas the operation of God gives completion to his choice. . . . Man does not always choose what his guardian angel intends, nor that to which the heavenly body inclines him: whereas he always chooses in accord with God’s operation in his will. Hence the guardianship of the angels is sometimes frustrated . . . whereas divine providence never fails.” * “Man can be directed to all things by the one divine disposition (that is what happens in the case of the predestined).” *

“Among the parts of the whole universe the first distinction to be observed is between the contingent and the necessary. . . . Therefore it belongs to the order of divine providence not only that such and such an effect be produced, but that it be caused necessarily, and that some other effect be produced contingently.” ** “The divine providence is the per se cause that this particular effect will happen contingently. And this cannot fail.” ** “God foresaw that it would happen contingently. It follows then infallibly that it will be, contingently and not of necessity.” ¢* “For all things are

88 De veritate, q.5, a.5 ad 1um. 29 Contra Gentes, II, 91, par. 1. 40 Ibid., chap. 92, par. r,

foreseen by God so as to be freely done by us. . . . It belongs to His providence sometimes to allow defectible causes to fail, and sometimes to preserve them from failing.” * “Accordingly, by knowing His essence, God knows all the things to which His causality extends. Now this extends to the works of the intellect and will. ... Therefore God knows both the thoughts and the affections of the mind.” #

All these quotations from the Contra Gentes show that for St. Thomas the divine motion, which directs us to perform salutary acts, is a motion that concerns the exercise of the act or a physical motion which, of itself and infallibly, inclines us, without compulsion, to perform this particular act rather than a certain other, and this because the divine causality extends even to the free mode of our acts; for this latter still pertains to being. This means that for St. Thomas the divine motion is predetermining although not necessitating.

We find the same doctrine expounded in the following passage: “God can change the will from the fact that He Himself operates in the will as He does in nature; hence, as every natural action of the will, inasmuch as it is an action, not only is from the will as immediate agent, but is also from God as first Agent who operates more vigorously; hence, as the will can change its act for another, much more so can God.” ** The text is clear. The human will as secondary cause determines itself to perform a certain free act; therefore much more so can God as the first Cause, who operates more vigorously, incline the will infallibly to determine itself to perform this particular act rather than a certain other. Thus He is the cause of St. Paul's conversion, of Magdalene’s or of the good thief’s.*

49 Ibid., q.22, a.9; De malo, q.6, a.1 ad gum; also Com. in I Periher., lect. 14.

In all these texts we see that for St. Thomas the divine causality extends even to the free mode of our determinations, so that everything real and good in them depends upon God as the first Cause, and upon us as secondary cause. In this sense the divine motion is predetermining and not necessitating.

The peculiar nature of predetermination is especially affirmed by St. Thomas, when commenting on our Lord’s words: “My hour has not yet come.” * “By this is meant,” says St. Thomas, “the hour of His passion, which is determined for Him not of necessity, but according to divine providence.” It is evidently here a question of a determining and infallible but not necessitating decree of the divine will. In like manner, commenting on the verse, “They sought therefore to apprehend Him: and no man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come,” *! he says: “By this is meant His hour predetermined not from fatal necessity but by the three divine Persons.” Again, commenting on St. John’s words, “Jesus knowing that His hour had come, that He should pass out of this world to the Father,” * he says: “Neither are we to understand by this that fatal hour, as if subjected to the course and disposition of the stars, but the hour determined by the disposition of divine providence.” And concerning the words of our Lord, “Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son,” ** he remarks: “Neither is it the hour of fatal necessity, but of His Father’s ordination and good pleasure.”

All these texts evidently point to a predetermining and infallible divine decree that refers to the hour Jesus speaks of as His own, and hence even to the free act which He had infallibly to perform in willing to die for our salvation. These texts also refer to the permissive decree as regards

the sin of Judas, who before this hour could do no harm to our Lord.

It has been claimed that the expression, “God does not determine from necessity,” is not found in the writings of St. Thomas.** His commentary on the passages of St. John, which we have just quoted, show, on the contrary, that the hour of Jesus in which He freely offered Himself in the garden of Gethsemane and in which Judas betrayed Him, was not from necessity determined and fixed by God.

Finally, we find the same teaching in the Theological Summa of St. Thomas, where he gave it its definite shape. We shall quote only the principal texts. St. Thomas begins by saying: “Determined effects proceed from His own infinite perfection according to the determination of His will and intellect.” * There we have the eternal predetermining decree. How does it safeguard our liberty? St. Thomas explains this in the fundamental text to which he always has recourse: “Since, then, 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. Now God wills some things to be done necessarily, some contingently.” * St. Thomas states this objection: “Every cause that cannot be hindered, produces its effect necessarily. But the will of God cannot be hindered. For the Apostle says: ‘Who resisteth His will?’ (Rom. g: 19.) ‘Therefore the will of God imposes necessity on the things willed.” ** Instead of replying to this by stating, as the defenders of the scientia media do, that God foresees what we shall freely decide upon doing, he says: “From the very fact that nothing resists the divine will, it follows that not only those things happen that God wills to happen, but that they happen necessarily or

54 Cf. A. d'Alès, Dict. apol., art. “Providence,” append. “Prédetermination physique.”

contingently according to His will.” * We have already seen the reply to this objection.’ This text also expresses with all possible clarity, that the intrinsic and infallible efficacy of the decrees and the divine motion, far from destroying the liberty of our acts, causes it; for this efficacy extends even to the free mode of these acts, and this still pertains to being.

St. Thomas said the same in the following passage: “God, therefore, is the first cause, who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural 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.” 6°

Elsewhere St. Thomas explains, as he did when commenting on Damascene’s statement that “God foreknows our intentions, but does not predetermine them.” Briefly St. Thomas replies as follows: “Damascene calls predestination an imposition of necessity, after the manner of natural things which are predetermined towards one end. This is clear from his adding: He does not will malice, nor does He compel virtue. Whence predestination is not excluded by Him.” * This text shows that St. Thomas, in excluding necessitating admits non-necessitating predetermination that implies, in his opinion, predestination. On this point he says: “Predestination most certainly and infallibly takes effect, yet it does not impose any necessity.” *

All these texts enable us to see clearly the meaning of passages occurring further on in the Theological Summa of St. Thomas on this subject. Thus we read: “Since, therefore, the will is an active principle, not determinate to one thing, but having an indifferent relation to many things, God so moves

81 Contra Gentes, III, go (end).

e2 Loc. cit, Ia, q.23, a.1 ad 1um, it that He does not determine it of necessity to one thing.” * Throughout this question St. Thomas used the expression “not to move of necessity” as meaning, to move without necessitating. It is in this same sense that he says here “He does not determine of necessity to one thing,” as he said in the passages just quoted from his commentary on St. John’s Gospel that have reference to the “hour” of Jesus appointed by Providence. In all cases it is a question of a non-necessitating predetermination, which extends even to the free mode of our acts.

St. Thomas repeats even here that “the divine will extends not only to the doing of something by the thing which He 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, fer the will to be moved of necessity, which is not fitting to its nature, than for it to be moved freely, which is becoming to its nature.” * This means that God cannot by His motion necessitate the will to will a particular good that is presented to it as good under one aspect, and that is not good under another." Such an object, which is absolutely inadequate to the universal scope of the will, specifies the free act, in virtue of the principle that acts are specified by their object; therefore the act of the will that concerns a particular good thus proposed by the intellect under the form of an indifferent judgment, cannot be other than free. This constitutes, for St. Thomas, the very definition of a free act; “® whereas the Molinist definition of liberty abstracts from the specifying object, saying: “Liberty is the faculty which, granted all that is required as a prerequisite for the will to act, it can either act or not act.” The Thomists, considering that the free act, like every act, is specified by its object, say with the Council of

Trent that, “under the influence of the divine efficacious motion, the will still has the power to resist. It can resist if it so wills, but under the influence of efficacious grace it never so wills, just as Socrates when seated can rise, but he is never at the same time both seated and standing. “It is even commonly accepted doctrine among them that “it implies a contradiction for the will, when the judgment is indifferent, to be necessitated by the divine motion, which is itself efficacious.” ** Just as the will cannot will an unknown good, one that is not proposed to it by the intellect, so also it cannot will any other good than that which is proposed to it; it cannot necessarily will what is proposed to it as not necessarily desirable. The act specified by this object cannot but be free, and the divine efficacious motion cannot change its nature; therefore it is not necessitating.

However, when it is efficacious, it causes the will infallibly to will freely this particular good rather than that other; it is in this sense that it is predeterminating. Such is, indeed, the mind of St. Thomas. There can be no doubt about this if we read the reply to the third objection of this article from which we have just quoted.*

The objection which St. Thomas states is the one that will always be brought up by the Molinists. It is as follows: “A thing is possible, if nothing impossible follows from its being supposed. But something impossible follows from the supposition that the will does not will that to which God moves it; because in that case God’s operation would be ineffectual. Therefore it is not possible for the will not to will that to which God moves it.” Therefore it wills of necessity. St. Thomas far from saying that God foresees our consent, replies as follows: “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

68 Cf. Billuart, Cursus theol., De actibus humanis, diss. II, a.g. 89 Loc. cit., Ia Iae, q.10, 2.4.

it does not follow that the will is moved by God necessarily.” 1° The will truly has the power to perform the contrary act, but this act, which is really possible, is never really present under the influence of efficacious grace, for this latter would no longer be efficacious. That is why actual resistance is said to be incompatible with efficacious grace. So Socrates when sitting has it in his power to stand, but he cannot at the same time stand and sit; he must sit, while he is seated.”

This is one of the clearest texts on this point. It evidently affirms an infallible, but not necessitating predetermination. It is another way of expressing what, as we have just seen, St. Thomas said: “From the very fact that nothing resists the divine will, it follows that not only those things happen that God wills to happen, but that they happen necessarily or contingently, according to His will.” ™ In another of his works he wrote: “God foresaw that it would happen contingently. It follows then infallibly that it will be, contingently and not of necessity.” **

The distinction between the possible and the compossible is tantamount to the distinction between the divided and composite senses, as St. Thomas points out when he says: “The fact that God wills any created thing is necessary on the supposition that He so wills, on account of the immutability of the divine will, but is not necessary absolutely.” In other words, there is necessity of consequence or a conditional necessity, but not of consequent, as in the case of a strict syllogism, the minor of which is contingent. Then he goes on to say: “So the same must be said of predestination. Wherefore one ought not to say that God is able not to predestinate one whom He has predestined, taking it in a

71 For a criticism of this illustration as applied to efficacious grace, see Pohle-Preuss, Grace, p. 243. (Tr.)

composite sense, though absolutely speaking, God can predestinate or not. But in this way the certainty of predestination is not destroyed.” ™

St. Thomas speaks just as clearly in his treatise on grace, saying: “God's intention cannot fail. . . . Hence if God intends, while moving, that the one whose heart He moves should attain to grace, he will infallibly attain to it, according to John 6: 45: ‘Everyone that hath heard of the Father and hath learned cometh to Me.’ ” "5 Similarly he says: “The Holy Spirit infallibly effects whatsoever He wills. Hence it is impossible for these two things to be at the same time true: that the Holy Spirit will to move anyone to perform an act of charity, and that this person lose the virtue of charity by committing sin. For the gift of perseverance is included among God's benefits, whereby most certainly are liberated whoever are liberated, as Augustine says (De dono persever., chap. 14).” 7°

So we see that for St. Thomas the foreseeing of a free determination that would depend solely upon ourselves, is not the foundation for this divine certainty. It has its foundation in a decree of the divine will, the execution of which is assured by the divine motion."

All these texts presuppose a divine predetermining but not necessitating decree, which extends even to the free mode of our acts; and they affirm the presence of a divine motion that assures the infallible execution of this decree. In this sense, too, it is justly said to be predeterminating and non-

17 Ibid., la, q.14, a.8; q.19, 2.3.4, c€. et ad gum; a.8; De veritate, q.6, a.3; Quodl. XII, a.3,4; All things are predetermined and ordained is declared to be but a Scotist infiltration into the school of Thomism. Cf. H. Schwamm, Das gotiliche Voherwissen bei Duns Scotus und seinen ersten Anhangern, Innsbruch, 1934. See also on this subject M. Congar, Praedeterminare et Praedeterminatio, according to St. Thomas, Rev. Sci. Phil. et Théol., August, 1934, pp. 363-71. Likewise, P. V. Doucet, O.F.M., in Archiv. Franc. Hist., 1931, pP- 391-92, who is against Schwamm.

necessitating. It causes the will infallibly to determine itself, to perform this particular act rather than a certain other, and it causes in us and with us all that there is of reality and goodness in this act.’* Only evil, which is a disorder, is not included within the scope of its causality; it is excluded from the adequate object of Omnipotence, and far more so than sound is from the object of sight."

Of late years people have written: “For God to have infallible knowledge of our free acts He does not need to inject the element of a free determination into the drama of our liberty, and that such a process of knowledge would be truly anthropomorphism; it would be the knowledge of effects in their proximate cause, which is not a divine process.”

The Thomists never claimed for God the necessity of a created motion, so that He may have infallible and eternal knowledge of our acts; for this motion, as such, since it is received in the created will, exists only in time. They always said God knows our free acts in His eternal decree, and that His motion assures its execution in time. As a matter of fact, without this eternal decree, such a future free act would not be present in eternity as the object of divine intuition rather than its contrary act. God foresaw from all eternity that Paul would freely be converted on his way to Damascus on a certain day and at a certain hour, because He had decided to convert him efficaciously in this manner. Without this decree, Paul's conversion would pertain only to the order of possible things and not to that of contingent futures.

The Molinists never proved that God cannot infallibly move our will to determine itself freely to perform a certain act; for it cannot be proved that God’s universal and sovereignly efficacious causality cannot extend even to the free mode of our acts. This mode is still being, and is therefore possible of realization; it is included consequently in the

adequate object of Omnipotence, and beyond this there is only evil, which is a privation and a disorder.

This sublime doctrine makes all the more its demand upon us when we consider what influence God has upon the most heroic acts of the saints, upon the “fiat” of Mary on the day of the annunciation, and upon the meritorious acts of Jesus, whose human will here on earth, an image of the divine will, was both most free and impeccable.*°

How does the divine motion adapt itself to the very nature of the secondary cause? We must take this to mean, say the Thomists, that the divine motion is actively modified by our will which receives it, for the will, in so far as it receives, is passive. But God adapts Himself in His motion to the nature of secondary causes, which means that He moves them according to their nature. Thus a great artist adapts his motion to the various instruments which he uses. Thus St. Thomas, commenting on St. Paul’s words on this point: “May He fit you in all goodness that you may do His will, doing in you that which is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ,” ** writes: “When God incites a person to be of good will, He applies him, that is He makes him apt... . Interiorly . . . only God makes the will apt, who alone can change the will: “The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord; whithersoever He will He shall turn it’ (Prov. 21: 1). Hence it is said: Doing in you: ‘For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish’ (Phil. 2: 13). But what will He do? What is pleasing in His sight, that is, He will cause you to will what is pleasing to Him.” 8

Finally, the Thomists admit that physical premotion is entitled to be called simultaneous concurrence, when the created will is already in act; but it is a simultaneous con-

80 Cf. St. Thomas, Hla, q.18, a.4 ad gum, and the commentators apropos of the agreement between Christ's liberty and His impeccability.

currence that differs from Molina’s in this, that it is primarily a premotion to apply the secondary cause to act.** Under the influence of this concurrence, the secondary cause becomes the instrumental cause of what is more universal in the effect produced, namely, of its very being in so far as it is being; whereas it is the proper cause of this effect in so far as it is this individual effect. Thus my will is the proper cause of my voluntary act and the instrumental cause of the very being of this act, in virtue of the principle: “The more universal effects must be reduced to the more universal and prior causes.” §° St. Thomas also says: “Furthermore, we find that according to the order of causes is the order of effects, which must be so because of the similarity between effect and cause. Neither can the secondary cause exert its effect on the primary cause by its own power, although it is the instrument of the primary cause as regards the effect of this latter. . . . And for this reason nothing acts to produce being except by God's power. For being itself is the most common and first of effects, and therefore it belongs to God alone to produce such an effect by His own power.” ** The created will is therefore the proper cause of its act in so far as it is this individual act; but it is the instrumental cause of being as regards the being of its act, vital and instrumental being, of course, as St. Thomas remarks.** In like manner this apple tree is the proper cause of this particular fruit, although God is the proper cause of the being of this same fruit.

To sum up what we have just said as to what physical premotion is, and to dispel the false notions that have often been entertained about it, let us say:

1. It is a motion received in the created operative potency

84 Cf. Goudin, O.P., Phil. Met., q.3, de praemotione, a.2; also Zigliara, loc. cit., chap. 5 (end).

86 De potentia, q.3, a.7 (end). 87 De veritate, q.24, a.1 ad pum, in order to apply it to act. It is therefore a motion distinct both from the uncreated action that it presupposes, and from our action that follows it at the same moment. Efficacious grace is neither God nor the salutary act to which it is ordained. Thus our action remains truly our own; it is not created in us from nothing, but proceeds vitally from our faculty that is applied to its act by the divine premotion.

2. It is a physical motion, as regards the exercise of the act, and not a moral motion, or as regards the specification of the act, a motion that results from the attraction of a proposed object. Of all the agents that are distinct from our will, God is the only one, moreover, who can so move it interiorly according to its natural inclination to seek universal good, which He alone was able to give it. Under the influence of this motion, it moves itself.

3. It is a premotion according to a priority not of time, but of reason and causality.

4. It is predetermining, according to a causal predetermination distinct from the formal determination of the act that follows it. This means that it moves our will by an intrinsic and infallible efficacy to determine itself to perform this determinate good act rather than a certain other. The determination to perform a bad act, since it is itself bad and deficient, for this reason does not come from God, but from a defectible and deficient liberty. The divine predetermining motion is therefore not necessitating, for, like the divine predetermining decrees, the execution of which it assures, it extends even to the production in us and with us of the free mode of our acts, which is still being, and thus it is included in the adequate object of Omnipotence, and besides this there is only evil.

Footnotes

1. Summa theol., la Ilae, q.110, a.2; q.111, 2.2. 2 Cursus phil., Phil. natur., q.25, a.2. 8 Loc. cit., Ia, q.45, a.3. ↩