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Will is a consequence of intelligence. Divine intelligence, knowing
the Supreme Being, cannot be conceived without divine will, which
loves the good, pleases itself in good. This will of God cannot be,
as it is in us, a mere faculty of willing. Divine will would be
imperfect if it were not, by its own nature, an unceasing act of
willing, an unceasing act of loving, unceasing love of good, a love
as universal and spiritual as the intelligence which directs it. All
acts of God's will proceed from His love of good, with its
consequent hatred of evil. Hence, necessarily, there is in God one
act, spiritual and eternal, of love of all good, and primarily of
Supreme Good, the Infinite Perfection. This first divine love is
indeed spontaneous, but it is not free. It is something higher than
liberty. Infinite good, known as it is in itself, must be loved with
infinite love. And the Good and the Love, both infinite, are
identified one with the other. [383] .
Article One: God's Sovereign Freedom Of Will
In willing the existence of creatures God is entirely free. This
follows from what has just been said. Only an infinite good
necessitates the will. Hence, while God, we may say, is inclined
to creation, since good is of itself diffusive, He nevertheless
creates freely, without any necessity, physical or moral, because
His happiness in possessing Infinite Good cannot be increased.
Creatures can add nothing to infinite perfection. Inclination to
self-diffusion is not the same thing as actual diffusion. While it is
not free in causes which are non-intelligent (the sun, for
example): it is free in causes which are intelligent (e. g.: in
the sage dispensing wisdom). This free diffusion, this free
communication, does not make God more perfect, but it does make the
creature more perfect.
"God would be neither good nor wise had He not created." Thus
Leibnitz. [384] Bossuet answers: "God is not greater for
having created the universe." Bossuet's sentence is a simple and
splendid summary of Aquinas. [385] The creative act does not
impart to God a new perfection. This free act is identified with the
love God has for Himself. In regard to Himself as object, God's
love is spontaneous and necessary, whereas in regard to creatures it is
spontaneous and free, because creatures have no right to existence,
and God has no need of them. Purpose and agent give perfection to the
effect, but are not themselves made more perfect by that effect. This
doctrine, the freedom of creation, puts St. Thomas high above
Plato and Aristotle, for whom the world is a necessary radiation of
God. [386] .
Article Two: The Causality Of God's Will
God's will is not only free in producing and preserving creatures,
but it is the cause by which He produces and preserves. Herein
God's causality differs, for example, from man's generative
causality. Man is free indeed to exercise this causality, but if he
does exercise it, he is not free to engender aught else than a man,
since his generative faculty is by its nature limited to the human
race. Man's free will is not of itself productive, but depends on a
limited faculty distinct from itself. God's free will is itself
infinitely productive. Let us listen to St. Thomas:
"A natural agent, since it is limited, is in its activity limited by
that nature. Now, since divine nature is not limited within certain
bounds, but contains in itself all the perfection of being, it follows
that its boundless causality does not act by natural necessity (unless
you absurdly conceive God as producing a second God). And if God
does not create by natural necessity, then it is only by the decrees of
God's will and intellect that limited created effects arise from His
infinite perfection." [387] In these words lies the refutation
of a capital thesis of Averroism. God, the saint repeats, acts only
by His uncaused will. There are not in God, as in us, two acts of
will, one willing the end, the other willing the means. By one sole
act God wills both end and means. The phrase "for the sake of"
modifies, not God's will, but the object, the effect which God
wills. Hence the proper expression is not: For the sake of life God
wills food, but rather, God wills food to exist for the sake of
life. [388] .
Now we understand that God's efficacious will is always infallibly
fulfilled. [389] Nothing that is in any way real and good can
reach existence except in dependence on God's universal causality,
because no second cause can act unless actuated by the first cause, and
evil can never come to be without divine permission. [390] .
So much on the efficacious will of God. In what sense, then, do we
speak of God's inefficacious will? This will, says St. Thomas,
[391] is a conditioned will, an antecedent will, which wills
all that is good in itself, independently of circumstances. Now this
conditional, antecedent will remain inefficacious because, in view of
a higher good of which He alone is judge, God permits that this or
that good thing does not come to pass, that defectible creatures
sometimes fail, that this or that evil comes to pass. Thus, in view
of that higher good, God permits, to illustrate, that harvests do
not reach maturity, that the gazelle becomes the prey of the lion,
that the just suffer persecution, that this or that sinner dies in
final impenitence. Sometimes we see the higher good in question,
sometimes we cannot. In permitting final impenitence, for example,
God may be manifesting infinite justice against obstinacy in evil.
Such is the Thomistic distinction of antecedent (inefficacious) will
from consequent (efficacious) will. On this distinction as
foundation rests, further, the distinction of sufficient grace (which
depends on antecedent will) from efficacious grace (which depends on
consequent will). Sufficient grace is really sufficient, it makes
fulfillment of precepts really and objectively possible. [392]
But efficacious grace gives the actual fulfillment of the precepts here
and now. Actual fulfillment is something more than real power to
fulfill, as actual vision is something more than the real power of
sight. [393] .
To illustrate. God willed, by consequent will, the conversion of
St. Paul. This conversion comes to be, infallibly but freely,
because God's will, strong and sweet, causes Paul's will to
consent freely, spontaneously, without violence, to his own
conversion. God did not on the other hand will, efficaciously, the
conversion of Judas, though He, conditionally, inefficaciously,
antecedently, certainly willed it, and He permitted Judas to
remain, freely, in final impenitence. What higher good has God in
mind? This, at least: the manifestation of infinite justice.
[394] .
We must add this remark: Resisting sufficient grace is an evil which
comes solely from ourselves. But non-resistance is a good, which,
in last analysis, comes from God, source of all good. Further,
sufficient grace, however rich in the order of power, proximate
power, still differs from efficacious grace, which effectively causes
the salutary act itself, which is something more than the power. And
to say that he who does not have efficacious grace, which causes the
salutary act, cannot have even the real power to place that act is
equivalent to saying that a sleeping man is blind, because, forsooth,
since he does not actually see, he cannot have even the power of
sight. [395] .
Article Three: The Thomistic Dilemma
This dilemma runs thus: In regard to any created and limited good,
if God's knowledge is not unlimited and independent, then God's
knowledge would be dependent on, determined by, something created.
But scientia media is dependent on something finite and created, the
creature's act of choice.
The efficacious will of God, far from forcing the sinner at the
moment of conversion, actualizes the free will, carries it on,
strongly and sweetly, to make its own free choice of good. From all
eternity God willed efficaciously that Paul, at that particular
hour, on the road to Damascus, hic et nunc, would consent to be
converted. God's will, entering into all details of space and time,
is infallibly fulfilled by actualizing, not by forcing created
liberty. Similarly, from all eternity God willed efficaciously that
Mary, on Annunciation Day, would freely consent to the realization
of the mystery of the Incarnation and that divine will was infallibly
fulfilled.
On this point Thomists have written much against "simultaneous
concursus" as defended by Molina and Suarez. For this
"simultaneous concursus" is a divine causality which is indifferent,
that is, can be followed, in fact, either by an evil act or by a good
act. Thomists, on the contrary, to defend God's efficacious acts
of will, call these acts "predetermining divine decrees," which are
all summed up in the term "physical premotion." They insist that
this physical premotion does not force the created will, does not
destroy created liberty, but, in us and with us, actualizes the
essential freedom of our choice. If even a beloved creature, they
argue, can lead us to choose freely what that creature wills we would
choose, how much more the Creator, who is more deeply intimate with
us than we ourselves are! [396] .
Let us here note the harmony of this doctrine with a commonly accepted
theological principle. All theologians agree in admitting that, since
all good comes from God, the best thing on earth, sanctity, is a
special gift of God. Now what is the chief element of sanctity, not
as it is in heaven, but as it is in the saints who still live here on
earth? It is their meritorious acts, especially their acts of
charity. Even sanctifying grace, a far higher thing than the soul
which has received that grace, even the infused virtues, and charity
in particular, have a purpose beyond themselves, namely, free and
meritorious acts, in particular acts of love for God and neighbor.
Free choice makes these acts what they are. Without free and
self-determined choice the act would have no merit; and eternal life
must be merited.
Hence this free self-determination, this choice as such, must come
from God, who alone by His grace brings it to be a reality in us.
Think of what is best in Peter and Paul at the moment of martyrdom.
Think of the merit of Mary at the foot of the cross. Think, above
all, of that free and self-determined act of love in the soul of
Jesus when He cried: "Consummatum est."
According to Molina, this free self-determination of the meritorious
act does not come from the divine motion, from divine causality, but
solely from us, in the presence indeed of the object proposed by God,
but under a grace of light, of objective attractiveness, which equally
solicits both him who is not converted and him who is converted.
[397] .
Simultaneous concursus gives no more to the one than it does to the
other. Let us suppose that from God comes the nature and existence of
the soul and its faculties, and sanctifying grace, and actual grace in
the form of objective attractiveness, and also a general divine
concursus under which man can will evil as well as good. Let us
further suppose two just men, who have received all these gifts in
equal measure. If one of these men freely determines himself to a new
meritorious act, even to an act of heroism, whereas the other freely
falls into grievous sin and thus loses sanctifying grace—then the first
man's free and meritorious self-determination, that by which he is
better than the second, does not come from God, since He is not the
author of that which precisely distinguishes the first from the second.
Here, then, since God is not the creative and determining source of
this self-determining meritorious act, God's knowledge of that act
is dependent on, determined by, the act of God's creature. God is
spectator, not author, of what is best in the heart of God's
saints. How can this doctrine be reconciled with the infinite
independence of God, the Author of all good?
Now listen to St. Thomas: "Since God's act of love is the
source of all good in creatures, no creature can be better than
another, did not God give to that creature a higher good than He
gives to another." [398] .
And again: "Certain authors, since they cannot understand how God
can cause an act of will without harm to our liberty, give of these
verses [399] a wrong exposition. The words 'to will' and
'fulfill' they expound thus: God gives the power of willing, but
not the actual choice between this and that. [400] ... But
Scripture is evidently against this exposition. Isaias, for
example, in 36: 12, speaks thus: 'All our deeds Thou hast
wrought for us, O Lord!' Hence we have from God not only our
power of willing, but also our act of willing." [401] .
Let us now summarize. If God is the cause of our faculties, then a
fortiori He is cause of that which is still better than our faculties,
since a faculty exists only for the sake of its act. Hence man's free
and self-determined choice, which comes entirely from man as second
cause, comes likewise entirely from God as first cause. Thus, to
illustrate, the apple belongs entirely both to the tree and to the
branch.
Article Four: Difficulties
We must now examine some texts wherein St. Thomas seems at first
sight not to be in accord with his own texts just cited. Here is one
such text. [402] .
"God, as universal mover, moves the will of man to the universal
object of the will, to good, namely, and without this universal
motion man cannot will anything. But man by reason determines himself
to will this or that, either to a true good, that is, or to an
apparent good."
The text, even as it stands, is thus interpreted by Thomists:
Man, as second cause, certainly determines himself, since he
deliberates only to make a choice. His deliberation ends, either in a
salutary act, under actual operating grace, or then in an evil act,
under that universal motion treated in our text, which motion is not
the cause of the act as evil, just as, to illustrate, the energy of a
lame man is the cause of his walk, but not of the limp. But the text
cited does not at all prove that the divine motion toward the salutary
free act is never predetermining, or that it remains indifferent, so
that from it an evil act might as equally come forth as a good act.
So far the text as it stands. But, in that same response,
[403] the saint adds these words: "Yet sometimes God moves
some men in a special manner to will determinately something which is
good, as in those whom He moves by grace." [404] This is
particularly true of gratia operans, of special inspiration. But
now, if even in one sole case divine motion infallibly produces a
salutary act, which must be free (Mary's fiat, for example, or
Paul's conversion): it follows evidently that the divine motion does
not destroy the creature's freedom of will.
Now let us consider another text [405] from which an objection
has been drawn. It runs thus: "The will is an active principle,
not limited to one kind of object. Hence God so moves the will that
it is not of necessity determined to one act, but that its act remains
contingent and not necessary, except in objects to which it is moved by
nature" [406] (e. g.: happiness, beatitude).
Is this text opposed to common Thomistic doctrine? Not at all.
Throughout this whole question the two expressions, non ex necessitate
movet and movet sed non ex necessitate, are used interchangeably.
Similarly, voluntas ab aliquo objecto ex necessitate movetur, ab alio
autem non (in art. 2) and voluntas hominis non ex necessitate
movetur ab appetitu sensitivo (in art. 3). Moreover, in the very
same article from which the objection is taken, the saint in the third
response writes as follows: "If God moves the will to act, then,
under this supposition, it is impossible that the will should not act.
Nevertheless, speaking simply and absolutely, it is not impossible
that the will should not act. Hence it does not follow that the will
is moved by God ex necessitate." [407] .
Clearly, the meaning of the passage is this: The divine motion
obtains infallibly its effect, i. e.: man's act of actual choice,
but without forcing, necessitating, that choice. Thus, on
Annunciation Day, the divine motion infallibly brought Mary to say
freely her fiat. Far from forcing the act, far from destroying
Mary's freedom, the divine motion instead actualized her freedom.
When efficacious grace touches the free will, that touch is virginal,
it does no violence, it only enriches.
Let us listen again to the saint, in a passage where he first presents
an objection incessantly repeated down to our day, and then gives his
own answer. The objection runs thus: If man's will is unchangeably
(infallibly) moved by God, it follows that man does not have free
choice in willing. [408] The answer is this: [409] God
moves the will infallibly (immobiliter) by reason of the efficacy of
His moving power; [410] but, since our will can choose
indifferently among various possibilities, its act remains, not
necessary, but free.
God moves each creature according to its nature. That is the saint's
central thought. If the creature has free will, God actualizes that
freedom to act freely, selectively, by choice, just as, in plants,
He actualizes the vegetative power, or in animals the sense power, to
act without choice, each in accord with its nature. If the musician
can evoke from each instrument the natural vibrations suited to express
his inspirations, how much more easily can the divine musician, who
lives in us more intimately than our own freedom does, evoke from one
free instrument (e. g.: St. Paul) vibrating chords, fully
natural and fully free, yet so different from those he evokes from a
second free instrument (e. g.: St. John).
Again St. Thomas: "If God's intention is that this man, whose
heart He is moving, shall receive (sanctifying) grace, then that
man receives that grace infallibly." Why? Because, as he says
three lines earlier: "God's (efficacious) intention cannot fail,
that is, as Augustine says, by God's gifts, all who are saved are
infallibly (certissime) saved." [411] .
Further, St. Thomas often speaks of a divine predetermination which
does not necessitate the will. Thus, in explaining our Lord's
words: [412] "My hour is not yet come," he says: "
'Hour' in this text means the time of Christ's passion, an hour
imposed on Him, not by necessity, but by divine providence.
[413] And this holds good of all the acts freely done by Christ
in that hour of His passion. Here are the saint's own words:
"That hour was imposed on Him, not by the necessity of fate, but by
the eternal sentence of the entire Trinity." [414] Here we
have a predetermining decree, with no allusion to anything like
scientia media, a knowledge, that is, which would depend on prevision
of our free consent. [415] .
We must return again and again to the principle: God's knowledge,
being uncreated, can never be dependent on, determined by, anything
created, which, though it be only a future conditional thing, would
never be at all had God not first decided it should be. And nothing
can, here and now, come to pass unless God has from all eternity
efficaciously willed it so, and no evil unless He has permitted it.
In this sense St. Thomas, following St. Paul and St.
Augustine, understands the words of the Psalmist: "In heaven and
on earth whatever God willed, that He has done." [416] .
Elsewhere our saint reduces this doctrine to a simple formula:
"Whatever God wills simpliciter, comes to pass, though what He
wills antecedently does not come to pass." Thus, God, who willed
the conversion of one thief simpliciter, willed that of the other
antecedenter. Admitting, as we must, that we are here faced with an
impenetrable mystery, the mystery, that is, of predestination, we
must nevertheless hold that whatever there is of good in our free choice
comes from God as first cause, and that nothing in any way good come
to pass here and now unless God has from all eternity willed it so.
The saint does not tire of reiteration. Whatever there is of reality
and goodness [417] in our free acts comes from the Author of all
good. Only that which is evil in our acts cannot come from Him, just
as, to repeat, the limp of the lame man does not come from the energy
by which he walks.
In this sense, then, we understand certain formulas coined by
Thomists. The divine motion, they say, prescinds perfectly from the
evil in a bad act, [418] that is to say, malice, moral evil,
is not contained in the adequate object of God's will and power, just
as, to illustrate, sound is not contained in the adequate object of
sight. This leads to a second formula: Nothing is more precisive
(praecisivum) than the formal object of any power. [419] Thus
truth is the precisive object of intelligence, and good is that of the
will. Evil, disorder, cannot be the object of divine will and divine
power, and hence cannot have other source than the second cause,
defectible and deficient.
Summary
To show the harmony between this doctrine and generally received
theological principles, let us recall that all theologians maintain
that what is best in the souls of saints on earth must come from God.
Now that which is best in these saints is precisely their
self-determined free choice of meritorious acts, above all of love for
God and neighbor. To this end are ordained and proportioned all forms
of grace: habitual grace, infused virtues, the gifts of the Spirit,
all illumination, all attractive, persuasive, actual graces. This
general principle, accepted by all theologians, surely inclines to
accepting the Thomist doctrine. Without that doctrine we rob the
divine causality of what is best in us, and insert into uncreated
causality a knowledge dependent on our free choice, which, as such,
would not come from Him.
In the light of this principle the saint shows the nature of God's
love for us, how God loves those who are better by giving them that by
which they are better. [420] He shows further that mercy and
justice are the two great virtues of the divine will, and that their
acts proceed from love of the Supreme Good. Love of the Supreme
Good, which has the right to be preferred to all other good, is the
principle of justice. This love of the Supreme Good, which is
self-diffusive, is the principle of mercy, a principle higher than
justice, since, as radiating goodness, it is the first expression of
love.
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