The various ways of explaining the efficacy and causality of grace efficacious of itself are weighed

Those who admit grace per se efficacious explain its efficacy and causality not in one way alone. Five modes are more commonly circulated. Some explain it by the multitude of helps; some by moral causality; others by indeliberate acts; others by victorious delight; and finally others by physical promotion. These five modes we shall examine in the following §§, and shall establish the truth.

There are examined and rejected the three first modes.

I. — To explain the efficacy and causality of grace per se efficacious by the multitude and accumulation of helps is not to explain the thing sought, nor to touch the knot of the difficulty; for no one denies that God attracts man to himself by many helps, both extrinsic and intrinsic. But the question is, first, whence that help among these many to which the will consents is efficacious : by its own proper virtue? How is that efficacy to be explained, and wherein to be placed?

None of which does this opinion declare. For if it say that this help is efficacious by its own proper virtue, all assertors of grace per se efficacious say this; but they ask how and wherein that efficacy and virtue is to be placed : in moral motions? in indeliberate acts? in victorious delight? in physical premotion? And this the present mode does not explain. If it say that it is efficacious from the consent of the will, it now rejects grace per se efficacious and returns to the opinion of Molina, and is bound to admit the middle science, whereby God explores toward whom the will is about to consent; which middle science nevertheless the patrons of this mode do not admit.

II. — Others place the efficacy and causality of grace per se efficacious in moral helps — not indeed fallibly moving in the sense of Molina or of the Congruists, who employ the middle science, whereby God explores toward whom out of innate liberty we are about to consent — but in helps infallibly moving, or which they judge to move infallibly, and to which they attribute whatever we attribute to physically moving helps. But, since moral help moves only objectively, inviting, alluring, persuading, etc., and only under the character of final cause, however much it be posited, the will itself always remains in potency and undetermined so as to consent to it, especially a will weak, hard, and unteachable unto good, unless it be changed and determined through something received intrinsically in it. Nor say that it is changed and determined by the very consent and operation; both because it ought to be changed and determined in order to operate and consent : therefore antecedently to consent and operation; and because operation changes not the agent actively, but the patient, since operation issues from nothing except as it is in act, and suffers as it is in potency : therefore, inasmuch as the agent operates, it is not changed effectively by its own operation, for thus it would suffer inasmuch as it operates : therefore, if it is changed, it is antecedently to the operation. And by this reason also is proved that the efficacy and causality of grace per se efficacious cannot be explained by sympathy, or by the divine decree immediately, without something received intrinsically in the will, as some wish.

III. — The third mode places the efficacy and causality of grace per se efficacious in indeliberate motions, namely pious affection, which, if it be stronger than temptation, will conquer and be efficacious. So Gonzalez among our authors. But although an indeliberate pious affection helps and is the seed of a good work, nevertheless, however strong it be supposed, in order that the will infallibly follow it deliberately and consent to it, it must be determined by further grace or cooperating motion; otherwise it will remain void, not only on account of a stronger temptation, but even from the instability of the human will, or from several other causes, as often happens and as we know from experience. This opinion will be confuted further from what must be said in the following §.

§ II

Is examined and rejected the fourth mode, by victorious delight.

Not a few place the efficacy and causality of grace in victorious delight, which they call also love and charity, inspiration of love and charity; for they use these names promiscuously, and they contend that St. Augustine taught this expressly.

But they are not of one mouth nor one sense. Some fight for indeliberate delight, others for deliberate. Among the former, some maintain an indeliberate delight necessitating; but Jansenius, whose error is condemned in the third proposition out of the five famous ones. Some defend an indeliberate delight not necessitating : thus generally the Augustinian Fathers, whose opinion seems to coincide with the third of the preceding §.

That these various opinions may be understood, it must be observed that delight can be taken in a twofold manner : 1° strictly, and it is the repose of appetite in a good possessed; if the appetite be rational, it is spiritual delight; if sensitive, sensible delight. Repose is here taken privatively for cessation from every act, as in insensible things, which, while they attain their perfection, do not perceive it, and are therefore held to rest by the mere cessation of motion. But cognitive beings, while they attain their perfection and good, perceive or acknowledge it, and from that cognition is caused a certain movement of the soul complacent and resting in the good present; and this movement is delight. 2° Delight is taken in a wider sense for the affection or inclination of the will toward good as fitting and consonant with nature and reason. And taken in either sense it can be deliberate or indeliberate.

Likewise, that grace per se efficacious consist in delight can be understood either in the formal sense, namely that efficacious grace be the victorious delight itself, or in the causal sense, that efficacious grace be the cause of this delight.

That Augustine understood it in this last sense, the following things prove : Book I of De Nuptiis et Concup., c. 30, n. 33, he says : « The concomitant delight in the law of God according to the inner man comes to us from the great grace of God. » Book De Spirit. et Litt., c. 3, n. 5 : « But we say that the human will is so divinely assisted to work justice, that, besides the fact that man was created with free choice of will, and besides the doctrine by which it is prescribed to him how he ought to live, he receive the Holy Spirit, whereby there becomes in his mind that delight and love of the highest and immutable good which is God. » Book I ad Simplic., q. 2, n. 21 : « Since therefore those things delight us whereby we make progress toward God, this is inspired, and the grace of God is offered. » Therefore, according to Augustine, delight is not grace, but its effect.

Natural reason also evinces it. 1º Delight is an act of a vital power; but grace is not a vital act, otherwise it would be effected by a vital power. 2º Spiritual delight concerning supernatural good, taken in any manner whatsoever, is a good act. Therefore it is from grace. 3° While the mind is affected with delight wherewith it was before not affected, it is intrinsically changed; but an efficient cause of this change must be assigned, which can be none other than grace. These things being premised, I say 1° : Grace works not always in us delight taken strictly, nor are we inclined and drawn to good by that alone, but by various other modes.

It is proved 1° from Scripture, which sets forth fear as conducing to good. Eccli., I, 1 : He that feareth God shall do good. Jerem., XXXII, 40 : I will give my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me. Matth., X, 28 : Fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body into hell. Psal., CXVIII, 120 : Pierce thou my flesh with thy fear; for I am afraid of thy judgments. Thus elsewhere everywhere. Whence Trent, session VI, chapter 6, enumerates the fear of divine justice among the dispositions required for justification. And canon 8 strikes with anathema those who should say that « the fear of hell, whereby we take refuge in the mercy of God, grieving for sins, or whereby we abstain from sin, is sin. » Finally, session XIV, chapter 4, resolves decretorially that attrition conceived from the fear of hell « is a gift of God and an impulse of the Holy Spirit, not indeed inhabiting, but moving, by which the penitent being helped prepares for himself a way unto justice. » Where you have plainly that fear is an effect of grace and conduces to salvation.

It is proved 2º from Augustine. Serm. 348¹ he says : « When punishment is feared which [God] threatens, is learned the love of the reward which he promises, and thus by the fear of punishment itself a good life is retained. » Book De Correp. et Grat., c. 5, n. 7 : « Thou dost not wish thy vices to be shown to thee, nor that they be smitten, and that useful grief arise, whereby thou mayest seek the physician : ... as if the fear of the corrected man, or shame, or grief did nothing at all. » Ibid., n. 8 : « These thus, those otherwise, and others otherwise, are called in diverse and innumerable ways, that they may be reformed. » And book I cont. duas epist. Pelag., c. 19, n. 37 : « He is drawn therefore in wondrous ways to will, by him who knows to work inwardly in the very hearts of men, not that men believe unwillingly — which cannot be — but that they become willing from unwilling. » Further, if we are drawn to God in wondrous, diverse, and innumerable ways : then not by delight alone. ¹ Formerly 214 de tempore.

It is proved 3° The Christian religion teaches us to follow, not the delightful, but the right and honest, however hard and bitter; or, that I may use the words of Christ, not joy, but the cross; and to love God, not because he delights, but because he is worthy. Therefore to will that men be always led to act by the motive of delight, never by reason, by duty, by honesty pure from all alluring delights, savors of the religion of Epicurus, not of Christ.

It is proved 4° by experience, whereby it stands established with us that the just often withdraw from evil and do good, with no delight soothing them, but induced either by fear of punishment, or by the sole motive of duty and of the eternal law, amid wearinesses, sadnesses, and pains, nature wholly resisting.

I say 2° : Grace per se efficacious always works delight taken in the wider sense for the affection or inclination of the will toward fitting good; because its proper effect is to incline and apply the will to good, and consequently to effect that what is more fitting be always proposed to the will. For neither does the will fear evil except from the love of the opposite good, and because it judges that fitting and good for itself, namely to flee this evil; so that love is the first-born act of the will.

Of delight therefore thus taken Augustine speaks mostly, when he says that grace is, or works, delight, which he calls also love and charity, taking charity widely for any volition of good. And this the Augustinian defenders of victorious delight seem to concede; for when Laurentius Berti, book XLV, c. 8, had objected to himself from Scripture and Trent that not delight alone, but also the fear of the Lord, is the principle of our actions, he came at length so far as to call delight « the fervor of good will, » and « inspiration of good will. »

I say 3° : Delight taken in whatever sense, whether strictly or widely, whether deliberate or indeliberate, is not that in which consists the efficacy of grace per se efficacious; because that in which the efficacy of grace consists is that whereby it obtains its effect infallibly and indefectibly. But delight in God not yet clearly seen in this life, taken in whatever sense, is not that whereby grace obtains its effect infallibly and indefectibly; since all theologians teach, with St. Thomas, that delight and love of God not yet clearly seen in this life is not indefectible and irrevocable, but can, even by subsequent potency, be conquered and destroyed by fear or by the love of created good.

You will say : How therefore is that celebrated saying of Augustine to be understood, in Epist. ad Galat. : « What delights us more, of necessity we work according to that? » — which, says Jansenius, book IV of De Grat. Chr., c. 6, deserves to be written in golden characters.

Answer. It certainly cannot be understood in the sense of Jansenius, as if it were not free for man to resist the greater delight : both because the Church condemned this sense in Jansenius himself; and because Augustine himself acknowledges that he did not always do what delighted him more : « I did not, » he says, book VIII of Conf., c. 8, n. 20, « that which with incomparable affection pleased me more. » And book LXXXIII Quaest., q. 70, he says that man could restrain, even with grief, the great delight of hunting; finally because, according to Augustine, greater and greatest was the celestial delight in Adam and the angels sinning, which however they did not follow.

Therefore, 1° granting that Augustine speaks there of indeliberate delight : it is answered that he understands a moral necessity taken for great difficulty of acting otherwise, because men are wont to do what delights them more. Yet Augustine says this not universally and absolutely, but on the hypothesis that no other motive occur. For, as we saw, he teaches that fear often draws us away from what delights more; which other motives of duty, honesty, utility, etc., can likewise accomplish. And so it is plain, even granting this sense, that the efficacy of grace does not consist in delight alone. But

2° And more truly Augustine understands these words of deliberate delight, taken for the affection and inclination toward fitting good following the free election of the will; just as if he had said : Of necessity we work what we more deliberately love, what we judge practically more fitting, what pleases more. But this necessity, as is plain, is not absolute, but hypothetical; not of the consequent, but of the consequence; not antecedent, but consequent upon our liberty. In this sense therefore the saying of Augustine is most true, that we necessarily do what delights us more, that is, what we more love after deliberation and freely choose before another; but the present question remains intact : whence has grace, which is the cause of this deliberate delight and love, that it efficiently and infallibly effect it, and fix our heart therein so firmly that no good draw us away from it? For, as we already said, delight and love of any good whatsoever, even of God, in this life, is of itself defectible and losable. We shall say, as will presently appear, that grace has this from the divine motion, which effects that the love of God be always proposed to us as more fitting, and inclines us to him efficiently and freely.

You will object : St. Augustine speaks of the delight of preventing grace, whereby it comes about that we will. Therefore he does not understand delight deliberate and following free volition. — Proof of the antecedent. Book I of De Spir. et Litt., c. 35, n. 63 : « Who knows not, » he says, « that it is not in the power of man what he knows, nor is it a consequence that what has been known to be to be desired be desired, unless it delight as much as it ought to be loved? » And book I of De div. quaest. ad Simplic., q. 2, n. 22 : « The will itself, unless something occur which delights and invites the mind, can by no manner of means be moved. But that this occur is not in the power of man. » Therefore.

Answer. I distinguish the antecedent. Augustine understands sometimes of preventing and indeliberate delight, I concede; always, I deny. In those places closely objected therefore we confess that he understands of indeliberate delight which grace produces, and which is nothing else than an indeliberate effect toward good as fitting, whereby it comes about that the will, placed in act, can freely move itself into a further deliberate act, yet through further grace moving the will thereto intervening. But it is false that Augustine, where necessitating delight is in question, understands indeliberate delight. It is plain from what has been said.

Besides, this instance again does nothing for the present question. For from this, that the will, in order that it will and love deliberately, must be preceded by delight or affection of fitting good indeliberate, it does not follow that in that delight or indeliberate affection sits the efficacy of grace, which we seek; since even that indeliberate affection is an effect of efficacious grace, and moves efficiently and infallibly to a deliberate act only through further motion or grace intervening.

§ III. — Is examined the fifth mode, by physical premotion.

Finally the Thomists commonly place the efficacy of grace in physical premotion or predetermination.

By premotion or physical predetermination they understand nothing else than the active application of a power to its act, according to its mode, namely so that it acts freely, if it be a free power, necessarily, if it be a necessary one. Further, supposing such premotion to exist, no one can deny that it is the most expeditious mode of explaining the efficacy of grace; for since it repugns that there be active application without passive, it follows that there is an infallible connection between grace applying the will to act and the will acting.

But the adversaries deny that such premotion exists, on many grounds, but chiefly from injury done to human liberty. That this exists the Thomist philosophers prove by every kind of arguments, which may be seen in their works. Lest however I dismiss the reader wholly fasting in this celebrated controversy, I will bring forward certain things for its assertion drawn from philosophy. Whence

Physical promotion is briefly asserted from St. Thomas.

The holy Doctor, q. 3 De Potentia, a. 7, whose title is : Does God operate in the operation of nature? says : « Since no thing moves or acts of itself unless it be a mover unmoved, a thing is said in a third way to be the cause of another's action, insofar as it moves it to act; in which is understood neither the collation nor the conservation of active virtue, but the application of the virtue to action : as man is the cause of the cutting of the knife from this very fact that he applies the sharpness of the knife to cutting, by moving it. And since the agent inferior by nature acts not unless moved,... it follows of necessity that God be the cause of the action of any natural thing whatsoever, as moving and applying the virtue to acting... In a fourth way one thing is the cause of another's action, as the principal agent is the cause of the instrument's action; and in this way also it must be said that God is the cause of every natural action. » Finally he concludes the article thus : « Thus therefore God is the cause of any action whatsoever, inasmuch as he gives the virtue of acting, and inasmuch as he conserves it, and inasmuch as he applies it to action, and inasmuch as by his virtue every other virtue acts. And when we have joined to these that God is his own virtue, and that he is within any thing whatever, not as part of its essence, but as holding the thing in being, it follows that he himself operates immediately in every operator, the operation of will and nature not excluded. »

Iª 2ae, q. 109, a. 1, c. : « As all bodily motions are reduced to the motion of the heavenly body, as to the first bodily mover, so all motions both bodily and spiritual are reduced to the first mover simply, which is God. And therefore, however perfect any bodily or spiritual nature be supposed, it cannot proceed into its act, unless it be moved by God. »

That this is the opinion of St. Thomas was acknowledged by the more eminent theologians of the Society.

1° The little book on the reason of studies composed in the Roman College itself, in the year 1586, by six Fathers of the Society of Jesus a-

-p pointed by the most Reverend Father General for this purpose. Such is the fifth rule : « In theology let our men follow the doctrine of St. Thomas, as is provided in the fourth part of the constitutions, chapter 14, excepting a few. » Among those few exceptions, at number 6 is read : « Second causes to be properly and univocally instruments of God, and, when they act, that God first inflows into them, or moves them. » That this book is kept in the convent of St. Thomas Aquinas at Toulouse, Father Anthony Massoulie testifies, and that he himself often read it, and transcribed with his own hand from it these things which we relate. Indeed another was afterwards published at Antwerp, wherein these things are wanting : with what mind or cause I inquire not. It suffices us that those six Fathers, the original authors, thus judged.

2° Molina himself confesses that this opinion of prime motion was handed down by St. Thomas, in the Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, disp. 26. Likewise the Jesuits of Coimbra, in book II of the Physics, chapter 7, q. 15.

Premotion is asserted by reasons drawn from St. Thomas.

The first reason is proposed thus. God is the first mover and first efficient cause, to whom all second causes and all created movers are immediately subordinated in acting and moving. But, physical premotion set aside, the primacy of cause is not saved in God, nor the subordination of second causes in acting. Therefore. — The major is a principle constant in St. Thomas, proved among all theologians and philosophers, so that he would be rash who denied it. For as certainly God is the first being, from whom all beings are immediately participated, so he is the first efficient cause, to whom all second causes are immediately subordinated and from whom they depend in acting. — Proof of the minor. The subordination of causes in acting consists in this, that the first move and apply the seconds to acting, and that the seconds act not unless moved by the first. « If there be many agents ordered, » says St. Thomas, Iª p., q. 105, a. 5, c., « the secondary agent always acts in virtue of the first agent; for the first agent moves the secondary to act. And according to this all things act in the virtue of God himself. » This also is plain, not only in natural things, but even in artificial ones : inferior workmen are and are said to be subordinated to some first workman, soldiers to a general, monks to an abbot, insofar as they act according to the moral application and determination received — workmen from the architect, soldiers from the general, monks from the abbot; so that if an inferior workman act without the moral application of the superior architect, a soldier fight without the command of his general, a monk conduct himself by his own nod and not the abbot's, by this very fact the subordination is overthrown. But the motion whereby the first mover, or first cause in the genus of efficient cause, moves and applies the second, is physical premotion; for, as we said above and as is evident per se, the motion of the mover is prior in nature and causality to the motion of the moved. Therefore.

It is confirmed. The primacy of cause in God and the subordination of second causes to him in acting cannot be saved through simultaneous concourse, nor through moral motion, nor through this, that God gave to second causes the virtue of acting. Therefore through physical premotion alone, or previous concourse. The consequence is plain from a sufficient enumeration; for nothing else assignable exists whereby the subordination of causes could be saved.

Proof of the first part of the antecedent. Not through simultaneous concourse; because simultaneous concourse moves not the second cause, inflows not into it, makes it not to act, but acts together with it, and inflows into the effect alone; otherwise it would not be simultaneous but previous, and so we should have our intent. Whence God through it is co-cause, but not first cause. Nor stands in the way that it be more perfect and worthier than the concourse of the second cause. That indeed makes and shows the cause more perfect and worthier, that is, first under the character of dignity and perfection, but not first in causing and in the genus of efficient cause, which is here in question.

You will say : Simultaneous concourse is even unto the action of the creature, and not merely unto its effect. Therefore.

Answer. I distinguish the antecedent. Simultaneous concourse is even unto the action of the creature as effect, I concede; reduplicatively as action, or as formally from the second cause, I deny. For through simultaneous concourse God moves not the second cause to act, nor makes it to act, but only acts with it; otherwise, as already said, it would not be simultaneous, but previous. But for subordination in acting it suffices not that he produce the action together with the second cause, nor that he act with it; but it is required that he move and determine it to act, and make it to act. Confer the tract on God, dissert. VI on the middle science §§ 4, 6 and 7, and dissert. VIII on the Decrees a. 1 and 2.

Proof of the second part of the antecedent. Not through moral motion; because moral motion indeed can constitute subordination in the moral order and in the genus of final cause, but not in the physical order and in the genus of efficient cause, which is here treated; for God is first mover and first cause in the physical order and in the genus of efficient cause, and not only in the genus of moral and final cause. Otherwise he would be merely first mover and first cause with respect to free agents, which alone are capable of moral motion, not of natural agents. Confer On the Decrees, place last cited.

Proof of the third part of the antecedent. Not through this, that God gave to second causes the virtue of acting : 1° because St. Thomas proscribes this opinion as erroneous, III Cont. gent., chapter 88. 2° Because Pelagius admitted it, and was condemned. 3° Because it falls back upon the opinion of Durandus, denying the immediate influx of God into the actions of creatures, which all reject. 4° Finally because it constitutes the subordination of second causes to the first not in causing, but only in being, as is plain from what has been said. Confer On the Decrees, place cited.

The second reason is proposed thus. A cause indifferent of itself and undetermined to act or not to act, to do this or that, cannot be determined to one rather than to another, except through physical premotion. But man is indifferent to act or not to act, to do this or that. Therefore. — The minor is certain; for in this indifference lies the liberty of man. — Proof of the major. A cause indifferent of itself and undetermined to this or that cannot determine itself to one rather than to another; because, since it is supposed indifferent, there is no reason why it should incline to this rather than that; nor from an indifferent cause, as such, can a determined effect proceed more than heat from cold. Nor can it be determined through simultaneous concourse; because, from the very adversaries, simultaneous concourse is offered indifferently to either alternative, and elsewhere inflows not into the cause so as to determine it, but supposes it determined. Nor through moral motions; because, as I already said, moral motions move the will only objectively and by alluring, not intrinsically, by changing it : whence, any moral motion whatever being posited, the will is still undetermined and indifferent to this or that. There remains therefore that it can be determined through physical premotion alone.

The third reason. God is the immediate and universal efficient cause of every being and of all its modes. Therefore he is the immediate physical cause of action reduplicatively as action is, and as it proceeds formally and depends upon the will; for action, under that character, and this its procession and dependence upon the will, is something in the nature of things, namely a mode of being and liberty itself in exercise, whereby we merit or demerit. But he cannot be the immediate efficient cause of action under that formality, except through physical premotion, whereby he applies the will to acting and makes it to act; for through simultaneous concourse he acts while it acts, he makes it not to act : through moral motions he is only moral cause, not efficient and physical. Confer On the Decrees, a. 2, § 4, the first answer of the adversaries.

Note. Almost everything which I have said against the middle science, for determining decrees and for grace per se efficacious, fights for physical premotion. Therefore they are to be compared.

As to the objections which are drawn from authority, from injury to liberty, from the insufficiency of help, and from affinity with Calvinism, you have them solved in the dissert. cited On the Decrees, a. 3. Those which are drawn from injury to divine sanctity are solved in the same place, § 7.

Whoever desires more, let him go to Sylvius, On the motion of the first mover; to Father Anthony Massoulie, in his work St. Thomas his own interpreter, tom. I, dissert. 1 and 2; but above all to Father Anthony Goudin, in the Metaphysics, disp. II, q. 3, who treated this matter, in my judgment, no less solidly than clearly and within the grasp of all.