Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 3 (2006): 473–494

473

The Immaculate Conception, St. Thomas,
and Blessed Pius IX
B ASIL C OLE , OP
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

F RANCIS B ELANGER , OP
St.Thomas Aquinas University Parish
Charlottesville,Virginia

I. Influences on St. Thomas vis-á-vis
the Immaculate Conception
A S S T. PAUL endured the mysterious thorn in his flesh, so Thomism
over the centuries has borne the pain of St.Thomas’s apparent denial of
the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The great doctor was innocent of
heresy when he took his position centuries before the dogma was defined.
But when Blessed Pius IX in 1854 stated that the Blessed Virgin Mary
“in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege
granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the
Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original
sin,”1 one knows there was a rather chastened silence among Aquinas’s
disciples. It was the one crucial area where they had to admit that their
hero’s reputation was tarnished.
It has ever been a matter of debate as to what Thomas himself—as
distinct from Thomists—exactly taught with regard to the immaculate
conception.2 Three issues make the topic somewhat complicated. First of
all, there is what we would recognize today as bad science of Thomas’s
notion of delayed animation by contemporary standards—that is, that the
1 Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (1854).
2 Thomas Heath, OP,“The Immaculate Conception,” in Summa Theologiae, vol. 51

(Oxford: Blackfriars, 1969), appendix, 113.

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Basil Cole, OP & Francis Belanger, OP

human soul is infused into the flesh of the unborn baby sometime after
conception, either forty or eighty days—which made the idea of an
immaculate conception more or less nonsensical to him from the outset.
Second, he in fact taught that Mary was cleansed from original sin while
still in the womb and that she never committed an actual sin—mortal or
venial. Third, many theologians argue that his view on the doctrine
changed over time, as manifested in different works.
We will argue two points: first, that Aquinas’s basic argument is against
the idea of the Immaculate Conception, but second, that his view of
Marian sanctification is nonetheless close to the dogma as we have it.To
do this, it will be necessary to review what he says about Mary’s sanctification in his various works, doing so in chronological order. His view
of the matter is more difficult to ascertain than one might think, and it
will be useful to see the whole progression of his thought and reflect on
its various expressions.Then it will be possible to summarize and evaluate what he actually taught, taking into account the trajectory of his speculations on the subject and using as a touchstone the reflections of some
latter-day Thomists.
Thomas’s Opinions Reviewed
The first work to look at is Thomas’s Scriptum super libros Sententiarum. He
composed this commentary on the famous work of Peter Lombard
during his first inception as a bachelor of theology in Paris from
1256–1257.3 He deals with the question of Mary’s sanctification in the
third distinction of the third book of the Sentences.4 There he asks whether
Mary could have been sanctified before animation.The very basis for this
question is his belief in delayed animation, which entailed that the
embryo had first a vegetative soul, then a sensitive (or animal) soul, then
finally the intellectual soul, which superseded the others and performed
their functions.5 He concluded that since the human soul is closer to
God than the body and “the virtue that is given by another agent comes
through those things which are closer to it thence to those which are the
more distant,”6 there has to be an intellectual soul for sanctification to
3 Gilles Emery, OP,“Brief Catalogue of the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in Jean-

Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans.
Robert Royal (Washington, DC:The Catholic University Press, 1996), 332.
4 Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententtiis magistri Petri Lombardi, ed. Maria Fabianus
Moos, OP (Paris: Sumptibus P. Lethielleux, 1933), 96–108.
5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 118, a. 2, ad 2; and I, q. 76, a. 3.
6 Scriptum super Sententiis, bk. 3, d. 3, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 2 s.c. 1:“Sed virtus alicujus agentis
prius pervenit ad ea quae sunt sibi propinquiora . . . per ea ad magis distantia.”

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take place. The answer to the question then is no, sanctification cannot
take place before animation by the intellectual soul.
Thomas then asks whether Mary was sanctified before her birth.To this
the answer is yes. Moreover, she was not merely sanctified in the womb but
totally cleansed from original sin and then never committed a sin of any
kind. Here we already have a basic doctrine of Thomistic Mariology: Mary
was immaculate—a view that Aquinas would never change—but she was
not conceived immaculately because she was not fully human at the time
of conception. His Mariology is very high, and it is obvious that by his
denial of what he understands the immaculate conception to be, he has no
intention of detracting from the preeminence of Mary’s sanctification.
The key question remains:Was she sanctified at the instant of receiving her rational soul, whenever that was? This is crucial because the real
crux of the solemnly defined dogma of the Immaculate Conception is
that Mary was cleansed from sin from the first moment of her existence
as a person. If Thomas held that she was immaculate at the instant of her
soul’s infusion, then he could be seen as having basically defended the
dogma-to-be. His objection based on delayed animation would fade to
insignificance. But his answer in the Sentences excludes this interpretation,
for he argues bluntly that Mary could not have been free from original
sin “in ipso instanti infusionis.”7
The reason Aquinas gives becomes a standard in his arguments against
the immaculate conception in subsequent works: Everyone needs to be
redeemed by Christ. If Mary’s soul had been immaculate at the time of
infusion, she would not have needed that redemption. He can see no way
of saying that she was always free from original sin without claiming that
she therefore was free from the necessity of redemption.Thus, along with
delayed animation, we have another reason why Thomas rejects the
doctrine, and it would seem then that in the Super libros Sententiarum, his
first systematic treatise, he has clearly staked his position against the
immaculate conception of Mary.
The next work we can look at is his Compendium of Theology, a brief
doctrinal synthesis, which he probably wrote in Rome from 1265 to 1267.8
He treats the question of Mary’s sanctification in chapter 224.9 Again
Thomas argues that Mary was “free from every stain of actual sin—not only
of mortal sin but of venial sin.” That she was moreover sanctified in utero can
be deduced from the fact that this privilege, according to the Scriptures, was
7 Cf. Scriptum super Sententiis, solutio II to quaestiuncula III of this question, 99.
8 Torrell, The Person and His Work, 164–65, 328.
9 Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, trans. Cyril Vollert, SJ (St. Louis: Herder, 1947),

263–66.

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given to two lesser saints—Jeremiah and John the Baptist—and it would not
have been fitting for Mary to have been less favored than they. Here Aquinas
again argues against the immaculate conception, first, because her conception, unlike Christ’s, resulted from the commingling of the sexes, and
second, as he has already said, because an immaculate conception would
have precluded the need for redemption.
Following along in temporal sequence there is Aquinas’s Quodlibetal
Questions. It is in the sixth of these, written sometime in the years 1268
to 1272 at Paris, that Aquinas treats the immaculate conception. In question 5, article 1, he asks, “Whether it is licit to celebrate the feast of the
Conception of Our Lady?”10 His answer is no, because the privilege of
being conceived without original sin belongs to Christ alone. He uses the
reference of Romans 5:12 to Adam—“in quo omnes peccaverunt”—as
proof that original sin is universal. Then he gives the universal redemption argument: Even Mary needed Christ’s redemption. As he does in
various places, he references 1 Timothy 2:4, which speaks of Christ’s
salvation being for all.
What he says next is significant and unique to the Quodlibetals.Thomas
admits that though the Roman liturgy and most local churches do not,
there are some churches that do have a feast in honor of the Conception
of Mary. Sensitive to the theological authority of the liturgy, he must offer
possible reasons for why such a feast is permitted.The first is that, given
that Mary was sanctified in the womb but after conception, one does not
know when exactly the sanctification happened, so one simply celebrates
the sanctification at the conception.The other, similar, explanation is that
some believe that Mary was sanctified immediately after conception or
animation—“cito post conceptionem”—so they celebrate her sanctification at that point. Neither of these does Thomas advance as his own view
but only as possible excuses for those who celebrate the feast.
Thomas’s treatment of the immaculate conception in the Summa Theologiae deserves special treatment as it summarizes his thought clearly. In the
tertia pars, which was written in Paris and Naples from 1271–1273, question 27 concerns “The sanctification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” In article one, Thomas asks, “Was Mary sanctified before birth?”11 Consistent
with his earlier arguments he answers in the affirmative. His basic argument—identical to the one employed in the Compendium—is that she must
have been sanctified in the womb because others were and a priori Mary
10 Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibetal Questions, ed. Raymundi Spiazzi, OP (Rome: Mari-

etti, 1956), 122–23.
11 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, “Our Lady”; cf. also Torrell, The Person

and His Work, 147.

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surpasses everyone in dignity and holiness. However, in the answer to the
fourth objection, which is basically that a person could only be sanctified
after birth, Aquinas specifically implies that Mary could only have been
sanctified post animationem—“after the animation nothing prevents the
child from being sanctified in the womb.”12 This passage and the one in his
Commentary on the Sentences mark the only two times that Thomas explicitly treats the question of sanctification at the instant of animation, and in
both he denies it.
In article two,Thomas asks whether Mary could have been sanctified
before animation. His answer, of course, is no.The first reason is that an
embryo (today’s terminology) without a soul cannot be sanctified. The
second reason is his familiar appeal to the universal redemption of Christ.
Thomas sees the issue as a clash between an article of faith—everyone
needs Christ for salvation—and then, a mere theological opinion. Logically, he is correct to reject the latter if it contradicts the former. But the
real question is whether there is truly a conflict between the two. Only
later in the history of theology—especially with Blessed John Duns
Scotus—would it become clear how the two views could be reconciled.
In the reply to the second objection, Thomas’s view of the matter is
perhaps most clearly crystallized:
If the soul of the blessed Virgin had never contracted the stain of original sin, it would have diminished the dignity of Christ in his capacity
as Savior of all. . . . But the blessed Virgin did indeed contract original
sin, but was cleansed from it before her birth.13

Here Aquinas clearly states, in a work that represents a summary of his
teaching and at a period that is late in his career, that Mary’s soul, at least
for a time, incurred original sin. This point is of prime importance
because there are some Thomists who will try to finesse his various statements on the matter to argue that he never said this, but only that her
flesh before animation had some relationship to original sin.
It is in two of his late works, On the Angelic Salutation and On the
Psalms, both written around the same time as the tertia pars, that Aquinas
presents his highest Mariology. In the former work he avows that Mary
“was free from sin more than any other saint.”14 Moreover she is higher
than the angels on three accounts—her fullness of grace, her closeness to
12 ST III q. 27, a. 1, ad 4.
13 ST III, q. 27, a. 2, ad 2.
14 Thomas Aquinas,The Three Greatest Prayers, trans. Lawrence Shapcote, OP (London:

Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1937), 30–32.

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God, and her purity.Yet even here he states very clearly that Mary was
conceived in original sin, though not born in it. Only Christ is conceived
without it.
In his commentary on Psalm 45 (46 according to the Hebrew version)
in On the Psalms, Aquinas relates the verse “God is in that city, she will
not be overthrown, and he will help her at the dawning of the day” to
Mary. She will not be “overthrown,” Aquinas says, because of her sinlessness: “The Virgin never sinned, neither mortally nor venially.”15 Aquinas
makes a reference here to the Song of Songs 4:7: “You are all beautiful,
and there is no stain of sin in you.”That God “will help her at the break
of day” is seen as a reference to Mary’s sanctification in the womb. It is
perhaps fitting in this, his last statement on Mary’s sanctification, that
Aquinas speaks of her sinlessness as going back to her mother’s womb
but, for the only time, makes no reference to his belief in her conception
in original sin. He certainly does not defend the immaculate conception
here but his silence on the issue is thought-provoking. Perhaps it shows
a certain hesitancy in Thomas to oppose a doctrine that would, after all,
be shown to be true.
From this survey of Aquinas’s thought on the immaculate conception
it is clear why there is a notion among theologians that he made a
mistake on this dogma-to-be. Yet there have been thinkers over the
centuries, albeit a minority, who held that his teaching is actually
compatible with the doctrine.While it is clear that Thomas did not affirm
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as now formulated, they claim
that he did not deny it either. We think this is an incorrect judgment,
although it is true that Aquinas’s opposition to the doctrine is vaguer and
less forceful as he matures than is often supposed. In a sermon authenticated as genuine by Louis Bataillon, OP, of the Leonine Commission, but
yet unpublished,Thomas had this to say about the Blessed Mother:
The human race was sick.“Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am sick; heal
me” (Ps. 6:3).This sickness is a consequence of sin, and God wanted to
apply the remedy of medicine. He acted as good physicians do. When
good physicians want to offer their medicines, they use them first upon
the worst sicknesses, that they might gain renown. The whole human
race was sick, and in woman it would seem as if wholly corrupt,
whence Solomon said: “I have found woman more bitter than death”
(Eccl 7:26). Hence the Lord, wishing to offer his good medicine,
offered it first to woman, that through woman it might be given to
others. Whence in Sirach we read, “the speedy coming of a cloud is a
medicine for all” (43:24), and Solomon said in his prayer: “The Lord
15 Ibid.

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said that he would dwell in a cloud” (1 Kgs 8:12). In a cloud, that is, in
the Blessed Virgin, is the salvation of the human race, because it was
healed through her. Hence it says in Sirach: “in me is all the grace of
the way and of the truth, in me all hope of life and of virtue” (24:25).
And since the medicine for all is in that cloud, that is, in the Blessed
Virgin, therefore the Apostle says: “let us then with confidence draw
near the throne of grace, that we may obtain grace and mercy in
seasonable aid” (Heb 4:16).16

This is certainly high Mariology and, at the same time, gives the basis for
Mary’s role in our salvation.
The chief ambiguity that Thomas’s defenders seize upon is based on
his view of delayed animation.Thomas argues repeatedly that sanctification at conception is impossible because there is no soul there to be sanctified. As the scholastic maxim has it: “A thing must be before it is
such.”17 For Aquinas, the real issue, therefore, is whether there was an
immaculate animation. Was Mary sanctified at the moment she came to
be as a human person? The defenders claim that Aquinas never denied
this. But this ignores the obvious. First of all, on every occasion that
Thomas uses the delayed animation argument—in the Commentary on the
Sentences, the Compendium, and the Summa—he also uses the universal
salvation argument; furthermore, he uses only the universal salvation
argument in the Quodlibetals and in the Angelic Salutation. It was this argument therefore that he saw as the most cogent and relevant against the
doctrine, not the easily disposed with delayed-animation argument.
Furthermore there are the two occasions where Aquinas explicitly states
that Mary could not have been sanctified at the instant of animation—in
the Sentences and in the Summa (III, q. 27, a. 1). Although he says it only
twice, nowhere does he say otherwise. Moreover there is the remark
quoted above from the Summa that Mary’s soul was tainted, which obviously could only have been the case at animation. It is clear that at widely
differing occasions during his career, both at the beginning and near the
end,Thomas held the same opinion against immaculate animation.
A more subtle argument employed by Thomas’s defenders on this issue
involves admitting that Thomas taught that Mary contracted original sin.
One then denies that he meant the stain of original sin, or original sin
strictly speaking, rather some kind of tendency toward it from which she
was instantaneously delivered. Fr. Urban Mullaney, writing at the height of
neo-Thomist fervor in the 1950s, makes this argument in a lengthy article
16 We wish to thank Peter Kwasniewski of Gaming, Austria, for this timely quota-

tion and translation.
17 Heath, “The Immaculate Conception,” 111.

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called “Mary Immaculate in the Writings of St.Thomas.”18 He says that, in
Thomas’s thought, “there could be in one instant in time (1) the infusion
of the soul into the fetus . . . ; (2) some order to sin in the person constituted
. . . ; and (3) grace excluding sin from the person.”19 The rub is clearly in
point two:What is “some order to sin”?20 Fr. Mullaney argues that this is
the tendency toward having original sin without actually having it.
We would argue that this view is actually an exercise of neoThomism—a development of Thomistic theology of the immaculate
conception, but not a real exegesis of any text of Thomas. For Aquinas,
original sin is essentially two-sided: the formal aspect, which is the deprivation of original justice; and the material aspect, which is concupiscence
or the fomes peccati (tinder of sin).21 He never speaks of any third
element—a “tendency” or an “order” to sin. In his writings you either
have original sin or you do not. Moreover and to be especially blunt, he
argues that Mary had the fomes peccati even after her sanctification,
although it was rendered harmless by grace and Divine Providence.22
Aquinas clearly never said that Mary had only a tendency to original sin
but not the thing itself.
Fr. Mullaney’s rationale is nonetheless worthwhile as a Thomistic
account of the immaculate conception, if not literally Thomas’s account.
One can argue like this: Mary was redeemed preventatively, according to
the dogmatic definition.The preventative element means that one cannot
say that she ever contracted original sin. But, on the other hand, she was
redeemed: She is not some kind of pure creature outside the line of Adam.
The latter view, which existed in the Middle Ages, would entail that Mary
was not in the order of redemption. Indeed it was probably specifically
what Thomas had in mind when opposing the doctrine.23 Now it is
commonly understood that the advantage Scotus had over Aquinas was
that the Franciscan was able to envision anticipatory redemption for Mary.
18 Urban Mullaney, OP,“Mary Immaculate in the Writings of St.Thomas,” Thomist

17 (1954): 428–68.
19 Ibid., 449, emphasis added.
20 It is also an issue whether Thomas ever said that Mary’s sanctification happened

“in one instant of time” with her animation, as Mullaney asserts. In fact he seems
to say the opposite on a number of occasions. In the Quodlibetals, he mentions
this possibility as an excuse to justify the localized liturgical celebration of the
conception of Mary, but he does not present this as his own view.
21 cf. ST I–II, q. 82, a. 3 and q. 81, a. 3, ad 2.
22 ST III, q. 27, a. 3. Only after the conception of Christ in her womb was she thoroughly cleansed of the fomes peccati.
23 Lawrence Shapcote, OP, “St. Thomas and the Immaculate Conception,” quoted
in Heath, “The Immaculate Conception,” 113.

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But we would submit that this may not have been Aquinas’s major block
to accepting the immaculate conception. He did, after all, see Mary as
being sanctified in anticipation of her role as Christ’s mother. Rather, his
trouble was in explaining this logical problem: How could someone never
tainted by sin have been redeemed from sin? Indeed this is the real puzzle about
the doctrine on which Mullaney’s explanation, perhaps, sheds some light.
To avoid the two extremes—on the one hand, that Mary incurred
original sin and, on the other, that she did not need to be redeemed—it
seems necessary to say that Mary had some “order” to sin—that she
would have incurred original sin had God not intervened “in view of the
merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race” (cf. Ineffabilis Deus).
Something like this was the solution of the commentator Cajetan, who
argued that Thomists could hold for the immaculate conception so long
as they posited a “debt” of sin, as opposed to the stain or guilt of sin, in
Mary.24 Though not universally accepted, this was one way of explaining
how someone who never incurred sin could yet be redeemed from it.
Whatever the solution, one must acknowledge that the grace Mary had
was a grace of redemption and not something utterly unlike what the rest
of the Christian faithful receive.
In favor of those who defend Thomas, one can say that he is certainly
not abundantly clear in his opposition to the immaculate conception. As
noted, on the crucial issue of immaculate animation he makes statements
in only two places, and in neither place is it his central point. It is not one
of his articles in the Summa.There, his two major articles deal with sanctification before and after animation, but not really at animation.Although
he touches on it in an objection, it is noteworthy that he does not face
this crucial question head on. There is thus some justification for saying
that Thomas never really treats of the immaculate conception, if one
means by this that he did not directly, in a self-consciously central argument, address whether Mary was sanctified from the first moment of her
existence as a human person. At most, he did this in his Commentary on
the Sentences, but this was an early work and carries less authority than his
later, more independent pieces.
There is even a measure of confusion in St.Thomas’s arguments, which
is remarkable in this clearest of all theologians. For instance, there are several
places where Thomas denies the possibility of the immaculate conception
but says nothing of animation. Since sanctification at conception of the
24 E. D. O’Connor, “Immaculate Conception,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7,

2nd ed. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 2003), 334. Cajetan,
Commentarium, in Opera omnia Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Leonine ed. (Rome:
Typographia Polyglotta, 1903), 291–92.

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vegetable soul is metaphysically impossible for him, these are rather weak
statements. Why does he not ask the question more pointedly? Then
again, there are three places—the Compendium, the Quodlibetals, and On the
Angelic Salutation—where he argues that not Mary but only Christ was
conceived free from original sin. If conception is relatively unimportant
compared to animation, why does he take pains to guard Christ’s “immaculate conception”?25 Also, the two arguments that he uses against the
immaculate conception in one article of the Summa—from delayed
animation and from the universal need for redemption—are really arguments from entirely different, mutually independent perspectives. One is
metaphysical and the other is soteriological. It seems that these could have
been treated separately.
One then can say, at least, that Thomas does not argue strenuously and
clearly that Mary was conceived in original sin. He has a notion that she
had to be redeemed and that she was sanctified in the highest fashion. He
does aver that her soul was tainted for a time, but he only says this
obliquely. Even as he approached the topic, he seemed to shy away from
it, perhaps sensing the truth of the dogma even as his mind could not
quite find its way clear to embracing it.
It would in fact have been extraordinary for Aquinas to have argued
for the immaculate conception. The very notion had hardly presented
itself coherently by his time.Although we can say that their writings were
compatible with it, none of the Western Fathers spoke specifically of an
immaculate conception. Nearly all the masters of Aquinas’s day were
opposed to the doctrine—Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Lombard,Alexander of Hales, Albertus, Bonaventure.26 Although, as mentioned above,
there was in some places a feast of the Conception of Mary, this was a
case of piety preceding theology in embracing a doctrine. In Aquinas’s
time the immaculate conception was still very much a concept whose
theological formulation was undeveloped. It is perfectly possible that his
opinion would have been more positive had his career coincided with a
later stage in doctrinal development.
Conceding that St.Thomas did not argue for the immaculate conception, what can be said in a positive way concerning his theology of Marian
25 It would seem that he is being inconsistent in his use of the term “conception.”

Perhaps on the occasions he mentions Christ’s conception and in the instances
where he speaks of Mary’s conception without mentioning her animation, he is
using the term broadly to connote the whole process of coming to be as a
person, which would include conception strictly so-called and then animation.
In any case, he does not make extremely clear distinctions in these passages.
26 Shapcote, “St.Thomas and the Immaculate Conception,” 113.

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sanctification? Aquinas held that Mary was cleansed from original sin in
her mother’s womb and that she yet was redeemed by Christ. This is in
fact the teaching of the Church as it was later developed if one includes
the caveat that Mary was “cleansed” in an anticipatory way, not from any
stain of sin actually incurred. On the specific question of whether she was
sanctified in the very instant of her coming to be as a human person he
seems to have erred, but even then his opposition is stated very mildly
and he seems not to have focused his intellectual abilities in attacking the
idea of an immaculate animation. On the issue of the immaculate
conception, Aquinas is not perfect, but given the freedom he had in the
absence of a dogmatic definition and the preponderance of theological
argumentation against the doctrine, his is a thought-provoking and
largely beneficial contribution.
II. Another Problem: Understanding What
the Immaculate Conception Means
To appreciate the meaning and significance of Mary’s immaculate
conception, the theologian or the preacher also needs to understand
several faith issues before looking at this datum of faith.They are: original justice, the consequences of original and personal sin on the human
person, and sanctifying and actual grace (helping grace or assisting grace
is the terminology used by St. Thomas Aquinas).27 With these thoughts
in mind, Mary’s immaculate conception shines out even more clearly.
“Original justice” and “resplendent grace” are phrases used in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church to describe the state of the first parents,
Adam and Eve (nos. 376, 54). Based upon the tradition of the Church’s
teachers and following St. Thomas Aquinas,28 it consisted of sanctifying
grace, a mind and will totally in union with God such that the body, the
emotions were in sync with the will and intellect because the spiritual
faculties, being in union with God through sanctifying grace, kept perfect
control of the emotions and instincts for food and sex. In addition, the
first parents possessed freedom from suffering and death and from any
slavery to Satan or the devil.
After the fall from grace through an act of disobedience, the protoparents lost sanctifying grace (CCC, no. 399), original justice (CCC, no.
400), and the freedom from pain and death (CCC, no. 405). Further, they
became more influenced by the devil’s temptations (CCC, no. 407).
However, they and their offspring were promised a Redeemer who would
27 Cf. ST I, q. 62, a. 2; Summa contra Gentiles IV, ch. 72b.
28 Cf. ST I–II, q. 82, aa. 1–4.

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save them from the chaos but on his terms (CCC, no. 410). However,
there are outcomes, the first of which affects the human mind:
The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such
truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but
also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin.
So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that
what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful. (CCC,
no. 37, quoting Pius XII, Humani generis, no. 2)

Likewise, the other consequences of original sin are summarized in
the Catechism. Control of the body by the spirit is shattered, union with
others and lower created beings of nature is broken, and death comes into
play (no. 400). Humans now, unlike Adam and Eve’s prior situation before
their sin, are drawn toward sin (CCC, nos. 401, 403, 405) and also the
natural powers of intellect and will are wounded in some way (CCC, no.
405). Finally, the devil himself has acquired a certain but limited dominion over man (CCC, no. 407).
To be freed from all these consequences takes a lifetime, a physical
death with a probable period of suffering in purgatory, and a final resurrection from the dead.While in this life sanctifying grace is given to children and to adults according to the measure of divine providence.
Human nature has a disposition for grace, according to St.Thomas, even
though it contains the wounds of original and personal sin. Sin diminishes this capacity for grace in human nature. This why St. Thomas
reminds us that:
Since all children are equal at baptism, because they are baptized not in
their own faith but in that of the Church, baptism has the same effect
for all of them. Adults, on the other hand, who approach baptism
through their own faith, are not equal. Therefore some receive more
and others less of grace of new life, just as the one who draws more
closely receives more warmth from a fire, even though the fire, of itself,
radiates its heat to all in equal fashion.29

Baptism does not restore the original justice of Adam and Eve but gives
sanctifying grace to those disposed to receive it. Human nature is not all
that it should be, thereby limiting grace’s reception especially because of
the inclination to sin, among other defects, flowing from original sin.

29 ST III, q. 69, a. 8, Summa Theologiae, vol. 62, ed. and trans. James J. Cunningham,

OP (Oxford: Blackfriars, 1975).

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Immaculate Conception Primarily But Not Exclusively:
A Reality of Nature
The numbers in the Catechism that touch upon the Immaculate Cconception of the Virgin Mary are numbers 490–494. In them we find the ancient
and venerable teaching concerning Mary’s fullness of grace (no. 490), her
redemption at her very conception (no. 491), her freedom from every
personal sin (no. 492), and her constant obedience to the will of God (no.
493).These numbers reflect the living tradition of the Catholic Church.
However, theologians need to make more precise what the Immaculate Conception is in itself.While it is not the same reality as the fullness
of grace, as will be shown, it was a gift that came together with the fullness of grace. It is similar to confession and absolution of sins, that is, at
the same time, forgiveness of sin and the infusion of grace come together,
yet they are distinct outcomes. However, the restoration of grace may or
may not be as intense before one needed the sacrament to alleviate grave
sin, depending upon one’s disposition. There are degrees of sorrow and
degrees of penance.
Likewise, in Mary, her Immaculate Conception and her fullness of grace
are also distinct yet completely united. For the sake of piety, the many
saints, such as St. Maximillian Kolbe, and the people of God in general
conflate the two. Strictly speaking, however, Blessed Pius IX did not
solemnly define Mary’s fullness of grace. He had no need to do this because
it had never been seriously denied over the centuries. Even today, modern
Scripture scholars remind us that the Greek word “kecharitomente” of
Luke 1:28, spoken to Mary by the angel, which is translated either as
“highly favored” or “full of grace,” is only used once in the entire Bible!
In order to understand the significance of both the Immaculate
Conception and the fullness of grace of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is also
necessary to reflect, therefore, on the meaning of grace, and why human
nature in its weakness creates an obstacle for and limits any possible
increase of grace.
The word “grace” has many distinctions with its modifiers: sanctifying
or divine life, actual grace, such as inspirations of the mind and heart. It
can also mean any favor from God not immediately connected with the
supernatural order. So being created is a grace, a gift of the natural order.
Now, for sanctifying grace to come into adult souls at baptism, there has
to be a disposition, namely, the desire to receive the sacrament, divine
faith, and sorrow for one’s past sins.The more one has sinned personally
prior to baptism, the less suitable one becomes for receiving an abundance of either actual graces or sanctifying grace itself, unless God has

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Basil Cole, OP & Francis Belanger, OP

deeply prepared someone with actual graces prior to baptism and that
person has cooperated with them. In fact, the natural good of human
nature is an aptitude for grace, but sin, original or personal, while never
totally corrupting it completely, still diminishes this aptitude.30 Even after
baptism the tendency to sin, called “concupiscence” since the Council of
Trent (using St. Augustine’s terminology) and in the present Catechism
(no. 405), still exists.This fact means that grace’s hold on the soul is in a
weakened state.Thomas reminds us again that:
since our free will is of itself fickle, and its fickleness is not removed by
the habitual grace of our present life, it has not the power even when
restored by grace to keep itself immovably in the good, though it has
the power to choose the good. For often the choice lies within our
power, but not its realization.31

Some Confusions
From time to time, many Catholics have thought that the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was the virgin birth of Jesus or
Mary’s birth as a virgin, which are mistakes and blunders of great proportion. But there seems to be another miscalculation on the part of the
theologians and perhaps even an imprecise heading of Catechism of the
Catholic Church as well. Both seem to conflate the Immaculate Conception with Mary’s fullness of grace; but, they are really distinct aspects, as
nature and grace or even potency and act.
The clearest way to pinpoint the problem is to reread the definition of
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, to see exactly what Blessed
Pius IX taught:
We declare, pronounce, and define: the doctrine which holds that the
most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, and in view of the
merits of Christ Jesus, the Savior of the human race, preserved immune
from all stain of original sin, is revealed by God and, therefore, firmly and
constantly to be believed by all the faithful.32

It has been common knowledge that when he came to the Latin word
“declaramus,” Blessed Pius IX burst into tears and afterward the sun came
30 Cf. ST I–II, q. 85, aa. 1–2; De Anima, 14, ad 17.
31 ST II–II, q. 137, a. 4, Summa Theologiae, vol. 42, eds. and trans.Anthony Ross, OP,

and P. G.Walsh, OP (Oxford: Blackfriars, 1966).
32 Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, emphasis added, cited in The Christian Faith in the Doctri-

nal Documents of the Catholic Church, eds. and trans. J. Neuner, SJ, and J. Dupuis, SJ
(New York: Alba House, 1996), no. 709, emphasis added.

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out and shone through Bernini’s window and cast a beam of light on
him. Blessed Pius goes on to say that if anyone thinks otherwise “he has
suffered shipwreck in the faith . . . separated from the unity of the Church
. . . incurs penalties established by law.”
What is interesting from a theological point of view is that he leaves out
something that he could have easily put into the definition, that is, he could
have said:We declare Mary “free from all stain of original sin and given the
fullness of grace” (emphasis added).Was this lacuna a theological mistake on
his part? Was this purposely left out so that theologians could debate the
subject? It is interesting that he leaves it out of the definition but calls the
Immaculate Conception “a singular grace and privilege.” However, he does
not explain the nature of this “singular grace” for clearly it is not simply
sanctifying grace, nor a charism, nor an actual grace, but an external or
negative grace, namely, a prevention of evil together with the infusion of
sanctifying grace.That this grace is a certain “fullness” is a separate idea but
based upon Mary’s immaculate human nature.
As St.Thomas will say from time to time,“grace presupposes nature.”33
But nature is fallen except in Mary (and Jesus). Adam and Eve were also
created without original sin. They committed the original sin. In addition, humans willingly sin, limiting the infusion of grace by their lack of
a deep disposition or their desire for union with God, which can have
many degrees in this life and the next.The purpose of understanding and
living the spiritual life is to reorder nature’s disorderly conduct and bad
habits in order to grow in a desire for God and the things of God.When
this process continues, then individuals become more and more open to
God’s grace and intimacy with him and thereby more readily do his
manifest will with his help.
Original sin is first of all the absence of sanctifying grace that merits
heaven, and secondarily, the negation of what was original justice,
namely, a freedom from suffering, death, dullness of mind, and emotional
and instinctual upheavals out of control with reason. How original sin is
transmitted from person to person is undefined, the Church’s official
teaching merely indicates that it is transmitted at human generation and
divine infusion of the soul. So, since Mary is spared from original sin,
then her Immaculate Conception is the negation of a negation to her
very nature, and therefore, must imply a perfect human nature with a
certain receptivity to and abundance of sanctifying grace with a potential for growing in sanctifying grace beyond our imaging. In fact, Mary
suffered and died, though neither teaching is solemnly defined but is
33 Cf. ST I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2 and q. 2, a. 2, ad 1.

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taught by the liturgy and the ordinary magisterium. How can it be that
since Mary’s death was not defined the ordinary magisterium of the
papacy taught it?
When the encyclical that solemnly defined Mary’s Immaculate
Conception was promulgated, titled Munificentissimus Deus by Pius XII,34
within the document itself the Holy Father affirms that Mary died four
different times.35 He also refers to the liturgy’s witness twice on this
matter,36 and gives the teaching of St. John Damascene,37 St. Germanus
of Constantinople,38 Amadeus of Lausane,39 St. Francis de Sales, and St.
Alphonsus Liguori,40 who all agree that Mary died. He makes their
teaching his own. Further, it should be noted that the definition of her
Immaculate Conception does not say she received the fullness of grace,
but it is understood to be so as we can see from the first paragraph of
Ineffabilis Deus of Blessed Pius IX where he speaks of Mary’s “fullness of
holy innocence and sanctity.”41
The Catechism teaches quite clearly that Mary’s Immaculate Conception implies the fullness of grace when it says:
The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is
“enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from
Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the
merits of her Son.” The Father blessed Mary more than any other
created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to
be holy and blameless before him in love.” (no. 492, emphasis added)

Yet, strictly speaking, only possessing the privilege of the Immaculate
Conception does not yet make her all holy. Something else is needed:
The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the AllHoly” (Panagia) and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as
though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.” By
the grace of God, Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life
long. (no. 493, emphasis added)

34 See www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12MUNIF.HTM.
35 See nos. 5, 14, 20, 40 of the encyclical letter.
36 See nos. 17, 18.
37 See nos. 21, 22.
38 See no. 22.
39 See no. 28
40 See no. 35.
41 See www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9ineff.htm.

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Here we can say that the particular “grace of God” that kept Mary free
of every personal sin had to be intrinsic: actual graces throughout her life,
which were given in light of something else, namely, her supreme mission
on earth as the Mother of God, together with her fullness of grace, which
would be the expression of what theology calls “gratia elevans.”42 The
Catechism further remarks:
The Holy Spirit prepared Mary by his grace. It was fitting that the
mother of him in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily”
should herself be “full of grace.” She was, by sheer grace, conceived without sin as the most humble of creatures, the most capable of welcoming
the inexpressible gift of the Almighty. It was quite correct for the angel
Gabriel to greet her as the “Daughter of Zion”: “Rejoice.” It is the
thanksgiving of the whole People of God, and thus of the Church,
which Mary in her canticle lifts up to the Father in the Holy Spirit
while carrying within her the eternal Son. (no. 722, emphasis added)

Again, we find a hint of why the “Immaculate Conception” is to be
distinguished conceptually from the “fullness of grace.” The second
sentence in this number teaches that her immaculate conception was a
sheer grace that prepared her to receive the fullness of sanctifying grace
when it says she was “the most capable of welcoming the inexpressible
gift of the Almighty.”
A final section of the Catechism also gives us another deep insight into
the definition when it says:
In Mary, the Holy Spirit manifests the Son of the Father, now become
the Son of the Virgin. She is the burning bush of the definitive theophany. Filled with the Holy Spirit she makes the Word visible in the
humility of his flesh. It is to the poor and the first representatives of the
gentiles that she makes him known. (no. 724, emphasis added)

Now, the next question jumps out: Could Mary have been filled with
the Holy Spirit without the Immaculate Conception? It does not seem
possible according to St. Thomas. First, in his Summa we find an objection concerning the meaning of “fullness of grace”:
It would seem that the fullness of grace is not proper to Christ. For
what is proper to anyone belongs to him alone. But to be full of grace
is attributed to some others; for it was said to the Blessed Virgin (Lk
1:28): “Hail, full of grace”; and again it is written (Acts 6:8): “Stephen,
42 De veritate, 18, 1, ad 1.

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Basil Cole, OP & Francis Belanger, OP
full of grace and fortitude.”Therefore the fullness of grace is not proper
to Christ.43

Like so many of his objections, they seem to close the door to certain wellestablished beliefs or ideas. But then,Thomas surprises us in his reply:
The Blessed Virgin is said to be full of grace, not on the part of grace
itself—since she had not grace in its greatest possible excellence—nor
for all the effects of grace; but she is said to be full of grace in reference
to herself, that is, inasmuch as she had sufficient grace for the state to
which God had chosen her, that is, to be the mother of his only begotten. So, too, Stephen is said to be full of grace, since he had sufficient
grace to be a fit minister and witness of God, to which office he had
been called. And the same must be said of others. Of these fullnesses
one is greater than another, according as one is divinely pre-ordained
to a higher or lower state.44

This fullness of grace is unique to Mary because it is received by someone whose capacity for the reception of sanctifying grace is not limited by
original sin. Original justice, in part, is restored in her very nature.And even
though this fullness of grace and being “filled with the Holy Spirit” are also
profoundly distinct yet united, still, Mary would continue to grow in grace
in ways we cannot and will never imagine or grasp, being outside the
bounds of created intelligence. In other words, Mary’s Immaculate
Conception is like an active potency, in that she was immediately and
instantly capacitated to receive a superabundance of grace. She is like a
potential galaxy that grace filled and deepened again and again with new
splendors as she cooperated with the providence of God and the actual
graces that came her way. She lived a simple life externally, seldom spoke
and then very simply from what we read in the Gospels. What went on
within her depths only saints can fathom but it did not mean a lesser love,
compassion, or closeness to all of us but, strangely, brought her closer to us
even now since that is the nature of mercy, the consequence of divine love
in anyone’s soul on earth or in heaven.
St. Thomas Aquinas was neither a defender nor a dissenter from the
Immaculate Conception, as we have seen, as it was eventually defined and
explained in the encyclical, though some of his insights helped along the
way to formulate the Church’s teaching. He did come close to one aspect
of the consequence of her immaculate conception, that is, the truth of
43 ST III, q. 7, a. 10, obj 1, Summa Theologica, vol. 2, trans. Fathers of the English

Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947).
44 ST III, q. 7, a. 10, ad 1.

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491

Mary’s fullness of grace, even though he argued against certain misunderstandings of the Immaculate Conception of his day. He had this to say
about her fullness of grace in his sermon On the Angelic Salutation:
Grace overflowed into her body.The Blessed Virgin was full of grace as
regards the overflow of grace from her soul into her flesh or body. For
while it is a great thing in the saints to be endowed with grace that
their souls are holy, the soul of the Blessed Virgin was so full of grace
that it overflowed into her flesh, fitting it for the conception of God’s
Son. Thus Hugh of St.Victor says, “the Holy Spirit had so kindled in
her heart the fire of divine love that it worked wonders in her flesh,
yea, even so that she gave birth to God made man.” And St. Luke says,
“For the Holy One that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of
God” (Lk 1:35).
Grace overflows from her onto all mankind. So full of grace was the
Blessed Virgin, that it overflows onto all mankind. It is indeed, a great
thing that any one saint has so much grace that it is conducive to the
salvation of many; but it is most wondrous to have so much grace as to
suffice for the salvation of all mankind. Thus it is in Christ and in the
blessed Virgin. So in every danger you can find a refuge in this same
glorious Virgin: “A thousand bucklers” (that is, protections from peril)
“hang therefrom” (Can 4:4; RSV = Song 4:4). Likewise, you may
obtain her assistance in every virtuous deed; “In me is all hope of life
and virtue.”
She is therefore, full of grace, surpassing the angels in that plenitude.
For this reason she is rightly called Mary, which signifies that in herself
she is enlightened (“The Lord will fill thy soul with brightness,” Is
58:11) and that she enlightens others throughout the world. Thus she
is compared to the sun and the moon.45

Today, as a result of Pius IX’s solemn definition, we know what Thomas
did not know from the official teaching of the Church of his period in
history—namely, that none of this plenitude of grace would have been
given to her, nor have grown intensely within her, had she not been
created together with the great gift of the immaculate conception, preventing her from receiving the wounds of original sin.
This is why no other human can receive the fullness of grace no matter
how well they prepare themselves, even though the crosses of life can
purify someone from many effects of original and personal sin. If anyone
cooperates with the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and more intensely acts
from divine charity, he or she will become more apt to receive an increase
of sanctifying grace from Jesus Christ. But Mary, unlike the rest of all
45 The Aquinas Catechism, St. Thomas Aquinas (Manchester, NH: Sophia Press,

2000), 165–66.

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492

Christians, did not need any healing or purifying graces at all, being
preserved from the “stain of original sin,” and never throughout her life
committed a venial sin.Venial sin also diminishes the capacity to grow in
sanctifying grace.46 Therefore, her advance in grace occurred each moment
of her life on an upward swing, while our advance, given the fact that the
just person sins seven times a day, is more erratic and gradual, if not downright slow. Even after confessing one’s sins in the sacrament of penance,
someone may not necessarily receive the degree of grace he or she originally possessed because of the lack of intense sorrow for sin and desire to
reform. Some few Christians, however, may actually return to grace with a
greater intensity because of their deep sorrow for sin, caused by their cooperation with actual grace.47
It is absolutely beyond doubt that the first and supreme reason Mary was
given such a privilege of the Immaculate Conception and the fullness of
grace was so that she would be readied for her own salvation and the
mission of the divine maternity directly for ministering to Christ. Second,
her role in the salvation of humankind was included in possessing such a
privilege.Third, one should also deduce that she was given these gifts for
her husband, St. Joseph, to enable their marriage to transcend all states of
life and be “the summit from which holiness spreads all over the earth.”48
In the work by John Paul II, Vita consecrata, he develops some of these ideas
in number 28 (section title,“The Model of the Virgin Mary”):
Mary, called “All beautiful,” is the human person who reflects most
perfectly the divine beauty. . . .The relationship with Mary, which every
Christian has from union with Christ, is even more pronounced in the
life of consecrated persons and necessary for their individual and
community progress. . . . She is the sublime example of perfect consecration since she belongs completely to God and is totally devoted to
him. . . . Her life teaches unconditional discipleship and diligent service. . . . She is the model and mother of consecration to the Father,
union with the Son, and openness to the Spirit. . . . A filial relationship
to Mary is the royal road both to fidelity to vocation and to effective
help for living it fully.

Could God have given anyone, other than Mary, the fullness of grace
without the Immaculate Conception? To answer this question, a few
distinctions are in order.
46 De Malo, 7, 2, ad 4, 6, and 16.
47 Cf. ST III, q. 89, a. 2.
48 John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1989),

no. 7.

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493

God gives a superabundant and quasi-infinite grace to Christ as Head
of the Church; he gives to Mary a fullness appropriate to her high dignity
as Mother of God and Mother of the Church; and he gives to Stephen
or any other great saint a fullness appropriate to his place in the Mystical
Body. Mary’s fullness was “uniquely full” because her being did not have,
and never had, any impediment whatsoever to the reception and
outworking of grace. This fits into Thomas’s schema, whereby Christ’s
soul is singularly full of grace because of the unique grace of the hypostatic union; then one can add, Mary’s grace is singularly full for a created
person because of the unique grace of the Immaculate Conception,
which consecrates her person as entirely in its own order of being as the
grace of union consecrates the human nature of Christ in its order of
being; and finally, the other members of the Church are given grace
according to the measure of the giving of Christ—first Apostles, then
prophets, martyrs, and so on.
So, according to St.Thomas, God can do anything that is not a contradiction.49 However, the degree of sanctifying grace given to human
beings after initial grace is normally given to those who are so disposed
to receive a higher degree of grace.50 While it is a fact that God gives a
greater intensity of grace to some rather than others, after initial grace
much also depends on a person’s cooperation with the actual graces of
the Holy Spirit preparing the person for a “greater measure of grace.”51
Writing about the question of sanctifying someone in the womb,
Thomas clearly taught that Mary was given that “extraordinary privilege of
grace,” as was Jeremiah and John the Baptist.52 However, as we have already
seen, this was not precisely the immaculate conception that rectified the
human nature of Mary in an extraordinary way. Nevertheless, as we have
seen,Thomas holds that Mary was given the fullness of grace as well as her
sanctification in the womb. Neither Jeremiah nor John the Baptist were
given this fullness. Had Aquinas known the solemn definition of the
Immaculate Conception, he would have been more consistent in teaching
about Mary’s ability to possess the fullness of grace, since sanctification in
the womb does not, of itself, prevent human nature from being wounded
in some ways.Yet,Thomas did see clearly that Mary possesses grace almost
beyond measure, sometimes referred by other theologians as “almost infinite”: Believers should be grateful for this insight.
49 Cf. ScG I, ch. 84; ScG II, chs. 22–23.
50 Cf. ST I–II, q. 112, aa. 2–4.
51 Ibid.
52 Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, ch. 224.

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Basil Cole, OP & Francis Belanger, OP

III. Conclusions
Thomas could have deduced a convenientia argument for the immaculate
conception without in any way derogating from the primacy and salvific
universality of Christ’s redemptive work. But he would have had to
contradict Bernard of Clairvaux and Albertus Magnus, among many
others at the time. Moreover, Thomas might have seen that Mary could
be perfectly full of grace only if she were perfectly free of all impediments
to grace, for otherwise she would have necessarily failed in regard to
some cooperation with grace, however minor or venial the issue.Thomas
had the premises in his hand, but he failed to find the syllogism due to a
lack in scientific discovery and the tradition against the immaculate
conception as it was understood at the time.
Further, if our observations are correct, then Mary’s fullness of grace
stands out with such a bright light in Aquinas that it becomes easier to
understand her role as Mediatrix, Redemptrix, and Advocate. It is grace that
ultimately merits, redeems, and underpins one’s relationship to the Church
in heaven. If merit follows graced action and Mary is so filled beyond
understanding with grace, then her moral actions become a deep source
such that she merits not only for herself but also congruously for the rest
of humankind. It also makes sense of why both Jesus and Mary conquered
sin, death, and the devil—but she was a subordinate and secondary cause of
our salvation under her son, since she is both preredeemed and does not
possess the infinite grace of the hypostatic union.
Finally, the Immaculate Conception outfitted her being so richly as to
be a perfect mirror image of her relationship to the Trinity as Mother of
the God-Man, and also, to attain union or intimacy with the Father and
the Holy Spirit that no other human person can reach. Finally, it becomes
even clearer why she can be called the bride of the Holy Spirit by appropriation since she is full of his presence from her very beginning. N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 3 (2006): 495–514

495

St. Thomas, Norman Kretzmann,
and Divine Freedom in Creating
L AWRENCE D EWAN, OP
Còllege Dominicain
Ottawa, Canada

M Y PROJECT here is to review and criticize the position of the late
Norman Kretzmann concerning Thomas Aquinas on God’s freedom to
create or not to create. I will first recall the Kretzmann position; second,
defend St.Thomas; and third, suggest one fundamental reason why Kretzmann made the mistake I see him as making.
As is well-known, St.Thomas taught that God exercised free choice in
willing to create rather than not to do so.1 Kretzmann, considering the
1 ST I, q. 46, a. 1 (294a40–42):“Speaking unqualifiedly, it is not necessary for God

to will something other than himself ” (absolute loquendo, non est necesse Deum
velle aliquid nisi seipsum). Cf. I, q. 19, a. 10, and I, q. 19, a. 3.That St.Thomas did
not consider this an easy topic, though it is knowable by natural reason, is
suggested by his use of it to help explain God having revealed a truth about
himself that surpasses the capacity of natural reason, namely, that he is a Trinity
of persons. He says:
knowledge of the divine Persons was necessary . . . in one way, so that
one might judge rightly concerning the creation of things. For through this,
that we say that God made all things through his Word, there is excluded
the error of those holding that God produced things by necessity of nature.And
by the fact that we hold that there is in Him a procession of love, it is
shown that he did not produce creatures because of any neediness [non propter
aliquam exigentiam], nor on account of some other extrinsic cause, but
because of the love of his own goodness. Hence also, Moses, after he said:
“In the beginning, God created heaven and earth,” adds:“God said: Let
there be light!” in order to show the Word of God; and after, he said:
“God saw the light, that it was good,” in order to show the approval of
the divine Love; and similarly with the other works. (ST I, q. 32, a. 1,
ad 3 [210a44–b11], emphasis added)

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Lawrence Dewan, OP

overall presentation of Thomas on the divine will and creation, judged
that Thomas should rather have said, based on some of Thomas’s own
principles, that God’s willing to create was an absolutely necessary act of
divine willing, just as God’s willing his own being is absolutely necessary.
He thus thought he saw a tension in Thomas on this subject.2
Kretzmann’s Criticism
How does Kretzmann argue for this position? Let us begin with a statement from his last book, on creation.3 In his treatment of Summa contra
Gentiles 2.23, where Thomas teaches that God, as regards his action relative to creatures, acts not by natural necessity but by judgment or choice
of the will (per arbitrium voluntatis), Kretzmann says:
Aquinas’s own presentation of God’s willing of other things, particularly in Book I, [note 56] and his acceptance of the Dionysian principle (“Goodness is by its very nature diffusive of itself and [thereby] of
being”) commits him to a necessitarian explanation of God’s willing
things other than himself. [note 57] I favor such an explanation, which
sees God’s creating as his (freely)4 acting through the necessity of his
nature (considered as perfect goodness), and which confines the
creator’s free choice among alternatives to the selection of which ones
2 Kretzmann’s 1991 paper on the “general problem” (cf. below, note 8) begins with

references to Augustine and the question whether the “why?” of God’s creating
is “goodness” or “he willed”; Kretzmann thinks he sees this tension in Thomas;
the possibility of such a “tension” of answers in Augustine was presented by H.
Cousineau, SJ, “Creation and Freedom: An Augustinian Problem: ‘Quia voluit’?
and/or ‘Quia bonus’?” Recherches Augustiniennes 2 (1962): 253–71.
3 Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in
Summa Contra Gentiles II, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).
4 Lest the word “freely” confuse us, I would note, first, that I will mean by “free”
willing in this essay the freedom of choice. Kretzmann here is speaking of what
Thomas carefully describes as a willing by “natural necessity” (cf. ST I, q. 82, a.
1); the will is unable to exercise any control over such an act (ibid., ad 3). In ST
I, q. 19, a. 3, he calls God’s willing his own goodness “absolutely necessary.” Kretzmann’s use of the term “freely” about such willing seemingly relates to the use
of the term “liberum voluntatem,” “free will,” about such willing, in keeping with
the expression of Augustine in De civitate dei 5.10 [PL 41.152], referred to by
Thomas in De veritate 24.1, ad 20; as Thomas explains in ST I, q. 82, a. 1, ad 1,
this refers only to lack of coercion. Cf. also Thomas, Contra doctrinam retrahentium
c. 13 (written in 1271): “Libertati enim voluntatis non opponitur confirmatio
voluntatis in bono: alioquin nec deus nec beati liberam voluntatem haberent.
Opponitur autem ei necessitas coactionis ex violentia vel metu procedens” (To
freedom of the will the confirmation of the will in the good is not opposed:
otherwise neither God nor the blessed would have free will. However, coercive
necessitation whether coming from violence or from fear is opposed to it).

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to actualize for purpose of manifesting the goodness that is identical
with his being. As I see it, God does (freely) create through the necessity of his nature, and freely chooses among alternatives in deciding
what to create. (126)

The footnotes send us to Book 1 of the Summa contra Gentiles, and so also
to The Metaphysics of Theism, Kretzmann’s commentary on that work.5
Note 56 sends us to Summa contra Gentiles 1.75.643,6 76.647, and 81.682.
Now, all of these passages merely make the point that God wills himself and
other things in a single act of will. Without wishing to minimize the
subtlety of Thomas’s treatment of the divine simplicity, one can still say that
due attention to the distinction between the principal object of the divine
will and derivative objects, as taught in Summa contra Gentiles 1.74–75,
should serve to eliminate difficulty for divine freedom merely based on the
unity of the act.7 Note 57 sends us to Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics
of Theism (ch. 7, sect. 7–9) for an “at length” argument on the matter, and
to two 1991 papers.8 All we have here in this The Metaphysics of Creation
5 Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in

Summa Contra Gentiles I, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
6 The third number in each of these references indicates the paragraph in the ScG

edition by C. Pera, P. Marc, and P. Carmello (Rome/Turin: Marietti, 1961).
7 We can see that Kretzmann’s unhappiness with Thomas’s own teaching on God’s

free choice is related to the question of the object of the act. The creatures are
included in the object, not as principal object, but as associated secondary
objects, because of the divine intellect’s assessment of them, not as principles of
God’s goodness, but as likenesses of God’s goodness. Cf. ScG 1.82 (699).That is
why it would be a monstrosity for God’s will to bear upon them other than as
mere convenientia: they cannot be willed as necessaria. (ed. Pera, column A, lines
45–51.) Kretzmann, on the other hand, writes:
This single act of will—God’s sole, eternally occurrent, all-encompassing volition—has already expressly been shown to be necessary and
choiceless as regards its principal object, even if it is free in an attenuated sense. How, then, could any act identical with that act count as an
act of choice? As we go further into Aquinas’s account of God’s willing of creatures, it’s becoming only harder to see how choice can enter
into God’s volition at all. Aquinas acknowledges the difficulty. (Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism, 220)
He goes on to quote the introduction to ch. 81 (682). Of course, Aquinas is quite
satisfied with his own answers to the difficulty which he goes on to propose.
Evidently, Kretzmann will not be. (We might note that if Kretzmann is going to
attribute any choice to God, he is certainly going to have to face the same difficulty,
or give up the divine simplicity. However we will not pursue that issue here.)
8 These are in Scott MacDonald, ed., Being and Goodness:The Concept of the Good
in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

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text is the single-act doctrine plus the “Dionysian principle,” namely,
“bonum diffusivum sui” doctrine.9 Certainly, the one-act doctrine does
not do much for Kretzmann’s case, and it seems to me that everything
hinges on what to make of Thomas’s technique of using “bonum diffusivum sui.” Since Kretzmann himself, on this matter, sends us to The Metaphysics of Theism, let us review what he does there.
In the section of his discussion where he addresses Thomas’s explanation of the divine goodness as principle, giving worth to the existence of
other things, Kretzmann begins by underlining that the other things
cannot be “means.” He notes that Thomas himself stresses this. But this
leads Kretzmann to the view that God all by himself would seem to be
“the best of all possible worlds.” Accordingly, when Kretzmann directly
confronts the question of why the divine goodness would constitute a
reason10 for the existence of things other than God, it takes the form:
what motivates God to choose not the world consisting solely of himself, the absolutely perfect being, but, instead, a world consisting of the
absolutely perfect being accompanied by a universe swarming with
countless other beings, none of which—not even any that is perfect in
its kind—is or could be absolutely perfect? I find Aquinas’s attempts to
answer this question unconvincing. (222, emphasis added)

As an indication of an “unconvincing” answer, he here quotes (and it is
certainly the right passage to refer to) Summa contra Gentiles 1.82 (699);
to me it seems perfect.We read:
Now, though the divine will is not determined relative to its effects,
nevertheless it is not necessary to say that it wills none of them, or that
it is determined by something outside towards willing them: for since
the apprehended good determines the will as its proper object, and the
divine intellect is not extraneous to his will, since both are his essence,
then if the will of God is determined by his intellect towards willing
1991): “A General Problem of Creation: Why Would God Create Anything at
All?” 208–28; and “A Particular Problem of Creation: Why Would God Create
This World?” 229–49. It is the first of these that concerns our question.
9 Cf. for example, ST I, q. 5, a. 4, obj. 2 and ad 2. On “bonum diffusivum sui” and
Thomas, cf. my paper, “St.Thomas and the Causality of God’s Goodness,” Laval
théologique et philosophique 34 (1978): 291–304.
10 ScG 1.86 (ed. Pera, no. 718) teaches that the reason for God willing other things
diverse from himself is his own goodness, his goodness being willed by him as
an end, and the others willed by him as items ordered toward that end. In my
aforementioned paper, on “the causality of God’s goodness,” I have presented
Thomas’s conception of the good as what has the nature of what merits reproduction: cf. especially p. 301.

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something, that will not be a determination of the divine will brought
about by something outside. For the divine intellect apprehends not
only the divine act of being [divinum esse], which is his goodness, but
also other goods, as was shown earlier. [1.49] It apprehends these as
likenesses of the divine goodness and essence, and not as its principles.
And thus the divine will tends towards them as items harmonizing
[convenientia] with his own goodness, but not as items necessary for his
own goodness.

Kretzmann quoted this in part, but I am quoting it as a whole.The reason
I do so is that Kretzmann never seems to have appreciated the doctrine
of the mode of goodness of the object, a doctrine Thomas is observing
as to will as found in us, and obviously needed if the notion of will as
applied to God is to have any proper content.
I say that the passage from Thomas is the right Summa contra Gentiles
text to quote as to God’s willing of other things, but I do not see it as an
“answer” to Kretzmann’s question, for the simple reason that I do not
believe Thomas would ever have accepted that question as truly à propos.
I will return to this at the end of the essay.
What we have in the above Summa contra Gentiles text is the very same
line of thinking that we will have in the Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, a. 3 as
regards the impossibility of God’s willing of creatures being anything but
a choice. It seems to me inevitable.
Thomas’s Argument
Though Kretzmann in The Metaphysics of Theism is commenting on
Summa contra Gentiles 1, he refers to Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, a. 2, which
he presents as “more pointed evidence” [225] of the necessity that
production follow from goodness [“bonum diffusivum sui”].That is, the
supposed tension in Thomas’s doctrine would find question 19, article 2
at odds with question 19, article 3. Accordingly, I wish to focus on the
sequence of discussions in question 19.The very least one can say is that
Kretzmann has in front of him Thomas himself designing a questionnaire
in which the doctrine of self-diffusion is used immediately prior to I, q. 19,
a. 3, the doctrine of the inevitability of freedom, that is, no absolute necessity,
in that self-diffusion, in the case of God producing other things (free selfdiffusion as the metaphysically necessary judgment of the issue).Thomas can
hardly be accused of “perhaps inadvertantly” (Kretzmann’s expression)11
11 This expression is actually used by Kretzmann in The Metaphysics of Theism, 223,

where the discussion bears on ScG 1.87 (724), that God’s goodness “is the cause
of God’s willing; and it is also the very willing itself.” In that text,Thomas is making
the point that, if one wishes to speak of a “cause” of God’s willing, one can only

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confusing the two doctrines. Thomas obviously sees the presentation as
entirely coherent, and the only possible coherent account.
Let us review, then, the sequence of discussion in question 19.The topic
is the divine will. God has come on the scene, so to speak, in the Summa
Theologiae I as an existing maximal being, cause of being and goodness and
of every perfection for every being: Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3: the Fourth
Way.The nature of his being, perfection, and goodness has been presented
as far as the human mind can do so.12 Moving into divine operation, questions 14–18 present the divine intellect and associated considerations.Thus,
all is prepared for consideration of the will.
The first article of question 19 asks whether there is will in God, and
this is affirmatively answered on the basis of God’s having intellect. Will
accompanies intellect. However, this is not simply asserted. The accompanying of intellect by will is explained through a comparison with natural things, things that lack knowledge. The point is to spotlight the
presence of inclination in things.13 A natural being, if it has not a form that
is natural for it, tends toward it, and if it has that form, reposes in it. (Thus,
Thomas regularly introduces the proposition, when speaking of appetite
in the most general way, that every being has appetite for its own perfection.)14 This then is proposed as a law of being, and it is seen to be fullfilled at the higher level that is the intellectual nature, the nature having
intellectual knowledge. Just as the natural thing has being and perfection
through form, so the intellectual nature, through intelligible form, sees

refer to the divine goodness itself, and since that is identical with the divine act
of will, this is hardly a “causality” that threatens the divine perfection.There is no
reason to say that this implies a necessitarian explanation of God’s willing other
things, unless one thinks that a doctrine of thoroughgoing divine simplicity
implies it.That is not, in fact, Kretzmann’s argument. He rather sees in the above
sentence from ScG 1.87 an “echo” of “bonum diffusivum sui,” and for him
“bonum diffusivum sui” is a doctrine of necessary creation. Why, I ask, would
identifying God’s goodness with his willing constitute an “echo” of “bonum
diffusivum sui” anyway? Perhaps he takes it as meaning that God’s goodness is
essentially the willing of creatures.This is to ignore the diversity of notions whereby
we make our approach to God. God is, indeed, identical with the choosing of
creatures, and that is why the willing of things other than God is suppositionally
necessary (cf. ST I, q. 19, a. 3): given that he does so choose, he must eternally so
choose, because he is unchangeable (something that pertains to essence as such).
12 Qq. 3–11, with qq. 12 and 13 on the human knowing and naming of God.
13 Cf. ST I, q. 80, a. 1; also I, q. 60, a. 5 (ed. Ottawa, 366a50–53) and the entire
discussion of natural inclination in the intellectual nature presented in I, q. 60, a.
1–5.
14 Cf. ST I, q. 5, a. 1; I, q. 48, a. 1 (ed. Ottawa, 304a4–5).

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goodness.15 Accordingly, it is presented as seeking the goodness that it
perceives itself to lack, and reposing in the goodness that it properly
possesses. All this relates to the doctrine that through sense and intellect
the soul is in a way all things:16 That is, the intellectual nature has a capacity to share in infinite goodness.17 All this natural inclination, attending
on the apprehension of goodness, pertains to will.18
Remarkably, the body of I, q. 19, a. 1 merely concludes that since God
has intellect, he has will (though it does add that just as the divine act of
understanding is identical with the divine act of being, so also is the
divine act of willing).19 The implications of its approach are seen only in
the replies to the objections.Thus, in the ad 2 we see that his willing is a
love of his own goodness and a delighting in that goodness. Similarly,
though a will is a “moved mover,” the picture we get in the ad 3 is that
it is only the divine goodness itself that “moves” the divine will (and since
both the goodness and the will are identically the divine essence, there is
really no “this moves that”).20 This primary focus on will in God as
divine love and delight for the divine goodness is quite different from the
approach to the question of God’s having will in the earlier De veritate.
There, will was presented as relating one thing to another, and especially as
having free inclination in that regard, the example being the architect free
to build or not to build, and to build this or that.21
Accordingly, in Summa Theologiae I, question 19, the next article asks
whether God wills things other than himself. It is worth underlining that
15 Cf. ST I, q. 59, a. 1.
16 ST I, q. 14, a. 1; I, q. 80, a. 1, and so on.
17 Cf. ST I–II, q. 2, a. 6 (723b33–724a5); also I, q. 54, a. 2 (334a18–29).
18 ST I, q. 60, a. 5: “[T]he natural inclination in those things which lack reason

demonstrates the natural inclination in the will of the intellectual nature.”
19 This is a backward reference to ST I, q. 14, a. 4, where it was argued that God’s

esse and essence and intelligere are identical, and thus that to attribute understanding to God does not posit any multiplicity in the divine substance.
20 The doctrine that God is by his very own essence good, taught in I, q. 6, a. 3, is
referred to in all three replies to objections here in I, q. 19, a. 1.The doctrine of I,
q. 6, a. 3 should be stressed.Where the good of creatures was seen in their substantial being, in the accidents related to their perfect operation, and in their order to
another as to an end, God is seen as essentially his own act of being, and what
others have through accidents, he has essentially; most important, he is not ordered
toward anything else, as to an end, but rather he is the ultimate end of all things.
He has every mode of perfection as identical with his own essence. No wonder it
is a question whether he could possibly will anything other than himself!
21 De veritate 23.1; cf. also Scriptum super Sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi 3.27.1.4
(ed. Moos, 868, nos. 74–75), where inclination is presented in terms of order
toward others.

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this is not yet the question: Is God’s willing of the things the cause of the
existence of those things. That question will be posed only in article 4.
In article 2, the focus is on the sort of willing to be attributed to God, as
regards its objects. It has been seen that the object of divine willing is the
divine goodness or essence.22 Is there any room for, any appropriateness
of, a willing of things other than the divine goodness? Just as there was
controversy attached to the very idea of the divine intellect considering
anything but God himself, so also the parallel question must be raised as
regards the divine willing.23
How does Thomas handle this? We see a replay of the technique used
in article 1.24 Thomas begins with the simple conclusion: God wills not
only himself but [the things] other than himself. He then immediately
refers us to the just seen comparison of the will in intellectual natures to
the inclination in natural things.We read:
For the natural thing does not have merely a natural inclination with
respect to its own proper good, that it acquire it when it does not have
it or that it repose in it when it has it, but also that it diffuse [diffundat]
its own proper good into other things, according as this is possible.
Hence, we see that every agent, inasmuch as it is in act and perfect,
produces something similar to itself.25
22 I had written that the primary object was seen to be the divine good; however,

though I, q. 19, a. 1, ad 3, does speak of the “principal” object, in considering
things other than God, in speaking of God himself it speaks simply of his own
goodness as being “the object of the divine will”; so also, in the ad 2, the will of
God always has “its object,” since it is essentially identical with it. In I, q. 19, a. 3
(133a8–17), God’s own goodness is called the “proper object” of his will, and, by
implication, the “proper and principal object.”
23 Cf. ST I, q. 14, a. 5. Notice the similarity in the types of objection proposed there
and here in I, q. 19, a. 2. There is no real parallel to I, q. 19, a. 2 in the De veritate. The Ottawa edition suggests De veritate 23.4, but this is on a somewhat
different topic: whether the divine will necessarily wills everything that it wills.
De veritate 23.1, as we said, collapses into a unity the question of God having will
with God willing other things.
24 In Scriptum super Sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi 1.45.1.2, it is clearer that
Thomas is speaking of God willing the things other than himself that actually
exist.This makes clearer the distinction between the queries: (1) Does God will
other things? And, (2) Is his willing the cause of these things? I might repeat that
from the outset (ST I, q. 2, a. 3), God is presented as the maximal being, cause of
being and goodness and every perfection for all beings.
25 Cf. De Potentia 2.1:
The nature of any act whatsoever is that it communicate itself inasmuch
as this is possible. Hence, [text reads unde; but I suggest enim: that is, For]
each agent acts inasmuch as it is in act; but to act is nothing else but

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This is the starting point of the consideration. It is immediately and with
maximum brevity attributed to will: “Hence, this also pertains to the
intelligibility of will: that the good which someone has, he communicate
to others, according as this is possible.”26 Next, the validity of going on
to attribute this to will as found in God is stressed and explained: “And
this pertains most especially to divine will, from which, by some likeness,
all perfection is derived.”We might ask here whether we are not anticipating the later conclusion that God’s will is the cause of things; perhaps
this is not so, since that conclusion is about efficient causality, and what
we have here seems to be more a matter of exemplar causality; thus,
perhaps the anticipation is relative to I, q. 44, a. 3: God as the exemplar
cause of all. Of course, in I, q. 6, a. 4 we were told that he was the exemplar cause of all goodness, which is very much identified with perfection:
cf. I, q. 6, a. 3.27
And at last we come to the actual application of the principles to the
question at hand:
Hence, if natural things, inasmuch as they are perfect, communicate
their good to others, much more does it pertain to the divine will that
it communicate its good to others through likeness, according as this is
possible.Thus, it wills both itself to be and the others: but itself as end,
whereas [it wills] the others as ordered towards the end, inasmuch as it
becomes [inquantum condecet] the divine goodness for others to participate in it.
to communicate that through which the agent is in act, to the extent that
this is possible. Now, the divine nature is maximally and most purely act.
Hence it too communicates itself inasmuch as this is possible. Thus, it
communicates itself by mere likeness to creatures, as is clear to all: for
every creature is a being in virtue of likeness to it.
Kretzmann does not refer to this text in either of his books; it clearly would have
confirmed him all the more in his conviction. It certainly shows that Thomas has
no hesitation in using the doctrine of “bonum diffusivum sui.” Everything really
turns on the question: How possible is divine willing of others? I believe Thomas
has demonstrated that it can only be a choice.
26 In her April 26, 1995, obituary in the New York Times, Ginger Rogers, the dancer
and entertainer, who died the previous day at age eighty-three, was reported as
having once been asked by an interviewer what personal quality she was proudest of; she replied: “The most important thing in anyone’s life is to be giving
something.The quality I can give is fun and joy and happiness.This is my gift.”
27 Note ST I, q. 59, a. 1, where the whole hierarchy of inclination is presented as
emanating from the divine will. In connection with ST I, q. 59, a. 1, note I–II,
q. 79, a. 2, s.c., where there is a reference to Augustine, De Trinitate 3.4 (PL 43,
873):“[T]he will of God is the cause of all movements” (used by Thomas as referring to the movements of the liberum arbitrium of the human being).

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This ends the body of the article. Clearly, there is no hesitation on
Thomas’s part in presenting this conception of what belongs to divine
will most of all instances of inclination: It is to communicate the divine
goodness by likeness as much as possible.
However, there is more to the conclusion than that. There is already
the careful specification of the nature of the objects of the willing. In
willing himself to be,28 God is willing as one wills an end (and for the willing of the end precisely as end, there can be no question of choice: ST
I–II, q. 13, a. 3). In willing things other than himself to be, however, he is
willing them “as ordered towards the end” [ut ad finem]:This does not yet
determine explicitly the mode of his willing of those things, that is,
whether it is a necessary willing or an optional willing.That is only made
explicit in the next article. However, it expresses the measure of the possibility mentioned in the expression “as much as possible”: What is the
measure of the “goodness” of such an object? The stage is thus set for that
next article, especially when one takes into consideration the word condecet, that is, it is becoming for the divine will to so will.29
If the conclusion of this article 2 is about the very nature of will and
especially of the divine will, it is also true that the conclusion of article 3
is about that same nature. In article 3 Thomas demonstrates that the only
possible mode of the divine willing of another thing is that of entirely free
choice. The inclination to communicate goodness is characterized by
“according as this is possible.” In what way is the divine willing of other
things possible? What does the nature of will, as we experience here in this
world, tell us about that? Just as we used natural things and created will
to approach the character of the divine will as regards the inclination to
communicate the divine goodness, so also here we base our judgment on
will as we know it in creatures.30
There are six objections introducing this discussion, surely a sign of
difficulty and of some debate in the schools.The article’s query is:Whether
28 While it is true that God “wills himself to be,” I would suggest that the best

conception of his willing of himself is as “loving himself ” and “delighting in his
own being and goodness.” “Willing himself to be” might be taken causally, and
that would be quite wrong. Cf. ST I, q. 41, a. 2.
29 On this assessment of the divine willing of creatures as decentia, cf. my paper:“St.
Thomas, God’s Goodness, and God’s Morality,” in The Modern Schoolman 70
(1992): 45–51.
30 On the justification of this procedure of natural theology, cf. Aquinas, Scriptum
super Sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi 1.2.1.2 (where the obj. 2 and the ad 2 speak
explicitly of distinguishing in God what pertains to the operations of intellect
and will) and 1.2.1.3 (a later, c. 1265, addition to Thomas’s Scriptum super Sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi ).

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God wills by necessity whatever he wills? Thomas is going to say that God
wills himself by absolute necessity, and that all his willing is necessary, speaking of suppositional necessity (the supposition being that he does so will, and
the necessity deriving from the fact that the divine will is immutable);31
however, his willing of things other than himself is not by absolute necessity, but rather is voluntary.32
The body of this article is much longer than the two preceding it.The
distinction between absolute necessity and suppositional necessity shapes
the reply. We have first the explanation of this distinction. What characterizes absolute necessity? This pertains to the discussion of an essential
nature.Thus, it can be judged by the relationship of the terms that express
the situation. With absolute necessity, the predicate is included in the
notion of the subject (in this way, it is necessary that a human being be
an animal), or else the subject is included in the definition of the predicate (in this way, a [whole] number is odd or even).33 This is contrasted
with the proposition: “Socrates is seated.” There is no absolute necessity
31 As one can see from I, q. 19, a. 3, obj. 1 and ad 1 (where the point depends on

divine eternity), immutability pertains to the divine will in virtue of its identity with
the divine substance (cf. I, q. 14, prologue [ed. Ottawa, 91a16–19]); thus, Thomas
discussed eternity and immutability in qq. 9 and 10; cf. especially I, q. 9, a. 1.
32 We might note the scriptural passage that Thomas selects for the sed contra argument. Where does he find an authority for the divine freedom with respect to
God willing things other than himself? He goes to St. Paul, Ephesians 1.11,
speaking of the creator:“who brings about all things according to the counsel of
his will” (qui operatur omnia secundum consilium voluntatis suae). (The Greek
runs: “ta panta energountos kata tén boulén tou thelématos autou” [emphasis
added]. The Bible de Jérusalem translates: “qui mène toutes choses aux gré de sa
volonté” [emphasis added]. The Revised Standard Version has: “Who accomplishes
all things according to the counsel of his will” [emphasis added].Thomas is quoting the Latin Vulgate. [At ST II–II, q. 51, a. 1. Thomas notes the equivalence of
the Greek word boulé and the Latin word consilium.]) The word consilium, counsel, is the key here.Thomas argues in the sed contra that what we do by counsel of
the will, we do not do by necessity of the will.The crucial role of counsel in the
conception of the will moving itself, that is, freedom of choice, is clearly brought
out in De Malo 6.The argument is very definite.We read: “Cum igitur uoluntas
se consilio moueat, consilium autem est inquisitio quedam non demonstratiua
set ad opposita uiam habens, non ex necessitate uoluntas se ipsam mouet (Since,
therefore, the will moves itself through counsel, and counsel is not a demonstrative investigation but rather an investigation that can arrive at opposite conclusions, the will does not set itself in motion in a necessary way; lines 377–381).
Cf. my paper “St.Thomas and the Causes of Free Choice,” in Acta Philosophica 8
(1999): 87–96. In the ST, cf. I–II, q. 14, a. 2, on counsel as bearing strictly on
what is “ordered towards an end” and not on the end as such.
33 These examples relate to the two modes of per se predication presented in In
Post. An. 1.10 (Leonine lines 25–76), which paraphrases Aristotle at 73a34–40.

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there, since he can be seated or standing or lying down. However, it can
be a case of suppositional necessity: supposing that he is seated, it is necessary that he is seated while he is seated.34
This now is applied to the divine will. Any power has a necessary relation to its proper object: It is of the very nature of the power that it tend
toward its proper and principal object—sight to color.35 And the divine
will has such a relation to the divine goodness: This is its proper object,
and is thus willed by God the way we humans necessarily will happiness.36
We should underline the way it is still the very nature of will, as we
can observe it in humans, that is the means of making the judgment
about the divine will.What we mean by “will” in God must be based on
what we mean by “will” in us.What we call will in us must exist by priority of God, and in a higher way.37
We continue with the same application. God wills things other than
himself as items “ordered towards the end” that is his own goodness. It
belongs to will as such that what is ordered toward an end, but is not
necessary for the existence of that end, is not willed of necessity: It is an
object of willing that as an object is intrinsically optional. If the end is a
leisurely promenade, you do not necessarily make use of a horse.
Thus, it is quite evident that for God to will such an object, that is, an
intrinsically optional object of divine will, with absolute necessity would be
against the very nature of will. If something other than God is willed by God,
the willing must have the character of optional willing relative to such an
object.This follows from the perfection in itself of the divine goodness, infinite in its own intrinsic perfection, and from the nature of will.
34 The distinction between absolute and suppositional necessity is seen in Thomas’s

Expositio libri Peryermenias 1.15 (ed. Leonine, t. 1*1 [Rome/Paris: Commissio
Leonina/Vrin, 1989], lines 17–46) commenting on Aristotle, 19a23, where we
are told that suppositional necessity is based on the principle that the same thing
cannot simultaneously be and not be.
35 Cf. the intellect to being; sound to hearing: ST I, q. 5, a. 2.
36 As I said, it is in I, q. 19, a. 1, ad 3, that we see that it is the divine goodness that
is the object of the divine will. In ScG 1.74 the doctrine is that the essence of
God is the “principal item willed,” the “principal object.” However, one should
also notice ScG 1.72, on God having will, where, in no. 625, one sees the necessity that in God the object of appetite and the appetite itself must be identical:
The reason is that only God himself as will can proportionately correspond to
the divine goodness.
37 Cf. ST I, q. 13, a. 2, on how good is said on God. “Will” is clearly expressive of
perfection, as indicated by the arguments in I, q. 19, a. 1; also, even though it can
express a relation to creatures, it is said of God as pertaining eternally to him: I,
q. 13, a. 7, ad 3.

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Of course, we have seen that God does will things other than himself.
Thus, there is a suppositional necessity in his so willing, given the immutability of God.
The doctrine can be summarized by focusing on the contrast between
divine being and goodness, on the one hand, and created being and goodness, on the other.As soon as this distance is grasped, it is clear that, relative
to the divine will, created goodness can only be an optional object. The
grasping of the distance is had in the successive considerations expressed in
[A] the Fourth Way proof of God’s existence [ST I, q. 2, a. 3], [B] the
conclusion that God is the act of being itself subsisting [I, q. 3, a. 4], [C] that
thus in God preexist the perfections of all things eminently [I, q. 4, a. 2],
[D] that he is thus the source of all goodness [I, q. 6, a. 4]. Indeed, [E] his
perfection, that is, his goodness, is unqualifiedly infinite [I, q. 7, a. 1].
Hence, as regards the doctrine that it belongs to the divine will, most
of all, to communicate its good through likeness as much as possible
[1.19.2], it seems clear that adequate attention must be paid to the
expression “as much as possible.” How possible is such a willing? It is only
possible in the mode of choice. A necessary act of willing a creature
contradicts the nature of willing and divine willing.
Thus, far from there being a “tension” as between the doctrines of
1.19.2 and 1.19.3, 1.19.3 completes the picture of divine willing, using
the very same line of investigation that obtained in 1.19.1 and 1.19.2.
God is “all for” communicating his goodness to another being, and does
so in the only possible way, namely, by freely choosing to do so.
The formality of Thomas’s approach is remarkable. He is not yet even
addressing the question of whether the divine willing of other things is
the cause of those other things. He is focusing strictly on the nature of
willing. Since our immediate interest is Kretzmann’s issue, which turns
on the nature of the will as presented in 1.19.2, I will leave aside discussion of 1.19.4.38
The Root of the Kretzmann Problem
As we said at the beginning of the essay, in Kretzmann’s presentation of
Thomas, God seems to be the “best possible world,” and the question
Thomas is supposed to be answering becomes why God chooses to add
less perfect being to such a situation.Thus, Kretzmann has Thomas viewing God as “choosing . . . a world consisting” of himself and less perfect
beings.The obvious point is that such a unified object, a world including
38 I might note, however, that if Kretzmann were right, one could not say that the

divine will is the cause of the things God creates; the divine nature would be the
cause: cf. the very helpful ST I, q. 41, a. 2.

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God and creatures, is not in Thomas’s doctrine at all, and certainly not an
object of divine choice.
Such a choice would have to be undertaken in the light of an end that
would include under it the divine good and the created good as ad finem
items.39 In that picture,“the good world” would be a third item to which
divine good and created good would relate (even as parts). Such a threefold picture of the analogy of the good between creatures and God is
explicitly rejected by Thomas.40
Kretzmann speaks of Thomas’s God as “surrounded [emphasis added] by
uncountably many variously incomplete likenesses of itself ” (Metaphysics of
Theism, 223).These likenesses Kretzmann conceives of as supposedly “suitable companions” (223, original emphasis) for the absolutely perfect being.41
These views are quite foreign to Thomas’s own conception of the
creator and his product. Though Kretzmann speaks of God as being
absolutely perfect and as perfect goodness, it seems to me that he is not
following out the implications of such unqualifiedly infinite being,
perfection, goodness.To conceive of a world consisting of God and creatures is to place God within an order with those creatures.This is rejected
by Thomas. God is not really related to creatures. Kretzmann characterizes Thomas’s God by the word “accompanied”:
what motivates God to choose not the world consisting solely of
himself, the absolutely perfect being, but, instead, a world consisting of
the absolutely perfect being accompanied by a universe swarming with
countless other beings. (Metaphysics of Theism, 222, emphasis added)

The word “accompanied” ties together the two parts of the object of
choice Kretzmann has in mind, and requires criticism in the light of the
doctrine that the divine transcendence leaves room for no real relation of
God to a creature.42 As Thomas says:
since God is outside the entire order of the creature, and all creatures are
ordered to him, and not the converse, it is evident that creatures are
39 The object of choice is what is ad finem, that is, ordered toward an end; the ulti-

mate end in no way falls under choice: ST I–II, q. 13, a. 3.
40 Cf. ST I, q. 13, a. 5 (ed. Ottawa, 81a15–37). Notice that the order is from crea-

tures to God, as to that in which the perfections of all things preexist in an
excelling way.
41 They are, of course, suitable products: ScG 82 (699):“divina voluntas in illa tendit
ut suae bonitati convenientia.”
42 On the way that God transcends “the whole of being,” cf. my papers “St.Thomas
and Creation: Does God Create ‘Reality’?” Science et Esprit 51 (1999): 5–25; and
“Thomas Aquinas and Being as a Nature,” Acta Philosophica 12 (2003): 123–35.

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really related to God himself, but in God there is not any real relation
to creatures; rather, [such relations are] merely according to notion,
inasmuch as creatures are related to him.43

Creatures accompany God, by virtue of a real relation to him, that is, they
serve him. If one says that God “is accompanied,” it is that real relation in
creatures that one must mean.
Kretzmann’s approach eliminates the difference in the two modes of
object of will, the principle object and the secondary objects, judged to be
secondary because of the nature of the proportion of their goodness to the
divine goodness.44 We see this clearly in Kretzmann’s attributing to Thomas
the idea of a divine choice of a world including God and creatures.45
Though Kretzmann speaks of God as containing all perfection, my
general point is that Kretzmann fails to appreciate the divine transcendence. This makes him misconceive the problem of why creation. He
expresses it in terms of a perfect world and addition or subtraction.
(Thus, a sort of “why spoil it?” question seems implied.)
One might concede that God, if one will, is the best possible “world,”46
and stress that there are no additions possible.47 But likeness to it is possible and worthwhile.
I wish to suggest that the difficulty that Kretzmann has with God’s free
choice in creating is linked to his failure to appreciate Thomas’s doctrine
of being, and so of goodness. After all, the case for free creation turns
entirely on the distinction between that which is good by its very own
43 ST I, q. 13, a. 7 (ed. Ottawa, 84a21–29).
44 The use of the term “proportion” here follows that of Thomas in ST I, q. 12, a.

1, ad 4, concerning the relation of the creature to the creator.
45 The creatures are included in the object, not as principal object, but as associated

secondary objects, because of the divine intellect’s assessment of them, not as
principles of God’s goodness, but as likenesses of God’s goodness. Cf. ScG 1.82
(699). That is why it would be a monstrosity for God’s will to bear upon them
other than as mere convenientia: They cannot be willed as necessaria (ed. Pera,
column A, lines 45–51).
46 I say this by way of concession. It should be asked whether such a “world” problematic is not a technique of approach to reality more appropriate for the calculative mind as contrasted with genuine ontological analysis: cf. Charles De
Koninck, The Hollow Universe (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), ch. 1,
“The World of Symbolic Construction, or Two is One Twice Over.” I consider
it truer to say that God is not part of a “world” at all; on this, see my review article of Kretzmann’s The Metaphysics of Theism, “Review of Norman Kretzmann,
The Metaphysics of Theism,” EIDOS (University of Waterloo) 14 (1997): 111–13.
47 For the impossibility of addition to the unqualified infinite, cf. De Malo 5.1, ad
4 (quoted below in the addendum, note 55), and ST III, q. 10, a. 3, ad 3.

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essence and that which is good only by participation. That Kretzmann’s
approach might leave out this dimension of the doctrine one was already
led to expect by his remarks in The Metaphysics of Theism concerning
Thomas’s presentation of God as the subsistent act of being [ipsum esse subsistens]. Kretzmann quotes with approval Christopher Hughes, criticizing
the statement that God is “being itself (ipsum esse).” Kretzmann says:
that way of putting it suggests that God is nothing but existence, and as
one recent critic puts it, “nothing subsistent could be just existence: a
merely existent substance is too thin to be possible.”48 The identification Aquinas seems to prefer is this: God, or God’s nature, is “his own
being (suum esse)”—that is, the uniquely necessary being of the kind
that ultimately explains all existing.49

The view that “existence” is “too thin” to be a subsisting thing suggests
to me that Kretzmann is limiting the signification of esse to the mere
assertion of the extra-mental situation of the things one speaks of (the
“is” that expresses truth).50 If, on the other hand, one were already
considering the hierarchy of acts of being discovered in the infra-divine
world,51 one would see that there must exist something that is being itself,
subsisting by itself. Far from being “thin,” it is rightly judged by Thomas to
contain eminently the perfections of all things.52 Nor is the assertion true
48 Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God: An Investigation in

Aquinas’s Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 21.
49 Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism, 127–28.
50 ST I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2; also cf. CM 5.9 (895–896). In this sense of “existence,” we

say even of blindness that it exists.
51 Cf. for example, De ente et essentia c. 1 (ed. Leonine, lines 53–63, emphasis added):

But because “ens” is said absolutely and primarily of substances, and
posteriorly and in a somewhat qualified sense of accidents, thus it is
that essentia also properly and truly is in substances, but in accidents it
is in a certain measure and in a qualified sense. But of substances, some
are simple and some are composite, and in both there is essentia; but in
the simple in a truer and more noble degree [ueriori et nobiliori modo], inasmuch as they also have more noble esse; for they are the cause of those
which are composite, at least [this is true of] the first simple substance
which is God.
Cf. also Scriptum super Sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi 2.1.1.1 (second argument
in the body of the article) (ed. Mandonnet, 12–13). Where the act of being is
conceived as itself found in hierarchy, it is not something by nature “thin.”
52 This doctrine is central in ST I. Cf. ST I, q. 4, a. 2 (25a11). God is ipsum esse
subsistens. It is not at odds with the talk about “God’s esse,” but rather is the
appropriate way of describing the peculiar status of God’s esse. Cf. ST I, q. 4, a.
2, ad 3. Nor is it at all absent from ScG 1, on which Kretzmann is commenting:

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that Thomas prefer[s] speaking of God’s nature as “his own being” rather
than as ipsum esse subsistens. Indeed, when, in introducing creation,
Thomas presents God as the cause of being for anything that in any way
is, it is precisely ipsum esse subsistens that is featured.53 It must be appreciated to see why creation can only be a choice.
Addenda
Bernhard-Thomas Blankenhorn, OP, “The Good as Self-diffusive in
Thomas Aquinas,” Angelicum 79 (2002): 803–37.While I find much that
is good in this paper, many things trouble me.
cf. ScG 1.28 (no. 260): For a thing “to be its own esse” is for that thing to be
comparable, as to esse, to the way pure subsisting whiteness is related to things
that merely participate in whiteness. Thus, while in the passage it is never said
that God is ipsum esse subsistens, it is said that God who is his own esse has esse
according to the entire power of being itself (ipsius esse).
53 ST I, q. 44, a. 1. Kretzmann, in The Metaphysics of Creation, 56, has some remarks
about the other arguments in ScG 2.15, but he concentrates on no. 927, the fifth
argument. I would have liked to see a discussion of the first, no. 923, which he
mentions in no. 54. He says that “the version of the thesis” for which it argues
“looks too strong.”This is that “everything that is in any way at all” is from God.
He objects that sin, according to St. Thomas, is in some way. He then argues, in
keeping with what he finds in the notes of the Marietti ed. of I, q. 44, a. 1, of the
ST, that the quocumque modo expression must be limited to all natural beings of any
kind. Now, in I–II, q. 79, a. 2:Whether the act of sin is from God,Thomas uses the
very language discussed by Kretzmann:“Respondeo dicendum quod actus peccati
et est ens, et est actus; et ex utroque habet quod sit a deo. Omne enim ens, quocumque
modo sit, oportet quod derivetur a primo ente; ut patet per Dionysium,V cap. De
Divinis Nominibus,” emphasis added. And Thomas goes on to explain why God is
not the cause of the sin as a sin, that is, as lacking the due order.
The problem text to which Kretzmann refers, which speak of a sin as a thing
“that is in some way,” is Scriptum super Sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi 2.37.1:The
meaning of “thing,” “res,” which is attributed to the act of sin, including the
privation itself, is that of a res rationis, and can be attributed even to a pure negation.They are called “beings” because the mind can treat them as beings in order
to consider them.They are not in natura. This must be what Kretzmann means
in saying that a text like 1.44.1 only refers to “natural beings,” that is, a sense of
“natural being” that would include human rational actions (God is the cause of
the act that is involved in the sin, but not of the lack in that act.). However, in
2.37.2, which Kretzmann here cites as well, in the ad 2, it is explained that even
the being of reason that the sin has is from God.
Thus, the references do not oppose the doctrine that everything that in any
way is is from God; it is the defect that is involved in sin that is not from God.
There is no reason to limit the beings talked about in 1.44.1 to “every (natural)
being of any kind at all” (The Metaphysics of Creation, 56, note 54). Rather, it
follows for any item that in any way participates in being, precisely to the extent
that it participates in being.

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At page 819 he attempts to save a “self-communication” within the
divine essence, quite apart from a doctrine of the Trinity. Obviously, such
a view of God’s understanding and willing himself yields “self-communication” only as an ens rationis. There is no real communication, since
that implies real distinction. He is trying to save us from “[Norris]
Clarke’s dilemma,” that we must either posit necessary creation or a
plurality of persons in God in order to maintain “bonum diffusivum sui.”
I think one must be content with things seeking to communicate their
good inasmuch as it is possible.
He lays great emphasis on the “bonum diffusivum sui” referring to final
causality.While this is certainly true,Thomas’s doctrine in Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, a. 2 is about the nature of the will and thus about efficient
causality. Everything turns on the nature of the will in I, q.19, aa. 1–3.
Blankenhorn kindly refers to my paper,“St.Thomas and the Causality
of God’s Goodness,” Laval théologique et philosophique 34 (1978): 291–304:
“Dewan argues that Peghaire misinterpreted Plato and Thomas, that both
see the good as a matter of final causality, and therefore do not posit a
necessity on God’s part to create” (830).
In fact, I say nothing about the issue of necessary versus free creation
in that paper.What I say is that Thomas’s doctrine of the good as diffusing itself is a doctrine of final causality, but that the doctrine of the final
cause always involves the effect: an agent producing something. Peghaire
had not understood the reason statements about final causality speak so
explicitly about efficient causality. Kretzmann depended somewhat on
Peghaire in this respect.
While I do not want to get into the paper’s discussion of the act of
being, I must mention that at pages 811 to 812 he makes substantial form
“first act” and sees esse as seemingly the principle of “acting substantially.”
Is he saying that esse is second act? Yes, he calls esse substantiale an “action”!
This is squarely against Summa Theologiae I, q. 54, a. 2:The esse of a creature cannot be an actio.
Sandra Menssen and Thomas Sullivan, “Must God Create?” in Faith
and Philosophy 12 (1995): 321–41.This paper evaluates two sets of arguments against God creating with absolute freedom: one having the Leibnizian line that God must create the best possible world, and the other
based on “bonum diffusivum sui.”
I see, on page 323, that they think of God and creatures as members
of a single “world” (and of a “possible world” as consisting of God alone).
Now, one might accept the view that God, all by himself, is the “best of
all possible worlds.” (I say this by way of concession. It should be asked
whether such a “world” problematic is not a technique of approach to

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reality appropriate for the calculative mind as contrasted with genuine
ontological analysis: cf. C. De Koninck, The Hollow Universe (London:
Oxford University Press, 1960), ch. 1:“The World of Symbolic Construction, or Two is One Twice Over.”) However, in doing so, there is no
reason to view the result of creation as a new “world” uniting that best
world with other beings. Part of the doctrine of analogy of being is that
God transcends created reality infinitely.Thus, there is no real relation of
God to created reality.
On pages 324 to 325, the authors defend a premise [designated “2-a”]
in an argument they will reject for other reasons. The premise they
defend amounts to saying that a “possible world” that includes God plus
a good created world is better than a “possible world” that consists merely
of God himself.They defend this on the basis of the premise that “being
has value in and of itself ” (p. 325).
I would say that this is false. Though the good is in things, nevertheless all the goodness of things derives from the goodness of God. God is
the exemplar, efficient, and final cause of all goodness (ST I, q. 6, a. 4).
One cannot “add” together the goodness of God and the goodness of a
creature, so as to get something “better” than the goodness of God
alone.54 On page 324 they reject what they call “the standard Thomistic
line of attack,” namely, that one cannot add to the infinite, and God is
infinite.Their rebuttal is: “But as Aquinas noted, one can make additions
to the infinite if one goes into a different order of infinity” (324). At this
point (note 13), they refer us to Summa Theologiae III, q. 10, a. 3. It appears
that they have in mind the ad 3. However, from that text it is clear that
the idea that one can “add to the infinite” holds good only when one is
speaking of a particular infinite, and not when one is speaking of the
divine infinity unqualifiedly.Thus, the authors are misusing the reference
to Thomas. He would not suffer an “addition” to the divine infinite
goodness as they do.
54 De Malo 5.1, ad 4: “To the fourth it is to be said that created good added to

uncreated good does not make a greater good, nor greater blessedness. The
reason for this is that if two participants are conjoined, that which in them is
participated can be augmented, but if a participant is added to that which is by
essence such, this does not make something greater. . . . Therefore, since God is
the very essence of goodness, as Dionysius says in the book On the Divine Names,
whereas all others are good by participation, God is not made more good by the
addition of any good whatsoever: because the good of any other thing whatsoever is contained in him. Hence, since beatitude is nothing other than the
obtaining of perfect good, whatever other good added to the divine vision or
enjoyment will not make one happier; otherwise, God would be made happier
by making creatures.”

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They also argue against “bonum diffusivum sui” necessitating creation,
but they do so, it seems to me, by getting away from the historical meaning (and metaphysical truth) of “bonum diffusivum sui.”The authors see
themselves as acting somewhat like Thomas in finding an acceptable
meaning for “bonum diffusivum sui” (apparently because Thomas was
accused by Kretzmann of having introduced a “novel interpretation” of
“bonum diffusivum sui”). In so doing they refuse to be “mired in historical exegesis” (331).
N&V

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515

Law as “Act of Reason” and “Command”
F ULVIO D I B LASI
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

I N THIS ARTICLE , I focus on the way in which we should interpret Aquinas’s thesis that “law pertains to reason” when we look at it from
the viewpoint of the analogical nature of the concept of law. Due to the
modern debate on voluntarism, scholars usually frame Aquinas’s thesis in
the context of stating the primacy of the intellect over the will in the
concept of law. There is something true in this approach, but it is
nonetheless misleading. To understand Aquinas’s statement that “law
pertains to reason” we must analytically divide it into two conceptual
elements: “act of reason” and “command.” As striking as it might seem,
the first one includes already the power of the will and refers to a perfect
meaning of practical knowledge that is applicable also to God. The
second, on the other hand, refers practical knowledge to a relation
between two or more subjects, and does not include the “binding force,”
which in the complete definition of law comes later, with the concept of
authority. In what follows, I will first touch briefly upon the analogical
predication of “law,” and then I will examine in more detail the meaning
of law, respectively, as an “act of reason” and a “command.”
I. The Analogical Nature of Aquinas’s Concept of Law
I assume, for simplicity, that a purely equivocal predication of “law” is
clearly not what Aquinas had in mind. A univocal predication should
immediately be discarded also because three out of the four kinds1 of law
listed by Aquinas (eternal, natural, divine, and human) refer to God’s action,

1 Of course, as the predication is not univocal, I use “kind” in a non-technical way.

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Fulvio Di Blasi

and “univocal predication is impossible between God and creatures.”2
Moreover, there is obviously no specific difference to add to each kind in
order to obtain its respective nature—as we should, for example, add
“rational” to “animal” in order to obtain human nature. On whatever
kind of law we focus, the definition given by Aquinas is supposed to be
already complete.
“Law” is used analogically: Namely, it is predicated of God’s law and
man’s law “according to proportion” with “something one [aliquid
unum],” or “according to priority and posteriority” with respect to something one.3 More particularly, it is used analogically according to the
second “way” of analogical predication indicated by Aquinas: Namely, the
one in which “the order of reference of two things is not to something
else but to one of them.”4 Moreover, the terms “eternal law,” “natural
law,” and “divine law” imply “relation to creatures”; and, consequently,
they fit what Aquinas says in ST I, q. 13, a. 7: Namely, (1) they are predicated of God ex tempore, that is, from our temporal perspective and “not
by reason of any change in Him”; (2) they imply a “relation” that is real
from the side of creatures—as “creatures are really related to God”—and
logical from the side of God—as “in God there is no real relation to creatures, but a relation only in idea, inasmuch as creatures are referred to
Him”; and (3) like the terms “Savior” and “Creator,” they signify
“directly” “the action of God, which is his essence.”
The analogical nature of Aquinas’s concept of law has many very
important consequences that are closely related to one another.
1. The first one flows at once from what we have just said about q. 13,
a. 7. When the term “law” refers to God’s action, it implies a way to
know God grounded on a real relation to him on the side of creatures.
More particularly, (A.1) when God’s law has to do with nature,
Aquinas’s discussion of law overlaps with his philosophical explanation of creation and of God’s existence and essence: That is, it
depends on what we know about God starting from creatures.5 On
the other hand, (A.2.), when God’s action refers to something higher

2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 5. All translations are by the Fathers

of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger, 1947). See also Summa
contra Gentiles, bk. 1, ch. 32.Translations of book 1 of the Summa contra Gentiles are
by A. C. Pegis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975).
3 Ibid. See also ScG, bk. 1, ch. 34.
4 ScG, bk. 1, ch. 34; ST I, q. 13, a. 5, c.
5 ST I, q. 13, a. 1, c.

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than nature (that is, grace), Aquinas’s discussion of law depends on
what we know about God through Revelation.The use of the term
“law,” in this case, depends on the real relation creatures have to God
due to the action of grace.
2. Second, when the term “law” refers to man’s action it involves participation in God’s action.That is to say, when we analogically predicate
the same term (or perfection) of God and of a creature, it means
both: (B.1) that the perfection existing in the creature causally
depends on God; and (B.2) that what “we attribute to creatures, pre-exists
in God, and in a more excellent and higher way.”6 Unjust human law
is a “perversion” ultimately because God’s perfection cannot be
analogically predicated of what departs from the imago Dei.
3. Third, the meaning of “law” is prior in God according to reality (secundum naturam) but prior in man according to the order of our knowledge (secundum cognitionem).7 This means that when we first call
something “law” we do it according to the way (modus significandi) in
which the human law (which is prior in our knowledge) is law.
However, the reality that the term “law” signifies (its res significata)
belongs primarily to God’s action.8 When Aquinas, in quaestio 90,
begins to define “law,” he cannot but observe first the nature of law as
it exists in human reality.9 However, the definition of law he elaborates
is supposed to reach a level of refinement in which its res significata will
be perfectly (and first) applied to God’s action.
As far as I can tell, the best textual evidence of this is the first objection
of ST I–II, q. 90, a. 4 (“Whether promulgation is essential to a law?”),
which reads:“It would seem that promulgation is not essential to a law. For
the natural law above all has the character of law (maxime habet rationem
legis). But the natural law needs no promulgation.Therefore it is not essential to a law that it be promulgated.”The meaning of this objection is clear:
If what maxime habet rationem legis does not need promulgation, it follows
that this feature is not essential to the concept of law.Aquinas replies:“The
natural law is promulgated by the very fact that God instilled it into man’s
mind so as to be known by him naturally.” In this reply, the premise of the
6 ST I, q. 13, a. 2, c. As is well-known, Aquinas in this passage uses as an example

the term “good.”
7 ScG, bk. 1, ch. 34.
8 ST I, q. 13, a. 6.
9 And even the terminology used—the imposition of names—depends on the way

(modus significandi) in which “law” is predicated of “human law.”

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objection is confirmed:The perfect res significata of what is called “promulgation” belongs indeed to what maxime habet rationem legis, that is, to natural law.10 We might wonder why Aquinas here mentions natural law instead
of eternal law, given that the former is not different from the latter11 but is
definitely less comprehensive. There are possibly many reasons for it, but
one of them might well be that natural law is, in creatures, the highest level
of participation in the eternal law. Natural law, therefore, maxime habet
rationem legis, not only as to the human law, but also to all things that are
regulated by the eternal law. Probably, at the moment of stating what is
essential to the concept of law,Aquinas focused spontaneously on the highest natural imago Dei in creation.12
The major difficulty in interpreting Aquinas’s concept of law should be
evident at this point. Not only the concept as a whole but also each term
used in defining it must be analogically applied first (in its perfect meaning) to God’s action and only secondarily to man’s action—even if, as we
have said, the first meaning in the order of our knowledge comes from
human reality. But how can a definition, made up of genera and specific
differences, be applied to God, given that no univocal or generic predication is possible in the case of God?13 The answer to this apparent inconsistency lies at the very root of Aquinas’s doctrine of “the names of God.”
As we mentioned above, “our knowledge of God is derived from the
perfections which flow from Him to creatures, which perfections are in
God in a more eminent way than in creatures.”14 However, the way
(modus significandi) in which we know creatures’ perfections depends
always on a genus-specific difference intellectual process that starts ultimately with the genus of things (rerum).15 To be “alive,” for example, or
10 ST I, q. 90, a. 4, obj. 1. It is worth noticing that the objection does not refer to any

other author.This means that, while writing it, Aquinas was actually thinking that
natural law maxime habet rationem legis; and that the character of “promulgation”
(which is clearly something required for human law to be just) should belong to
natural law first and in the most excellent way.
11 ST I, q. 91, a. 2, ad 1.
12 It is also possible that Aquinas here uses the term “natural law” in a more general
sense, which includes the natural laws of both human beings and every other
creature, and which refers to the way in which the eternal law exists in creatures.
To reserve the term “natural law” to the case of human nature is a linguistic
convention of which Aquinas should have been well aware.
13 Aquinas himself writes that “nothing is predicated of God as a genus or a difference; and thus neither is anything predicated as a definition, nor likewise as a
species, which is constituted of genus and difference.” ScG, bk. 1, ch. 32.
14 ST I, q. 13, a. 3, c.
15 As “ens” (being) is not a genus: See ScG, bk. 1, ch. 25. For the general explanation
of the analogical nature of ens see, of course, the first article of De veritate.

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to be a “person,” are obtained by adding a specific difference to a certain
genus of existing things: “material bodies” and “individual substances,”
respectively. It cannot be questioned that every term we use for creatures’
perfections expresses a specific quidditas (modus significandi) that as such
cannot be predicated of God.This is why Aquinas, to justify his doctrine
on analogy, has to make a crucial distinction between: (a) names, like
“stone,” that express the perfections flowing from God’s creative act
“along with a mode that is proper to a creature”16—these names can be
predicated of God only metaphorically; and (b) names, like “living,” that
“express these perfections absolutely, without any such mode of participation being part of their signification”17—in these names the res significata can be separated from the modus significandi, and they can be predicated
of God analogically.
For Aquinas, we arrive at every concept by studying the genera and
specific differences of the things we know through experience; and it is
evident that we do not predicate any definition as such of God. At the
moment of analogically naming God, we should be sure that the
concepts we use express perfections of things in a way that is not necessarily limited by their specific way of participating in God’s perfection.
II. Law as an Act of Reason
That law is an “act of reason” cannot mean “discursive knowledge” (scientia discursiva) because this knowledge is proper to human imperfect intellect18 but is impossible in God, who “sees all things in one (thing), which
is Himself.”19 If by “reason” we mean “reasoning about something” in the
sense that certain knowledge is not immediately available to the intellect,
then God’s knowledge cannot be called “rational” but only “intellectual.”
God’s knowledge of the law, consequently, must be an intellectual knowledge, at once of the means and of the (common) end. If this is true, the
concept of law as such cannot refer either to prudential reasoning or to
prudence.20 The fact that we humans need prudence should be inter16 ScG, bk. 1, ch. 30.
17 ST I, q. 13, a. 3, ad 1.
18 Which “does not simultaneously possess all things capable of being understood,

but only a few things from which he is moved in a measure to grasp other
things.” ST I, q. 60, a. 2, c.
19 ST I, q. 14, a. 7; ScG, bk. 1, ch. 57.
20 At least, as far as by “prudence” we mean something involving necessarily a reasoning or deliberation process.This is the meaning of prudence most common in the
contemporary debate.As I shall mention later,Aquinas uses sometimes a “purified”
concept of prudence, which does not involve discursive reason and whose res significata can be applied also to God’s providence and law. In the present article, when

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preted in the sense that our (limited) intellect has to struggle to reach a
(often limited) knowledge of the means to the end. However, once the
means has been identified, and the law has been passed, there is no reason
properly to call our knowledge of the means-common good relationship
“prudential”—if not in the limited and secondary sense that it is an
imperfect knowledge: Namely, that most of the time we cannot be sure
we have identified the best means to the end.21
So, “act of reason” does not mean “discursive reason” and does not
mean “act of prudence”; but it cannot mean also purely speculative
knowledge (scientia speculativa) because law “directs to the end.”22 Aquinas
explains that knowledge of the means-end relationship, when it is not
“ordered to the end of operation,”23 is only speculative. In this sense,
both our knowledge of how to build a house that we do not want to
build and God’s knowledge of what “He can make, but does not make at
any time” are speculative.24 However, God has “practical knowledge
[scientia practica] of what He makes in some period of time” (that is, of
creation) because “knowledge is called practical from the end.”25 “Act of
reason,” in the definition of law, means therefore “practical knowledge”;
and this knowledge is called “practical,” not because it involves either
discursive reason or prudence, and not even because it is knowledge of
the means to the end, but rather because it is a knowledge that tends
toward the end via some means: That is to say, it is a knowledge that
requires the action of the will. Aquinas is extremely clear and consistent
on this point. In ST I, q. 14, a. 8 (Videtur quod scientia dei non sit causa
rerum), for example, he clarifies that “the knowledge of God [scientia Dei]
is the cause of things” insofar as “there is added to it the inclination to an
effect, which inclination is through the will”:
I say, without qualification, that the concept of law cannot refer to prudence, I
always imply a concept of prudence involving necessarily deliberation and
reasoning.
21 As we shall see better below, this is true not only of the act of passing a law but
of the concept of (free) action itself. For us every action is an “act of prudence”
because we need discursive reason to reach the knowledge of the means.
Prudence, however, cannot be essential to the definition of (free) action; otherwise “(free) action” could not be predicated of God. This means, in turn, that
strictly speaking our knowledge of the moral action does not essentially include
the prudential reasoning that is needed in order to figure out what the best
action to do here and now is.
22 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 1: ordinatur ad finem operationis.
23 ST I, q. 14, a. 16.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid. See also ST I–II, q. 9, a. 1, ad 2: “[T]he speculative intellect is not a mover,
but the practical intellect is.”

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Now it is manifest that God causes things by his intellect, since his
being is his act of understanding; and hence his knowledge must be the
cause of things, in so far as his will is joined to it. Hence the knowledge of God as the cause of things is usually called the “knowledge of
approbation” [scientia approbationis].26

In the order of our knowledge, the analogical meaning of law comes
from human law; and, due to the limitation of our intellect, human law
(like every moral act) requires both discursive reason and prudence.This
is why in the prima secundae Aquinas uses the term “practical reason,”
which is evidently more appropriate to human reality than to divine reality. However, he is very careful in considering always the res significata by
“practical reason” according to its perfect meaning of scientia practica that
we have just seen in ST I, q. 14, a. 16. This consistency is very easy to
verify if we just focus on the connection that traces ST I–II, q. 90, a. 1,
backward to ST I–II, q. 1, a. 1 (Videtur quod homini non conveniat agere
propter finem) and, backward again, to ST I, q. 19, a. 10 (Videtur quod deus
non habeat liberum arbitrium).
In ST I–II, q. 90, a. 1, Aquinas says that “law” pertains to reason
because it is “a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act
or is restrained from acting”; and
the rule and measure of human acts is the reason [ratio], which is the
first principle of human acts, as is evident from what has been stated
above; since it belongs to the reason to direct to the end [rationis enim
est ordinare ad finem], which is the first principle in all matters of action
[in agendi].

We should already catch a glimpse of Aquinas’s train of reasoning in that
the expression rationis enim est ordinare ad finem is virtually equivalent to
the expressions used in ST I, q. 14, a. 16, to define divine practical intellect and science. But let us go to the “what has been stated above”: that
is, to the way in which he had defined “ratio” as “the first principle of
human acts” and as what “directs to the end.”
Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 1, a. 1, aims at distinguishing human acts as
rational from the acts of irrational creatures. In short, the difference is that
human acts are not the outcome of necessary factors but of “free-will
[liberum arbitrium],” which is defined as “the faculty of will and reason
[ facultas voluntatis et rationis].”The “ratio” that “directs to the end” and is
“the first principle of human acts” must be therefore continuous in the
prima secundae with the ratio of the liberum arbitrium; and it is important to
26 ST I, q. 14, a. 8, c.

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note that in the definition of liberum arbitrium as “facultas voluntatis et rationis” the concept of liberum arbitrium depends on the concept of ratio, and
not vice versa.This is important because ST I, q. 19, a. 10, says that God
has liberum arbitrium in the same way in which ST I–II, q. 1, a. 1, says that
humans have liberum arbitrium:
We have free-will with respect to what we will not of necessity, nor by
natural instinct. For our will to be happy does not appertain to freewill, but to natural instinct. Hence other animals, that are moved to act
by natural instinct, are not said to be moved by free-will. Since then
God necessarily wills his own goodness, but other things not necessarily, as shown above, He has free will with respect to what He does not
necessarily will.27

The conclusion is inevitable: If God has liberum arbitrium, and liberum
arbitrium depends on the concept of ratio, the concept of ratio cannot refer
either to discursive reason or to prudential knowledge. It is also evident,
at this point, that God has liberum arbitrium according to ST I, q. 19, a. 10,
exactly as he has scientia practica according to ST I, q. 14, a. 16—the only
difference being that scientia practica does not refer just to what God “does
not necessarily will,” but to what he actually freely wants. In other words,
“ratio,” as the knowledge of what leads to the end, becomes “practical
knowledge” when the end is also wanted by the agent: that is, when the
agent has an active inclination toward it. In this case, the means is loved
by the will because of the end (dilectio electiva: love of choice)28 and “man
is induced to act or is restrained from acting.” With this last line, we are
back to ST I–II, q. 90, a. 1, and we can confidently assert that Aquinas
uses ratio practica (or simply ratio) in the prima secundae in a way that is
consistent with the perfect meaning of scientia practica given in ST I, q. 14,
a. 16.With this extensive meaning of ratio in mind,Aquinas will not hesitate, in the treatise on law, to apply the term “practical reason” to God—
as he does, for example, in q. 91, a. 1.29
27 ST I, q. 19, a. 10.
28 On the concepts of dilectio naturalis and dilectio electiva, see ST I, q. 60, aa. 1–2.
29 “Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut supra dictum est, nihil est aliud lex quam

quoddam dictamen practicae rationis in principe qui gubernat aliquam communitatem perfectam. Manifestum est autem, supposito quod mundus divina providentia regatur, ut in primo habitum est, quod tota communitas universi
gubernatur ratione divina. Et ideo ipsa ratio gubernationis rerum in Deo sicut in
principe universitatis existens, legis habet rationem.”Actually,Aquinas goes so far
as to give to prudence the restricted meaning of scientia practica, and to call God’s
providence “prudence.” He writes: “[I]t belongs to prudence, according to the
Philosopher,‘to order other things towards an end,’ whether in regard to oneself

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This intense discussion does not only have the very relevant conclusion that “act of reason,” in the definition of law, does not mean either
“discursive reason” or “prudence.” It has also two other extremely important consequences. One is that it gives us the essential definition of practical knowledge (or practical science) according to Aquinas. Practical
knowledge is the (intellectual) knowledge of the means-end relationship
in which the will is actually willing the end. This knowledge is already
“action” because for the agent who is inclined toward the end, the choice
of the will coincides with the identification of the means by the intellect:
No other factor is conceptually required. In God, scientia practica is already
the choice and the act to create.30 The other very important consequence
is that the “will,” as the inclination to the end known by the intellect, is
present in the definition of law from the start. The will is what makes
reason practical, by providing knowledge with the power to act; willing the
common good grounds the choice of the (human or divine) legislator to
pursue it via a specific legal means. Whatever the second concept of the
definition does, it is not adding the will to the picture.
III. Law as a Command
First of all, we have to dispel any doubt on “command” being the second
conceptual element of “law” even if it might not appear clearly so in the
famous definition given in ST I–II, q. 90, a. 4 (quaedam rationis ordinatio ad
bonum commune, ab eo qui curam communitatis habet, promulgata). Lex is not
just a “dictate of reason [rationis dictamen]” but, as ST I–II, q. 92, a. 2,
explains,“a dictate of reason per modum praecipiendi”: that is, by way of (or
as a) precept, or command.“Command” adds a specific nature to the act
of reason involved in the concept of law.
Now, the paragraph in which this partial definition—dictamen rationis
per modum praecipiendi—appears, focuses on distinguishing lex from a
mere theoretical act of reason: namely, from a “dictate of reason per
modum enuntiandi.” In this sense, the definition could just be referred to
the concept of practical knowledge as described in the previous section.
However, it is relatively easy to see that lex est rationis dictamen per modum
praecipiendi means more than that: specifically, that it adds to the concept
of “act of reason” the concept of imperare (to command) as described in
ST I–II, q. 17. In order to make this point clear, we should first trace the
. . . or in regard to others subject to him. . . . In this way prudence or providence
may suitably be attributed to God.” ST I, q. 22, a. 1, c.
30 In passing: There is a striking similarity between Aquinas’s concept of practical
knowledge and Aristotle’s idea that practical syllogism concludes with the actual
action.

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terminology of the treatise on law back to ST I–II, q. 17, and then focus
directly on the meaning of imperare.
As for the terminology, there is no doubt that for Aquinas “praecipere”
and imperare are the same kind of action.31 This appears clearly, not only
from the overall context of ST I–II, q. 92, a. 2, just cited, but from several
other passages of the treatise on law.The most important for us is nothing other than the first article of the treatise, the one on “law pertaining
to reason.” More specifically, its sed contra, which reads,“On the contrary,
it belongs to the law to command [praecipere] and to forbid. But it belongs
to reason to command [imperare], as stated above (17, 1).Therefore law is
something pertaining to reason.” In this passage it is unquestionable, not
only that praecipere and imperare are interchangeable, but also that Aquinas
refers the act of reason that is “law” to imperare as described in ST I–II, q.
17. Lex est rationis dictamen per modum praecipiendi, therefore, is the same as
lex est rationis dictamen per modum imperandi according to the meaning of
imperare given in ST I–II, q. 17.
What does imperare mean in ST I–II, q. 17? First of all, imperare is an
act that belongs to the genus of the voluntary acts. Inside this genus,
however, it is not “voluntary” (1) as the acts that proceed from the will
without mediation (ut immediate ipsius voluntatis existents), but (2) as the
acts that exist as commanded by the will (qui sunt voluntarii quasi a voluntate imperati).32 Not all “voluntary acts” are strictly speaking acts of the
will; imperare, for example, is technically an act of “reason.” In any case, it
goes without saying that the acts that belong to the second category (like
command) must be preceded by acts that belong to the first (like intention and choice).
The distinction between the two categories becomes crucial precisely
as soon as we consider that “choice” (electio, in Latin; proairesis, in Greek)
belongs to the first category as an act that pertains materially to the will
and formally to reason.33 This means that (a) since choice is an act following practical knowledge as described in the previous section, and (b) since
the acts of the second category follow the acts of the first category, (c)
“practical knowledge” as such does not include the (more specific)
meaning of act of reason “as command.”
Now, the reason why imperare belongs to the second category is that it
involves mediation between the choice itself and the movement that actually leads from the means to the desired end. In the case of command, in
31 Except for secundum quid predications like the one in ST I–II, q. 92, a. 2, where

imperare is said to be one of the four “acts of law.”
32 See ST I–II, q. 6, prologue.
33 See ST I–II, q. 13, a. 1.

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other words, we have a second agent responsible for the movement that
attains the end chosen by the first agent. “To command [imperare] is to
move, not anyhow, but by intimating and declaring to another.”34 Again:
“To command [imperare] is nothing other than to direct someone to do
something, by a certain motion or intimation.”35
As far as the “imposition of names” is concerned, the term “command”
signifies first the orders given by one human being to another human
being; and what is essential to it is, as we have just seen, the fracture, so to
speak, between the agent who chooses and the agent who performs the
movement leading from the means to the end. For example, I want the
table to be set for dinner and I tell my child, “Set the table for dinner!”
The movement leading to the end is performed not by me but by my
child.What the command essentially aims at is to induce another agent to
act in a way that realizes the means-end connection as known and chosen
by the one who commands. It is only by way of an analogical extension
that Aquinas uses the term “command” in question 17 for the commandrelations existing between the faculties of the same agent. This is already
clear from the fact that in defining “command” in question 17 Aquinas
uses a terminology taken from the relationships humans have with one
another: “to direct someone to do something,” and so on. The main
evidence, however, is that the inter-faculties meaning could not be predicated of God—whereas “command” is, for instance, in ST I–II, q. 93, a.
5, c: “God is said to command [praecipere] the whole of nature”—because
this meaning is inseparable from the way in which our complex and
imperfect human nature works.
What is most important is to understand why “command” is for
Aquinas an act of reason.This is not easy for us because we are culturally
too close to a long voluntaristic tradition that affected deeply both moral
thought and legal theory. In a sense,Aquinas’s point is extremely easy and
reasonable. He says that “command” is basically what “orders the one
commanded [ordinat eum cui imperat].” That is to say, a command is meant
to create an order—a means-end order—in the action of “the one
commanded” with respect to the end to be achieved through his action.
Now, it goes without saying that the act of “ordering” something (in the
sense, clearer in Latin, of putting in order, arranging, and so on) belongs in
and of itself to reason.Therefore, the means-end relations that those who
command want, so to speak, to transfer to “the ones commanded” is something essentially rational. At the same time, (a) since the power of the soul
34 ST I–II, q. 17, a. 1, ad 1.
35 ST I–II, q. 17, a. 2, c.

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that moves is never the knowing faculty but always the appetite—which, by
definition, is what goes or tends toward the known object—, and (b) since
command is supposed to induce a movement in the second agent,Aquinas
says (c) that command is an act of reason that “retains in itself something
of an act of the will.”
Since therefore the second mover does not move, save in virtue of the
first mover [that is, the will], it follows that the very fact that the reason
moves by commanding, is due to the power of the will. Consequently
it follows that command is an act of the reason, presupposing an act of
the will, in virtue of which the reason, by its command, moves to the
execution of the act.36

So far so good; but how does “command” induce the second agent to
act? This is a key question because appetite, whether rational or irrational,
is an internal principle of movement.The fact that I am hungry does not
make somebody else eat; and the simple fact that I want somebody to do
something does not make him do it. Certainly, the command should
express, or convey, the will of the one who commands to “the one
commanded.” Precisely in this sense the act of reason “retains in itself
something of an act of the will”; and the execution of the command
happens by way of obeying and not just by way of doing something
reasonable. However, “the one commanded,” even if perceiving clearly
the will of the one who commands, might remain perfectly indifferent to
the command if his internal principle of motion—his appetite or inclination—were not somehow aroused by the command itself. In order for
the command to be effective, therefore, the one who commands must have
the power to cause the movement of—or to bind—the internal principle
of motion of “the one commanded.” Without this power, somebody
might well command something—maybe shouting in a square—but no
result would follow from it. From this point of view, the conceptual
element of the “power to move the second agent,” or “to bind him,” does
not seem to be logically implicit in the notion of “command.” This is
why, I think, the concept of law is usually associated with another
element called “authority.”And this is also why “command,” unlike “law,”
admits of a reflexive predication. Let me explain this better.
In q. 17, a. 6, Aquinas says that it is not inconsistent to say that “reason
commands itself ” because “reason reflects upon itself, consequently just
as it directs [ordinat] the acts of other powers, so can it direct [ordinare] its
own act.” On the basis of Aquinas’s explanation, we might think of cases
36 ST I–II, q. 17, a. 1, c.

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in which we tell ourselves something like “Okay, I have to focus on this
now!” or—in a situation that is not perfectly clear—“This is what I have
to do because it is clearly the right thing to do.” Since “to command”
means to induce a movement according to a rational means-end plan, we
can say that we command ourselves when we reflexively try to reach the
final assent to a specific course of action by telling ourselves that it is the
most rational course of action to undertake. What we cannot say is that
in these cases we “obligate,” or “bind,” ourselves.And this is why Aquinas
consistently writes in the treatise on law that “properly speaking, none
imposes a law on his own actions.”37 This is also consistent with the principle, which Aquinas takes from Aristotle, according to which nobody
can, properly speaking, do injustice to himself because (1) injustice is
something going against the will/freedom of somebody, and (2) nobody,
strictly speaking, can voluntarily go against his own will.38
Now, providing “command” does not imply the meaning of “binding”;
what does it add exactly to “act of reason” in the definition of law? Basically three things: (1) the conceptual element of the “relation between two
subjects or agents” (according to a rational plan—order—envisioned by he
who commands); (2) the conceptual element of being an “external principle of action”; and (3) the conceptual element of involving a formal “act
of obedience.” The first should be already clear from what we have said
above.As for the second, it means that “command” as such is external to the
(second) agent that moves according to the means-end relation implicated
by the command. (This is conceptually true also in the case of reason
commanding itself because this is exactly what the reflexive intellectual
process does, to make reason dialogue with itself as if from the outside.)
Command, in other words, is something external to the actual movement
at stake—as my saying “Set the table for dinner!” is external to my child
setting the table for dinner.This means, in turn, that strictly speaking when
we have a command the action performed by the second agent must be
formally described as an act of obedience. If this is not the case, the use of
command (and, accordingly, of law) is only metaphorical—as when we do
what somebody else wants us to do just because we recognize that it is the
best thing for us to do.
The question now is, “Are these conceptual elements present in the
treatise on law?”The answer is as easy as it is surprising. In the entire structure of the Summa Theologiae, “law” is dealt with at the exact moment of
approaching the “external principles” of action: Consequenter considerandum
37 ST I–II, q. 93, a. 5, c: nullus, proprie loquendo, suis actibus legem imponit.
38 See Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. I.

Litzinger, OP (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1964),V, 17, 1138b5 –14, n. 1107.

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est de principiis exterioribus actuum.39 And, starting with the first article of the
treatise, Aquinas is very clear that law “may be in something in two ways
[dicitur dupliciter esse in aliquo]. First, as in that which measures and rules
[uno modo, sicut in mensurante et regulante]. . . . Secondly, as in that which is
measured and ruled [alio modo, sicut in regulato et mensurato].” Finally, that
law requires obedience is implicit in every passage related to the binding
force of law, for example in ST I–II, q. 96, a. 4:“Whether human law binds
a man in conscience?” The binding force, though, as we mentioned,
requires also the power of the “authority. The analysis of this conceptual
element goes beyond the limits of this paper.
N&V

39 ST I–II, q. 90, prologue.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 3 (2006): 529–556

529

The Question of Evil and the Mystery
of God in Charles Journet*
G ILLES E MERY, OP
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

T HE QUESTION of evil is present throughout the works of Charles
Journet. Journet not only wrote a book on evil,1 several parts of which
appeared as articles in the French journal Nova et Vetera,2 but he also
published various short works,3 as well as numerous studies4 touching on
* Translation by Robert E. Williams, SSI, and Paul Gondreau of “La question du

mal et le mystère de Dieu chez Charles Journet,” in Charles Journet: Un témoin du
XXe siècle, Actes de la Semaine théologique de l’Université de Fribourg, Faculté
de théologie, 8–12 avril 2002 (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2003), 301–25.
1 C. Journet, The Meaning of Evil, trans. Michael Barry (New York: P. J. Kennedy,
1963); French: Le mal, Essai théologique (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961).
2 Journet,“La question du mal,” Nova et Vetera (French) 32 (1957): 190–201; idem,
“Les formes du mal,” Nova et Vetera (French) 34 (1959): 26–31; idem,“Le mal de
la nature,” Nova et Vetera (French) 34 (1959): 100–117; idem,“Dieu est-il responsable du péché?” Nova et Vetera (French) 34 (1959): 206–36; idem,“Le mystère de
l’enfer,” Nova et Vetera (French) 34 (1959): 264–87.
3 Journet, Le purgatoire (Liège-Paris: La Pensée Catholique, 1932); Notre-Dame des
sept Douleurs,“Les cahiers de la Vierge, 2” ( Juvisy: Cerf, 1934); Frère Jérôme Savonarole, Dernière méditation sur le Psaume “Miserere” et sur le début du Psaume “In te
Domine speravi” (Fribourg: Librairie de l’Université, 1943 [Paris: Desclée de
Brouwer, 1947, 1961, 1968]); Journet, Les sept Paroles du Christ en Croix (Paris:
Seuil, 1952); cf. idem, “La quatrième parole du Christ en Croix,” Nova et Vetera
(French) 27 (1952): 47–69; idem, La Volonté divine salvifique sur les petits enfants
(Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958); idem, Sur le pardon du péché et la part laissée aux
indulgences (Saint-Maurice: Ed. Saint-Augustin, 1968); C. Journet, J. Maritain, and
Philippe de la Trinité, Le péché de l’ange (Paris: Beauchesne,1961).
4 C. Journet, “Les maladies des sens internes,” Revue Thomiste 29 (1924): 35–50;
idem, “La peine temporelle du péché,” Revue Thomiste 32 (1927): 20–39 and
89–103; idem, “Le péché comme faute et comme offense,” in Trouble et Lumière,

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Gilles Emery, OP

several aspects of evil (suffering, sin) or related questions (“tragedy,” man’s
condition before sin, hope, redemption, and so on).5 Under Charles Journet’s editorship, the journal Nova et Vetera devoted much space to a
number of reflections on the question of evil in the events that struck the
world in the twentieth century (the events in Poland, in Russia, the occupation and resistance, deportations, anti-Semitism, reprisals, war and
peace, atomic weapons, and so on).6 Journet also preached spiritual
retreats on the mystery of evil.7 A brief glance at Charles Journet’s publications shows us right away the exceptional place of evil at the heart of
his theological thought from his first writings to the last.
On a great number of essential points, Charles Journet’s doctrine on evil
goes back to and develops the “classic”Thomistic doctrine: Evil is defined
as “the privation of a good that should be present” (evil is a “negativity of
privation”); it is divided into three forms (evil of nature, of fault, and of
punishment); in man, after the original fall, it only takes on the form of the
evil of punishment and the evil of fault, and so on.8 But the thought of
Études Carmélitaines (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1949), 21–29; idem,“Pour une
théologie du martyre,” in Limites de l’humain, Études Carmélitaines (Paris:
Desclée de Brouwer, 1953), 215–24; idem, “Dieu et le mal: Aspects métaphysiques du problème,” Revue Thomiste 59 (1959): 213–69; idem, “Un affrontement de Hegel et de la sagesse chrétienne,” Nova et Vetera (French) 38 (1963):
102–28; idem, “La peine du péché actuel,” in Le Christ devant nous: Études sur
l’eschatologie chrétienne (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1968), 71–126.
5 Journet,“Notes sur le tragique,” Nova et Vetera (French) 18 (1943): 185–97; idem,
“L’univers de création ou l’univers antérieur à l’Église,” part 1, Revue Thomiste 53
(1953): 439–87, and part 2, Revue Thomiste 54 (1954): 5–54; idem, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” Nova et Vetera (French) 29 (1954): 208–29;
idem, “De l’espérance,” Nova et Vetera (French) 45 (1970): 161–222; idem, “La
Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, Nova et Vetera (French) 48
(1973): 46–75, and part 2, Nova et Vetera (French) 48 (1973): 81–103.
6 See, for example, “Représailles,” Nova et Vetera (French) 18 (1943): 113–23;
“Résistance,” Nova et Vetera (French) 18 (1943): 209–21;“Au nom du droit chrétien,” Nova et Vetera (French) 18 (1943): 321–38; and so on. Concerning these
contributions, see G. Boissard, Quelle neutralité face à l’horreur? Le courage de Charles
Journet (Saint-Maurice: Ed. Saint-Augustin, 2000).
7 Le mal, retreat preached at Ecogia, August 17–30, 1953, typewritten notes. A
retreat on God, preached several times with some changes, also testifies to the
presence of the question of evil in Charles Journet’s meditation on the mystery
of God; the same preoccupation appears again in the retreat on Les paradoxes des
Noms divins (preached in 1971 at Notre-Dame d’Argentan Abbey). I should
mention still other meditations of Journet, notably the last part of his retreat on
the Our Father, Notre Père qui es aux cieux (Saint-Maurice: Ed. Saint-Augustin,
1997), with the text of a radio address in the appendix.
8 See, in particular, Journet, Meaning of Evil, 27–57.

God and Evil According to Charles Journet

531

Journet is not limited to the rehearsal of a common doctrine. It has its own
characteristics that express the theologian’s fundamental preoccupation: evil
in its relation to the mystery of God. For it is this relation, which Journet
pondered and delved ever more deeply into in the course of his work, that
forms the core of his study of evil.This is what I would like to outline here,
without dealing with all the aspects that caught Journet’s attention (the
redemptive suffering of Christ, the Virgin’s compassion, and human suffering), but rather limiting ourselves to some fundamental characteristics dealing with the mystery of God and evil.
I. Evil: A Question Put to Us . . . by God
In all his writings, Charles Journet lays particular stress upon the interdependence of the knowledge of God and the knowledge of evil.“The rule
of both fields of knowledge is not to destroy each other but to enrich
each other by advancing together”:These two fields of knowledge either
“extinguish one another” or “deepen one another.” Hence, to answer the
question of evil means “to clear up a mystery with a mystery.”9 Journet’s
thought, insisting on mystery, resolutely parts company with a rationalistic kind of approach that aims at integrating evil into a purely rational
grasp of the universe. With just as much vigor, his thought rejects a
dialectical approach in which evil and good would be engaged in a
process that tends toward unity.10 Since good and evil cannot be placed
on the same level, it is in the mystery of God that light can be brought
to bear on the mystery of evil. It is from this height that we must look at
the presence of evil in history.11 For this reason Journet’s approach is
rigorously theological because for pure philosophy, evil remains an enigma.
Faced with the evil undergone by the innocent, faced with the suffering
of little children, Journet suggests the state of mind a Christian philosophy must adopt: “At this point, philosophy cannot be integrally
constructed without borrowing higher data from theology.”12
On this high level, according to Journet, evil must be looked at
through the “eyes of God,” that is, with the vision of God Himself:“[W]e
should turn to God to see evil through his eyes, with the penetrating
sight that theologians call the vision of wisdom.Then we can get to the
9 Ibid., 21–23.
10 See, in particular, his critique of Leibniz, in Journet, Meaning of Evil, 119–24; and

of Hegel,“Un affrontement de Hegel et de la sagesse chrétienne,” 102–28. In this
regard we should keep in mind the dedication of his work The Meaning of Evil:
“To those who know how to hate the absurd and worship mystery.”
11 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 21–23 and 275.
12 Journet, “La quatrième parole du Christ en Croix,” 58; idem, Le mal, 266.

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Gilles Emery, OP

bottom of things.”13 Hence, an authentically Christian look at evil is one
of “faith illuminated by the gift of wisdom,” which is “the only light
which allows the mind to plumb the depths of evil without foundering.”14 With St.Thomas, we must understand the “gift of wisdom” as the
gift of the Holy Spirit that, linked to charity, enables us to judge things
by using the highest cause as our guideline, which is God Himself.15
Journet gives as examples the Virgin Mary, St. Thomas Aquinas, St.
Catherine of Sienna, and St. Angela of Foligno.16
This “point of view” profoundly modifies the question of evil as
commonly posed. It reverses it. Journet invites us here to take “question”
in its primitive meaning of “torture,” of scandal, and to put it on the high
level of God himself. From this perspective, it is not so much man who
puts the question of evil to God, like a cry rising to heaven, but rather it
is God who “puts before each one of us, in ever more harrowing ways,
the question of evil, not in order to shake our faith and trust but to make
them truer and more intense.”17 The question of evil invites us consequently to look closely at the divine design, at God’s permission and
knowledge of evil.
II. God’s Permission of Evil
Following Maritain, Journet reproaches Hegelian rationalism for positing
evil’s dialectical or metaphysical necessity.18 A similar criticism is leveled
against Leibniz’s theodicy.19 Their mistake consists in failing to recognize
the essential place that belongs to the divine “permission” of evil. “The
idea of the permission of evil is misunderstood”;20 this is what can help
13 Journet, Le mal, retreat, according to typewritten notes unrevised by the author;

cf. idem, Meaning of Evil, 247–49, which invites us to look at what evil becomes
“in the eyes of God.”
14 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 281.
15 St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II–II, q. 45, a. 1.
16 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 280–81; idem, Le mal, retreat.
17 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 285; cf. 289: “The question of evil can never be sidestepped, for God sets it before every man from the time he first comes into the
world”; idem, Le mal, retreat:“The problem of evil, the question of evil—I stress
this word, understanding it in its primitive sense of torture: put to the question—
the question of evil is addressed by God to each one among us several times in
our life. He asks you to answer this direct question that is put to you without
losing faith or love, but instead to seize the opportunity of this question, this
scandal, to grow in your faith and your love.”
18 Journet, “Un affrontement de Hegel et de la sagesse chrétienne,” 124–25 (texts
of Jacques Maritain).
19 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 119–24.
20 Ibid., 83.

God and Evil According to Charles Journet

533

us grasp correctly the place of evil in God’s design:While God wills the
good directly and per se, he does not will evil directly but permits it per
accidens.With St.Thomas, Journet explains:“It is not true to say that God
wills evils to be. . . . Nor is it any more true to say that God wills evils not to
be. . . .The only thing left to say is that God wills to permit evil.”21 Journet
stands here, with St.Thomas, on the dividing line that affirms the universal scope of divine providence as well as the efficacy of the divine will
without sacrificing the rights of reason (irrationalism).
On this basis, Journet, again with St.Thomas, carefully distinguishes the
three forms of evil. The evil of nature (for example, the suffering of the
animal killed by another animal that makes it its meal)22 is willed in the
sense that in and of itself it is linked inseparably to a good intended by
God:“It is tolerated and accepted by God but not intended . . . , it is willed
indirectly and per accidens.”23 As for the evil of punishment (the punishment incurred through sin: human illnesses, the infirmities of old age,
death), in an analogous way it is permitted by God, willed in indirect fashion; in itself it is not intended by God, but “willed” inasmuch as he intends
a good to which the evil is connected by virtue of divine justice.24 But
the evil of fault (sin) is absolutely not willed by God: There can be no
question of God willing it, not even accidentally or indirectly.The evil of
sin is “permitted, tolerated, and suffered in a completely different sense from
the evil of nature; it is permitted as a rebellion, an offense, which God cannot
will in any way, which he cannot acquiesce in or consent to without denying his own being.” So, when we say that the evil of sin is permitted,“this
cannot be taken to mean that it is accepted, consented to, and tolerated,
in other words indirectly willed, as the reverse side of some good looked
for by God.”25 Among the diverse forms of evil, then, it is the evil of fault
that presents the greatest theological difficulty. For if we look at evil from
man’s point of view, in the light of creatures, the evils of nature and
punishment, especially suffering, will seem to be the most “revolting.” But
if we look at evil in God’s light,“from God’s point of view,” then it is the
evil of sin, the refusal of the love offered by God, that stands out as the evil
most “unacceptable” to God, as the most radical form of evil.
21 Ibid., 82.
22 The evil of nature, insofar as it assails man, is an evil of punishment; every evil of

man comes down to the evil of punishment or the evil of fault. On this point,
Charles Journet clearly adopts the teaching of St.Thomas.
23 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 147; cf. idem, “Dieu est-il responsable du péché?” Nova
et Vetera (French) 34 (1959): 207.
24 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 186; cf. ST I, q. 19, a. 9.
25 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 147; cf. idem, “Dieu est-il responsable du péché?”
207–8; idem, “Dieu et le mal: Aspects métaphysiques du problème,” 213–69.

Gilles Emery, OP

534

Following St.Thomas Aquinas to the letter, Journet is extremely firm
and reminds us constantly of this fundamental truth: In no way (nullo
modo) does God will the evil of fault.26 When we speak of the allowance
of sin, it is more a question of God’s respect for the creature, even to the
point of the created will’s resistance that God may allow “to happen and
bear fruit indirectly in other things.”27 Up to now, Journet’s thought is in
full agreement with the common teaching of Thomists,28 but it departs
from the common tradition in its explanation of the divine knowledge
of sin and the permissive decree. We need to point out that the main
difference between Journet and other Thomists is not about the evil of
nature or the evil of punishment, but about the evil of fault, as well as the
divine decree by which sin is permitted.
III. How Does God Know Sin?
God, who does not possess the idea of evil, knows evil by knowing the
good of which the evil is a privation: Evil is known through the good.29
God does not draw this knowledge from creatures, for the divine knowledge cannot be specified immediately by a created object as such; divine
knowledge cannot be passive in regard to a creature that would determine it. It is in himself, through his essence, that God knows the good of
creatures and hence the evil that is its privation. As regards the evil of
nature and of punishment, Journet, with Jacques Maritain, explains that
God knows it “by the science of vision, by a creative knowledge giving form
and not receiving it, by seeing it in his essence alone”;30 this is the way God
knows everything of which he is the cause.31 This thesis fits in with the
common teaching of Thomists.
But how does God know sin, the free act of the creature who separates himself from God? Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange may serve as an
26 ST I, q. 19, a. 9:“Malum culpae, quod privat ordinem ad bonum divinum, Deus

nullo modo vult.”
27 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 147.
28 See, for example, R. Garrigou-Lagrange, God, His Existence and His Nature: A

Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, vol. 2, trans. Bede Rose (London:
B. Herder, 1936), 380. With Journet, we must stress the broad and analogical use
of the term “permission.”
29 ST I, q. 14, a. 10; q. 15, a. 3, ad 1.
30 C. Journet, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 217–18; idem,
L’Église du Verbe Incarné, vol. 3 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1969), 273–74.
31 What we call “science of vision” (scientia visionis) is the knowledge of what was,
what is, or what will be in reality, that is, knowledge joined to will in the exercise
of causality.This “science of vision” is not the same as the “science of simple understanding” (scientia simplicis intelligentiae), which has to do with the knowledge of
possible things and does not involve any act of the will; cf. ST I, q. 14, a. 9.

God and Evil According to Charles Journet

535

example of the teaching of Thomists: God knows when a sin exists in
some soul “inasmuch as He permits this moral defect in which He
cannot concur, and inasmuch as He concurs as first cause in the physical
entity of the sin.”32 God knows the sin insofar as he is the first cause of
the creature’s act (he enables the creature to act); as for the failing, God
is not its cause but he knows it insofar as he permits it, although this
permission is not the cause of the sin.
This allows Garrigou-Lagrange to maintain a twofold affirmation: the
universal scope of divine providence (nothing escapes divine providence,
not even sin), and the guiltlessness of God (God is not responsible for sin).
“Therefore evil is known by God in his decree permitting through
condemning it. He also envisages it in his sublime motives for permitting
it.”33 According to this teaching, God knows the creature’s free acts “in the
divine decree by which they are made present to Him from all eternity.”34
By decree we mean the act of knowing joined to the will:The “permissive
decree” is thus the act whereby God knows sin and allows it.35 This decree
is therefore the medium by which God knows the wicked human act. If we
take into account God’s causality as it relates to the human act (the creature could not act, even for evil, without the efficacious concurrence of the
first cause that gives the necessary impulse to the act as such), GarrigouLagrange’s position may be summed up this way: “God knows future sins
in a twofold decree, namely, permissive and effective.”36 In a similar vein,
Jean-Hervé Nicolas specifies: First, God knows the subject of sin; second,
God knows the failing in his permissive decree; third, God knows the sinful
act in the causal idea of this act (determining decree).37
32 Garrigou-Lagrange, God, His Existence and His Nature, 70.
33 Ibid., 70–71.
34 Ibid., 73; idem, The One God.A Commentary on the First Part of St.Thomas’s Theo-

logical Summa, trans. Bede Rose (London: B. Herder, 1946), 444–46.
35 Garrigou-Lagrange, God, His Existence and His Nature, 66–67. The expression,

“divine decree,” corresponds to what St.Thomas calls “determinatio voluntatis et
intellectus Dei” (idem, The One God, 521). In the case of the permissive decree, the
knowledge in question is the “science of vision” (scientia visionis), that is, the knowledge of what was, is, or will be in reality, knowledge joined to the will (cf. above).
36 Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, 587: “God knows future sins in a twofold
decree, namely, permissive and effective; for there is a positive element in sin, that is, the
act or effect, which can be produced only with the concurrence of the First Cause;
and there is the privative element, and this comes, however, solely from a defectible
and deficient cause.”
37 Jean-Hervé Nicolas, “La permission du péché,” Revue Thomiste 60 (1960): 516;
there is a priority of the “permissive decree” over the “determining decree,” just
as in sin there is the natural priority of the failing over the positive determination. In no case does God determine the failing itself (see below).

Gilles Emery, OP

536

Journet parts company with this teaching on certain points and qualifies it on others. With Maritain, Journet stresses the eternity of divine
knowledge: God does not know sin beforehand, but knows it in his “eternal now,” wherein all the moments of time are indivisibly present.38 This
teaching does not differ from that of Garrigou-Lagrange, except for the
stress Journet lays on this point by reprising a famous page from Maritain’s Existence and the Existent, repeated several times in the writings of
the theologian:“The divine plan is not a scenario prepared in advance.”39
Journet’s position, like Maritain’s, is clear: It is a matter of avoiding all
determinism and thus preserving the divine guiltlessness.
As for the divine knowledge of sin by means of the permissive decree, it
seems unacceptable to Journet (as well as to Maritain). It is not enough to say
that God knows sins in his essence alone, but we must also say that he knows
them “in his essence insofar as created existents are seen in it, and in them
this privation which their freedom is the first cause of.”40 In other words,
through his science of vision, God sees the sin in the will of the man who
refuses grace, and He sees it in the instant when this will refuses the divine
impulse of love.41 Here Journet takes up again and at length Maritain’s position in his Existence and the Existent and in La clé des chants, explaining that
“evil can only be known in the instant when it wounds existence” and that
the science of vision attains it eternally, in its presentness, in that very instant
when it happens.42 God sees sin, of which he is not the cause, in the will of
the man who brings to nothing (“nihilates”) the divine motion to the good;
he knows sin “in the creature’s freely nihilating will.”43 With Maritain, then,
Journet denies the place that Garrigou-Lagrange’s Thomism assigns to the
permissive decree as a means of knowing sin:“Unlike several theologians that
we usually follow, we do not conceive of this permissive decree as the
‘medium’ by which God knows the deficiency of his creatures.”44
38 Journet,“De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 217–19; idem, L’Église

du Verbe Incarné, 274.
39 Journet,“De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 218; idem, L’Église du

Verbe Incarné, 274; cf. J. Maritain, Existence and the Existent (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, Image Books, 1956), 122.
40 Ibid.
41 Journet,“De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 216–22; idem, L’Église
du Verbe Incarné, 273–78; idem, Meaning of Evil, 180–82.
42 Ibid.; Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 112–22. Idem, “La clé des chants,” in
Œuvres complètes, vol. 5, 1932–1935 (Fribourg-Paris: Ed. Universitaires-Ed. SaintPaul, 1982), 790–92.
43 Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné, 278.
44 Ibid.; Journet refers to Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 122–25. See also Journet, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 221–22.

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537

What is at stake in this thesis is obvious: Journet will not accept the
view that the permissive decree precedes man’s sin in any way whatever
(hence the insistence on the eternal presentness of divine knowledge), for
man has the entire initiative in sinning (hence the statement that God
knows sin in man’s failing will). With Maritain, he endeavors to exclude
every divine initiative in connection with evil, even the permissive
decree, and only recognizes the divine initiative in connection with the
good.Thus, in the case of sin, every determining knowledge on the part
of God must be put aside since God is absolutely not the author of sin.
Therefore God only knows sin in the culpable will that has refused the
divine motion to the good and not in the intervention of a divine decree.
In a similar vein, Journet explains that “God knows the creature’s
refusal—certainly not by causing it, for He does not cause what nihilates—in the positive motion to the good that the creature nihilates.”45
These explanations rest upon the understanding of sin as a “nihilation”
(in French, “néantement”) and upon the position of the permissive
decree as a consequence (Maritain).46
IV. In What Way does God Permit Sin?
The Consequent Permissive Decree
According to the usual thesis of Thomists, sin “only takes place following
a purely permissive decree of God.”47 With this statement, the Thomists
do not intend to attribute causality to God with respect to the sinful failing: God “only concurs in the physical act of the sin, not in any way in
the disorder inherent in it.”48 As Garrigou-Lagrange explains, the creature’s free will needs a divine motion to be determined to something. God
and man must be considered as two “total causes,” one of which (the
creature as second cause) is subordinated to the other (God, the first
cause). If the human will could be determined by itself alone, our freedom
45 Journet, “Dieu est-il responsable du péché?” 232.
46 As regards the critique that Journet makes of knowledge by permissive decree, we

should point out that Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, while professing the teaching
that Charles Journet rejects, nevertheless does not ascribe any causality to the
permissive decree as such. Rather, what is proper to Maritain and Journet’s position is the exclusion of all divine activity that would precede the wicked human
action, in order to exclude any divine intervention in the realm of evil: God has
all the initiative in the realm of the good, the creature has all the initiative in the
realm of the bad. For a balanced overview of this debate, if yet close to Journet’s
explanation concerning the knowledge of sin, see G. Bavaud, “Comment Dieu
permet-il et connaît-il le péché?” Revue Thomiste 61 (1961): 226–40.
47 R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Les perfections divines (Paris: Beauchesne, 1936), 115.
48 Ibid., 116.

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would have the dignity of God’s primary freedom, or resemble it univocally.49 Far from suppressing our freedom, the motion by which God
moves our will to determine itself is the source of our freedom: In us and
with us, the divine will causes the free mode of our act. This does not
mean that God is the cause of moral failing: If in the acts that precede the
definitive choice, there comes into play a bad movement that inclines us
to a sinful choice, God is in no way the cause of this failing, as it belongs
entirely to the defectible nature of the creature.50 When we say then that
God permits sin, we mean that God allows sin to happen.This doctrine
tries to account for the guiltlessness of God without lessening his universal causality (God’s causality in human action, even wicked, considered as
action and as free).
Pushing further the reflection on the relationship between God’s
permission and man’s sin, the usual teaching of Thomists insists that
human failing does indeed precede God’s refusal of actual grace, but this
failing presupposes the divine allowance of sin and would not happen
without it.51 In other words, if sin happens, it is because God permits it,
but this permission in no way is the cause of sin. Such, in its broad
outlines, is the solution of the “antecedent permissive decree.”52
Like all Thomists, Journet agrees that sin must be explained in virtue
of a divine permission, but he denies the antecedent permissive decree.
Firstly, Journet takes up from Maritain the idea of “nihilation.” While
every initiative comes from God as it relates to the good, man alone takes
the initiative for sin: Sin “is produced without God.”53 Journet subscribes
wholly to Maritain’s observations on the dissymmetry between the realm
of the good and that of evil.54 He reproaches certain Thomists (such as
Bañez and the school that follows him) for trying to explain evil in the
49 Garrigou-Lagrange, God, His Existence and His Nature, 356–57.
50 Ibid., 380–84; idem, Les perfections divines, 211–24.
51 Garrigou-Lagrange, God, His Existence and His Nature, 372–73. Here the divine

allowance of sin is linked to the absence of “efficacious grace.”What we call “efficacious grace” is the grace that effectively moves to action, as distinct from “sufficient grace,” which gives the proximate power to act but not the acting itself.
52 See J.-H. Nicolas, “La permission du péché,” 509–46; and note 37 above.
53 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 178.
54 Ibid., 179:“In the line of evil-doing, the creature is first cause. . . .The first initiative towards good acts comes always from God . . . but . . . the first initiative to
evil-doing always comes from the creature.” Cf. idem,“Dieu est-il responsable du
péché?” 222, 230–32. On this dissymmetry between the realm of the good and
that of evil, Journet follows Jacques Maritain expressly, see Maritain, Existence and
the Existent, 94–99. See also Journet, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de
l’homme,” 217.

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539

same way as we explain good, despite the total dissymmetry between the
two realms. By sinning, man on his own initiative,“sprung from his nothingness,” eludes the flow of divine causality.“For a free creature, in so far
as it has come out of nothing, has this fearful privilege of being able to
nullify within itself the influence of God.”55
This nihilation must not be understood as an act of annihilation, like
a reduction of a being to nothingness, for that would take us back to the
positive line that Journet precisely wants to avoid in explaining sin.
Rather, we are dealing with a privation, a negation. More exactly, Journet—like Maritain—calls nihilation the non-consideration of the rule, the
first principle of sin, the free will’s initiative of nothingness.Thus the first
moment of sin, which is a privation, consists in the creature’s “nihilation”
of the divine motion to the good. Here Journet is quite close to Maritain’s thinking on the “shatterable motion,” that is, the divine motion to
considering the right rule of action, which the creature can put in check.
Based on this, Journet takes up one of Maritain’s central theses: The
permissive decree is not antecedent but follows upon the evil will’s nihilation of the shatterable motion.56
According to Charles Journet, as we have already noted, God knows
sin by knowing the nihilating initiative in man’s free will. When we say
then that God “permits sin,” this means that God “abstains from supplying a remedy to the first failing of man and lets the act, deviated at its
source, play itself out according to its own rules. . . . God permits the sin
simply by not intervening to prevent it: here we have ‘the permissive
decree of sin.’ ”57 For those Thomists whom Journet wishes to part
company with, “the permissive divine will precedes the nihilating initiative of the free creature.” Instead, Journet holds that “God forsakes the
creature only after having been forsaken by the creature,” in such a way
that “the withdrawal of the creature precedes the withdrawal of God.”58
Subsequently, as we have seen, the withdrawal of the creature is not
known to God by his permissive decree.
More precisely, Journet distinguishes two moments in the resistance to
divine motion: A first moment when God may intervene to stave off the
55 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 178; idem, Dieu est-il responsable du péché?” 231–32.
56 Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 99–112.
57 Journet, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 220.
58 Ibid., 221 note 2.This affirmation is not lacking in traditional Thomistic teach-

ing (Garrigou-Lagrange, Les perfections divines, 233).The debate arises rather from
the usage of the sufficient grace/efficacious grace distinction (GarrigouLagrange, J.-H. Nicolas), or shatterable motion/unshatterable motion (Maritain,
Journet), and therefore from the relationship between the permissive decree and
the withdrawal of God, as well as from the notion of “nihilation.”

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sin, and a second moment when the sin occurs if God has not come to
counter the nihilating will.59 No sin occurs, therefore, without a permissive decree of God, but far from coming before the nihilation of the
divine will, this decree is by nature subsequent to it.“For us, the permissive decree is God’s decision not to use extraordinary means to intervene
and prevent the evil act from unfolding.”60 The permissive decree looks,
then, like a divine non-intervention in face of a human initiative (the
non-consideration of the rule that the shatterable divine motion would
lead us to consider; this is not yet a moral evil, but it gets the creature’s
process toward it underway).These explanations are based on the distinction between shatterable motion, which the human will can put in
check, and unshatterable motion, a divine motion that intervenes in
every morally good act by determining it.They can give rise to questions
about Maritain’s position, questions raised sometime ago by MarieJoseph Nicolas and Jean-Hervé Nicolas.61
By and large, these explanations of Journet give Jacques Maritain great
credit for untying the knotty problem of the relationship between divine
grace and human freedom. Maritain’s contribution, underlined and
adopted by Journet, consists in the two following affirmations: First, the
59 Following Maritain, Journet explains that in the first moment the human will

can,“by nihilating it, interrupt the shatterable motion whereby God directs it to
consider the rule before acting”; in the second moment, “the will proceeds to
the election that will be disordered”; when the shatterable motion is not shattered, it then gives way to an unshatterable motion under which the good act is
produced ( Journet, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 221, note
1).Thus there are “two divine permissions”: in the first instance, there is a conditional permission implied in the possibility of thwarting the motion that directs
us to considering the rule of acting; in the second instance, there is the permission, pure and simple, of letting the free action continue with its own dynamism
( Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné, 166–67). Journet refers expressly to Maritain,
Existence and the Existent, 176–90.
60 Journet, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 222.
61 Marie-Joseph Nicolas, “La liberté humaine et le problème du mal,” Revue
Thomiste 48 (1948): 191–217; J.-H. Nicolas,“La permission du péché,” 5–37 and
185–206.The criticism deals not only with Maritain’s position as it relates to the
universality of providence (God’s causality only in the realm of the good), but
also with the distinction between shatterable motion and unshatterable motion,
as well as the notion of “nihilation,” which J.-H. Nicolas deems ambiguous (nihilation, a pure negation that is not yet a fault, would still already be resistance to
God).As we shall see further on, it also deals with the motive for permitting evil.
Maritain responded to J.-H. Nicolas’s criticism: Jacques Maritain, Dieu et la
permission du mal (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963). For a critical appreciation
favorable to Maritain’s position, see Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers, “Le
péché et la causalité,” Bulletin Thomiste 11 (1960–1962): 553–637.

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541

dissymmetry between the order of the good and the order of evil (man
has all the initiative in the realm of evil, while God has all the initiative
in the realm of the good); second, the denial of a “scenario played out in
advance” (eternity of divine knowledge, the creature’s nihilation of the
divine motion, denial of the antecedent permissive decree, the divine
knowledge of sin in the nihilating human will). According to Journet, it
is in this way that Maritain enabled theology to strictly affirm the guiltlessness of God, who wills sin neither directly nor indirectly.62
V. Why Does God Permit Sin?
When Journet speculates about the motive for the divine permission of
evil, he comes up with a clear and unchanging answer: Evil is permitted
for a greater good. He grounds this response on his reading of St.Augustine
and St.Thomas. He stresses its mysterious character by making clear that
this kind of answer does not flow from an a priori metaphysical necessity, but rather from an investigation that takes into account three statements of fact: an infinitely good and powerful God, a world where evil is
rife, and the necessary triumph of good over evil (the good’s superabundant compensation for evil).63 The particular characteristic of Journet’s
thinking is his insistence on the analogical value he sees in this response, as
it applies to all forms of evil: the evil of nature, the evil of punishment,
“and even the evil of fault.” God permits each form of evil “for some
greater good.”64 Of these three forms, Journet pays most attention to the
evil of fault (sin),65 while professing a basic Christocentrism.
What is this “greater good” for the sake of which God permits sin? Journet gives his clear answer in his very first writings, and particularly in his
study of the original fall: Adam’s transgression is “preordained to Christ,”
not, to be sure, as a means, but insofar as sin, once allowed, will be repaired
by Christ. In the unique design of God,“all things are ordered to the glory
of Christ the Redeemer.”66 For Journet, the glory of Christ is thus God’s
first aim, the very reason for the universe and its crowning, the highest cause for
which everything has been arranged.67 Here Journet is expressly following
62 Charles Journet, “Jacques Maritain Theologian,” New Scholasticism 46.1 (1972):

33–35. For Maritain, the absolute guiltlessness of God is “the fundamental certitude, the rock to which we must cling in this question of moral evil.” Maritain,
Dieu et la permission du mal, 11.
63 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 85–86.
64 Ibid., 85; cf. idem, “Dieu et le mal: Aspect métaphysique du problème,” 234–36.
65 Concerning the evil of nature and the evil of suffering, Journet’s thinking repeats
the common teaching of Thomists.
66 Journet, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 213–16.
67 Ibid.

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the Christocentrism of the Salmaticenses, for whom all things, including the
grace of the angels and the primordial grace of man in the state of innocence, existed for Christ, propter Christum.This priority of Christ must be
understood in the order of values and of the end “in view of which” (finis
cujus gratia).68 This does not mean that in the order of conditionality Christ
was willed independently of certain events (according to the Thomistic
thesis, the Incarnation of Christ was decreed as a remedy for sin).69 Journet knows that on this point St. Thomas’s interpretation is delicate. All
Thomists agree on one affirmation: If Adam had not sinned, the Son of
God would not have become flesh. But a difference arises concerning the
relationship between the permission of sin and the good willed by God.
Certain masters of the Thomistic school (Cajetan, John of St. Thomas)
refuse to appeal to Christ immediately in answering the question, “Why
did God permit Adam’s sin or original sin?” More precisely, Cajetan
explains that God allows sin because he is exercising his providence in
respecting the conditions of created beings, that is, by acting in conformity with the nature of creatures. Respecting man’s freedom, God allows sin
and then seizes the occasion of the sin to bring about a greater good, the
redeeming Incarnation of the Son of God.70 Pursuing this line of thought,
Jean-Hervé Nicolas, in his debate with Maritain, explains that sin is the
occasion of a greater good, with God turning the evil that happens to the
best advantage, but evil is not allowed only for the good things that God
can draw from it: The permission of evil is not of itself ordered to the
obtaining of this good as its raison d’être.71 For his part, Journet prefers the
68 The end “cujus gratia” is the reason for which other things are willed, the end

for which everything has been arranged; see L’Église du Verbe Incarné, vol. 3,
270n2.
69 Journet,“De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 213–16; idem, L’Église
du Verbe Incarné, 270–72.
70 Cajetan, In IIIam, q. 1, a. 3 (Leonine ed., vol. 11, 16).What is at stake in the debate
has to do with the unity of the divine plan and the “contrariness” that sin sets
against God’s design. Must we posit one single divine decree whereby Christ is
willed as Redeemer (the Carmelites of Salamanca, Journet), or one plan in
which Christ would not have been foreseen, then another plan whereby Christ
is willed, this last alone being willed with an efficacious will ( John of St.Thomas
continuing Cajetan)? Cf. M.-J. Nicolas, “La liberté humaine et le problème du
mal,” 205 note 1.
71 J.-H. Nicolas,“La permission du péché,” 538–44; idem, Synthèse dogmatique, Complément: De l’univers à la Trinité (Fribourg/Paris: Editions Universitaires/Beauchesne,
1993), 386–90. According to J.-H. Nicolas, we cannot say that sin is permitted for
the sake of a greater good, but we have to say: God wills this good because sin has
taken place.

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543

solution of the Carmelites of Salamanca who answer that God permitted
the sin of Adam for the sake of the redeeming Incarnation, in anticipation of
the glory of Christ, since God only allows sin for the sake of a greater
good.72 Such is the “simple and grandiose” solution that Journet rallies
to (without giving up the thesis that finds the reason for the permission
of sin in the freedom that God has willed for his spiritual creatures).73 All
things, including Adam’s grace and the permission of sin, are ordered to
the glory of Christ the Redeemer, albeit in different ways: Sin cannot be
a means to the glory of Christ, but it is a precondition for its possibility.
This thesis can be associated with Journet’s teaching on the grace of the
angels: From their first moment, the grace and substantial glory of the
angels are ordered to Christ as to their final cause.The primordial grace
of the angels, at the dawn of the world, is finalized by the influx of
Christ.74 In this way, Journet upholds the primacy of Christ even to its
utmost consequences: The glory of Christ the Redeemer is the end that, in and
of themselves, all things willed or permitted by God are ordered to.75
A final thesis comes into play to complete these explanations: The
world of the redemption, the world of Christ’s grace, is all in all better than
the world of Adam’s innocence.76 Therefore, the “greater good” that the
permission of Adam’s sin anticipates is not only Christ himself (the hypostatic union of God and man in Christ),77 or his Mother, but the order
of Christ’s grace in its full scope.The world of the Redemption, that is,
participation in Christ’s grace and glory, involves us in a higher destiny
than the one Adam had before his fall. To lay out this Christological
thesis, Journet calls upon St. Bonaventure, St.Thomas, the Carmelites of
Salamanca, and, in particular, St. Francis de Sales, whom “[t]his view was
exceptionally dear to.”78

72 Journet, “De la condition initiale privilégiée de l’homme,” 215n2; idem, Mean-

ing of Evil, 256–59.
73 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 256–57.
74 As regards Adam’s state of innocence, Journet states: “If the humanity of the

redemption is first in the order of intention, the humanity of innocence is first
in the order of execution” Journet, L’Église du Verbe incarné, 279.
75 Journet, L’Église du Verbe incarné, 207–15 and 269–73.
76 Journet,“Dieu et le mal:Aspect métaphysique du problème,” 268; idem, Meaning
of Evil, 86 and 256–59.
77 As St.Thomas says, God loves Christ more than the whole human race and more
than the whole universe. ST I, q. 20, a. 4, ad 1.
78 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 258; idem, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de
Dieu,” part 2, 82.

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Such is the understanding of the Exultet’s “Felix Culpa” that Charles
Journet presents:79 The Church is gathered around the Word made flesh,
and a new universe is reshaped bit by bit, the universe of the Redemption, which, all in all, is incomparably better than what went before.80
This understanding goes beyond the letter of St.Thomas and looks rather
like a Christocentric interpretation of St.Thomas Aquinas (insertion of some
elements of Duns Scotus’s Christocentrism into the heart of a Thomistic
theology).81 As for Journet’s thought itself, we can observe the convergence of his doctrine with that of Maritain.82
VI. God Wounded by Sin
Sin does not destroy God’s design since in this design sin is ordered to a
greater good. Moreover, Journet is very firm on the singleness of the
divine plan, as we have just recalled. This does not mean that God is
“indifferent” to sin, as if sin did not touch God, did not bring him any
vexation, any frustration. Journet does not merely invoke the infinite
majesty of God, which sin strikes at by defrauding it of what is justly due
to it: “More concretely, it [sin] hurts God Himself, admittedly not in
Himself, but where He is vulnerable, that is to say, in the love by which
He strives to save us,”83 for “it was impossible for God to love us without
at the same time needing our love.”84
This consideration of God’s vulnerability and the wound sin inflicts on
him, which Journet reminds us of repeatedly, picks up on Maritain’s
explanation in his An Introduction to the Basic Problems of Moral Philosophy:

79 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 86 and 259; idem, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour

de Dieu,” part 2, 82. Cf. ST III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3.
80 Journet, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 2, 82.
81 On this question of Scotist Christocentrism and Thomism, see M.-J. Nicolas,“Le

Christ et la création d’après saint Thomas d’Aquin,” in Studia mediaevalia et mariologica P. Carolo Balic, OFM septuagesimum explenti annum dicata (Rome: Ed. Antonianum, 1971), 79–100.
82 J. Maritain, God and the Permission of Evil, trans. Joseph Evans (Milwaukee: Bruce
Publishing Co., 1966), 62–63. Without going into the Christological question,
Jacques Maritain (in answer to the criticism J.-H. Nicolas had leveled against
him) maintains here that “God permits evil only in view of a greater good, that
is to say, by referring or ordaining this evil to a greater good”; God allows sin
“because God is certain that He will draw a greater good from the evil which
the creature will be able to commit.”
83 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 182. Journet repeats and develops the same explanation
in the passages indicated in the following notes.
84 Journet, “De l’espérance,” 211.

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Sin deprives the divine will of something it really desired. . . . If I sin, something which God desired and loved will not be for all.This is through my
first initiative. I am therefore the cause—the nihilating cause—of a privation with respect to God, a privation as to the terminus or desired effect
(in no way as to the good of God Himself). . . . Sin deprives God Himself
of something which He conditionally but really desired. . . . Moral defect
affects the Uncreated, in no way in Himself, since He is absolutely invulnerable, but in the things and the effects He desires and loves. Here, one
can say that God is the most vulnerable of beings.85

Journet continues: “God indeed is afraid of sin, He is afraid on my account
of the evil I can do to Him.”86
In Journet, as in Maritain, this explanation of God’s vulnerability and
the deprivation of love that sin inflicts on God shows a very vivid perception of a real divine wounding, the depth of moral evil in the eyes of
God,“this thing, unacceptable to God, that sin is”:87 sin cannot destroy God
in himself, but it is truly God himself that sin wounds. In its basic elements,
these explanations that distinguish the being of God from his effects,
God’s conditional will from his absolute will, or God’s antecedent will
from his consequent will, remain right in line with the doctrine of St.
Thomas Aquinas.
When St. Thomas analyzes the distress that is tied to mercy, he
explains, as a matter of fact, that the merciful person is the one who is
affected by the distress of another, who feels sorrow for the misery of
another “as if it were his own misery.”88 Compassion lies in this: “[H]e
who loves looks upon his friend as another self, and counts his friend’s
hurt as his own.”89 This is why the merciful man acts: He provides a
remedy for another’s misery out of love, “as if for his own misery.” As
regards God, St. Thomas explains, he does not experience mercy inasmuch as it is a passion tied to the sensible appetite (because of the immateriality and immutability of God): God is not afflicted in himself, but he
is merciful in his effects, in the activity of his love for the creatures he
loves.90 It is in the effects of God’s love that his compassion, distress, or
85 Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to the Basic Problems of Moral Philosophy, trans.

Cornelia Borgerhoff (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1990), 196–97, quoted in Journet, Meaning of Evil, 183; idem, “Dieu est-il responsable du péché?” 235–36;
idem, “De l’espérance,” 204–5; idem, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de
Dieu,” part 1, 53–54.
86 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 183.
87 Journet, “De l’espérance,” 205.
88 ST I, q. 21, a. 3.
89 Ibid., II–II, q. 30, a. 2.
90 Ibid., I, q. 21, a. 3.

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sorrow find their reality:“Mercy is especially (maxime) to be attributed to
God, as seen in its effect (secundum effectum), but not as an affection of
passion (non secundum passionis affectum).”91 This is the teaching that Journet repeats while stressing the reality of the love God has for his creatures
and which sin wounds. In his last writings, however, Journet goes a step
further by posing the question of a real suffering in God.
VII. The “Mysterious Suffering” of God
A work by Jacques Maritain gave Charles Journet the opportunity to
delve more deeply into his reflection on God’s vulnerability. In the course
of an article on theological knowledge, which was published in the Revue
Thomiste in 1969, the philosopher included several pages titled “A Great
Problem.”92 Maritain’s reflection starts with the Thomistic teaching on
the divine names.Analogy implies that the names we use to speak of God
have a twofold aspect: (1) the perfections themselves that the names
signify and that exist properly in God, and even more properly in him
than in creatures wherein they exist by participation in the divine plenitude; and (2) the manner of signification (“mode of signifying”) of these
names, a manner by which no name is properly attributed to God since
in our language names retain the mode of signifying that befits creatures.
Maritain pushes this doctrine of St.Thomas higher and to its furthest
point when reflecting on God’s mercy. As we cited above, according to
St. Thomas “mercy is especially to be attributed to God, as seen in its
effect, but not as an affection of passion.” While recognizing the perfect
truth of this doctrine, Maritain nonetheless adds, “Yet that leaves the
mind unsatisfied”: must we not recognize in God’s mercy a reality as we
concede to his love? “Should we not say of mercy, then, that it exists in
God according to what it is, and not only according to what it does?”93
In answer, Maritain asserts that mercy exists in God as a perfection of his
being, “though in a state of perfection for which there is no name: a glory or
splendor unnamed, implying no imperfection, unlike what we call suffering or sorrow, and for which we have no idea, no concept, and no name
that would be applicable to God.”94 Here Maritain evokes divine perfections that are “nameless,”“unnamable” (innominabiles). In this way, the affec91 Ibid.
92 Maritain, “Quelques réflexions sur le savoir théologique,” Revue Thomiste 69

(1969): 5–27; cf. 14–27.This article presents the fruits of a seminar that Maritain
held with some superiors of the Little Brothers of Jesus at Kolbsheim in the
summer of 1968.
93 Ibid., 16–17.
94 Ibid., 17.

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tion of passion, the suffering linked to the human experience of mercy,
although embedded in our imperfection, would be a participation in this
“nameless and unnamable” perfection of God, a perfection that affects
neither his plenitude of being, nor his immutability, nor his happiness.
These observations, inspired by Scripture and theology, make an
appeal to considerations of an anthropological nature as well. In our
human experience, the suffering of love is not a wholly negative reality;
it is not merely a deprivation but also carries a positive and noble
element, fertile and precious, in short—a perfection. The “mysterious
exemplar” of such nobility would be the analogate in God. Such an
exemplar of merciful suffering in God, in whom all is perfection, would
then be a part of God’s happiness and beyond what is humanly conceivable.95 Two references to the thought of Raïssa Maritain suggest her
influence on the position worked out by Jacques Maritain, as well as the
influence of Léon Bloy.96 Journet paid great attention to these pages, and
he cites them several times in his last writings.97 The French journal Nova
et Vetera has published extracts from them.98
Along with Maritain, Journet gives Marie-Dominique Molinié credit
for having stressed the “quasi-suffering” of God, a deep mystery of the
unspeakable sorrow that our sin causes God, which, instead of disintegrating the Godhead, “reveals the existence in It of an unsuspected
grandeur.”“It is important that we take very seriously the biblical expressions that show God as ‘moved to his depths.’ ”99 If it is indeed with
Jacques Maritain that Journet’s speculation delves more deeply into the
mystery of God’s suffering, his references to Molinié make clear the biblical and spiritual inspiration of this reflection. Journet shows a great appreciation for Molinié: In the French journal Nova et Vetera, he presents his
papers under the title “A Theology of Great Style”100 (there is nothing
humdrum about such praise from the pen of Charles Journet).
95 Ibid.
96 Quoting Maritain, Journet explicitly repeats the mentioning of Raïssa Maritain

and Léon Bloy, Journet, “De l’espérance,” 206. For a short survey of Maritain’s
teaching and how it is confronted with that of St. Thomas, see Gilles Emery,
“L’immutabilité du Dieu d’amour et les problèmes du discours sur la ‘souffrance
de Dieu,’ ” Nova et Vetera (French) 74 (1999): 17–20 and 27–37.
97 Journet, “De l’espérance,” 205–6; idem, “Jacques Maritain Theologian,” 35–36;
idem, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 57–60.
98 Journet,“La souffrance de la créature,” Nova et Vetera (French) 44 (1969): 226–28.
99 Journet, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 55–56.
100 C. Journet,“Une théologie de grand style. Les cahiers de M.-D. Molinié, OP, sur
la vie spirituelle,” Nova et Vetera (French) 48 (1973): 299–310.

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Molinié’s paper dealing with the Mystery of the Redemption (1970)
contains an important reflection on the “suffering” of God in a chapter on
the divine mercy that arrives at Maritain’s conclusions, albeit by a different
path.101 Journet retains Molinié’s affirmation of God’s “quasi-suffering” as
it relates to the refusal of the creature to whom he wishes to give
himself.102 As in Maritain, so in Molinié, Journet finds the expression of a
sound grasp of the divine immutability, as well as the recognition of the
mysterious and exemplary reality of suffering in the Triune God:
In God, impassibility is not an absence of emotion, it is not indifference,
it is an excess of love and of joy. . . . Hence, we must be careful before we
say that God does not suffer . . . , because his love for us is no joke.Those
who have not sounded the depths of this mercy unfailingly imagine that
God does not suffer by virtue of a kind of indifference . . . , and this
mistake is much more catastrophic than the anthropomorphism that
pictures God as suffering. . . .The sufferings of Christ merely reflect in
a human way the absolutely divine mystery of the Trinitarian love
wounded by our refusal.103

This being the case, the thought of St.Thomas cited above (God is merciful in respect to the effectus of mercy but not in respect to the passionis affectus) seems insufficient.We must “go a step further on the road opened by
St.Thomas,”104 for St.Thomas has left this question open: It has remained
“incompletely resolved by St. Thomas.”105 There is, to be sure, a certain
suffering that is incompatible with God’s absolute perfection. But there
exists an unutterable compassion affecting God in his relation to our
wretchedness (our sin) that does not entail any imperfection. It has to do
with a “pure perfection” that we must acknowledge in God, for which we
have no concept, and which is the “hurt of God.”106 The created analogate
of this perfection is magnanimity, the nobility that sorrow carries with it
when it is overcome by greatness of soul. In this manner, Journet, with
Maritain, holds that mercy does not merely exist in God with respect to its
effects, but according to what it is, taken however to a degree of completion
101 Marie-Dominique (André) Molinié, Le mystère de la Rédemption, mimeographed

paper (1970), 37–45. This paper has recently been published in book form:
Marie-Dominique Molinié, Un feu sur la terre, vol. 6: Le mystère de la Rédemption
(Paris:Téqui, 2001), cf. 54–64.
102 See, for example, Journet,“La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 56.
103 Molinié, Le mystère de la Rédemption, 41–42, quoted in Journet,“La Rédemption,
drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 55–56.
104 Journet, “De l’espérance,” 206, quoting Maritain.
105 Journet, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 52 and 57.
106 Ibid., 57.

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above every name, an “unnamed” perfection, the exemplar of what it is in
us when it is lived with nobility and magnanimity.107
This meditation on “the troubling mystery”108 of the “mysterious
suffering” or “quasi-suffering”109 of God stays very close to Maritain’s
reflections. Journet contents himself with brief comments on these
reflections without developing at length their epistemological (divine
names) and metaphysical aspects.At the same time, Journet does not give
up his conviction that sin reaches unto God himself, though not in himself
(following the previous explanations of Maritain),110 thereby suggesting
the great caution this mystery imposes on our human reflections:
It will be difficult for theology to go further than the great meditation
we have just summarized, albeit quite rashly. It remains satisfied in
showing that there is no metaphysical impossibility in saying that God,
absolutely invulnerable in Himself, is unutterably vulnerable in the love
He bears for us and which is the arena of his mercies. It does not betray
the truth since it leads us to a divine perfection that for us remains
nameless and unnamable.111

We can easily recognize an important pastoral motive at the heart of
Journet and Maritain’s theological reflection on the mysterious suffering
of God. Care for those to whom Christian preaching is directed does not
dictate to theology what is true and what is not, but it makes it attentive
to the way the faith is expressed. Certainly God is not wounded in
himself; he knows no deficiency:
On this we are clear. But if we preach to men that God cannot be hurt
by the sight of their disorders and the sufferings that ensue, will they
not picture some impassible God, indifferent to pity, too far above them
to worry about their lot? Are they not going to turn away from the true
God and even end up getting angry at Him? So what will the Christian do?112

Preaching in univocal fashion on the divine impassibility runs the risk of
presenting God as a stranger to man, as man’s competitor. Preaching thus on
the divine immutability, not well clarified, may then beget indifference or
107 Journet, “De l’espérance,” 203–8; idem, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de

Dieu,” part 1, 57–60.
108 Journet, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 57.
109 Ibid., 55–56.
110 Ibid., 53–54.
111 Ibid., 58.
112 Journet, “De l’espérance,” 204.

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rebellion.With Molinié, Journet agrees that the concept of an immutability of indifference is a graver error than the anthropomorphism that
endows God with passions, for nothing that concerns creatures can be
indifferent to God.113 Recognition of a nameless perfection, the eternal
exemplar in God of what in us is distress with nobility, permits us to
“banish from the mind of men the abominable idea of an impassible God
who abandons the creature to itself and who takes pleasure at the sight of
an unfolding human history where evil abounds.”114
In these reflections, Journet made every effort to avoid a contradiction: If mystery can be adored, contradiction is hateful. The affirmation
of God’s “quasi-suffering” must not be understood in dialectical fashion,
as though God had within himself an element of negativity and thus
underwent a process on account of his differences.115 With the utmost
firmness, Journet rejects the idea of a becoming in God in the manner of
Böhme’s gnosis, of Hegel’s panlogism, of Berdyaev’s tragic sense, or of the
theories of divine kenosis.116 The divine immutability and impassibility
remain absolutely inviolate.
Here we touch upon the perception of the divine paradoxes that
animates Charles Journet’s theology: the paradoxes of a wealthy God who
begs, of a good and mighty God who allows evil, of God’s peace that
troubles, and of an impassible God who yet conceals within himself the
mysterious exemplar of magnanimous suffering. “To respect better the
mystery of the Divine Essence,” Journet tells us,
it is good and helpful to designate it by using words together that seem
incompatible, that seem contradictory. I do not say: they are in fact
incompatible and contradictory.That would be to make of God a focal
point of inconsistencies, that would be to destroy God in our understanding, that would be to sweep Him forever from our thinking.117

But these seemingly contradictory words “cease to be so if we go beyond,
if we strip them of their covering and only keep their clearest, purest, and
113 Journet, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 54–56.
114 Jacques Maritain, quoted in Journet, “La souffrance de la créature,” 227.
115 Journet, “Un affrontement de Hegel et de la sagesse chrétienne,” 123–25.
116 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 97–102. Journet refuses to speak of a “kenosis” in God

himself; he explains this in the sixth conference of his retreat “The Paradoxes of
the Divine Names” (preached in 1971) about the humility of God. Those who
say that the Father is humble because He gives his divinity to the Son strip the
word “humility” of its meaning. Divinity cannot be lost, but in the human attitude of humility there is something that answers to the divine nature, namely, the
magnanimity that exists in the eternal Godhead.
117 Journet, “Dieu. I. Paradoxes divins,” Nova et Vetera (French) 34 (1959): 134.

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most sublime content”: “All the names we utter foreshadow the unique
unutterable Name into which they vanish.”118 For Journet, the affirmation, paradoxical but neither absurd nor contradictory, of the mysterious
suffering of God remains in the clarity-obscurity of what we know and
do not know about God.
VIII. Some Questions
It was my intention to present Charles Journet’s thought, not to subject
it to a critique. However, we have to recognize that for the Thomist, Journet’s doctrine may raise some problems. These difficulties have to do in
particular with the evil of fault, that is, sin, in its relation to God. I would
like to point out these problems, at least as questions addressed to Journet’s doctrine.
1. The main difficulty has to do with the action of God and with his
knowledge.We have seen that when Journet says that God “permits”
moral evil, he denies the classical Thomistic thesis of the “antecedent
permissive decree.” According to Journet, this thesis involves God
himself too deeply in the scandal of evil. He replaces it therefore with
Jacques Maritain’s explanation of the “shatterable” and “unshatterable”
divine motion while asserting the notion of “nihilation” by the human
will. But Maritain’s explanation itself raises a problem. The notion of
“nihilation” and of “shatterable motion” is problematic, for if nihilation
is something “positive,” it must be caused by God; but if nihilation is
purely negative, this means that God has not given something positive
to the human person: In either case, it is not easy to see how the explanation can avoid the intervention of an antecedent decree.119 According to Journet, the denial of the “antecedent permissive decree” and of
the “determining decree” does not weaken God’s action in the world.
But a question remains: Can the theory of the “consequent permissive
decree” preserve the universal scope of God’s providence and, above
all, God’s independence?120
In a famous article published in 1992, Fr. Jean-Hervé Nicolas
(whom Maritain strongly opposed on this topic) surrendered to
118 Ibid.
119 For these criticisms see Stephen A. Long, “Providence, liberté, et loi naturelle,”

Revue Thomiste 102 (2002): 355–406, esp. 376–98.
120 Classical Thomism answered the question with the doctrine of “physical premo-

tion.” For this theory and how it applies to evil moral actions, see Réginald
Garrigou-Lagrange,“Prémotion physique,” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique,
vol. 13 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1936), col. 31–77, esp. 71–77 (“La causalité divine
et l’acte physique du péché”).

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Maritain’s objections and acknowledged that the modern Thomistic
doctrine on God’s knowledge of sin and on God’s permission of sin
(antecedent permissive decree) should be abandoned.121 The main
reason given by Fr. Nicolas for rejecting the antecedent permissive
decree was God’s absolute innocence: God is not responsible for
sin.122 But although he accepted Maritain’s objections, Fr. Nicolas
was still not fully satisfied with Maritain’s answer to the problem.The
doctrine of “nihilation” and of the “consequent permissive decree”
may not be the decisive answer for the Thomist.
2. The second difficulty has to do with the motive for which God allows
sin. Journet constantly repeats that evil is permitted for the sake of a
greater good. No doubt this Augustinian type of response is fundamental, but Journet goes further. On the one hand, Journet makes clear
that this “greater good” is the glory of the Incarnate Word. In the final
analysis, this means that moral evil (sin) is permitted propter Christum.
This explanation puts Christ at the heart of God’s initial plan, that is,
at the starting point of the divine economy. Following the Salmaticenses, Journet here professes an absolute Christocentrism that strays
from the thought of St.Thomas. On the other hand, Journet considers
the state of the redemption “all in all” better than the world of Adam’s
innocence (the world or the state of man “before” the fault of Adam).
This explanation likewise goes beyond the thought of Thomas
Aquinas. For St.Thomas, the Incarnation procures this “greater good,”
which is the union of man with God in the Person of the Incarnate
Word; it also allows certain persons (for instance, the Blessed Virgin
Mary) to attain a higher grace. But Journet generalizes this affirmation
by applying it universally to the state of redemption in itself.
To sum up, Journet is not satisfied with saying that God can draw
good from a permitted evil, but maintains that God allows the evil
for the good that he draws from it. He adds that this good is greater
than the one lost by the original evil, and he puts Christ at the heart
of the initial plan of God.123 Paradoxically, this explanation seems to
121 Jean-Hervé Nicolas, “La volonté salvifique de Dieu contrariée par le péché,”

Revue Thomiste 92 (1992): 177–96.
122 Ibid., 185–86: the antecedent permissive decree would imply that the defect of

the free will (“la défaillance de la liberté”) must follow infallibly from God’s
permission, to such an extent that it is difficult to avoid making God responsible for evil.
123 For St. Thomas’s teaching and the difficulties of Journet’s solution, see François
Daguet, Théologie du dessein divin chez Thomas d’Aquin: Finis omnium Ecclesia (Paris:
Vrin, 2003), 252–59.

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integrate evil into God’s design. Does God permit moral evil (sin)
propter Christum?
3. The last difficulty concerns the affirmation of the “mysterious suffering of God,” which Journet takes over from Maritain. For Journet,
this suffering or “quasi-suffering” of God is the perfect exemplar of
the wound of love, that is, a pure perfection, a nobility for which we
have no human word.As we have seen, we are dealing with a “nameless and unnamable” perfection. On this point too, Journet’s reflection (like Maritain’s) shows the profound humility the theologian
must dwell in when he contemplates the mystery of God. Undeniably, this doctrine is of exceptional profundity.We find in it the penetrating expression of a thought seeking to uncover in God not
suffering strictly speaking, but the transcendent exemplar of the
suffering of Christ and of the saints.
Still we must ask the following question: The noble element in
mercy, the fruitful and precious aspect of the suffering of love, is it
not charity? Is not the perfection Journet calls “quasi-suffering”
instead God’s incomprehensible love in his fruitful activity, which we
signify by the word “mercy”? In other words, if we exclude privation
and evil from God, as Journet certainly does, what is the gem that the
notion of “mercy” contains, what is the pure perfection that is
contained in love suffering to overcome suffering? Here we are faced
with a dilemma that Journet solves only by appealing to the obscurity of a “nameless” mystery: (a) either God suffers in the strict meaning of the word, and then would know pain in his very being and
would be subject to becoming and change; or (b) God in his merciful activity knows neither pain nor suffering—certainly not because
of a lack or a defect, but because of his eminent perfection—and
then it is his Love that we are naming, Divine Love working to heal
men and their misery. Scripture gives us a name, a word to signify this
perfection: God is Agape (1 Jn 4:8). Is the perfection and the nobility of compassion a suffering or a quasi-suffering? Is it not rather the
unchanging love of God?124
After reading the pages that Charles Journet devoted to the
mystery of evil, we cannot but be struck by the continual progress in
his thinking, a non-stop development whereby the theologian deepens his meditation on the path “opened by St. Thomas.” This deepening owes much to Jacques Maritain, whose original theses Journet
124 For the teaching of St.Thomas and the criticism of it by Maritain and Journet,

see Emery, “L’immutabilité du Dieu d’amour,” 5–37.

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followed from the beginning (God’s knowledge of evil, nihilation of
the divine motion, rejection of the antecedent divine decree) and
whom he followed right up to his final meditations (the mystery of
quasi-suffering in God).125
Journet’s theological meditation sought understanding while avoiding
the absurd.Without taking anything away from the worth and necessity
of rigorous metaphysical thinking, Journet wanted to shed light on such
thinking by a higher outlook, that of an evangelical vision of wisdom, like
the saints, for
if [the most orthodox doctrine is] repeated without being plunged back
into the flame where it was wrought or vivified by some secret power of
the Gospel, [it] will mislead and may turn to poison. How then are we to
avoid trembling at causing scandal where it was hoped to bring light?126

The spiritual and theological journey of Charles Journet shows an
ever more vivid awareness of the scandal of evil, an ever-deepening
wound, given the excess of evil in the world. We are not dealing here
merely with what is usually called “post-Auschwitz theology,” but with
the profound misery that strikes all the world’s forsaken people: not only
those in Europe who died lingering deaths in the prisons and camps,
perishing under torture because they had resolved to resist their
conquerors, but also
so many poor souls who had been doing nothing but their normal,
humble jobs and upon whom, like a beast, sudden death fell . . . , millions
of the poor throughout the centuries, crushed by the huge machine of
pride and plunder as old as mankind . . . the slaves of all times . . . , the
proletarians of the industrial age, all those that destitution has deprived
of their status as men, all the damned of society here below.127

Such an awareness of the excess of evil, whereby the question of evil can
become a “torture,”128 draws its profundity from a lively faith in God.The
125 For the early stages of the discussion between Journet and Maritain, see Michael

Torre,“Francisco Marín-Sola, OP, and the Origin of Jacques Maritain’s Doctrine
on God’s Permission of Evil,” Nova et Vetera (English) 4 (2006): 55–94.
126 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 20. This is very well illustrated by Journet’s theses on
God’s knowledge and permission of evil, or by his presentation of the divine
impassibility.
127 Journet, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 74. Here, as is
often the case, Journet borrows his words from Maritain.
128 Journet, Meaning of Evil, 15–16.

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555

most terrible evil, sin that wounds God, cannot be grasped “so long as we
have not glimpsed how serious is his love for us.”129 It is in the divine gift
of redeeming love that the evil of sin is seen as absolutely “unacceptable”
to God. Likewise, it is Christ who reveals to us the nobility of suffering
undergone with magnanimity and lets us catch sight of the eternal exemplar, in God, of such grief.130 Journet has only unfolded here the “point of
view” or outlook that he himself had invited us to adopt when faced with
the mystery of evil:“We must try to go to God in order to grasp evil from
N&V
his viewpoint.”

129 Journet, “La Rédemption, drame de l’amour de Dieu,” part 1, 54.
130 Ibid., 59.

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557

Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law*
S TEVEN A. L ONG
Ave Maria University
Naples, Florida
Not only does God protect and govern all things
by his providence, but He also, by an internal power,
impels to motion and action whatever moves and acts,
and this in such a manner that, although He excludes not,
He yet precedes the agency of secondary causes.
—Catechism of the Council of Trent, Article One

The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes:“For God is at work in you, both
to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Far from diminishing the
creature’s dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by
God’s power, wisdom, and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off
from its origin, for “without a Creator, the creature vanishes.” Still less
can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God’s grace.
—Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 308

Introduction

T HE INTENTION of this essay is to explain St. Thomas Aquinas’s
account of human freedom as a created and divinely actuated liberty, and
to argue that this understanding is essential to the Thomistic conception
of natural law. But to be clear: I mean to argue not only that this is true
of the doctrine of St. Thomas, but that this is the true account, and
furthermore that profound awareness and understanding of what the
* This essay orginally appeared as “Providence, Liberté Et Loi Naturelle” in Revue

Thomiste 3(2002): 355–406.

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natural law is, is incompossible with the contrary and now widespread
notion of human liberty as standing utterly outside the divine providential government.
To this end, I first set forth St. Thomas’s positive account of human
volition and divine causality.Then I consider two general lines of objection to St.Thomas’s teaching, the first briefly and the second in great and
abundant depth.The first line of objection is rooted in concern lest this
teaching deny human freedom and self-determination. The second
objection flows from Jacques Maritain’s revision of the classical reading
of St.Thomas’s teaching and implicitly is based on his view that this classical reading makes God too complicit in evil. An answer in sufficient
depth to this great Thomist seems justified by the datum that any wrong
step here gravely imperils St.Thomas’s radical metaphysical theocentrism
and the doctrine of natural law flowing from it. Because the line of criticism associated with Maritain is a brilliant effort to wed the principles
of St.Thomas to an account that finally recedes from these same principles, because the matter itself is of intrinsic importance; and because
Maritain’s analysis seems (despite his native Thomistic genius) to be yet
another shoot, within the Catholic life, of a growth of sensitivity about
and concern for autonomy that has dislodged awareness of the theonomic character of natural law, for all these reasons, the response to Maritain constitutes the largest portion of this essay.1 Nonetheless, my essential
argument is only completed within the final section.Therein I will argue
that the metaphysical and theocentric conception of natural law—
according to which the natural law is nothing other than one mode
whereby the divine mind orders the rational creature to its end—is
impossible if human volitional activity is outside of the divine causality.
I. “Without Me You Can Do Nothing”
St.Thomas’s account of human freedom in relation to divine causality is
perhaps most historically and doctrinally clear in his reflections on one
line from the Gospel of John (14:10):“Without me you can do nothing.”
These words suggest many lines of inquiry, all of them greatly enriched
by his teaching. Among these are the nature of good and evil, as well as
the properly theological question concerning the nature of predestination. But here I will focus upon one primary point: the question of the
relation of divine providence to freedom and moral law.
1 Another reason may also be given: that Jacques Maritain, as one of the foremost

Thomistic teachers of the past several hundred years, is one who stands so close
to the font of Thomas’s metaphysical principles that even when he may seem to
err, recourse to the salve of these principles always is near at hand.

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“Without me you can do nothing.” One of the chief meanings of
these words according to St.Thomas Aquinas is—as he writes in chapter
67 of the first part of the third volume of the Summa contra Gentiles—
“That in all things that operate God is the cause of their operating.”2 St.
Thomas further writes in chapter 67:
Hence it is clear that in all things that operate God is the cause of their
operating. For everyone that operates is in some way a cause of being,
either of essential or of accidental being. But nothing is a cause of being
except in so far as it acts by God’s power.Therefore everyone that operates acts by God’s power.3

The effect of being is not properly contained by any created nature,
either in essence or in operative power, and so, if the effect of being is to
be achieved by a creature’s operation, this requires that the creature be
applied to action by divine power, moving it to produce this effect.
This teaching remains the source of great difficulties for those who wish
to preserve theism while denying divine omnipotence. And this category
of brow-furrowed theists contains more occupants than may at first be
apparent. Speech about human freedom often supposes that the reality of
a free act cannot be caused by God. It is widely thought that if God is a
cause of the free human act, then this cause must be only a remote precondition—a sort of deistic stage-setting—and not a causality that extends as
far as moving the human person freely to act, actualizing the person’s free
self-determination. Yet the denial that God activates and moves human
creatures freely depicts divine causality as coercive or violent, and defines
human freedom in metaphysical terms more proportioned to God than to
a creature that can neither be nor act apart from God.
This strongly contrasts with the teaching of St.Thomas, who describes
the divine causality of freedom as follows:
2 ScG, IIIa, 67: “Quod Deus est causa operandi omnibus operantibus.” All Latin

citations are drawn from the Leonine editions, with the exception of the Summa
Theologiae which uses the Leonine text but as found in the Ottawa edition
(Ottawa: Collége Dominicain d’Ottawa, 1941).Translations are a combination of
my own (especially notes 9 and 48 below); or from Anton Pegis’s Introduction to
Saint Thomas Aquinas (New York: Random House, 1948), and also his translation
of the Summa contra Gentiles (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1975); or from the Benziger edition of the Summa Theologiae (New
York: Benziger, 1948).
3 Ibid.:“Ex hoc autem apparet quod Deus causa est omnibus operantibus ut operentur. Omne enim operans est aliquo modo causa essendi, vel secundum esse substantiale, vel accidentale. Nihil autem est causa essendi nisi inquantum agit in virtute
Dei, ut ostensum est (c. praec.). Omne igitur operans operatur per virtutem Dei.”

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Steven A. Long
Free will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free will man
moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that
what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing
to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the
first cause,Who moves causes both natural and voluntary.And just as by
moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so
by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being
voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He
operates in each thing according to its own nature.4

Far from moving the human will violently, God is the cause of the natural motion of the will, constituting it as what it is. He articulates the same
point more starkly in the following lines from De malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4:
When anything moves itself, this does not exclude its being moved by
another, from which it has even this that it moves itself. Thus it is not
repugnant to liberty that God is the cause of the free act of the will.5

4 ST I, q. 83, a. 1, ad 3:“Dicendum quod liberum arbitrium est causa sui motus; quia

homo per liberum arbitrium seipsum movet ad agendum. Non tamen hoc est de
necessitate libertatis, quod sit prima causa sui id quod liberum est; sicut nec ad hoc
quod aliquid sit causa alterius, requiritur quod sit prima causa eius. Deus igitur est
prima causa movens et naturales causas et voluntarias. Et sicut naturalibus causis,
movendo eas, non aufert quin actus earum sint naturales; ita movendo causas
voluntarias, non aufert quin actiones earum sint voluntariae, sed potius hoc in eis
facit; operatur enim in unoquoque secundum eius proprietatem.”
5 “Similiter cum aliquid mouet se ipsum, non excluditur quin ab alio moueatur a
quo habet hoc ipsum quo se ipsum mouet. Et sic non repugnat libertati quod
Deus est causa actus liberi arbitrii.” The antecedent text of this response to the
fourth objection is also very much to the purpose:“Ad quartum dicendum quod
cum dicitur aliquid mourere se ipsum, ponitur idem esse mouens et motum; cum
autem dicitur quod aliquid mouetur ab altero, ponitur aliud esse mouens et aliud
motum. Manifestum est autem quod cum aliquid mouet alterum, non ex hoc
ipso quod est mouens ponitur quod est primum mouens: unde non excluditur
quin ab altero moueatur et ab altero habeat hoc ipsum quod mouet.” “To the
forth it should be said that when it is said that something moves itself, that the
same thing is mover and moved. But when it is said that something is moved by
another, the moved is taken to be one thing and the mover another. But it is clear
that when something moves another, from this it is not taken to follow that it is
the first mover: wherefore it is not excluded that from another it is itself moved
and from this other it has even this, that it moves.”Thence the lines follow that
“when something moves itself, this does not exclude that it is moved by another
from which it has even this, that it moves itself. And thus it is not repugnant to
liberty that God is the cause of the free act of the will.”

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561

Indeed, apart from God the natural motion of the will could neither
be—it is not self-existent—nor be applied to action, since the act of the will
represents a surplus of actuality that itself must be reducible to the first cause.
Everything that moves from potency to act is moved by another in act—
indeed, quod movetur ab alio movetur is for St.Thomas an evident principle.
Thomas considers that God is both the first author of the will’s being
and of its natural motion6 and free choice. God moves necessary things
necessarily, and contingent things contingently (cf. ST I–II, q. 10, a. 4, ad
1). He puts the point pronouncedly when he writes:
Man is master of his acts, both of his willing and not willing, because of
the deliberation of reason, which can be bent to one side or another.
And although he is master of his deliberating or not deliberating, yet this
can only be by a previous deliberation; and since this cannot go on to
infinity, we must come at length to this, that man’s free choice is moved
by an extrinsic principle, which is above the human mind, namely, by
God, as the Philosopher proves in the chapter on Good Fortune.7

God is the first mover, the first object of appetite, and the first willer.
Thus as he puts it, “every application of power to action is chiefly and

6 Here, see ST I–II, q. 9, a. 4, ad 1, ad 2, and ad 3: (Ad 1) “It is of the nature of the

voluntary act that its principle be within the agent; but it is not necessary that
this inward principle be a first principle unmoved by another.Therefore, though
the voluntary act has an inward proximate principle, nevertheless, its first principle is from the outside.Thus, too, the first principle of natural movement, namely,
that which moves nature, is from the outside.”
(Ad 2) “For an act to be violent it is not enough that its principle be extrinsic, but we must add, without the concurrence of him that suffers violence.This does not
happen when the will is moved by an exterior principle; for it is the will that
wills, though moved by another. But this movment would be violent, if it were
counter to the movement of the will; which in the present case is impossible,
since then the will would will and not will the same thing.”
(Ad 3) “The will moves itself sufficiently in one respect, and in its own order,
that is to say, as a proximate agent; but it cannot move itself in every respect, as
we have shown.Therefore it needs to be moved by another as first mover.”
7 Ibid., I–II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 1: “Dicendum quod homo est dominus suorum
actuum, et volendi et non volendi, propter deliberationem rationis, quae potest
flecti ad unam partem vel ad aliam. Sed quod deliberet vel non deliberet, et si
huiusmodi etiam sit dominus, oportet quod hoc sit per deliberationem praecedentem. Et cum hoc non procedat in infinitum, oportet quod finaliter deveniatur
ad ad hoc quod liberum arbitrium hominis moveatur ab aliquo exteriori principio quod est supra mentem humanam, scilicet a Deo; ut etiam Philosophus
probat in cap. De Bona Fortuna.”

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primarily from God” (Summa contra Gentiles, 67). On this account the
positive substance of our own willing is, like our very existence, simultaneously most our own while being most a gift.
St.Thomas expressly addresses the need of all creatures for prior divine
motion to account for their acts in the Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 109, a.
1, resp.
But it is clear that, just as all corporeal movements are reduced to the
motion of the body of the heavens as to the first corporeal mover, so
all movements, both corporeal and spiritual, are reduced to the
absolutely First Mover, Who is God. And hence no matter how perfect a
corporeal or spiritual nature is supposed to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless
it be moved by God. Now this motion is according to the plan of his
providence, and not by a necessity of nature, as the motion of the body
of the heavens. But not only is every motion from God as from the First
Mover, but all formal perfection is from Him as from the First Act. Hence the
action of the intellect, or of any created being whatsoever, depends upon God in
two ways: first, inasmuch as it is from Him that it has the form whereby it acts;
secondly, inasmuch as it is moved by Him to act.8

On this account, we are moved from potency to act by God in that very
act whereby we freely determine ourselves. One may consider two
persons, each of whom exists and is preserved in being by God, and each
of whom is capable of rational volition. One of these proceeds to act,
while the other does not. St.Thomas teaches that the one that acts cannot
proceed to act without being moved by God (“non potest in suum actum
procedere nisi moveatur a Deo”). Elsewise finite human creatures roam
the earth creating ex nihilo the added perfection or reality of their free
determinations, entirely outside of the divine causality and the divine
providence. Further, all rational approaches to God hinge upon the
universal dependence of finite being upon God. Insofar as our free self8 Emphasis added. “Manifestum est autem quod sicut motus omnes corporales

reducuntur in motum caelestis corporis sicut in primum movens corporale; ita
omnes motus tam corporales quam spirituales reducuntur in primum movens
simpliciter, quod est Deus. Et ideo quantumcumque natura aliqua corporalis vel
spiritualis ponatur perfecta, non potest in suum actum procedere nisi moveatur
a Deo. Quae quidem motio est secundum suae providentiae rationem; non
secundum necessitatem naturae, sicut motio corporis caelestis. Non solum autem
a Deo est omnis motio sicut a primo movente, sed etiam ab ipso est omnis
formalis perfectio sicut a primo actu. Sic igitur actio intellectus et cuiuscumque
entis creati dependet a Deo inquantum ad duo: uno modo, inquantum ab ipso
habet perfectionem sine formam per quam agit; alio modo, inquantum ab ipso
movetur ad agendum.”

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determinations represent an added reality that did not before exist, a fortiori
the first cause of these determinations must be found in God. Indifferent
premotion—the idea that the natural motion of the will does not require
divine application to act in the case of the act of self-determination—does
not seem compatible with Thomas’s language.
Lest there be any doubt about the secondary causality of the rational
creature’s acts of free self-determination, St. Thomas expressly applies to
these acts the governing principles of the metaphysics of esse, and of the
real distinction of act from potency as such.This application is nowhere
clearer than in his insistence that just as the creature will fall into nonexistence apart from divine conservation in being, so it will fail of good
apart from divine conservation in the good. his words are arresting:
To sin is nothing else than to fall from the good which belongs to any
being according to its nature. Now as every created thing has no being
unless from another, and considered in itself is nothing, so does it need
to be conserved by another in the good which pertains to its nature.
For it can of itself fall from good, just as of itself it can fall into nonbeing, unless it is conserved by God.9

These words bring to mind St.Thomas’s language in the fifth chapter of
De ente et essentia, where he describes the immediacy of the divine causality of the actus essendi as like the causality of the light in the air by the sun.
If the sun is eclipsed, the diaphanous medium of air is no longer light, and
if God does not uphold a creature in being, it ceases to be. It is this very
logic that St.Thomas here applies to the need of the creature to be conserved
by God in that good that pertains to its nature, just as the creature must be
upheld in its being by God if it is not to cease existing. Clearly then the
rational creature’s acts must be activated by God at every instant, and the
creature cannot be the absolutely first cause of its actual self-determination without being converted into a being a se. If God withdraws preservative causality, the creature is permitted to fall.And this permission is not
like the permission given by one creature to another: for the salutary effect
cannot be achieved should God not uphold the creature in good. The
rational creature does not roam the cosmos creating ex nihilo the being of
9 Ibid., I–II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2:“Dicendum quod peccare nihil aliud est quam defi-

cere a bono quod convenit alicui secundum suam naturam. Unaquaeque autem
res creata, sicut esse non habet nisi ab alio, et in se considerata nihil est, ita indiget conservari in bono suae naturae convenienti ab alio. Potest enim per seipsam
deficere a bono, sicut et per seipsam potest deficere in non esse, nisi divinitus
conservaretur.”

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its own free determinations wholly outside the divine causality, but rather
God is the first cause of these determinations, and the rational creature the
secondary cause.
Freedom of the will, for St. Thomas, is rooted in the intellect. He
teaches that the will has the natural character of being undeterminable by
finite goods (cf. ST I, q. 82, a. 2, ad 2), as this pertains to the motion of the
will as an inclinatio sequens formam intellectam, an inclination following the
form of reason (“motus voluntatis est inclinatio sequens formam intellectam,” Quaestiones quadlibetales, Quodlibet 6, q. 2, a. 2). Because the object
of the will is universal or rational good, no finite good is so compelling
that reason is bound to command the will to embrace it. Every limited or
finite good is, in some respect, perceivable as not good. For instance it is
good to get up in the morning—but it is bad to do so when one is weary.
It is good to read a great work of literature—but it is bad because it strains
the eyes. It is good for one to follow the argument of an essay, but it is bad
if the author is verbose, or one needs coffee, or—God forbid—the reader
prefers the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Every finite good is by its
nature limited and from some point of view not good: No created good
is the subsisting universal good. Were willing held not to be an inclination
following the form of reason, this would curiously imply either that the
will were itself an intellect, or else that we could will without any object
of will. I have sometimes suspected that my brother philosophers may not
quite know what they are doing, but heretofore I have been reluctant to
press the point quite so far as this.
Since we affirm or negate God primarily in our response to created
things, and naturally lack a direct knowledge of God, the human person’s
response to God is free. But if one achieves the beatific knowledge of
God, then God is known as he is: the Perfect Good Who is in no way
undesirable, and Who answers and fulfills the order divinely instilled in
the human heart. This divine ordering of the person is not subject to
human dominion or caveat.Thus if one were to merit the beatific vision
there could be no possibility of refusing God because the will would be
utterly perfected in cleaving to Perfect Good.
Freedom is not an utter libertarian independence of God, but a function of the nature of the rational creature’s action, which contrasts with
the determination of the operational power of irrational beings to only
one effect. The rational creature’s freedom does not refer to its independence of divine motion for action, but rather it refers to the immaterial mode in which the rational agent is moved, a nobler mode owing to
its spiritual nature. As St.Thomas argues:

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It should be said that when it is said that God left man to himself, this
does not mean to exclude man from divine providence, but merely that
he has not a prefixed operating power determined to one as with natural things; because they are only acted upon as though directed by
another towards an end—for they do not act of themselves, directing
themselves towards an end, as do rational creatures through free choice
whereby these take counsel and make choices. Hence it is significantly
said: In the hand of his own counsel. But because the same act of free
choice is reduced to God as to a cause, it is necessary that whatsoever
happens from the exercise of free choice be subject to divine providence. For the providence of man is contained under the providence of
God, as a particular cause under a universal cause.10

The pattern for this inclusion of particular under universal causality is
spelled out quite clearly by St.Thomas in the third volume of the Summa
contra Gentiles:
For two things may be considered in every agent: namely, the thing
itself that acts, and the power whereby it acts: thus fire by its heat makes
a thing hot. Now the power of the lower agent depends on the power
of the higher agent, in so far as the higher agent gives the lower agent
the power whereby it acts, or preserves that power, or applies it to
action: thus the craftsman applies the instrument to its proper effect,
although sometimes he does not give the instrument the form whereby
it acts, nor preserves that form, but merely puts it into motion. Consequently the action of the lower agent must not only proceed from it
through the latter’s proper power, but also through the power of all the
higher agents: for it acts by virtue of them all: and just as the lowest
agent is found to be immediately active, so the power of the first agent
is found to be immediate in the production of the effect: because the
power of the lowest agent does not of itself produce this effect, but by
the power of the proximate higher agent, and this by the power of a yet
higher agent, so that the power of the supreme agent is found to produce
the effects of itself, as though it were the immediate cause, as may be
seen in the principles of demonstration, the first of which is immediate. Accordingly just as it is not unreasonable that one action be
10 Ibid., I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 4: “Dicendum quod in hoc quod dicitur Deum hominem

sibi reliquisse, non excluditur homo a divina providentia; sed ostenditur quod
non praefigitur ei virtus operativa determinata ad unum, sicut rebus naturalibus;
quae aguntur tantum, quasi ab altero directae in finem, non autem seipsa agunt,
quasi se dirigentia in finem, ut creaturae rationales per liberum arbitrium, quo
consiliantur et eligunt. Unde signanter dicit: ‘In manu consilii sui.’ Sed quia ipse
actus liberi arbitrii reducitur in Deum sicut in causam, necesse est ut ea quae ex
libero arbitrio fiunt, divinae providentiae subdantur; providentia enim hominis
continetur sub providentia Dei, sicut causa particularis sub causa universali.”

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produced by an agent and by the virtue of that agent, so is it not absurd
that the same effect be produced by the inferior agent and by God, and
by both immediately, though in a different way.11

It is not the purpose of this essay expressly to consider the teaching of
Bañez. But surely it must be seen that his famed terminology of premotionis physicae traces the teaching of St. Thomas quite aptly: There is a
motion bestowed by God without which the rational creature cannot
proceed to its act of self-determination. This motion is “prior”—hence
pre motion—not in a temporal sense, but in the sense in which the cause
is prior to that which is caused: Apart from this moving of the rational
creature from potency to act with respect to its act of self-determination
there can be no such act. But of course, in time, the motion is simultaneous with the activation of the power of self-determination. It is “physical” not in the sense of being a material thing, but in the sense of being
real. And of course its character as a motion has been noted.
II. Two Objections
It must be noted that there are many implications of Thomas’s teaching
which account for the tendency to reject it. Some authors believe it too
deeply implicates God in the scandal of moral evil; others think it insufficiently safeguards human liberty or that salvation would be more accessible were it more wholly a function of a human act not indebted for its
being to divine causality; and of course, continental a priorists live off the

11 ScG, IIIa, 70:“Haec autem difficultatem non afferunt si praemissa considerentur.

In quolibet enim agente est duo considerare, scilicet rem ipsam quae agit, et
virtutem qua agit: sicut ignis calefacit per calorem.Virtus autem inferioris agentis dependet a virtute superioris agentis, inquantum superius agens dat virtutem
ipsam inferiori agente per quam agit; vel conservat eam; aut etiam applicat eam
ad agendum, sicut artifex applicat instrumentum ad proprium effectum; cui
tamen non dat formam per quam agit instrumentum, nec conservat, sed dat ei
solum motum. Opportet ergo quod actio inferioris agentis non solum sit ab eo
per virtutem proprium, sed per virtutem omnium superiorum agentium; agit
enim in virtute omnium. Et sicut agens infimum invenitur immediatum
activum; ita virtus primi agentis invenitur immediata ad producendum effectum:
nam virtus infimi agentis non habet quod producat hunc effectum ex se, sed ex
virtute proximi superioris; et virtus illius hoc habet ex virtute superioris; et sic
virtus supremiagentis invenitur ex se productiva effectus, quasi causa immediata;
sicut patet in principiis demonstrationum, quorum primum est immediatum.
Sicut igitur non est inconveniens quod una actio producatur ex aliquo agente et
eius virtute, ita non est inconveniens quod producatur idem effectus ab inferiori
agente et Deo: ab utroque immediate, licet alio et alio modo.”

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artificial dichotomy of nature and reason. All these objections cannot be
treated adequately within the scope of this essay. But response is given
here to two criticisms: first, the criticism that this account is simply
incompatible with human freedom; and second, that it makes God too
greatly complicit with moral evil when this implication might be avoided
simply by introducing the notion of a divine motion that can be resisted
(or as Jacques Maritain puts it, “shattered”) by a pure negation of the
creature. Because the second criticism has greatly arrested the theological imagination of many serious Thomistic and non-Thomistic scholars,
theologians, and philosophers—and even more because the metaphysical
profundity of Thomas’s radical theocentrism is at stake—the response to
this second argument is provided in depth. Only after these responses are
made will I turn to the implications for natural law of the denial that
human freedom is subject to divine motion and actuation.
IIa. Self-Determination and Freedom
As to the first, the denial of God’s causality of free human acts seems
predicated on the confusion of self-determination with absolute independence. But as St.Thomas points out, an agent may be self-determining and
still not be the first cause of that self-determination, just as an agent may
be a cause of being without being the first cause.
The actuality of a thing is not a static possession, but is at each instant
received from and preserved by God. As this is true of first act, it is alike
true of second act or operation.Were we not caused to be, and caused to
be rational and free; did our wills not receive their natural motion from
God; and were this natural motion not then further activated and applied
by the superior agency of God—then we would neither cause ourselves
to exist, nor bestow upon our wills their nature and natural motion, nor
apply the natural motion of our wills without being moved from potency
to act with respect to that very act whereby we determine ourselves.That
self-determination has conditions does not detract from the fact that it is
self-determination—although it does detract from the rationalist claim of
absolute independence. Further, it is obvious free acts have conditions,
and that not all the conditions of the free act are within the power of the
one acting. For example, that the agent exists is a condition prior to its
acting and wholly outside the power of the agent—yet it cannot act if it
does not exist. But the agent is not the cause of its own existence. Similarly, as a created liberty that is not compelled by any finite good, but
which is not everywhere and always willing, human freedom requires
prior activation by God. It helps to consider, as St. Thomas points out,
that necessary and contingent are modes consequent upon being, while God

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is the universal cause of being.12 God can cause both the necessary and
the contingent precisely because God is even less confined in the same
order with the creature than a novelist is confined in the same order with
the characters in his novel.13
Yet another aspect of this same objection insists that on St. Thomas’s
account the creature is not “free” to choose God. But the choice of God
is always indirect and via creaturely mediation, and the objects of such
choice precisely cannot compel the will, because as noted above the
object of the will is universal good, and the subsisting universal good is
God rather than any finite good. But in one respect the objection is
correct. If by saying that the creature is not free vis-à-vis God what is
meant is that the creature has no liberty apart from divine causality, then
this is true: There is no libertarian freedom over against or outside the
divine causality, because the only real liberty is caused by God. Free
choice is free because it is rooted in the intellect, and this defines the way
in which the rational creature moves and is moved to its end: It moves to
its end not in the way of subrational being, which is determined to but
one physical effect, but through free rational self-determination, of which
it is the proximate cause, and God is the first cause. Any objection to this
will be tantamount to an objection that the will is a creature.As has been
seen above, just as the creature is a proximate cause of being without
being the first cause, so likewise the creature is proximate cause of its selfdetermination without being the first cause.
As a final word about this type of objection, it should be ceded that
there is no libertarian freedom with respect to divine causality (if there
were, surely we would be given a preconsent form before creation). But the
way God causes our actions is as free actions whose rational character is not
12 Cf. ST I, q. 22, a. 4, ad 3:“Et considerandum est quod necessarium et contingens

proprie consequuntur ens, inquantum huiusmodi. Unde modus contingentiae et
necessitatis cadit sub provisione Dei, qui est universalis provisor totius entis, non
autem sub provisione aliquorum particularium provisorum” (We must remember
that, properly speaking, necessary and contingent are consequent upon being as
such. Hence the mode both of necessity and of contingency falls under the foresight of God, who provides universally for all being; not under the foresight of
causes that provide only for some particular order of things). “Et considerandum
est quod necessarium et contingens proprie consequuntur ens, inquantum huiusmodi. Unde modus contingentiae et necessitatis cadit sub provisione Dei, qui est
universalis provisor totius entis, non autem sub provisione aliquorum particularium provisorum.”
13 The point of comparison is not the unreality of the characters, but the even more
radical distance obtaining betwixt the created order and God compared to the
distance between the novelist and his work.

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limited to one physical effect. Far from the parody of divine motion constituting the reduction of the creature to a puppet on a string, to be moved
rationally is to receive an essentially higher perfection than any corporeal
motion—whether violent or natural—attains as its term.We are moved by
God according to our nature, and as this is rational and hence free from all
creaturely compulsion, we are moved rationally and freely. The deepest
response to the Kantian account of ethical autonomy is found here. For it
is the constant maxim of St. Thomas that operatio sequitur esse, that operation follows being. A thing can only act according as it is. But even Kant
must acknowledge that our being is heteronomous: We do not cause
ourselves to be, our being is received. Since we can only act as we are, and
our being is received from without or—as Kant puts it—heteronomous, it
is then metaphysically impossible that our operation in any respect be
absolutely autonomous. Of course the more appropriate terminology is
not merely that of heteronomy, but as Pope John Paul II has put it in Veritatis Splendor, participated theonomy (no. 41). Our being and action participate
in the order of divine government—the eternal law.
IIb. Divine Complicity with Evil and the Idea
of Resistable Divine Motion
IIb.1 The Classical Account
It cannot be denied that in the classical Thomistic account14 evil requires
divine permission and that this permission—while it does not make the
mode in which the evil occurs to be necessary rather than contingent—
nonetheless is not like the “permission” of a creature. Because if God
permits the failure of a creature, the creature will fail, whether freely or
necessarily. Hence the pertinence of St. Thomas’s words from Summa
Theologiae I–II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2, quoted above:15
To sin is nothing else than to fall from the good which belongs to any
being according to its nature. Now as every created thing has no being
unless from another, and considered in itself is nothing, so does it need
to be conserved by another in the good which pertains to its nature. For
it can of itself fall from good, just as of itself it can fall into nonbeing,
unless it is conserved by God.
14 I take this account to be that reading of the texts of St.Thomas clear in the works

of Bañez, John of St. Thomas, and Cajetan—authors who, despite differences,
uphold the same general line of account—and which Réginald GarrigouLagrange, and Jean-Hervé Nicolas, have defended in the twentieth century. It is,
frankly, the simple force of the texts of St.Thomas themselves.
15 See note 9 above.

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These words are arresting, because they make patent that, for St.
Thomas, the conservation in good follows precisely the same logic as the
conservation in being, and hence one cannot read “can of itself fall” as
implying “may or may not of itself fall.” Because the creature of itself is
nothing, it is something only inasmuch as it is caused and conserved in
being by God. And this logic is alike verified in the line of good:
“Unaquaeque autem res creata, sicut esse non habet nisi ab alio, et in se
considerata nihil est, ita indiget conservari in bono suae naturae convenienti ab
alio.” As indicated above, this is merely to follow the maxim that operatio sequitur esse, that operation follows being, that a thing can only act
according as it is.The existential indigence of the creature, which requires
the divine conservation of its being, is matched by its operational
dependence on God to act or to be conserved in the good proper to its
act.This is simply an inference from the convertibility of being with good
at each successive grade of being, such that in addition to the initial being
and good of a thing, there is also the superadded being and good represented by a thing’s perfective acts. Whereas, in God, being and good are
simply convertible, that which is simple in God is composite in creatures.
And so creatures achieve their good only through many acts whose
superadded perfection is itself traceable to the First Cause of all being,
good, and truth. As St.Thomas puts it (Summa contra Gentiles, III, a.20):
From what has been said, it is evident that, although God possesses his
perfect and entire goodness according to the manner of his simple
being, creatures nevertheless do not attain to the perfection of their
goodness through their being alone, but through many things. Therefore, although each one is good inasmuch as it exists, it cannot be called
good absolutely if it lack other things that are required for its goodness.
Thus a man who, being despoiled of virtue, is addicted to vice, is said
indeed to be good in a restricted sense, namely, as a being, and as a man;
but he is not said to be good absolutely, but rather evil. Accordingly, in
every creature to be and to be good are not the same absolutely,
although each one is good inasmuch as it exists; whereas in God to be
and to be good are absolutely one and the same.16

He continues in this same passage to point out that each thing tends to
a likeness to God’s goodness as its end not only in its being but in “whatever is required for its perfection”; not only in respect of substantial being,
16 See also ST I–II, q. 18, a. 1, resp. “Solus autem Deus habet totam plenitudinem

sui esse secundum aliquid unum et simplex; unaquaeque vero res habet plenitudinem essendi sibi convenientem secundum diversa” (But God alone has the
whole fullness of his Being in a manner which is one and simple, whereas every
other thing has its proper fullness of being in a certain multiplicity).

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but also in respect to that which is accidental and belongs to its perfection, as well as in respect to its proper operation. Now none of this
perfection can be unless God causes and conserves it—elsewise the creature fails in good. The argument that this applies only to ontic nothingness and not to moral nothingness is unfounded. Indeed, as indicated in
Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2, St.Thomas expressly applies this
logic to the conclusion that if God does not uphold the creature in moral
goodness the creature will of itself fail, just as it will of itself fail in being
if God does not conserve it in being. This is not only the authentic
doctrine of St.Thomas Aquinas, but an inference that is inescapable from
the very nature of being itself.The first nothingness of the creature before
God is the root of creaturely defectibility; and actual defect is a second
nothingness of the creature whereby it fails of the divine motion and
actuation, discovering the fissure of its own finitude when permitted to
embrace its own devices to the exclusion of the extrinsic principles of
law and grace set over it for its perfection.
As defects, error and sin are never most properly free because no one as
such chooses them, but only (under the impetus of disordered appetite)
chooses some apparent good. Granted that freedom extends to them insofar as the sinner prefers to perform an evil act even though it be evil, choice
cannot reach out to the act save under the aspect of some apparent good.17
17 See ibid., I–II, q. 75, a. 1, resp.: “Omnis autem causa per accidens reducitur ad

causam per se. Cum igitur peccatum ex parte inordinationis habeat causam agentem per accidens, ex parte autem actus habeat causam agentem per se, sequitur
quod inordinatio peccati consequatur ex ipsa causa actus. Sic igitur voluntas
carens directione regulae rationis et legis divinae, intendens aliquod bonum
commutabile, causat actum quidem peccati per se, sed inordinationem actus per
accidens et praeter intentionem; provenit enim defectus ordinis in actu ex
defectu directionis in voluntate” (Now every accidental cause is reducible to a
cause per se. Since then sin, on the part of its inordinateness, has a per accidens efficient cause, and on the part of the act, a per se efficient cause, it follows that the
inordinateness of sin follows from the cause of the act.Accordingly then, the will
lacking the direction of the rule of reason and of the divine law, and intent on
some mutable good, causes the act of sin per se, but the inordinateness of the act
per accidens and beside the intention: for the lack of order in the act results from
the lack of direction in the will). See also idem, De Malo, 3, 2, ad 1:“Ad primum
ergo dicendum quod homo qui peccat licet per se non uelit deformitatem
peccati, tamen deformitas peccati aliquo modo cadit sub uoluntate peccantis,
dum scilicet magis eligit deformitatem peccati incurrere quam ab actu cessare”
(To the first therefore it should be said that the man who sins while he does not
will the deformity of sin per se, still the deformity of sin in a certain way falls
under the will of the sinner, namely, because he rather chooses to incur the
deformity of the sin than to desist from the act).

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Of course, there is no per se cause of defect, and so God is not the per se
cause of evil.18 Further, evil is a deprivation of the good owing to a subject,
and as such is precisely not a being but the deprivation of what is owed to
a being. Even the seeming ontological positivity of some evils derives from
disorder, from deprivation of that which is owing to the subject, as the
ontological positivity of excessive pain that no longer serves any teleological function derives from the deprivation of right order in the flesh that
constitutes disease. So, for this reason, too, God is not the direct and per se
cause of evil.
It may be said that what unfolds in this world—both necessarily and
contingently—is that which the Infinite Good brings forth given certain
initial defects that are permitted. In this respect the permission of defect
brings to mind the infinite distance of any universe vis-à-vis the divine
perfection according to St.Thomas Aquinas.There is no best of all possible worlds, because any possible world is infinitely inferior to God (which
means that it will be subject to certain limits that are truly ontological
imperfections). Given this datum, the permission of other evils for the sake
18 ST I–II, q. 79, a. 2, resp.: “Dicendum quod actus peccati et est ens, et est actus; et

ex utroque habet quod sit a Deo. Omne enim ens, quocumque modo sit, oportet
quod derivetur a primo ente, ut patet per Dionysium,V cap. De Div. Nom. Omnis
autem actio causatur ab aliquo existente in actu, quia nihil agit nisi secundum quod
est actu; omne autem ens actu reducitur in primum actum, scilicet Deum, sicut in
causam, qui est per suam essentiam actus. Unde relinquitur quod Deus sit causa
omnis actionis, inquantum est actio. Sed peccatum nominat ens et actionem cum
quodam defectu. Defectus autem ille est ex causa creata, scilicet libero arbitrio,
inquantum deficit ab ordine primi agentis, scilicet Dei. Une defectus iste non
reducitur in Deum sicut in causam, sed in liberum arbitrium; sicut defectus claudicationis reducitur in tibiam curvam sicut in causam, non autem in virtutem
motivam, a qua tamen causatur quidquid est motionis in claudicatione. Et secundum hoc Deus est causa actus peccati, non tamen est causa peccati, quia non est
causa huius, quod actus sit cum defectu” (The act of sin is both a being and an act;
and in both respects it is from God. Because every being, whatever the mode of its
being, must be derived from the First Being, as Dionysius declares [Div. Nom. v].
Again every action is caused by something existing in act, since nothing produces
an action save insofar as it is in act; and every being in act is reduced to the First
Act, namely, God, as to its cause, who is act by his Essence.Therefore God is the
cause of every action, insofar as it is an action. But sin denotes a being and an action
with a defect: and this defect is from the created cause, that is the free will, as falling
away from the order of the First Agent, namely, God. Consequently this defect is
not reduced to God as its cause, but to the free will: even as the defect of limping
is reduced to a crooked leg as its cause, but not to the motive power, which nevertheless causes whatever there is of movement in the limping. Accordingly God is
the cause of the act of sin: and yet he is not the cause of sin, because he does not
cause the act to have a defect).

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of a higher good is to some degree originally prefigured in the creation
of the creature—with its ineluctably accompanying ontological defect of
finitude—for the sake of the ad extra communication of the divine good.
Of course this ontological defect as such is not moral evil; but it is ontological defect, and it is necessarily tied with the creation of finite beings
for the sake of their real but deficient imitation of the divine good.
It is perhaps discomfiting to think, but nonetheless true, that the step to
create at all involves a greater ontological dissymmetry (that between the
uncreated God and finite being) than does the subsequent permission of
evil for the sake of a higher good by God, whereby the defectible finite
creature as such is allowed to suffer defect (dissymmetry between the creature and deprivation of its proper good).This does not mean that all else but
a monistic one insusceptible to plurification—all of creation—is somehow
by nature morally evil. It merely indicates the operational indigence of the
creature, whose action mirrors its existential dependence: Just as of itself it
cannot exist unless upheld by God, similarly the finite rational creature of
itself is subject to operational defect. A finite knower and willer (even in a
state of pure nature and apart from consideration of original sin) as such
cannot operate perfectly—nor for that matter, operate at all, as it cannot
proceed to its act without being moved by God—apart from divine aid.
Yet whatever defects God permits, the infinite goodness of God brings
forth from them condign effects manifesting the ultimate self-subsisting
Being,Truth, and Good that is the common good of all creation and the
end in nature and grace of all intellectual creatures. Imagine a million possible worlds as created by God, with varying degrees and types of defects
(apart from the ontological defect of finitude common to all), and in and
from each the infinite perfection of God would bring forth higher goods
essentially manifestative of the ultimate common good of the commonwealth of being.The manifestation of God in each would be good, and not
one world would be such that God could not create a better. Hence it is
not the presence of defect, but the creation of something from nothing, the
bringing of good from evil, which is conspicuous.
Nonetheless, whatever being and good that the act marred by evil has
is caused by God and, moreover, is caused precisely in a context in which
the evil afflicting the act is divinely permitted.Why is it permitted? This
is one of the great questions both of natural and revealed theology. God
does not cause evil, which, as defect not convertible with being, is more
outside the formal object of the divine will—outside the divine Good—
than is color to hearing or sound to sight. But God does permit evil.
The answer of the Thomistic tradition has always been that God
permits evil only for the sake of a higher good, because only God can

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bring something out of nothing and good out of evil. Hence God permits
persecutions for the sake of the patience of the saints, and ultimately
permits evil for the sake of the manifestation of his justice and his mercy.
This reasoning is prominent in Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 79, a. 4, ad 1–4:
(Ad 1): Every evil that God does, or permits to be done, is directed to
some good; yet not always to the good of those in whom the evil is,
but sometimes to the good of others, or of the whole universe: thus He
directs the sin of tyrants to the good of the martyrs, and the punishment of the lost to the glory of his justice.
(Ad 2): God does not take pleasure in the loss of man, as regards the loss
itself, but by reason of his justice, or of the good that ensues from the loss.
(Ad 3): That God directs the blindness of some to their spiritual
welfare, is due to his mercy; but that the blindness of others is directed
to their loss is due to his justice: and that He vouchsafes his mercy to
some, and not to all, does not make God a respecter of persons, as
explained in I, q. 23, a. 5, ad 3.
(Ad 4): Evil of fault must not be done, that good may ensue; but evil
of punishment must be inflicted for the sake of good.19

The passage referred to above—Summa Theologiae I, q. 23, a. 5, ad 3—is
even more pronouncedly clear:
The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others,
must be sought for in the goodness of God. Thus He is said to have
made all things through his goodness, so that the divine goodness might
be represented in things. Now it is necessary that God’s goodness,
which in itself is one and undivided, should be manifested in many
ways in his creation; because creatures in themselves cannot attain to
19 Ibid., I–II, q. 79, a. 4, ad 1–4: (Ad 1) “Dicendum quod omnia mal quae Deus facit

vel permittit fieri, ordinantur in aliquod bonum; non tamen semper in bonum
eius in quo est malum, sed quandoque ad bonum alterius, vel etiam totius
universi. Sicut culpam tyrannorum ordinat in bonum martyrum; et poenam
damnatorum ordinat ad gloriam iustitiae suae.”
(Ad 2) “Dicendum quod Deus non delectatur in perditione hominum quantum ad ipsam perditionem, sed ratione suae iustitiae, vel propter bonum quod
inde provenit.”
(Ad 3) “Dicendum quod hoc quod Deus aliquorum excaecationem ordinat
in eorum salutem, misericordiae est; quod autem excaecatio aliorum ordinetur
ad eorum damnationem, iustitiae est. Quod autem misericordiam quibusdam
impendit et non omnibus, non facit personarum acceptionem in Deo, sicut in
Primo dictum est.”
(Ad 4) “Dicendum quod mala culpae non sunt facienda ut veniant bona, sed
mala poenae sunt inferenda propter bonum.”

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the simplicity of God.Thus it is that for the completion of the universe
there are required different grades of being; some of which hold a high
and some a low place in the universe.That this multiformity of grades
may be preserved in things, God allows some evils, lest many good
things should never happen, as was said above (I, q. 22, a. 2).
Let us then consider the whole of the human race, as we consider
the whole universe. God wills to manifest his goodness in men; in
respect to those whom He predestines, by means of his mercy, as sparing them; and in respect of others, whom he reprobates, by means of
his justice, in punishing them.This is the reason why God elects some
and rejects others. To this the Apostle refers, saying (Rom 9:22, 23):
“What if God, willing to show his wrath [that is, the vengeance of his
justice], and to make his power known, endured [that is, permitted]
with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction; that He
might show the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which He
hath prepared unto glory” and (2 Tm 2:20):“But in a great house there
are not only vessels of gold and silver; but also of wood and of earth;
and some, indeed, unto honor, but some unto dishonor.”
Yet why He chooses some for glory, and reprobates others, has no
reason, except the divine will. Whence Augustine says (Tract. xxvi. in
Joan.): “Why He draws one, and another He draws not, seek not to
judge, if thou dost not wish to err.”Thus too, in the things of nature, a
reason can be assigned, since primary matter is altogether uniform, why
one part of it was fashioned by God from the beginning under the
form of fire, another under the form of earth, that there might be a
diversity of species in things of nature.Yet why this particular part of
matter is under this particular form, and that under another, depends
upon the simple will of God; as from the simple will of the artificer it
depends that this stone is in part of the wall, and that in another;
although the plan requires that some stones should be in this place, and
some in that place.
Neither on this account can there be said to be injustice in God, if
He prepares unequal lots for not unequal things. This would be altogether contrary to the nature of justice, if the effect of predestination
were granted as something owed and not given from grace. In things
which are given gratuitously, a person can give more or less, just as he
pleases (provided he deprives nobody of his due), without any infringement of justice. This is what the master of the house said: “Take what
is thine, and go thy way. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will?” (Mt
20:14,15).20
20 Ibid., I, q. 23, a. 5, ad 3:“Dicendum quod ex ipsa bonitate divina ratio sumi potest

praedestinationis aliquorum, et reprobationis aliorum. Sic enim Deus dicitur
omnia propter suam bonitatem fecisse, ut in rebus divina bonitas repraesentetur.
Necesse est autem quod divina bonitas, quae in se est una et simplex, multiformiter repraesentetur in rebus; propter hoc quod res creatae ad simplicitatem

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Yet even the exultet—“O happy fault, O necessary sin, that gained for
us so great a Redeemer”—fails fully to uncloak this mystery. For what is
the higher good for the sake of which God permits an individual soul to
be lost for eternity? The adequate answer to this question may be found
only in the beatific vision. Every evil is permitted for the sake of a higher
good, and finally that good resolves into the ultimate good, the good of
the manifestation of the divine mercy and justice, and the knowledge of
God himself.Yet an intuitive understanding of the beatific good capable
of revealing the nature of the fittingness of the permission of some
particular evil is accessible within and confined to the vision of the
essence of God: for only this vision constitutes as full a knowledge of
God and of all things in God as human nature is capable of receiving
with divine aid.
divinam attingere non possunt. Et inde est quod ad completionem universi
requiruntur diversi gradus rerum, quarum quaedam altum, et auaedam infimum
locum teneant in universo. Et ut multiformitas graduum conservetur in rebus,
Deus permittit aliqua mala fieri, ne multa bona impediantur, ut supra dictum est.
“Sic igitur consideremus totum genus humanum, sicut totam rerum universitatem.Voluit igitur Deus in hominibus quantum ad aliquos, quos praedestinat,
suam repraesentare bonitatem per modum misericordiae parcendo; et quantum
ad aliquos, quos reprobat, per modum iustitae puniendo. Et haec est ratio quare
Deus quosdam eligit, et quosdam reprobat. Et hkanc causam assignat Apostolus,
Ad Rom. IX dicens: ‘Volens Deus ostendere iram, idest vindictam iustitiae, et
notam facere potentiam suam, sustinuit, idest permisit, in multa patientia, vasa
irae apta in interitum, ut ostenderet divitias gloriae suae in vasa misericordiae,
quae praeparavit in gloriam.’ Et II Tim. II dicit:‘In magna domo non solum sunt
vasa aurea et argentea, sed etiam lignea et fictilia; et quaedam quidem in
honorem, quaedam in contumeliam.’
“Sed quare hos eligit in gloriam, et illos reprobavit, non habet rationem nisi
divinam voluntatem. Unde Augustinus dicit, Super Ioann.: ‘Quare hun trahat, et
illum non trahat, noli velle diiujdicare, si non vis errare.’ Sicut etiam in rebus
naturalibus potest assignari ratio, cum prima materia tota sit in se uniformis,
quare una pars eius est sub forma ignis, et alia sub forma terrae a Deo in principio condita, ut sic sit diversitas specierum in rebus naturalibus. Sed quare haec
pars materiae est sub ista forma, et illa sub alia, dependet ex simplici divina
voluntate. Sicut ex simplici voluntate artificis dependet, quod ille lapis est in ista
parte parietis, et ille in alia; quamvis ratio artis habeat quod aliqui sint in hac, et
aliqui sint in illa.
“Neque tamen propter hoc est iniquitas apud Deum, si inaequalia non inaequalibus praeparat. Hoc enim esset contra iustitiae rationem, si praedestinationis
effectus ex debito redderetur, et non daretur ex gratia. In his enim quae ex gratia
dantur, potest aliquis pro libito suo dare cui vult, plus vel minus, dummodo nulli
subtrahat debitum, absque praeiudicio iustitiae. Et hoc est quod dicit Paterfamilias,
Matth. XX:‘Tolle quod tuum est, et vade. An non licet mihi quod volo, facere?’ ”

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Still, it has been thought that because God is the cause of the positive
act in which he nonetheless permits evil that this may constitute divine
complicity in the evil act. Now, it is true that no evil act could exist at all
without divine permission, and that the positive substance of any evil
act—not that which constitutes it as evil, but whatever being and goodness it possesses—must be understood to be caused by God. But while
God permits evil for the sake of a higher good, he is in no way a per se
or direct cause of evil. In the end, the divine permission of evil, like an
author’s permission of defect within the context of a story, must be justified in relation to the nature and purpose of the whole work of creation.
And since this work of creation is for the sake of the manifestation of the
divine truth, goodness, justice, and mercy, it is in relation to these
purposes that the permission of evil must be understood.21 Yet the
adequate knowledge of the relation of any evil to these goods is not fully
knowable apart from beatitude. Here the classical account given by St.
Thomas stops, because it has followed the thread of causal reasoning as
far as it may be followed, and—even accented by the truths of divine
revelation—we converge at this point upon mystery.
21 Cf. Ibid., I–II, q. 79, a. 4, resp. (and see also ad 1–4 cited earlier in the text):“Dicen-

dum quod excaecatio est quoddam praeambulum ad peccatum. Peccatum autem
ad duo ordinatur: ad unum quidem per se, scilicet ad damnationem; ad aliud autem
ex divina misericordia vel providentia, scilicet ad sanationem, inquantum Deus
permittit aliquos cadere in peccaatum, ut peccatum suum agnoscentes, humilientur et convertantur, sicut Augustinus dicit in libro De Nat. et Grat. Unde et excaecatio ex sui natura ordinatur ad damnationem eius qui excaecatur, propter quod
ponitur etiam reprobationis effectus; sed ex divina misericordia excaecatio ad
tempus ordinatur medicinaliter ad salutem eorum qui excaecantur. Sed haec
misericordia non omnibus impenditur excaecatis, sed praedestinatis solum, quibus
“omnia cooperantur in bonum,” sicut dicitur Rom. VIII. Unde quantum ad
quodam, excaecatio ordinatur ad sanationem; quantum autem ad alios, ad damnationem, ut Augustinus dicit in III De Quaest. Evang.” (Blindness is a kind of preamble to sin. Now sin has a twofold relation—to one thing directly, that is to the
sinner’s damnation—to another, by reason of God’s mercy or providence, namely,
that the sinner may be healed, in so far as God permits some to fall into sin, that
by acknowledging their sin, they may be humbled and converted, as Augustine
states [De Nat. et Grat. xxii]. Therefore blindness, of its very nature, is directed to
the damnation of those who are blinded; for which reason it is accounted an effect
of reprobation. But, through God’s mercy, temporary blindness is ordered medicinally to the spiritual health of those who are blinded.This mercy, however, is not
vouchsafed to all those who are blinded, but only to the predestinated, to whom
“all things work together unto good” [Rom 8:28]. Therefore as regards some,
blindness is ordered to their healing; but as regards others, to their damnation; as
Augustine says [De Quaest. Evang. iii]).

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II.b.2 Regarding Maritain’s Revision
The weight of this mystery is troublesome to many modern authors.
Among the greatest Thomists of the twentieth century, Jacques Maritain
himself seems to have suffered the burden of this difficult contemplation.22 He considered it necessary to argue—in a pattern that some argue
is originally derived from the teaching of Fr. Marín-Sola, OP23—that God
moves the creature by motions that are “shatterable” or resistible. Fr.
William Most also has argued along similar lines.24 Because I know best
Maritain’s expounding of this argument (which some have considered to
be superior to Marín-Sola’s prior and arguably original development of
this argument),25 I will address his formulation, although the pattern of
22 See Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent, trans. Lewis Galantiere and Gerald

B. Phelan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1948), esp. 85–122, which comprise chapter four, “The Free Existent and the Free Eternal Purposes.” I address Maritain’s
formulation because I am more familiar with it. And here I must acknowledge
my great respect for, and indebtedness to, his teaching on many important points,
which makes it all the harder to part company with so sublime a guide even here
where the evidence seems to me to require it. I should further add that there is
some reason for thinking that it was Fr. Marín-Sola, OP, who may first have
developed this account and inspired Maritain along similar lines. Michael Torre
marshalls a brilliant and important defense of Marín-Sola against the classical
Thomistic argument in his two-volume dissertation, God’s Permission of Sin:
Negative or Conditioned Decree, A Defense of the Doctrine of F. Marín-Sola, OP Based
on the Principles of St.Thomas Aquinas (Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union,
1983). But finally—or so it seems to this author—his argument fails adequately
to answer the two primary objections marshalled in this essay and implicitly by
those Dominican theologians who, like Garrigou-LaGrange and Nicolas, refused
to surrender the formulation put forward by St.Thomas himself. For all of that,
his work stands as an instructive survey of the course of this discussion and a
powerful work of advocacy in behalf of Marín-Sola’s account, and one hopes that
it will be published more prominently and gain a wider hearing by all those
concerned with this question.
23 Cf.Torre, God’s Permission, 824–29.
24 Fr. Most’s position, from his treatise Grace, Predestination, and the Salvific Will of God:
New Answers to Old Questions (Front Royal,VA: Christendom Press, 1997): “And
the physical movement that produces the positive consent is given only on and
after the condition of non-resistance.” Most comments that Maritain’s account is
broadly identical with his own:“Maritain approaches the problem as a philosopher
rather than as a theologian, but his implications in theology are plain, and he
himself points them out.The broad lines of his solution are identical to ours, even
though there is a considerable difference in some respects. He finds the point of
entry for evil in non-consideration of the moral rule.” Ibid., 485.
25 Torre notes that Jean-Hervé Nicolas, OP, thought this, see Torre, God’s Permission,
825.

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this account is found in several authors.26 It may be said that a prime aim
of this account is to retain the positive authorship of all being and good
by God, while affirming that the divine permission of defect may—or
may not—yield defect. If this is theoretically feasible, the primacy of the
creature in the line of evil will be affirmed without any diminution of
the divine authorship of all being and good.
According to Maritain as he expounds the matter in Existence and the
Existent, the creature may shatter or nihilate shatterable divine motions
by a pure negation constituted by non-consideration of the rule of
reason.This negation is not in itself evil, but becomes a source of defect
in relation to an act that is not informed by consideration of the rule of
reason. On this account, God conditions the bestowal of an efficacious
motion that actually brings about the salutary act of the will upon the
creature not negating such a shatterable motion. If the creature simply
refrains from negation (a negation that consists in non-consideration of
the rule of reason) then God will bring the initial shatterable motion to
perfection within an unshatterable motion.27 Thus the creature is held to
be the unique and primary cause of evil whereas God is held to move
the created will inceptively with a motion that—while resistible—if not
26 In addition to Maritain and Marín-Sola, Fr. Most lists several other contempo-

rary authors who seek a similar solution to the problem of the relation amongst
divine causality, free acts, and evil, including Fr. Philippe de la Trinite, OCD, Dom
Mark Pontifex, OSB, Charles Cardinal Journet, and F. Muniz. Cf. Most, Grace,
Predestination, 484–85 and 516–18.
27 Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 94: “[B]efore the unshatterable divine activation, by which the will to good of creative Liberty infallibly produces its effect
in the created will, the divine activations received by the free existent must first
be shatterable activations.” He continues: “It depends solely upon ourselves to
shatter them by making, upon our own deficient initiative, that thing called
nothing (or by nihilating). But if we have not budged, if we have done nothing,
that is to say, if we have introduced no nothingness and no non; if we allow free
passage to these influxes of being, then (and by virtue of the first design of God)
the shatterable divine activations fructify by themselves into the unshatterable
divine activation. This unshatterable divine activation is none other than the
decisive fiat, received in us. By Its fiat the transcendent Cause makes that to
happen which It wills. By virtue of that unshatterable divine actuation, our will,
this time, unfailingly exercises its liberty in the line of good, produces the good
act.” So Maritain endeavours to preserve God’s first causality in the line of good,
while making the first cause in the line of evil to be the creature. But for the
creature to suffer any nonmoral defect, which can become a moral evil, seems
already for it to lack something, which could be only by divine permission:
unless it is for it to have something ontologically positive, which could be only
by divine causality. See also his St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil (Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 1942), 26–30.

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resisted will be completed and perfected by God. Granted that God does
not efficaciously uphold the creature who fails, the creature nonetheless
is the actual cause of its fall inasmuch as it fractures or shatters the divine
motion; while, if the creature does not shatter the divine motion, then
God perfects this shatterable motion with an unshatterable motion that
irresistibly moves toward the good act. God remains the cause of all being
and good.
The negation of non-advertence to the rule of reason is only a defect
in relation to an act that ought to be informed by such consideration
(apart from this relation to an act, taken in itself, this non-consideration
of the rule is not a defect, since one cannot always be considering the
rule). For it is clear that in things that are ruled and measured by another
their good flows from their conformity to the rule, while evil derives
insofar as they are not governed by the rule.28 As St.Thomas teaches, in
De malo, 3, 1, ad 13:
The defect which is presupposed in the will before sin is neither a fault
nor a punishment, but a pure negation; but it takes on the nature of
fault from the fact that with such a negation it applies itself to a work:
for by reason of the very application to a work it incurs responsibility
for that good which it lacks, namely, actually heeding the rule of reason
and divine law.29

Speaking of this teaching, Maritain well expresses its character in these
words:
There is a moment of nature, not of time, where the creature has as yet
done nothing, where it has as yet made no choice, (that is why there is
as yet no fault, but mere negation or absence of being) and where,
nevertheless, it has already done nothingness in the sense that it has not
considered its rule, freely and voluntarily—it has introduced the condition which will cause the texture of being to give way; that is why there
28 De Malo, 1, 3, resp.: “Quod sit patet: in omnibus enim quorum unum debet esse

regula et mensura alterius, bonum in regulato et mensurato est ex hoc quod
regulatur et conformatur regule et mensure, malum uero ex hoc quod est non
regulari uel mensurari” (Which is manifest, as follows: In all things of which one
ought to be the rule and measure of the other, good in the thing ruled and measured is from this, that it is ruled and conformed to the rule and measure, but evil
from the fact that it is not ruled or measured).
29 De Malo, 3, 1, ad 13: “dicendum quod defectus qui preintelligitur in uoluntate
ante peccatum, non est culpa neque pena, sed negatio pura; set accipit rationem
culpe ex hoc ipso quod cum tali negatione se applicat ad opus: ex ipsa enim
applicatione ad opus fit debitum illud bonum quo caret, scilicet attendere actu
ad regulam rationis et legis diuine.”

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will be faultiness now that it acts with that voluntary nonconsideration;
such an act will bear in itself the teeth-marks of nothingness.30

In this Maritain admirably articulates the doctrine of St. Thomas. The
point of variance between Maritain’s teaching and classical Thomism is
this: He wishes to assert that both the one who actually negates and the
one who does not actually negate are equally permitted by God to negate
(not to consider the rule of reason), and evidently he means this in the
composite sense. For, of course, one whom God freely moves to consider
the rule retains the power at another time not to consider the rule. But
for classical Thomism, such a one cannot, at the very instant of being
freely moved to consider the rule, not freely consider the rule.
In other words, all conditions being given, even the one who does not
negate but considers the rule of reason is, on Maritain’s account, able to
negate at the very instant when he does not negate, and this person
receives no more aid toward this effect of non-negation than the one
who does negate.This is to say that God gives a motion that has no actual
natural effect save insofar as the creature does not negate. This seems to
one formed in classical Thomism to imply something absurd, namely, that
not to negate (the same non-negation upon which efficacious aid is
predicated in this theory) calls for no more divine help than to negate:
that the effect of being and the effect of nothingness are achieved by
precisely the same divine causal influx. That is, God so conditions the
giving of efficacious motion toward the salutary act upon the creature’s
not negating the prior “shatterable” or negatible divine motion toward
consideration of the rule, that only when the creature does not negate does
God move the creature efficaciously. Speaking of this Maritain writes:
And when the creature does not produce nothingness under grace (this
is no merit in its part, for not to take the initiative of nothingness is not
to do something, it is only not to move under divine action)—when
the creature does not take the initiative of nothingness, then divine
motion or grace merely sufficient or breakable fructifies of itself into
unbreakable divine motion or into grace efficacious by itself.31

This strongly differs from the classical account, wherein if a creature does
not negate this is because God upholds the creature and efficaciously
moves it to consider the rule; and alike wherein, if God permits a creature to fall from some perfection, this implies that God is not causing the
30 Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil (Milwaukee: Marquette

University Press, 1942), 33.
31 Ibid., 37–38.

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contrary and hence this fall, rooted in the defectibility of the creature of
itself, will occur. Accordingly, this is the primary matter of contention.
Maritain’s revision of classical Thomism is a genuinely beautiful
account—because of its deep sense of the asymmetry of good and evil and
its clear intention to distance God as far as possible from any complicity in
evil. Nonetheless there are several points upon which this position
founders. I address these points, as well as certain others inevitably raised by
rejection of Maritain’s account, in the following seven considerations,
which are not of equal significance. Of these considerations, I wish to add
that it seems to me that the first and, even more, the third are perhaps the
most critically central in illuminating the reasons for the superiority of classical Thomism to the Maritainian revision, while the sixth is of prime
importance in understanding the classical account.
1. The negation in question is constituted either by something positive,
or by the lack of something positive. But if it is constituted by something positive, then it is received from God, and so God causes this
negation.And if it is constituted by the lack of something positive (as
both Maritain and St.Thomas hold), then God has not bestowed that
positive gift that would constitute the contrary of this negation. Even
given the distinction between the privation of that which is due and
the privation or mere negation of that which is not absolutely due,
this holds. Thus, either way, it transpires that we are in precisely the
position we were in before, namely, that the negation of “shatterable”
divine motion by the creature is (and must be if this negation is to
occur) permitted by God—and this is tantamount to saying that God
does not conserve some creature in its proper good and permits the
ensuing evil for the sake of some higher good.
Nor is the only problem that of a “resistable” or “shatterable” motion,
but rather perhaps even chiefly the problem of in what resistance may
consist that could conceivably fall outside the dichotomy of being and
lack of being. On any account that acknowledges divine omnipotence, the divine permission of evil must precede its realization, and
this permission must certainly consist in not causing the contrary of
that which is permitted. If one resists where another does not, that
one who resists either has something the other lacks, or lacks something the other has, unless resistance is no real difference at all, in
which case we may set it aside as a bedside fable.Yet we know that
defect and sin are not fables but quite real (although obviously not in
the sense of being convertible with being). Even granted that a negation is not like a deprivation inasmuch as deprivation is of something

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strictly owed, negation still must consist of act or lack of act—it cannot
inhabit an ontological limbo peopled with beings of reason into which
we breathe life when radical theocentrism disturbs the tranquility of
rationalist idylls.
We are simply looking the implications of “be” and “not-be”
directly in the face. Negation as such must be either something positive or the absence of something positive; negation must be either
something the creature does or something it does not do:The law of
excluded middle permits no other possibility. But these possibilities
suffice to demonstrate that either God has not bestowed that the lack
of which constitutes the negation or—if the negation as such is taken
to be positive—that God has caused it. One grants that the creature
is defectible, but any actual defection presupposes the divine permission, since nothing pertinent to being in any way can occur unless it
is at least permitted by God.And so the proponent of the pure “negation” of a merely “shatterable” divine motion must admit that such
negation must be permitted by God if it is to be, and moreover that
if God caused either something positive—or at least something
different—in the agent, this negation would not be.
Thus this first objection to the new theory shows that this theory
in no way suffices to alter the datum that negation is either permitted
by God in the non-conserving of the creature from the lack of being32
in which this negation consists, or else (if negation were thought to be
positive) that it is caused by God in the creating of that being in which
it consists. St. Thomas’s position is actually the first, but one or the
other must be affirmed regarding the nature of negation—it must
either consist in something positive or else in the lack or deprivation
(so long as it is understood that we do not here mean by “deprivation”
the refusal of what absolutely speaking is owed to a subject) of something positive.There is no tertia via hovering between being and nonbeing that eludes the twilight zone of the excluded middle.
32 “Lack of being” here is, in a sense, a deprivation, provided that we do not under-

stand it as a deprivation of that to which a creature is absolutely titled and so
itself an evil. It is not in itself moral evil: Although where an agent commits
moral evil there will first have been negation, negation is also found where there
is no moral evil. For example, an agent does not constantly advert to the need
not to steal watches—this adversion is not performed, is negated, by the agent—
but this is irrelevant inasmuch as the agent is in no situation permitting, or temptation inducing, the theft of a watch. Negation must signify either something
positive or the lack of something positive: there is no other possibility. And if it
is a lack of being, we can only conclude that of which it is the lack is not created
by God, this absence is divinely permitted.

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Perhaps the capital difficulty of Maritain’s account is that implicitly it invents a category that is neither being, non-being, nor even
imperfect being. For although he speaks of negation as “nihilating,”
yet it must be seen that the effect of being incurs a different causality than does the absence of such an effect. So if the creature “nihilates,” this can only be because God does not cause that being
contrary to the negation.
The reason of negation either pertains to being or to lack of
being, because there is no other possible category. But non-being or
lack of being as it pertains to volition implies that God does not
cause that which is lacked—that God permits the lack to occur (if he
did not, there would be no lack), which given this permission, this
non-causing of that which is lacked, infallibly but freely will occur.
Similarly, if one does not give alms to a particular beggar, that beggar
will not receive the alms, and this lack is the beggar’s own, which he
has of himself, and is not caused by the non-bestowal of alms. It is not
owed to a defectible creature that it be kept from all defect.
“Negation” as a pure “non” reflects a lack (for example, the nonadvertence to the rule of reason is nothing but the lack of this advertence and so cannot occur when the creature is efficaciously moved
to advert to the rule), but a lack implies that God has not caused that
which would render the lack not to pertain, has permitted it to affect
the action of the creature.This implies that the remedy for every evil
is to be found in God while also raising the question of the permission of evil.The radical defectability of the rational creature’s motion
toward and persistence in the good is tribute to the creature’s need
for divine activation toward, and conservation in, the good.
It must be remembered that negation can only be known as negation in relation to an act that is conditioned by negation (Maritain
insists that this negation is a pure non,33 but non-being as such is not knowable), and so God must intend to permit the deprived act to be as a condition
of knowing this negation, unless the act with reference to which it is
known is the actual human being, as, for example, when we know
that someone is not considering the rule of reason because that
person is sound asleep or otherwise occupied. It follows in any case
that negation is known only in relation to some act, and an act that
is caused precisely together with the negation (this need not be a sin:
God causes us to sleep or to be preoccupied with conundrums of
various sorts, and surely for most of us while we are sleeping or being
33 Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 94.

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preoccupied with a [non-moral] problem we are not considering the
divine law). So even when it is not a fault or a punishment, nonconsideration of the rule of reason must be permitted by God, as
were God efficaciously to move us to consider the rule of reason at
any time we would consider it.
2. No problem arises with respect to the idea of pure negation as being
neither deprivation of that which is strictly owed (because nonconsideration of the rule of reason is only a source of defect if the
creature proceeds to choice and not merely in itself) nor anything
positive. Hence in Summa Theologiae I, q. 48, a. 2, ad 1, St. Thomas
writes that “Evil is distant both from simple being and from simple
‘not-being,’ because it is neither a habit nor a pure negation, but a
privation.”34 A privation is the lack of something due, whereas a
negation is a simple non-being.The problem arises in failing to draw
the systematic implications of the datum that as negation is not
constituted by something positive, it is constituted by a lack of that
which is positive (even though the consideration of the rule is not
something that is absolutely owed but only in relation to some act).
As the lack is something that might be remedied by God, it must be
acknowledged that it is permitted to be by God and that did he cause
the contrary it would not be.
God permits morally significant negation as such, that is, negation
constituted by the turning to choice of the creature without consideration of the rule of reason.This permission means all that the older
Dominican analysis has argued that, in the composite sense, such
negation permitted in relation to the creature’s act of choosing is
incompossible with the non-occurrence of a free defective act. But
God could refuse to cause such an act, could move the creature elsewise, and could efficaciously will that the consideration of the rule,
as something positive, actually occur in relation to the act.As he does
none of these, in the composite sense—that is, given that God does
not cause the contrary—the creature will freely act without consideration of the rule, defect will distort this act, and the free defective
act will be its own.
3. The Maritainian analysis contains a critical fallacy whereby being is regarded
merely as the negation of nought. Maritain clearly acknowledges that the
34 ST I q. 48, a. 2, ad 1:“Dicendum quod malum distat et ab ente simpliciter, et non

ente simpliciter; quia neque est sicut habitus, neque sicut pura negatio, sed sicut
privation.”

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negation of not considering the rule of reason—nihilating or “noughting” the divine motion—is not an act.35 But he writes that:
when the creature does not produce nothingness under grace (this
is no merit in its part, for not to take the initiative of nothingness is
not to do something, it is only not to move under divine action).36

But how can not taking “the initiative of nothingness” be “not to
do something” and “only not to move under divine action”? If the
initiative of nothingness is not a positive act, then the language
describing it as “moving” is wholly metaphorical. And the contrary
of the negative is a positive. This difficulty is heightened further in
the following lines of Maritain from Existence and the Existent:
It is proper to remark here that if “not to nihilate” and “to consider
the rule” come practically to the same thing, nevertheless there is,
formally, a clear distinction between the two, and the first formality is the condition of the second.37
35 Cf. Maritain, St.Thomas and the Problem of Evil, 29: “In the first moment there is

an absence of consideration of the rule: and that, by virtue of the pure initiative
of the created will as a defective primary cause—I do not mean by the action of
created will, since at that moment there is still nothing positive, there is as yet no
action—I mean by the defective (and free) initiative of the created will.” See also
page 34:“[T]he creature slinks, not by an action but by a free non-action or disaction—from the influx of the First Cause.”
36 Ibid., 37.This formulation is arresting in holding that non-resistance is not something positive—a judgment that seems hard to square with it being the contrary
of a simple non-being of negation in a creature. If non-resistance is something
positive efficaciously caused by God in some—which the ensuing body of point
three argues—then (a) clearly when it is not caused the corresponding negation
is permitted, and (b) if God then concurs in an action of the rational creature,
this action will be one that is divinely permitted to be deficient.
37 Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 100, note 10. It should be noted that if one
holds that non-resistance is something positive from God whereby negation does
not occur, then the rest of the account fails. For that one not negate means an
absence of a pure non-being, which in context means the positive act of consideration of the rule and hence God’s actual causing of this consideration. Hence
it seems to me that Maritain correctly saw that non-negation had to be given
formal priority over actual consideration of the rule if his account were to be
upheld (contrary to some others who do not hold this but nonetheless argue for
some version of the revisionist account).Yet this seems to be, for all the reasons
articulated in my third point in the text above, a pure fallacy.This same problem
is found in many authors—to name but one, for example, Fr.William Most, who
writes in Grace, Predestination, 187–88, “causality is not required for non-beings,
among which are the absence of resistance.” Since the absence of resistance is
consistent with there being no subject and indeed no universe at all, this is true;

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This account fails to explain how it can be that whether the divine
motion is effective can be consequent upon whether the creature
negates or nihilates or shatters the divine motion, when this very
negation itself presupposes that God has not efficaciously moved the
creature to consider the rule. One cannot consider the rule of reason
without being efficaciously moved to do so by God, and only if one
is not efficaciously moved by God to consider the rule of reason does
negation occur.
It is the lack of actual consideration of the rule that constitutes the
creaturely negation, and in this context the negation of this negation
implies something positive in the creature from God. If these terms are
admitted, and it is argued that God conditions the giving of efficacious motion upon non-negation on the part of the creature, this is
backwards: For the non-negation on the part of the creature is nothing other than its considering the rule of reason, and this is caused by
God.Thus to say that God conditions the giving of efficacious help
toward a salutary act upon non-negation of the motion to consider
the rule, is tantamount to saying that he conditions one efficacious
help upon his having provided another efficacious help. Thence it
clearly follows that God permits a defectible creature to fall when he
permits the creature’s action while not moving the creature to consider
and apply the rule in act.
It is absolutely essential to note that we may not say in the strict sense
that God conditions the gift of efficacious help upon “non-negation”
alone, simpliciter, because the mere absence of negation as such does not
imply the existence of anything. For example, we may hypothesize that a
universe not be in which hence there would not be any creaturely
negating—here we hypothesize a negation of negation.Yet this negation of negation does not even imply the existence of any creature or
created act. God cannot condition the bestowal of efficacious help
upon non-being, and thus the absence of negation here must be the
presence of something else, caused by God. Thus it is not merely by
an absence of negation that the rule of reason is actually considered by
some creature, but by the positive substance of an act of consideration
that owes its being to God.
In sum, the creature can only avoid non-consideration of the rule
of reason—can only avert negating—insofar as it is efficaciously
but if we speak of the absence of a particular negation in an existing being, then we
are necesarily speaking about something positive (if there is not pure non-being
with respect to something, then in that same respect there must be being), and
this must come from God.

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moved by God actually to consider the rule. Hence the claim that God
conditions the giving of an unshatterable or efficacious motio toward the
salutary act upon the creature’s non-negation is tantamount to saying
that God conditions the giving of efficacious aid toward the good act
upon his giving of efficacious aid to advert to the rule of reason. For
the actual consideration of the rule of reason by the creature is a
consideration of which God is in any case the first cause, and it is the
efficacious gift of this consideration that constitutes non-negation in the creature.There is no way out of the dilemma than to admit that God must
permit creaturely defect if it is to occur, and that if it is permitted it
will occur, because it occurs only where God does not actually
preserve the creature by causing the contrary.This will be viewed as
unjust only if it is supposed that God owes the remediation of every
defect to the defectible creature.
To say that the creature does not fall prey to a negative hence is to
assert a positive whose prime source is God. God has caused in the one
creature, who does not negate, what God has not caused in another
whom he permits to negate.As noted above, Maritain’s analysis suggests
that the one who does not negate is equally “permitted” to do so.This
is true in the sense that the power to resist sufficient divine aid is
retained by the one who does not negate. But in the composite sense
it is not logically possible that the creature negate inasmuch as moved
freely not to negate. Given the divine actuation of the creature whereby
it is moved to consider the rule it will not simultaneously fail freely to
consider it although it retains the power not to consider it: Power and
act are not the same.As it is actually considering the rule, the power not
to consider the rule cannot be simultaneously exercised while nonetheless the power (in the divided sense) remains.
Divine permission of evil—non-sustenance in the good—thus is
a necessary condition for the creature falling back upon its own
defectibility.The non-being of simple negation in relation to choice
is incompossible with the omnipotent God efficaciously willing the
contrary. We may perhaps adjust the saying of Einstein, who
commented that “God does not play dice with the universe,” to note
that God does not play dice with the will, moving it in a way that
may or may not freely achieve any effect.
If the creature considers the rule, the creature is efficaciously
moved by God freely to consider the rule, and if it does not, and then
acts, then God has permitted the creature to suffer a free defect. It is
implausible to say that there is no intrinsic difference in the aid
bestowed in the two cases: In the one, a pure negation is permitted

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in a context in which it becomes the seed of evil, while in the other
that which is absolutely contrary to such negation—the consideration of the rule—is actually caused by God.The difference here is quite
literally that between “is” and “is not”—between being and notbeing. It makes no sense to say that the same causal influx that yields
being may just as well yield non-being, as though the First Cause
were playing darts whilst smoking hashish. Perhaps this causal influx
is thought to be insufficient to cause being in the absence of some
other positive factor? But every positive factor is from God, so if we
say that the motio toward consideration of the rule requires an additional positive factor to become an actual, rather than merely potential, consideration of the rule, then this motio plus the added positive
factor from God will yield the efficacious motion that is distinct from
the merely potential one. Upon these conjoined motions the efficacious advertence to the rule will be predicated. To say that a causal
influx is efficacious in positing its positive effect for so long as this
effect is not negated by the creature—when by “not negated” we can
mean only that the effect contrary to negation has actually been
caused by God—is a vicious circle.
It seems clearly true that, before the human creature is efficaciously moved by God to consider the rule, it is always negating in the
sense of not considering the rule of reason, and that this will persist
until God efficaciously moves the creature to consider the rule. Just as
one sleeps until one wakes, one does not consider until one does
consider, and actual consideration has only one First Cause and that
is God.To say that God does not cause this consideration of the rule
because one negates it is simply backwards because one is always
negating consideration of the rule unless God causes the contrary.
Apart from God moving us to consider the rule, one would never
cease non-consideration of the rule. One might as well project this
reasoning ad extra and claim that God is not causing a non-existent
elephant solely because the whole cosmos is freely non-considering
it. Hence the conditioning of divine act ad extra by non-being is
reasonable only inasmuch as it follows the divine permission of an act
deprived of some perfection (whether this perfection is due or not).
Elsewise nonentity as such is granted a spurious causal power
whereby it constrains divine creation—whereas, to the contrary, relative negation, and deprivation, are knowable in relation to beings that
God permits to be constrained by negation or deprivation. Since
God permits this—that is, does not cause the contrary—these deficits
of being will infallibly pertain to the creature. As pointed out under

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point one above: Negation is not even knowable save in relation to
an act.
If it is said that the creature is moved to consider the rule only
because it does not fail to consider the rule, we are back to the original misportrayal of act as merely the negation of nought, dwelling in
the kingdom of tautologies. This is not conspicuously helpful in
ontological analysis. Precisely as being tantamount to simple nonbeing, the role of negation in the genesis of evil underscores the
divine permission whereby the creature fails of its good—for according to St.Thomas the logic of divine conservation in being and good
is the same.
4. Let us suppose for a moment that it were intelligible that one who
negates and one who does not negate actually receive identical causal
influx from God. Nonetheless, it must be asked whether on the account
of these authors (Maritain and those who hold similar theories) it is
possible for God to move the human will freely and efficaciously.
To his credit Maritain (like Marín-Sola and Most) maintains that
God can without violence move the will infrustrably.38 Although
Maritain’s treatment maintains that God conditions his efficacious
motion—even at the natural level—upon the non-negation by the
creature of his “shatterable” or resistable motion, this condition reflects,
on his account, a divine self-limitation. But the moment it is conceded
that this is a divine self-limitation, then the question arises again:Why
does God limit himself in such a way as to permit that evil that is the
negation at the heart of a free evil act—especially when it lies within
the divine power to move the creature efficaciously and freely so that
this negation would not occur or, alternately, when God could simply
refuse being to the act that the negation would deform?
38 Cf. Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 97–98: “I do not deny (but this lies

outside the purely metaphysical considerations within which I intend to remain)
that God can, if He so wills, transport a created existent at one stroke to the
performing of a good free act by an unshatterable or infallibly efficacious activation or motion.This is a question of his free predilections and of the price paid
for souls in the communion of saints.” See also Most, Grace, Predestination, 472:
“We hold that God can, when He so wishes move the will of man physically and
infrustrably in such a way as to forestall or even cancel out the resistance of that
man, without taking away secondary freedom.” By “secondary freedom” Most
means only that the creature is not the first source of the action—something
which, on the principles of St.Thomas, pertains to all creaturely action as such,
but which Most thinks not to be true of certain acts of created liberty. Cf. Most,
Grace, Predestination, 158 and 159.

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The answer given will be that this is the price of freedom. But the
freedom described is not something pertinent to the nature of the
creature. Such freedom residing merely in divine self-limitation is not
that freedom St.Thomas holds to flow from the nature of the intellect and to reflect the sovereign indeterminacy of the rational will
before finite goods that are not the subsistent universal good: A freedom that specifies the nobler way in which the rational will is naturally moved by God. Rather, this freedom of Maritain’s teaching is an
accident caused by God not-acting or acting (depending upon
whether negation is conceived as constituted by lack of being or by
being, by something that is not positive or by something that is positive). Moreover one notes that this answer is simply a species of the
answer: “for the sake of a higher good”—the answer that was found
unacceptable when the good for the sake of which evil was permitted was the transcendent divine good for the sake of which all things
are.This good of a libertarian freedom of the will vis-à-vis God is not
natural to the will (that is why on this account the conditioning of
efficacious motion upon the absence of negation is a self-limiting ordinance of God), and the idea of God placing a limit upon his action
does not suffice to create a natural capacity of the creature to place
itself outside the divine causality.
Thus in the newer theory we have at hand only an inferior type of
the traditional answer, which states that evil is permitted for the sake
of a higher good that is finally the manifestation of the mercy and
justice of God himself. It is inferior because, in the newer account, the
good for the sake of which evil is permitted is not the infinitely transcendent God and the manifestation of his justice and his mercy.
Rather, on the new account, the good for the sake of which evil is
permitted is an accident extrinsically pertinent to our acts, which in no
way defines the essential character of our acts as does true freedom, and
which accident is merely the ab extra effect of a self-limiting ordinance
of God. On reflection, even were this answer possible—which the first
and third objections in particular seem to show not to be the case—it
would be drastically inferior to the traditional account that justifies the
whole in the only manner in which it can be intelligibly justified: in
relation to its transcendent purpose. Further, the traditional account
renders clear that which is susceptible of being made clear, and leaves
in the shadows that which can be made clear only through the beatific
knowledge of what lies hidden in God.
Nor does Maritain’s account do away with the essential mystery: the
question why God permits evil when he need not do so. By the very

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logic of being and good, the only possible answer to this question is:
for the sake of a higher good. Hence God must be said antecedently
to permit this negation—even if it is construed precisely as does Maritain—since that which is efficaciously contrary to such negation must
be affirmed to be both within the divine power and in no way violative of freedom (for God moves each creature according to its nature,
and hence as Maritain acknowledges may efficaciously and without
violence move the rational creature to a free act).
5. It might be asked, “why then should the creature be penalized for an
evil act which it cannot help but enact when God does not conserve
it in good?” I am inclined to think that this question evinces a
tendency of the human imagination to forget that responsible and free
acts are still responsible and free. The datum that God brings about
necessary things necessarily, and contingent things contingently, does
not make necessary things contingent (because they depend on God)
or contingent things necessary (because God causes them). One must
beware of moving from the premise that God causes a thing to the
premise that it is thereby itself ontologically necessary.
Here, too, the great confusion will be implicitly to imagine God
and the creature as within the same order. So that God permits a free
defect does not suffice to make this defect unfree, even on the supposition that given knowledge of God’s permission we know that it will
come to pass. Hence, precisely because of the responsible freedom of
the agent, penalty will be merited for a deliberately evil act.That God
might have upheld a creature from defect means that had the person’s
free act been different, it would not be evil, or, alternately, that had
God not willed the higher good for the sake of which he permitted
the evil, the evil would not have been permitted. But freely performed
evil acts do not become worthy of reward, or neutral, merely because
their existence implies an antecedent divine permission of evil.
Whatever necessary and sufficient conditions there may be for free
and deliberate perfidy, it is not an occasion of merit.
Yet it remains true that God is finally the one responsible for the
whole of creation, and that the permission of any evil can be only for
the sake of a higher good. And this is the deeper mystery: It is not
intuitively clear to us now, in via, how and why certain evils may be
related to higher goods and, finally, to the beatific Good Who is God.
Yet this absence of intuitive wisdom does not deprive us of the rectitude of judgment necessary to see that the divine good is infinitely
transcendent of any created good, and that the final reason for the

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permission of evil will pertain to the manifestation of the divine
justice and mercy.39
6. When God permits the rational creature in some particular freely to
fall from the efficacious governance of law and grace, its existential
and moral nothingness of itself becomes manifest. “Resistance” is a
term commonly used, yet the root of this effect is a lacuna of defect
permitted by God that—as a window onto the radical ontological and
moral insufficiency of the creature—finds therein its sole adequate
explanation. Free defect is free, but it is defect, and as such (see, for
example, De malo, 3, 1, resp.), it has no per se cause. One must not fall
prey to the temptation to poetize defect as an arcane species of act
immune from the principle of the excluded middle. We face here a
defect of created freedom itself left to its own devices, using its dominating indifference over any finite good to make itself rather than
God the center of its intentional cosmos. God permits this defect, but
it is the defect of the creature, not of God who is the only efficacious
source for its remediation and healing. Hence the words in Hosea
13:9:“Destruction is thy own, O Israel;Thy help is only in Me.”40
That it is within the divine power to prevent any defect of the creature (other than the ontological defect of finitude) does not make the
permission of operative defect wrongful.This permission existentially
manifests the truth that our aid is only in God, and our destruction is
of ourselves: a critical truth that all intellects must admit is both essential to the manifestation of the transcendent common good of the
whole universe who is God and ordered to realization of the need for

39 Another common objection inquires why one ought to strive if God ordains all

that is to be from all eternity. But He ordains that some things be by means of our
free striving, and so to take his ordering of things to be a reason not to strive is to
treat one’s striving as though it is not itself ordered by God, and this is foolish.
One might as well say that because the action of the lieutenant flows from the
plan and command of the general, therefore the lieutenant ought never to act—
whereas manifestly the plan and command of the general envision, cause, and
require the action of the lieutenant.
40 It is perhaps the condign moment to point out that in a sense that free defect
which imperils salvation is either not to do what is in us or not to ask God’s help
for what exceeds our power. Defect being our own, the Church’s maxim to do all
that is in us to do (positively), and to ask God’s help for what exceeds our strength,
is simply the maxim not to give up.That persons do give up is permitted by God,
but not only is it not caused by him but it is contrary to what he does cause (multiple sufficient graces which if not resisted will be perfected in efficacious graces).
Yet it is true that the defect at the root of resistence is permitted by God (else it

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the virtue of humility.41 It is truly the lance that penetrates the heart
of the prideful fallacy of the rational creature’s absolute autonomy:
Such autonomy is, insofar as it can be approximated, the condition of
the damned, bereft of the divine aid. And this may be tasted in the
bitter fruits of evil by those who have fallen to it, in their alienation
and loss of the divine friendship. These defective acts are free acts
proceeding from mind, will, and heart, acts occurring despite the real
power to act otherwise. God’s permitting of free defect does not make
the defect unfree, nor make the defect his own rather than the creature’s, but merely manifests what absolute moral autonomy on the part
of a creature is.Yet it only exists within divine providence as permitted
for the sake of higher good. Surely the creature’s good and salvation
rest more securely in the care of the omniscient and omnipotent God,
than in a spurious supreme governance by its finite defectible self.
There is no per se cause of defect, and the language of the creature
nihilating—which rhetorically suggests such a cause despite Maritain’s
intention to the contrary—in a sense grants too great a dignity to the
defectibility that is at the root of moral evil. Nonetheless, it is the nothingness and defectibility of the creature that is the radical root of moral
evil, and the nothingness of the creature is its own; indeed, it is the only
thing that is absolutely and solely its own. Hence the intention of the
Maritainian schema—to point out that the creature has the “initiative”
in the line of evil—is in a sense honored in the classically Thomistic
account.While there is no per se initiative of evil (for properly speaking initiative pertains to act, not to defect), the radical root of evil lies
within the creature’s nothingness, from which if it is not upheld both
in being and in operation by the extrinsic causality of God, it will fail.
Failing in act in this way is proportionate to the nature of the creature’s
actual agency—a finite agent cannot avert all operational defect without divine aid. It is tutoring in this datum that largely constitutes
growth in the virtue of humility.
God owes to the creature in the strict sense nothing whatsoever,
although he owes it to his own goodness that his providence be genercould not occur), and the contrary of the defect is not efficaciously willed by God.
Also, that God not efficaciously will the further good effect contrary to the evil
choice engendered by the free defect—while this materially presupposes the free
resistance of the creature—is permitted for the sake of higher good.
41 This is indeed a “kingdom of ends” of a most different sort than the Kantian,
objectively ordered to the acknowledgment of the transcendent Good for the
sake of whom everything is and acts, the extrinsic common good of the whole
universe of created being and the special beatitude of all intellectual creatures.

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ous, just, and merciful, and to his own spoken promises in revelation
that these be kept. That God permits the moral insufficiency of the
creature to be manifest is not for God to cause this insufficiency (it is
not something positive with a per se cause, but a lack that is the creature’s own). Likewise for the wise to withhold counsel is not for them
to cause the ignorance of their interlocutors, nor do the virtuous cause
wickedness by failing to correct every fault, for ignorance and fault the
others have of themselves. Hence St.Thomas notes:
Now God cannot be directly the cause of sin, either in Himself or
in another, since every sin is a departure from the order which is to
God as the end: whereas God inclines and turns all things to
Himself as to their last end, as Dionysius states (Div. Nom., i): so that
it is impossible that He should be either to Himself or to another
the cause of departing from the order which is to Himself.Therefore He cannot be directly the cause of sin. In like manner neither
can He cause sin indirectly. For it happens that God does not give
some the assistance, whereby they may avoid sin, which assistance
were He to give, they would not sin. But He does all this according to the order of his wisdom and justice, since He Himself is
Wisdom and Justice: so that if someone sin it is not imputable to
Him as though He were the cause of that sin; even as a pilot is not
said to cause the wrecking of the ship, through not steering the
ship, unless he cease to steer while able and bound to steer. It is
therefore evident that God is nowise a cause of sin.42

God bestows sufficient aid to the creature, which is a determinate
positive effect constituting a potential for a further good (the salutary
act in question). When free defect on the part of the creature—
proceeding from its own will—is permitted (and in no way caused)
by God, this defect will condition the act of the creature such that it
falls away of itself from the potential for good constituted by the
42 ST I–II, q. 79, a. 1, resp.: “Deus autem non potest esse directe causa peccati vel

sui vel alterius. Quia omne peccatum est per recessum ab ordine qui est in Deum
sicut in finem. Deus autem omnia inclinat et convertit in seipsum sicut in ultimum finem, sicut Dionysius dicit, I cap. De Div. Nom. Unde impossible est quod
sit sibi vel aliis causa siscedendi ab ordine qui est in ipsum. Unde non potest
directe esse causa peccati—Similiter etiam neque indirecte. Contingit enim quod
Deus aliquibus non praebet auxilium ad evitandum peccata, quod si praeberet,
non peccarent. Sed hoc totum facit secundum ordinem suae sapientiae et iustitiae, cum ipse sit sapientia et iustitia. Unde non imputatur ei quod alius peccet,
sicut causae peccati; sicut gubernator non dicitur causa submersionis navis ex hoc
quod non gubernat navem, nisi quando subtrahit gubernationem potens et
debens gubernare. Et sic patet quod Deus nullo modo est causa peccati.”

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prior sufficient motion, which the creature thus is said to resist. If
God does not permit such antecedent voluntary defect it will not be,
whereas if God does permit it—if he does not preserve the creature
from this defect—it will be. This defect is the creature’s own, for of
itself it is deficient with respect either to actuating itself toward, or
sustaining itself in, the good proper to its nature.
General (and efficacious) divine concurrence in the creature’s acts
assures it of some actuation toward and possession of the good, but
actuation and conservation in the good proper to its nature requires
proportionate divine assistance. Likewise, the student may be assured
some achievement of insight into his study through the ordinary
teaching of the master, but for the student to gain a flawless and fixed
command of the subject—to be sustained in the full good of his
study—argues special tutelage whether by native genius, the master,
or the Holy Spirit. The effect requires its proportionate cause. The
free creature is a deficient cause, susceptible of defect, and of moving
back and forth from good to evil, and yet again back to good. As St.
Thomas puts it in arguing that perseverance in good requires divine
aid, “everything that is changeable of itself needs the aid of an
immovable mover, in order to stand fast to one thing.”43 The finite
creature is certainly not ordered of its nature to evil, but its defectible
agency is such that its acts cannot be preserved from all failure without proportionate divine aid.
The creature of itself is operationally deficient as its operative power
is proportioned to its ontological finitude. A free, rational creature that
as created, of itself does not exist—and which hence is not its own law or
rule of operation—is likewise of itself defectible in act unless upheld in act by
an extrinsic power, namely, by God. It is of itself deficient in operation,
and hence, apart from divine aid, of itself falls away from the good.
Indeed, the creature cannot even proceed to a defective act without
divinely imparted motion, much less to an act integrally good, or to a
comprehensive pattern of acts integrally good and to persistence
therein.44 By contrast God is the source of all in the creature that is, and
that is good, and he can overcome any evil. Can there be a more salutary motive at once for humility and gratitude? Or a cause of greater
hope than the perfect wisdom and goodness of the all-provident God?
43 From ScG, IIIb, 155, titled “Quod homo indiget auxilio gratiae ad perseveran-

dum in bono”:“Omne enim quod de se est variabile, ad hoc quod figatur in uno,
indiget auxilio alicuius moventis immobilis.”
44 Cf. ibid., whose title is “That Man Needs the Divine Aid in Order to Persevere
in Good.”

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7. The question why God permits moral evil—the loss of a single
soul—can only be understood vis-à-vis a higher good. Finally this
higher good is the beatific good and what befits or is necessary to its
communication and to the manifestation of divine good, mercy, and
justice. But this is necessarily obscure for any creature prior to the
beatific vision itself, since what is required for the manifestation of
divine goodness, mercy, and justice, and entailed in the beatific
vision, is to a significant degree hidden in God. As intimated above,
in the end, the divine permission of evil, like an author’s permission
of some defect within the context of a story, must be justified in relation to the nature and purpose of the whole work of creation. So
there is necessarily a tension of incompleteness in the account,
because there is no way to reconcile all the elements entailed by the
real providential permission of evil without knowing everything
pertinent to the communication of the divine nature and the manifestation of divine good, mercy, and justice.
Yet it is clear that evil is permitted for the sake of a higher good by
the One Who alone is Good.Thus one is rightfully confident that all
intellects seeing the Uncreated Light in beatific vision will also see ad
extra how God, through permission of evil, brought forth greater good
and a more befitting manifestation of the divine good that is the
common good of the whole universe and the special beatific good of
all intellectual creatures. As every intellectual creature must admit that
the purpose of the whole of creation is the manifestation and communication of the transcendent good, no intellectual creature may with
reason fault God himself for that which essentially befits this manifestation and communication, whose character will be fully revealed on
the Last Day.The truth that our aid is solely in God, but our destruction of ourselves, is an essential truth pertaining to the manifestation of
God’s goodness and the communication of the divine nature, as well as
to our own salutary self-knowledge in humility. Hence this truth may
be seen to be befittingly manifested in the permission of free defect
and moral evil, even apart from fuller consideration of the manifestation of divine justice and mercy for the sake of which this permission
occurs. As noted above, free defect is free: Deliberate evil is not made
worthy of meritorious reward merely because God permits it for the
sake of higher good.45
45 Often against this account it is urged that if God permits creaturely defect in

relation to our free acts, this implies that the antecedent will for the salvation of
all men is not sincere. But one may will something sincerely and precisively, and
yet not will it efficaciously.The authors urging this point find their justification

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II.b.3 Conclusion about Maritain’s Revision
It follows, then, that unless we are to abandon the high Thomistic metaphysic for the sake of superordinating an unintelligible libertarian freedom to the First Cause of all being and act, that we cannot suppose that
God’s permission of evil is conditioned by mere negation in the absence of
prior divine permission for such negation such that—in the composite sense—
the negation cannot but freely occur.That species of creaturely negation
that wounds an act can only occur because of the divine permission of
evil, and if God were efficaciously to move the creature so as to uphold
it in good, then evil could not mar its action (and morally significant

of the damnation of souls in relation to the putative good of libertarian freedom
vis-à-vis God, while the permission of evil for the sake of the higher manifestation of the transcendent Good is troubling to them.Yet the latter is a far better
reason than the former, just as the Good Who is God is a far greater good than
any finite good. Hence it is not the sincerity of God’s antecedent will to save all
men that should be in question, but rather the logic of those who find infinite
good to be insufficient reason, but finite good—and a finite good which on
analysis seems spurious—to be sufficient reason for the permission of damnific
evil. Of course such critics also suppose that free defect is somehow unfree
owing to God’s permission of it, and so cannot fathom either its punishment or
the truth that evildoers really have the power not to sin, a power of which their
defective wills keep them from availing themselves.The critics of the traditional
Thomistic position desire from God something that is strictly impossible—that
something positive simultaneously be caused and not be caused. When it is
pointed out to them that God cannot gratify such a wish, they say that on the
Thomistic account God is the cause of that defect that God permits. But if defect
is permitted this necessarily implies that the omnipotent God has not caused the
contrary, and if God causes the contrary this means that defect is not permitted.
Only insofar as God wills to permit limit, negation, and defect in his effects are
these to be found there. God is not a creature, the efficacy of whose causality can
strictly be impeded. If he were, then abandonment to divine providence would
be no different in kind from abandonment to a creature. It follows that if God
simply wills something then it will be, and that if an effect does not exist, we may
from this infallibly infer that God does not simply and absolutely will that effect.
The resistance to this proposition is a headlong flight from metaphysical clarity
into obscurantism, as though biblical interpretation could dispense with metaphysical wisdom while retaining adequacy to divine revelation. Loss of the principles of non-contradiction and the excluded middle is a high price to pay for
seeking to sustain an account of human liberty inconsistent with the metaphysics
of creation and divine omnipotence.There is also in the criticism of the classical
Thomistic teaching the subtle deflection of emphasis from God to the creature,
as though the latter and not the former were the indispensable key to created
good.Yet all creation is nothing but a finite manifestation of God.

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negation would not occur).46 As St.Thomas puts it in chapter 142 of the
Compendium Theologiae:
good is rendered more praiseworthy when compared with particular
evils, just as in relation to the darkness of black, the radiant brilliance of
white is more pronouncedly manifest.And so through this—that evil is
permitted to be in the world—the divine goodness is more clearly
shown forth in the good, just as divine wisdom is more patently manifested in ordering evil to serve good.47

Of itself and apart from the divine conservation of being, the creature
is nothing. Likewise, of itself, and without divine activation toward and
conservation in the good proper to its nature, the rational creature freely
falls inward upon itself and fails of its good, revealing its volatilized moral
nothingness in second act. This is St. Thomas’s authentic teaching. We
now must turn to the most central implication, both historically and
doctrinally, of the denial of this teaching: an implication that has haunted
the counsels of Christendom from inside the tradition of Catholic reflection itself, and in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has
entered a phase of extreme virulence.
III. The Impossibility of Natural Law If Our Volition
Is Not Subject to Divine Causality
This brings us to a decisive implication of rejecting the Thomistic interpretation of the words, “Without me you can do nothing.” If one denies
that the human will receives not only its being, but also it natural motion
and application to action from God, one makes of the will a demiurgically
unmoved first mover. But divine providence extends only so far as the
divine causality.48 It follows that if the human will is not subject to divine
46 Of course, divine aid is only withheld because of prior free resistance; but this

prior resistance itself traces to defect and negation, and these must be permitted
if they are to be (no other answer is consistent with the omnipotence of God).
The free defect is free, it manifests the nothingness of the creature apart from
divine aid, and finally it is permitted for the sake of higher good.
47 Compendium theologiae, Capitulum CXLII: “Tertio, quia ex ipsis malis particularibus commendabiliora redduntur bona dum eis comparantur, sicut ex obscuritate nigri magis declaratur claritas albi. Et sic per hoc quod mala permittuntur
esse in mundo, diuina bonitas magis declaratur in bonis, et sapientia in ordinatione malorum ad bona.”
48 ST I, q. 22, a. 2, resp.: “Cum enim omne agens agat propter finem, tantum se
extendit ordinatio effectuum in finem, quantum se extendit causalitas primi
agentis” (For since every agent acts for an end, the ordering of effects toward that
end extends as far as the causality of the first agent extends). And again: “Unde
necesse est omnia quae habent quocumque modo esse, ordinata esse a Deo in

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power, then naturally it is not subject to the divine government. But
natural law is nothing other than a mode of the divine government
through secondary causality. St. Thomas makes this point clearly in the
following passage from the prima secundae of the Summa Theologiae:
I answer that, as was stated above, law denotes a kind of plan directing acts
towards an end. Now wherever there are movers ordained to one another,
the power of the second mover must needs be derived from the power of
the first mover, since the second mover does not move except in so far as
it is moved by the first.Therefore we observe the same in all those who
govern, namely, that the plan of government is derived by secondary
governors from the governor in chief.Thus the plan of what is to be done
in a state flows from the king’s command to his inferior administrators;
and again in things of art the plan of whatever is to be done by art flows
from the chief craftsman to the under-craftsmen who work with their
hands. Since, then, the eternal law is the plan of government in the Chief
Governor, all the plans of government in the inferior governors must be
derived from the eternal law. But these plans of inferior governors are all
the other laws which are in addition to the eternal law.Therefore all laws,
in so far as they partake of right reason, are derived from the eternal law.
Hence Augustine says in I De Lib. Arb. that in temporal law there is nothing
just and lawful but what man has drawn from eternal law.49
finem” (Hence all things that exist in whatsoever manner are necessarily directed
by God toward the end); and again: “necesse est omnia, inquantum participant
esse, intantum subdi divinae providentiae” (it necessarily follows that all things,
inasmuch as they participate in being, must to that extent be subject to divine
providence). Of God,Thomas says that “Et cum cognitio eius comparetur ad res
sicut cognitio artis ad artificiata” (His knowledge may be compared to the things
themselves as the knowledge of art to the objects of art). In ibid., I, q. 22, a. 3,
resp., St. Thomas defines providence as entailing two things, “scilicet ratio ordinis rerum provisarum in finem; et exectuio huius ordinis, quae gubernatio dicitur” (That is, the exemplar of the order of things foreordained toward an end,
and the execution of this order, which is called government).
49 Ibid., I–II, q. 93, a. 3, resp.: “Dicendum quod, sicut supra dictum est, lex importat
rationem quandam directivam actuum ad finem. In omnibus autem moventibus
ordinatis oportet quod virtus secundi moventis derivetur a virtute moventis primi,
quia movens secundum non movet nisi inquantum movetur a primo. Unde in
omnibus gubernantibus idem videmus, quod ratio gubernationis a primo gubernante ad secundos derivatur; sicut ratio eorum quae sunt agenda in civitate,
derivatur a rege per praeceptum in inferiores administratores. Et in artificialibus
etiam ratio artificialium actuum derivatur ab architectore ad inferiores artifices, qui
manu operantur. Cum ergo lex aeterna sit ratio gubernationis in supremo gubernante, necesse est quod omnes rationes gubernationis quae sunt in inferioribus
gubernantibus, a lege aeterna deriventur. Huiusmodi autem rationes inferiorum
gubernantium sunt quaecumque aliae leges praeter aeternam. Unde omnes leges,
inquantum participant de ratione recta, intantum derivantur a lege aeterna. Et

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The point must be seen: Natural law is simply one mode whereby the
Divine Mind orders or governs the rational creature toward its end. But the
Divine Mind cannot govern a creature to its end if that creature is by its
very nature absolutely ungovernable or wholly independent of his government:The idea is a contradiction in terms. If the creature is not dependent
upon God in being, both to be, to be preserved in being, and to act toward
and for the sake of being, then the universal providence of God over being
does not extend to it.Thus if our free human acts escape dependence upon
God for their coming-to-be, it will be an axiomatic inference to separate
the governance of these acts from the divine government. Human action
then comes to represent a zone of being and good beyond the divine power
and outside the scope of divine government. This is contrary to the divine
omnipotence and for this reason alone a foolish conclusion. But it clearly
and unequivocally also implies the impossibility of natural law.
Since the natural law is nothing other than a rational participation in
the eternal law; and since if man cannot be subject to divine ordering, he
must be outside the divine power, it will then also follow that man’s
moral actions cannot be subject to eternal law.The absolute and unconditional autonomy of the human will is incompossible with natural law.
This is precisely the antitheistic conclusion drawn by much of modernity
and postmodernity. It is in principle identical to the criticism that the
existence of God renders true and absolute creativity impossible for man.50
Insofar as man cannot create anything ex nihilo, apart from antecedent
matter, this is of course true: Creation in the absolute sense is reserved to
God. But as this criticism is posed by antitheists, it obscures the distinction between this lack of absolute creativity and the lack of what we
normally mean by creativity—for example, the inspired insight causing
the development of true theories, great works of art, brilliant strategies,
and so on: a lack of creatures in no way implied by the existence of God.
Needless to say, this criticism is erroneous. It is mirrored by the confusion of the relative autonomy of man within divine providence—which
flows from man’s rational nature and sovereign indeterminacy with
respect to all finite goods—with a quite different absolute autonomy that is
wholly spurious even with respect to the noblest of angelic creatures.
The reasoning of Summa contra Gentiles, III, a. 70, applies directly here
and manifests the nature of the error in question: “[T]he power of the
propter hoc Augustinus dicit in I De Lib. Arb., quod ‘in temporali lege nihil est
iustum ac legitimum, quod non ex lege aeterna homines sibi derivaverunt.’ ”
50 For example, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wove these confusions with great skill. Cf.
his comments on God and human liberty, Sens et non-sens (Paris: Les Éditions
Nagel, 1948, 1966), 356.

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lower agent depends on the power of the higher agent, in so far as the
higher agent gives the lower agent the power whereby it acts or preserves
that power or applies it to action.” But this description depicts the basic
character of passive participation in the eternal law by every creature
whatsoever.Thus if the lower agent does not receive its power to act or
the preservation of that power or its application to act from God, then it
will exist and act apart from divine governance.
Recall that on St. Thomas’s account of the natural law, man first
passively participates in the divine ordering of nature.All creatures receive
their being, natures, natural powers, and ordering to ends passively from
God.51 But because man is created rational, he receives being, nature,
natural powers, and ordering not only passively, but also—and by the very
nature of this passive participation—receives these actively, preceptively, and
rationally: as providing reasons to act or not to act. It is this finely delineated metaphysic of moral order that is jeopardized by suggesting that
human agency is causally outside the sphere of divine governance. For
how can a rule govern something that is naturally outside its governing
power? The legislature of Indiana does not pass laws governing the
molecular structure of carbon, nor does the Senate of the United States
deliberate on whether to command angels to pay more taxes. And,
though it may disbar him, even the Supreme Court of the United States
does not command William Jefferson Clinton to be continent.
Once the Thomistic metaphysic of morals is denied, the implications for
the moral life cascade. The normativity of the natural law will no longer
reside in the identity of absolute being, truth, and good in God, but instead
in the determinations of autonomous human reason. Nature and reason go
from being manifestations and expressions of divine order, to being either
antipodes of divine order or, perhaps, to opposing one another in an
endless and fruitless dialectic. God moves from being the author and
perfecter of human liberty and virtue, to being a threat to authentic human
freedom and an alien distortive influence upon morality.The symmetry of
these implications with Kantian autonomism is arresting. Yet unlike the
express rationalism of Kant, these implications flow from an intra-Catholic
source: metaphysical failure to reconcile divine providence and human
freedom. Even had Kant and Hegel never written, the failure to affirm that
every perfection of act—including those perfections of act that pertain to
human willing—stems first from God and only secondarily from the crea-

51 Indeed, all creatures also receive their natural powers, and the application of these

powers to act, from God.

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ture, is a failure pregnant with manifold antinomian disorders destined to
disrupt the counsels of Catholic intelligence.
Somehow, the ensuing absolutely autonomous kingdoms of the will are
to be brought under a different regime of divine law in revelation. Russell
Hittinger has amusingly and profoundly described this problem as that of
“Cartesian minds somehow under Church discipline.”52 But if per impossibile there could be a being by nature utterly independent of divine causality and hence not ordered by or toward God, why would it then require
divine direction? And how could it be subject to further supernatural direction without violence toward, or mutation of, its nature? It is perhaps in
these terms arresting to note that some theologians—for example, the
Greek patriarch, in his address at Georgetown University53—actually hold
that grace entirely mutates human nature rather than elevating and redeeming it. Once natural order is erroneously cast in the role of an antitheonomic
principle, what else can grace be but a violation or mutation of nature?
Once human freedom is held to be causally independent of God, the
conditions for the separation of natural and eternal law are achieved:The
“prenuptial agreement” of their temporary cohabitation guarantees
future calamitous conflict. Eternal law then is brought in—if it is brought
in at all—only as a theological gloss on an already sufficiently constituted
moral order, rather as the limits of jurisdiction of one sovereign power
help to demarcate the limits of an adjacent kingdom.54
This denial of God’s causality over human freedom—not as we find it
in the minds and with the motives of Catholic theologians such as
Molina, but simply in its objective character—thus appears to be a critical intra-Catholic contribution to the evolution of secularist antitheism
in the moral realm. For what do we mean by secularism save the claim
that the public order is outside the jurisdiction of divine rule? And what
could more directly imply this posture than the claim that our free actions
52 Russell Hittinger, “Natural Law and Catholic Moral Theology,” in A Preserving

Grace, ed. Michael Cromartie (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center;
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), 1–30.
53 Cf. Patriarch Bartholomew, “Dialogue, From an Orthodox Perspective,” Origins
27 (1997): 333 and 335–37. He claims that divine glory “recreates or otherwise
regenerates us into something other or different in essence than our previous
nature” (335). He also argues that “therefore we do not engage in idle talk and
discuss intellectual concepts which do not influence our lives” (335). But of
course, if human nature itself is not redeemed, one had better be silent about
natural interrogatories, preserving obscurantism untouched by reason.
54 I do not believe it to be straining matters too far to read the teachings of Bernard
Häring or Josef Füchs as more or less explicitly maintaining just such a metaphysically unfounded separation between natural moral order and eternal law.

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are naturally outside the divine government? It is the moral implications
of this metaphysically unfounded autonomism that Pope John Paul II
addresses and corrects in Veritatis Splendor.
One must say again: A thing can only act as it is.The rational human
person is first, foremost, and always, a creature, whose existence comes to
it from outside, from God. Because this is the character of its being, it
will—by a law of metaphysical necessity—manifest this derived being in
the very nature of each and every one of its acts. Because its being and
act are dependent upon God, the natural norm of the rational creature’s
being and act is to be found in its participation of the eternal law, which
participation is a means whereby the divine mind moves the rational
creature toward its end. At its heart this motion is ineluctable: The first
precepts of the natural law are inexpugnable, and the desire for the Last
End is not among those desires of which man is master. The further
precepts of the law, its conclusions and determinations, are all so many
ways in which God moves the rational creature toward the End. This
would not be possible were rational being a law to itself, immoveable by
God, and absolute first author of its own acts.
Human—and angelic—liberty are created liberties, which typify the
noble mode of the divine motion of human and angelic persons toward
their finality. For no matter how perfect a creature may be, it cannot
proceed to its act unless it first be moved by God. This highlights in a
profound fashion that the first necessity of any truthful personalism is its
metaphysical veracity. Accounts of the human person that begin by separating the creature from divine causality in either being or operation
ineluctably distort the nature of the person, of personal being, and of
personal activity. Person denotes, not an enclave of unintelligible libertarian aseity or arbitrary exemption from the laws of being qua being, but
the noblest part of the created order. In this light, one recollects the following words from Fides et ratio:
It should never be forgotten that the neglect of being inevitably leads
to losing touch with objective truth and, therefore, with the very
ground of human dignity. This in turn makes it possible to erase from
the countenance of man and woman the marks of their likeness to
God, and thus to lead them little by little either to a destructive will to
power or to a solitude without hope. Once the truth is denied by
human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free.Truth and freedom either go hand in hand or together they perish in misery. (no. 90)

Freedom flows from the rational nature of man, whereby the will is
ordered toward universal good and thence cannot be compelled by any

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605

finite good. It is a nobler, universal mode whereby God moves the rational
creature toward its end. Like any and every good, its radical actuating
source is ipsum esse subsistens per se, the Uncreated Light Who is God.
Thus it is with characteristically seraphic wisdom that St. Thomas
concludes chapter 67 of the first part of the third book of the Summa
contra Gentiles, whose chapter title is “That, in all things that operate, God
is the cause of their operating”:
Hence it is said (Is 26:12): “Lord, Thou hast wrought all our works in
us”; and ( Jn 15:5):“Without Me you can do nothing”; and (Phil 2:13):
“It is God who worketh in us both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.” For this reason Holy Writ often ascribes natural
effects to the divine operation: because He it is who works in every
agent, natural or voluntary, as it is written in Job 10:10, 11:“Hast Thou
not milked me as milk, and curdled me like cheese? Thou hast clothed
me with skin,Thou hast put me together with bones and sinews”; and
again in Psalm 17:14:“The Lord thundered from heaven, and the highN&V
est gave his voice: hail and coals of fire.”55

55 ScG, IIIa, 67: “Hinc est quod dicitur Isaiae 26, 12, ‘Omnia opera nostra operatus

es in nobis, Domine’; et Io. 15, 5, ‘Sine me nihil potestis facetere’; et Phil. 2, 13,
‘Deus est qui operatur in nobis velle et perficere pro bona voluntate.’ Et hac
ratione frequenter in Scripturis naturae effectus operationi divinae attribuuntur,
quia ipse est qui operatur in omni operante per naturam vel per voluntatem: sicut
iillud Tob 10, 10.11,‘nonne sicut lac mulsiste me, et sicut caseum me coagulasti?
Pelle et carnibus vestisti me, ossibus et nervis compegisti me’; et in Psalmo (17,
14), ‘intonnit de caelo Dominus, et Altissimus dedit vocem suam, grando et
carbones ignis.’ ”

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 3 (2006): 607–632

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Thomist Premotion and Contemporary
Philosophy of Religion
T HOMAS M. O SBORNE , J R .
University of St.Thomas
Houston,Texas

A LTHOUGH the problem of reconciling God’s providence and
human freedom is widely discussed in contemporary philosophy of religion, the traditional Thomist understanding is for the most part either
ignored or quickly dismissed.1 This Thomist understanding was developed in the early modern discussions concerning predestination and is
intimately connected with Thomas’s understanding of how God knows
future contingents. According to this view, although humans can freely
1 The classical Thomist view is not discussed in Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski’s overview

of contemporary accounts, “Recent Work on Divine Knowledge and Free Will,”
in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 45–64. For summaries of the Thomist doctrine, see A. M. Dummermuth, S.Thomas et doctrina praemotionis physicae seu Responsio ad R. P. Schneemann, SJ,
aliosques doctrinae scholae Thomisticae impugnatores (Paris: L’Année Dominicaine,
1886); idem, Defensio doctrinae S.Thomae Aq. de praemotione physica seu Responsio ad
R. P. V. Frins, SJ (Louvain: Uystpruyst; Paris: Lethielleux, 1895); N. Del Prado, De
gratia et libero arbitrio, pars secunda: Concordia liberi arbitrii cum divina motione juxta S.
Augustinum et D. Thomam (Freiburg: Consociatio Sancti Pauli, 1907); Réginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, De deo uno: Commentarium in primam partem S.Thomae (Paris:
Desclée, 1938), 509–56; idem, God, His Existence and His Nature: A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, 5th ed., vol. 2, trans. Bede Rose (Herder: St.
Louis, 1941), 268–396; idem, Predestination, trans. Bede Rose (St. Louis: Herder,
1946).There are at least two relatively recent articles that presuppose or argue for
aspects of the Thomist position:Theodore J. Kondoleon,“The Free Will Defense:
New and Old,” Thomist 47 (1983): 1–42; Steven A. Long, “Providence, liberté et
loi naturelle,” Revue Thomiste 102 (2002): 355–406. See the English version on page
557 of this issue of Nova et Vetera. Kondoleon is concerned with Plantinga’s understanding of free will and Long’s article is a criticism of Jacques Maritain.

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choose between different acts, it is God who first moves the will, and the
will’s motion is predetermined by his infallible eternal decrees. God
knows what someone will do in the future because he eternally decrees
either to cause or permit the human action.The great Thomist commentators designate such a motion of the will by God as “physical premotion.” The motion is physical because God moves the will not just
morally, that is as a final cause, but as an agent. It is “premotion” because
it has priority over the created agent’s own causal activity.This priority is
not in time but rather in the causal order. I shall argue that this concept
of premotion is at least prima facie coherent and has not been shown to
be incoherent by those philosophers who now either ignore or reject it.
Premotion is rejected by most contemporary Thomists who think that
the classical Thomist emphasis on God’s will as an inadequate or false
account for explaining his eternal knowledge of contingent actions.2
Moreover, most Thomists are now uncomfortable with the view that
God’s motion of the human will is infallible. In general, there is a worry
that a strong view of providence and predestination threatens human
freedom. This worry is not limited to Thomists. There are now many
theories that state that God does not have control over each human
action. These theories are sometimes described as “open theories”; God
is open to different determinations of the future by the human will.
Consequently, the future lies to some extent beyond the control of God’s

2 The classical Thomist position is sometimes described as “Bañezian.” This tradi-

tion contains many variations.With respect to the common aspects of it, it seems
to me that this tradition is fundamentally faithful to St. Thomas. The works of
Dummermuth (Thomas et doctrina praemotionis physicae) and Del Prado (De gratia et
libero arbitrio) are instructive on this point. In this article I use the word “Thomist”
to designate this tradition. For a sampling of alternative contemporary Thomist
approaches, see David B. Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); Christopher Hughes,“Aquinas
on God’s Knowledge of Future Contingents,” in Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the
Thomistic and Analytical Traditions, ed. John Haldane (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 143–59; Norman Kretzmann and Eleanore Stump,
“A Reply to Shanley,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1997): 439–45;
Eleanore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 118–22, 131–58, 178–82,
389–404; Brian J. Shanley, “Eternal Knowledge of the Temporal in Aquinas,”
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1997): 197–224; idem,“Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72
(1997): 99–122. There are many such alternative “Thomist” accounts that have
developed in the context of the “problem of evil.” See Brian J. Shanley, The
Thomist Tradition (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 92–127. For the Molinist objection
concerning God’s causation of evil actions, see note 17 below.

Thomist Premotion and Philosophy of Religion

609

will. Thomas Flint has argued that these open theories are incompatible
with a Christian understanding of providence, although he also thinks
that Thomist physical premotion is incompatible with human freedom.3
Consequently, he and others are sympathetic to Molinism, which
attempts to combine the belief that God’s providence extends to every
single human action with the belief that God cannot determine a free
action.4 Molinists oppose their view both to open theories and the classical Thomist account. According to Molinism, God foresees what
humans would do in particular circumstances before he creates that
world with those circumstances. God then creates that world in which
humans behave just as he had foreseen. This view was held by many
Jesuits and developed alongside and through conflict with the Thomist
doctrine of premotion. It is significant that whereas in the past Molinists
have been the Catholics who most emphasize the freedom of the will as
opposed to God’s causality, in contemporary debates Molinists are among
the few who hold that God’s providence extends to each human action.
They are among the few philosophers whose views are not obviously in
conflict with the Christian tradition. Indeed, the explicit rejection of
premotion is characteristic of those philosophers who are most sympathetic to traditional Christianity, namely Molinists and contemporary
Thomists. Other contemporary philosophers seem to be unaware of the
classical Thomist position.
It is my belief that the contemporary dismissals of physical premotion
are unfounded because they neglect key distinctions that are developed
by such commentators as Dominic Bañez and John of St.Thomas in the
context of their reading of Thomas Aquinas. My argument here is not
that such commentators faithfully represent the teachings of Thomas, or
indeed that their understanding of his teaching correctly describes how
God knows and wills human actions. These statements may be true, but
they are impossible to defend in one article. My position is that the
absence of premotion from contemporary debates has not yet been justified. No one has developed an argument against premotion that works if
the distinctions made by the Thomists are granted. Indeed, the critics of
Thomism are often unclear about which aspects of the Thomist position
3 Thomas P. Flint, “Two Accounts of Providence,” in Divine and Human Action:

Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1988), 147–81.
See also Alfred J. Freddoso, introduction,” in Luis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), trans.Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1988).
4 For a contemporary presentation, see especially Thomas Flint, Divine Providence:
The Molinist Account (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

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they are attacking. My argument has three parts. In the first, I shall
explain some key Thomist distinctions concerning necessity and premotion. In the second, I shall argue that many philosophers who object to
the Thomist position misconstrue the relevant understanding of necessity
and contingency. In the third, I shall focus directly on their denial that
the doctrine of premotion is helpful for discussions of how God moves
the human will. The first two sections illustrate that the Thomists think
plausibly that our understanding of necessity is connected either with a
logical necessity or secondary causality. Consequently, in order to show
that the will is free, they argue that human actions are necessitated neither
logically nor by secondary causes. In the third section, I argue that
Thomists do not simply beg the question by asserting that God’s predetermining decrees are compatible with human freedom. They have an
understanding of God’s causation that allows both for God’s infallible
motion and the contingency of many created events, among which are
free human actions.
I. Recovering the Historical Context
Although many philosophers of religion have some understanding of the
debate between Thomists and Molinists, many aspects of this debate are
misunderstood and often taken out of their historical context. I draw
attention to this context to show that Thomists developed their position
only to defend the traditional Thomist and Augustinian thesis that human
actions are undetermined even though they fall under God’s providence.
Moreover, since most of the literature on premotion considers only
twentieth-century writers, the contemporary focus is often on later
worries over “the problem of evil” rather than on the central issue of the
earlier period, which is how to understand God’s predetermination of
contingent events.
“Premotion” is a word that was developed by sixteenth-century
Thomist commentators in the context of controversies over grace, and it
remained part of the Dominican theological vocabulary at least until the
middle of the twentieth century.5 The Dominican literature on premotion
is vast and there are many disagreements among the commentators and
later theologians.6 In this article, I shall focus on two Thomists, namely
5 In addition to the works cited in note 1, see Réginald Garrigou-LaGrange,

“Prémotion physique,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 13.1, cols. 31–77.
6 For the theological context, see Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the

Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), 273–84. The classical Thomist literature is vast. I have selected
Bañez, the first commentator to develop the doctrine of premotion, and John of

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611

Dominic Bañez and John of St.Thomas. In the sixteenth century, Bañez,
who is also famous for having been Teresa of Avila’s confessor, used it to
attack Jesuits who softened the Thomist understanding of predestination,
which he understood to be identical to that of Augustine. Bañez was
among the first to develop and explain the Thomist position. In the seventeenth century, John of St. Thomas, the last great commentator, treated
predestination at great length and placed the doctrine of premotion in its
historical context. He argued that whereas Protestants such as Martin
Luther, and most especially John Calvin, held an understanding of grace
that destroyed human free will; Pelagius and his followers held an understanding of free will that threatened the Catholic doctrine of predestination.7 Although Calvinists and Pelagians are opposed in their emphases,
they both agree that it is impossible for God to infallibly move a human
action that is nonetheless free.Thomists used the word “semi-Pelagianism”
to describe those who hold that although God’s grace is necessary for a
meritorious action, humans can choose to either accept or reject the initial
grace. Indeed, some accused the Molinists of being semi-Pelagian.8 John of
St.Thomas thinks that Molina and some other Jesuits hold views that are
at least close to semi-Pelagianism and perhaps even imply it.9 The Dominicans responded to the Jesuits by more sharply distinguishing between
secondary causes and God.Whereas the human will cannot be determined
to a free action by secondary causes, it can be so determined by God’s
motion. “Premotion” designates this motion. Their central point was that
God’s causation differs from secondary causes so that notions of causality
that are taken from secondary causes cannot be applied to it.
Among the many contemporary and early modern objections to
premotion is that this doctrine is not found in the writings of Thomas
himself. It is true that Thomas never uses the word “premotion.” Indeed,
the commentators also use such unusual words as “predetermination” and
“predefinition.”10 “Predetermination” can be especially confusing because
St.Thomas, widely regarded as the last great Dominican commentator. But I do
not wish to deny the importance of such figures as the Carmelites of Salamanca.
See their tract. 4–5, in Cursus theologicus, vol. 2 (Paris: Palme, 1876).
7 John of St.Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 23, a. 5, in Cursus theologici, vol. 3, eds.
Solesmes (Paris: Desclée, 1931–1946), 46–60.
8 McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 282.
9 For example, see John of St.Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 28, a. 5 (Solesmes ed.,
vol. 3, 443–62).
10 Garrigou-LaGrange, Prémotion, 44–56. There is an excellent bibliography on
55–56. For Thomas, see for example Summa Theologiae I, q. 23, a. 1, ad 1. For the
Summa Theologiae I use the Leonine edition as reprinted in Summa Theologiae, 3
vols (Turin: Marietti, 1952).

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although Thomas in some contexts explicitly denies that the will is
predetermined, the commentators use this word to develop Thomas’s
own thought.11 But it is important to consider the word’s use and
context.When Thomas rejects predetermination he is using the word as
indicating that God imposes a necessity on the will that is the same as
that found in natural things.The commentators agree that the will is not
so determined, but they use the word “predetermination” to indicate that
God infallibly moves the will.They coined new words or changed existing ones in order to take part in controversies over grace.
Although the commentators differ in the details of their theories, they
do share a common terminology and understanding of premotion.
Perhaps their terminology is neglected because the commentators are
believed to have disfigured Thomas’s theory. Although my concern is
with whether the contemporary objections against their views are
cogent, one point should be addressed. It has been claimed that Thomas
did not develop a doctrine on God’s motion of the will in the way that
the commentators did because he recognizes that their attempt at precision is unattainable.12 A more likely reason is that he was not concerned
with addressing the views of Protestants and Jesuits. Different historical
periods can call for different vocabularies. The commentators used the
word “premotion” because they needed to distinguish not only between
God’s causality and that of creatures, but also between God’s moving the
will and both his creation and conservation of it.
Why is this motion called “premotion”? The prefix is inserted in order
to draw attention to the priority of God’s causality.13 This priority is not
one of time. God moves the will to act precisely at the time when the will
acts.The difference between the two actions is that a human being is not
the first cause of his act. Premotion is the way in which the human being
passively receives God’s motion.The human being who chooses a particular good does move himself to this good. Nevertheless, this movement from
potency to act requires a first cause. The doctrine of premotion is that
someone who freely acts both moves himself as the secondary cause and is
11 “Fastidiosi stomachi scrupulus iste est, sic distinguentis inter motionem et deter-

minationem. Sic enim ad hoc ponit D. Thomas praemotionem seu motum in
voluntatem, ut indifferentia ejus et suspensio resolvatur, quid aliud est praemotio
quam praedeterminatio?” John of St.Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 25, a. 4, no. 11
(Solesmes ed., vol. 3, 192).
12 “Like Wittgenstein, Aquinas knew that we must not presume to speak about
what lies beyond our ken.” Shanley, “Divine Causation and Human Freedom,”
101.
13 Garrigou-LaGrange, “Prémotion,” 41–42.

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613

directly moved by God as the first cause. Moreover, Thomists emphasize
that this premotion is physical.14 This word “physical” is awkward because
it brings to mind the causality of a physical body. But the word has a different meaning that can be best understood in context. Like the Thomists,
many Catholics adhered to the Augustinian belief that God can infallibly
move a free action, even though they differed from the Thomists by
attributing this infallible motion to his final causality or some sort of
sympathy caused in the will.15 For them, the motion is moral rather than
physical. In contrast,Thomists used the word “physical” to emphasize that
God is not only the final cause of the will but also the first efficient cause.
God is the first efficient cause of every action, including those that are
sinful. Even a sinner is not the first cause of his movement from potency
to act.The sinner’s own fault is in his turning away from the due end. But
God permits the action and causes it insofar as it has being so that he can
bring about some greater good, which may even be the manifestation of
God’s own justice through punishing the sin.
According to the Thomists, when anyone freely determines himself to
choose some good he is also infallibly moved by God. How is freedom
from necessity compatible with this infallible motion? A standard objection that even Thomas faced is that if God’s will must always be fulfilled
in every particular, then every event is necessary and not contingent.The
standard reply is that contingency is compatible with the necessity of
supposition or composition.16 Taken in a divided sense, Peter’s repentance is contingent. But taken in a composed sense, that is along with
God’s will that he repent, the repentance is necessary. By itself a statement
can be contingent even though it is necessary when considered in
conjunction with another. Thomists use consequents that have contingent antecedents to show how the consequent can be contingent even
14 Ibid., 42–44. See especially John of St. Thomas, Prima pars philosophiae naturalis,

q. 25, a. 2, in Cursus philosophicus thomisticus, vol. 2, ed. B. Reiser (Turin: Marietti,
1930–1937), 496–99.
15 Garrigou-LaGrange, Predestination, 168–170. For Scotists, see especially John of
St.Thomas Philosophia naturalis, IV, q. 12, a. 3 (Cursus philosophicus, vol. 3, 395–97).
16 ST I, q. 19, a. 3; q. 23, a. 6, ad 3. See especially Dominic Bañez’s commentary on
q. 19, a. 3, in Scholastica commentaria in primam partem angelici doctoris D. Thomae
usque ad sexagesimamquartam quaestionem, ed. Luis Urbano (Dubuque:W.C. Brown
Reprint Library, 1934, 1964), 413–14.Thomas also says that it is “incompossible”
for God’s motion of the will to fail: “si Deus movet voluntatem ad aliquid,
incompossibile est huic positioni quod voluntas ad illud non moveatur.” ST I–II,
q. 10, a. 4, ad 3. For an interesting catalogue of Thomas’s modal notions, see J. J.
McIntosh, “Aquinas on Necessity,” American Catholic Philosophical Association 72
(1998): 371–403.

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Thomas M. Osborne, Jr.

when it necessarily follows from the antecedent. Consider the following
statement:“If God wills Peter to repent, then he repents.”Thomas and the
Thomists admit that there is a necessity of consequence here. If the
antecedent is true, then the consequent must be so. Nevertheless, the
consequent, namely “Peter repents,” should not be understood as necessary when it is considered by itself, namely apart from God’s decree.The
act is contingent because it is not determinately present in any proximate
cause, but is instead freely chosen by Peter.
Not every necessity of supposition is the same as that of God’s predetermining decrees. The Thomist understanding of premotion presupposes
this distinction between the necessity of supposition or composition and
other kinds of necessity. Furthermore, the distinction in this context
depends upon an understanding of necessity and contingency among
causes and effects. The logical issue is connected to the Thomist understanding that effects are either necessary or contingent on account of their
proximate causes. For Thomists, such contingent effects as human actions
are not determinately present in their proximate cause, even though they
can be determinately present in the first cause. Consequently, there are at
least two kinds of objections to the Thomist position.17 First, some thinkers
may object to its understanding of necessity and contingency among
secondary causes. Second, they may accept aspects of this understanding
but reject the position that the contingent effects are determinately present
in the first cause, namely God. Consequently, before addressing the
contemporary arguments against premotion itself, I shall consider whether
and how contemporary philosophers misunderstand or misconstrue the
Thomist understanding of contingency.
II. Necessity and Secondary Causes
The standard objections against the Thomist account of the necessity of
supposition or composition are that this necessity is unintelligible or that
it does not preserve our intuitions about contingency. Moreover, the
necessity of supposition can be used in different contexts. All past and
present events are necessary by supposition, but this kind of necessity
might seem innocuous, whereas that necessity of supposition which
considers human acts along with God’s will appears to violate human
freedom. The most extreme libertarian might be glad to admit that past
17 I am not here concerned with the objection that the Thomist position entails

that God is responsible for evil actions.This objection does not seem particularly
difficult to me, and has been overwhelmingly refuted by J. H. Nicolas, “La
permission du péché,” Revue Thomiste 60 (1960): 5–37, 185–206, 509–46. See
also Garrigou-LaGrange, God, vol. 2, 365–96.

Thomist Premotion and Philosophy of Religion

615

and present free actions cannot be changed, and yet hold that their necessity is in no way based on God’s decrees. I shall show that on the Thomist
view the relevant contingency is based on the contingency of the proximate cause, and ultimately God’s decision to cause a contingent event.
The necessity of supposition with respect to God’s will is ultimately
compatible with such contingency.
Although necessity was not first discussed in the context of disputes over
predestination, it took a prominent role in modern debates over the issue.
But the role of the necessity of supposition in debates over human freedom
is usually not well understood.When discussing Antoine Arnauld’s somewhat Thomist post-1683 position, Robert Sleigh mentions his use of “the
notorious distinction between the composed and divided senses.”18
Christopher Hughes has criticized its use in the context of God’s knowing
future contingents by claiming that since present and past events cannot be
changed, then they should have absolute necessity and not the necessity of
supposition.19 Another approach is to agree with the Thomist distinction
between the kinds of necessity, but argue that it cannot preserve human
freedom.20 They would agree that one cannot infer “It is necessary that p”
from “it is necessary that ‘If g, then p.’ ” Nevertheless, if the antecedent is
necessary, and the consequent necessarily follows, then it would seem that
the consequent is necessary. For example, if it is necessary that God knows
that Peter will repent, and it is also true that if God knows of this repentance, Peter will repent, then it should follow that Peter’s repentance is
necessary. Molinists admit that the Peter’s action need not be necessary, but
hold that such contingency is rooted only in God’s free choice. Thomas
Flint follows Molina in stating that on the Thomist view free acts would
be contingent only because God did not need to create the world in which
Peter repents.21 If such were the only reason, only God’s liberty would be
preserved. On their account, the necessity of supposition preserves the
contingency of the human act, since the act need not occur; but the freedom of the act is not preserved.
18 Robert Sleigh, “Arnauld on Efficacious Grace and Free Choice,” in Interpreting

Arnauld, ed. Elmar Kremer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 167–68.
19 Hughes, “Aquinas on God’s Knowledge,” 152–57.
20 Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1991), 7–9; John Marin Fischer,“Introduction: God and
Freedom,” in God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom, ed. John Martin Fischer (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), 13–14. Alvin Plantinga, “On Ockham’s
Way Out,” in God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom, 180–81, thinks that there is no
reason to hold Thomas’s view that if God knows that someone will act, then it
is necessary that the agent will do so.
21 Flint, Divine Providence, 89–90.

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These criticisms do not address why Thomists think that the free act is
compatible with a necessity of supposition with respect to God’s eternal
decrees. One difficulty with understanding the Thomist account of necessity is that in contemporary philosophy there is as yet no widely accepted
standpoint from which to evaluate it. Many contemporary philosophers
think that any sort of necessity entails a fatalism that is incompatible with
human freedom.22 Often they attempt to explain possibility in terms of
possible worlds. But, as Plantinga notes, it is difficult on this view to capture
the difference between the logical possibility of someone’s performing an
action and our ordinary understanding of whether someone is able to
perform such an action:“Ability and logical possibility do not coincide.”23
According to Thomists, there is more to contingency that just logical possibility. How do they understand contingency and how it relates to a free
choice between alternative goods? In this section I will show that from a
Thomist perspective contingency is compatible with a certain kind of logical necessity, even though contingent effects cannot be determined by their
proximate causes.The compatibility between contingency and a necessity
of supposition with respect to God’s decrees is not an ad hoc solution to
the problem of God’s foreknowledge and providence, but part of a wider
understanding of contingency.
Bañez explains the necessity of supposition in the wider context of the
different kinds of necessity. For our purposes, the most relevant are: (1) logical necessity; (2) physical or natural necessity; and (3) the necessity of
supposition.24 Logical necessity has its foundation in the divine mind. For
example, it is necessary that a human being is a rational animal and that a
human being is risible. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that there actually
be any human beings. If there are human beings, then they are rational. He
contrasts the necessity that humans be rational with the way in which the
heavenly bodies are necessary. Physical or natural necessity is in created
things. According to his cosmology, there are beings that are necessary in
that they are incorruptible. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that they exist.
God freely chooses to give them their being. But, supposing that he creates
them, their existence has a necessity that no corruptible being has. Bañez’s
22 For the general issues, see Mark Bernstein,“Fatalism,” in Oxford Handbook, 65–81.
23 Plantinga, “On Ockham’s Way Out,” 211.
24 Bañez, In ST I, q. 19, a. 8 (Valencia, 428–29). For more on the necessities of

composition and division, see John of St.Thomas, Philosophia naturalis, I, q. 25, a.
3 (Cursus philosophicus, vol. 2, 505–7). For the historical context, see Jeffrey
Coombs, “The Ontological Source of Logical Possibility in Catholic Second
Scholasticism,” in The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal
Theory, 1400–1700, The New Synthese Historical Library, 53, ed. Russell L.
Friedman and Lauge O. Nielsen (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 191–229.

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physics may be outmoded, but there is an important distinction here
between that necessity that comes from the nature of a thing apart from its
existence and the necessity of an existing necessary body. Indeed, according to his cosmology there is necessity even in contingent natural events,
such as the procreation of animals, because of the causal role that the heavenly bodies play.25 Physical necessity is an absolute necessity. In contrast, the
necessity of supposition is not absolute but secundum quid.The necessity of
the consequence does not entail an absolute necessity of the consequent.
Since Peter absolutely speaking wills to be healthy, he wills to have medicine.26 The consequence is necessary. But the consequent, namely that he
wishes to have medicine, is not absolutely necessary.
It is important to recognize how Bañez connects the necessity of the
consequent with that of supposition. His concern is with contingent
events, which have only a necessity of supposition and not one of physical or logical necessity. It is true that the heavenly bodies are necessary
only if God has created them. There is a necessity of consequence. The
consequent is necessary in the sense that they are necessary beings with
respect to secondary causality, but not in the sense that it is necessary for
God to create them. There is something about them that cannot be
otherwise supposing that they exist. According to his cosmology, no
defects or secondary causes can destroy them. In contrast, contingent
events can be changed by defects or secondary causes.
How can contingent events have this necessity of supposition? Thomas
considers an objection based on the premise that “If God wills something, then it is.”27 According to this objection, since everything God
wills must happen, then everything is necessary. Thomas answers that
whatever event follows from the divine will has that necessity or contingency that God wills it to have.28 Although everything that happens may
25 Bañez, In ST I–II, q. 109, a. 1, in Comentarios inéditos a la prima secundae de Santo

Tomás, ed. Vincente Beltrán de Heredia, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1942–1948), vol. 3,
22–23.
26 “Ista consequentia est necessaria, Petrus vult absolute sanitatem, et judicat medium
necessarium esse potionem amaram, ergo vult potionem illam; non tamen consequens
est necessarium, ‘vult potionem’ absolute loquendo.” Bañez, In ST I, q. 19, a. 8
(Valencia, 429).
27 “Sed res creatae a Deo, comparantur ad voluntatem divinam sicut ad aliquid
prius, a quo habent necessitatem: cum haec conditionalis sit vera, sit aliquid Deus
vult, illud est; omnis autem conditionalis vera est necessaria. Sequitur ergo quod
omne quod Deus vult sit necessarium absolute.” ST I, q. 19, a. 8, obj. 3.
28 “Unde et ea quae fiunt a voluntate divina, talem necessitatem habent, qualem
Deus vult ea habere: scilicet, vel absolutam, vel conditionalem tantum. Et sic, non
omnia sunt necessaria absolute.” ST I, q. 19, a. 8, ad 3.

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618

be necessary when considered in conjunction with God’s will, not everything is necessary absolutely. Bañez comments that the following consequences hold:“God wills something to be, therefore it will be in the way
and when he wills it to be.”29 God wills a contingent event to occur at
a particular time and contingently. He can even will that it occur freely.
It is contingent whether Peter sits or not. Nevertheless, while he sits it is
necessary that he sit. Thomists thinks that the present is necessary in a
sense. Nevertheless, this necessity is not absolute. Peter sits freely. Consequently, his sitting is not necessary in a divided sense, that is when considering his sitting by itself. While he sits, he is sitting freely. Nevertheless,
his sitting is necessary in a composed sense. While Peter sits, it is necessary that he sit. It cannot be the case that he is both sitting and not sitting.
Even though contingent natural events and free actions have this secundum quid necessity, they are not necessary in an absolute sense. Contingent effects are contingent because they have contingent proximate
causes.30 Such contingency is not just logical but founded in the proximate cause and effect. Ultimately, this contingency has its source in God’s
will to produce the effect contingently through secondary causes. It is
important to recognize that contrary to classical mechanics, Bañez thinks
that there is contingency in many non-rational events.31 Although fire
always generates fire, it is contingent whether this fire generates this other
fire. Moreover, sometimes natural causes fail. Peter might beget a
monster, although it is unlikely. Natural contingent effects are produced
by causes that can be impeded.With respect to free choice, Peter may or
may not decide to sit. His sitting is contingent simply speaking.
The position that Peter’s decision to sit is undetermined does not
entail that human actions are entirely unpredictable. Thomists do not
claim that we can make no predictions about human actions.32 If we
consider the faculty of free choice in itself, then we can make no such
predictions. But a particular human being is inclined to certain decisions
on account of custom and also his bodily disposition. Consequently, if the
29 “Deus vult aliquid fieri, ergo fit eo modo et quando vult fieri.” Bañez, In ST I,

q. 19, a. 8 (Valencia, 430).
30 Bañez, In ST I, q. 19, a. 8 (Valencia, 434).
31 Ibid., 430.
32 “Huiusmodi

effectus in causis quidem ad utrumlibet nullo modo cognosci
possunt per se acceptis; sed si adiungantur causae illae quae causas ad utrumlibet
inclinant magis ad unum quam ad aliud, potest aliqua certitudo coniecturalis de
effectibus praedictis haberi, sicut de his quae ex libero arbitrio dependent, aliqua
futura conicimus ex consuetudinibus et complexionibus hominum quibus inclinantur ad unam.” Thomas, De veritate, q. 8, a. 12 (Leonine 22.2, 259). Cf. ST
II–II, q. 95, a. 5.

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faculty of free choice is considered alongside these other causes, then the
free action can be predicted. But this predictability does not take away
the contingency of the action since the action proceeds primarily from
free choice, and free choice is not determined to any action. Moreover,
human actions cannot always be predicted. Customs, passions, and dispositions can be resisted, although usually they are not. For an act to be
contingent, it needs only to follow from the faculty of free choice.
Although other causes may incline the agent to an action, this inclination
is not the same as determination. Free actions are not determinately present in their causes.
Contemporary philosophers often connect free choice with a freedom
from any sort of infallible causal influence, and they do not emphasize
that most free acts result not only from free choice, but from the influence of other causal factors.This view departs from the Thomist account
in two ways. First, Thomists distinguish between contingency and freedom. Non-rational effects can be contingent and yet they are not free.
Free actions are those contingent effects that are caused by an agent
through his faculty of free choice. The emphasis is not just on contingency but on the agent’s intellect and will. Second, Thomists see God’s
infallible causal activity as the source of an effect’s necessity or contingency. God’s agency does not take away contingency.
Bañez develops but does not depart from the way in which Thomas
and Thomists understand contingency. Throughout his works, Thomas
emphasizes that effects are contingent because they are not determined
by their proximate causes, and, ultimately, because God has decide to
produce them as contingent. Human actions are such undetermined
effects. Even though present and past human actions cannot be changed,
they are still contingent with respect to their proximate causes. The
necessity of the past or present does not take away from the contingent
nature of the effect. Cajetan emphasizes this point when he states that
present and past contingents are necessary only according to their state
and not according to their nature.33
It is unclear whether contemporary thinkers would accept non-rational
contingency. It is incompatible with classical mechanics. Nevertheless, there
is an important conceptual distinction between non-rational events that
must happen, natural events that occur for the most part or unless they are
impeded, and that contingency that is required by free choice. Bañez
emphasizes that even if it were the case that God created the world from
the necessity of his nature, there would still be contingency on account of
33 Cajetan, In ST I, q. 14, a. 3, no. 4 (Leonine 4, 188).

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620

the way in which causes can be impeded.34 Consequently, at least one
Molinist criticism, namely that the necessity of supposition preserves only
God’s contingency, does not work.Against the Scotists,Thomists argue that
even if there were a necessity of nature in God himself, so that he were not
free, there would be contingency in the world.35 The contingency in
nature is rooted in God’s power to cause that certain events occur contingently. Thomists presuppose that we can know that there is contingency
before we know that God can produce events either necessarily or contingently. Critics of premotion need to explain whether and how they are
attacking the Thomist understanding of contingency.
Thomists disagree on details, but they all base the relevant contingency
partially on their understanding of the secondary causes through which
God wills to produce the event. A freely chosen action is a special kind
of contingent action. A rational agent chooses between different acts.
Although Peter does not choose to beget a human being rather than a
monster, he can choose whether to beget or read.This later possibility is
an example of a free act that is necessary only secundum quid, that is only
with respect to God’s eternal decree. John of St.Thomas emphasizes that
Calvin does not properly distinguish between the necessity of supposition and absolute necessity.36 If God moves the will then it is impossible
that the will should not be so moved. Nevertheless, the necessity is not
simpliciter but secundum quid. The Thomist view requires that no contingent event can be determined by its secondary causes. John of St.Thomas
argues that the statement “Peter will read tomorrow” is contingent today
precisely because its occurrence has not yet been determined.37
Thomas’s understanding of future contingents is important because it
shows how our understanding of contingency in created events is
connected with our understanding of secondary causes. Following Thomas’s
In libri perihermenias,Thomists go so far as to deny that the principle of bivalence holds for future contingents, even though they accept the law of noncontradiction.38 An assertion A, which is about a future contingent event, is
34 Bañez, In ST I, q. 19, a. 8 (Valencia, 431).
35 In addition to Bañez see Cajetan, In ST I, q. 19, a. 8, nos. 11–15 (Leonine ed., 4,

246).
36 John of St.Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 23, a. 5, no. 14 (Solesmes ed., vol. 3, 52).

For the rejection of this distinction among early Reformers, see Chris Schabel,
“Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: Auriol, Pomponazzi, and Luther
on ‘Scholastic Subtleties,’ ” in Medieval Heritage, 165–89.
37 John of St.Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 19, a. 2, no. 5 (Solesmes ed., vol. 2, 413).
38 In Libri Peri Hermenias, lib. 1, lect. 13–15 (Leonine 1, 59–74). An excellent translation and commentary can be found in The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas: Introductory

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621

neither true nor false. Nevertheless, it is true that “A or not-A.”The assertion A is true only when it has some determinate adequation with the
object. Consequently, statements about the future are true only insofar as
they are about what is now presently the case. Future necessary events now
have a determinate being in their causes. Some future natural events can be
said to be true insofar as their causes presently have some determinate inclination to them. Fire generates fire. But free events do not have such a
temporally prior and determinate presence in their causes. Since they are
contingent, they at present have no determinate being. Nevertheless, it
cannot be the case both that “Peter will read tomorrow” and “Peter will not
read tomorrow.”39 But neither statement will be true or false until the next
day when he chooses to read or not. When Peter reads, he does so freely
precisely because his reading was not determined by previous causes. Once
he has started reading, his reading has a secundum quid necessity. Nevertheless, his reading is not necessary either in the way that his having rationality
is necessary or even in the way that it is for his posterior to press down on
the seat rather than to float into the air. Our understanding of whether an
event is necessary is based on our knowledge of whether an event has been
determined by secondary causes. This understanding of the contingent as
not being determined by secondary causes is developed not only in a theological context, but can be seen in logic. Nevertheless, this understanding of
contingency helps to explain how an event can be contingent in itself and
yet necessary with respect to God’s eternal decrees.
Thomists think that God knows future contingents only through his
eternal decrees. They could not be known any other way.40 They all
follow Thomas in holding the following: It is not that future contingents
Readings, ed. Christopher Martin, 31–48, 15–17. For Bañez, see especially, In ST I,
q. 14, a. 13 (Valencia, 350–64). Notice his cautious criticism of Cajetan on 357–358.
In this exposition, I follow John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 19, a. 1–3
(Solesmes ed., vol. 2, 406–25).
39 John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 19, a. 3, nos. 2–7 (Solesmes ed., vol. 2,
420–22). See also Thomas, In Libri Peri Hermenias, lib.1, lect. 13, no. 12 (Leonine
ed., 1, 62–63).
40 For Thomas, see especially ST I, q. 14, a. 13. A somewhat sympathetic and plausible construal can be found in Arthur N. Prior, “The Formalities of Omniscence,” in Papers on Time and Tense (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 26–44. Simo
Knuuttila connects the discussion with his view that pre-Scotistic modal theories are statistical in his “Time and Modality in Scolasticism,” in Reforging the
Great Chain of Being: Studies in the History of Modal Theories, ed. Simo Knuuttila
(Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981), 208–17. His interpretation of Thomas as holding only
a statistical account seems forced. The best recent account is Theodore J.
Kondoleon, “God’s Knowledge of Future Contingent Singulars: A Reply,”
Thomist 56 (1992): 117–39.

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are determinately true but cannot be known as future, but rather that there
is nothing to know. Since future contingents have no determinate truth,
not even God can know them as future. He knows them as present and as
their cause. Sometimes it is claimed that the later commentators such as
Bañez and John of St.Thomas shifted from an earlier position that God’s
foreknowledge depends on his eternity to the newer one that his foreknowledge is primarily grounded in his divine will.41 But Thomas himself
connects the two claims.42 The Thomist understanding of contingency is
so strong that God could only know future contingents insofar as they are
eternally present to him through his divine decrees. We can know such
future events only through revelation, and then only because God has eternal knowledge of them. In turn, his eternal knowledge is based on his eternal decree that the events happen. His statement that Peter would deny him
three times was true in an entirely different way from which our ordinary
statements about necessary future events are true.43 Thomas argues that
statements about the future are true only insofar as they are causes that are
present to us.44 In themselves future contingents are neither true nor false.
Even the statement about Peter’s denial was true not because it was based
on the preexistence of the effect in then present secondary causes, but
rather because it was true through God’s eternal decree.
Although the Thomist position is sometimes compared with fatalism,
it is not fatalistic according to the normal use of the word. Indeed, the
debate is about how such a word could be used. If our understanding of
contingency is taken from that of secondary causes, then it may not be
applicable to God’s causality.
The disagreement between the Thomists and the Molinists is in large
part over this connection between necessity and causality. Indeed, one
Thomist objection to Molinism is against their claim that God knows
41 Brian J. Shanley, “Aquinas on God’s Causal Knowledge: A Reply to Stump and

Kretzmann,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 450–455. For
Thomas’s earliest commentators, see Julianus Groblicki, De scientia Dei futurorum
contingentium secundum S.Thomam eiusque primos sequaces (Krakow: 1938). For the
connection between the two issues, see especially Bañez, In ST I, q. 14, a. 13
(Valencia, 352). For the way in which the thing is contained in eternity not
merely as in an efficient cause, see especially John of St. Thomas, Artis Logicae
Secunda Pars, q. 23, art. 2 (Cursus philosophicus, vol. 1,737).
42 Thomas, De malo, q. 16, a. 7, ad 15. I use the Leonine text as reprinted in The De
malo of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and trans. Richard Regan (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), 908–10.
43 John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 19, a. 3, no. 7 (Solesmes ed., vol. 2,
421–22).
44 See especially Thomas, De Malo, q. 16, a. 7, c. (Regan trans., 902–4).

Thomist Premotion and Philosophy of Religion

623

what someone will do in a particular situation apart from God’s willing
to create that situation.45 According to the Thomists’ understanding of
contingency, this claim is nonsensical. If an event is contingent, then it
cannot be previously known from its secondary causes. The Thomist
position is not simply question-begging, but based on a plausible understanding of our use of the terms “necessary” and “contingent.”
This emphasis on the connection between contingency and a real ability to be otherwise explains why Thomists emphasize that premotion is
not prior in time to the free choice, and that it is the passive reception of
God’s motion. If it were prior in time, then the future contingent would
be determined and consequently not contingent. Similarly, if it were
determined by a secondary cause other than the agent, then it would be
previously knowable in its cause and consequently not contingent.
In order to successfully defend or dismiss the Thomist position, it
would be helpful to show either that there is some incoherence in the
theory or even what aspects of the theory are rejected. Contemporary
critics of Thomism do neither. They are probably objecting to one or
more of the following three positions. First, they might deny that necessity of a present event can either be absolute or secundum quid. But most
philosophers would probably think it important to distinguish to hold
both such statements as “While sitting, it is necessary that he sit,” and “His
sitting is not necessary but contingent.” Nevertheless, Christopher
Hughes’s denial that such present events are necessary only by supposition may indicate a tension here with some contemporary understandings of modality.46 But it is possible to agree with Thomas that the
present has a secundum quid necessity and yet hold that it is impossible for
present contingents to be so necessary with respect to God’s predetermining decrees. Consequently, they might only or also be disagreeing
with the attempt to explain contingency in terms of whether secondary
causes can be impeded. The second objection is the worry that God’s
foreknowledge or causality could wipe out contingency entirely. This
objection consequently assumes a different understanding of what it
means to be contingent. Nevertheless, I know of no current argument
that the Thomist understanding is wrong. Such an argument might
include not only an alternative account of contingency but also one of
causality. Modal and causal terms are difficult to pin down. Nevertheless,
the critics of the Thomist position should recognize that the Thomistic
understanding of a contingent event as one that is undetermined by
45 For example, see Garrigou-Lagrange, God, 518–21; idem, Predestination, 317–18.
46 Hughes, “Aquinas on God’s Knowledge,” 154–57.

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Thomas M. Osborne, Jr.

secondary causes has a strong foundation in common usage. Third, the
critics might additionally object to the position that contingent actions
are free when they are necessary with respect to God’s eternal decrees.
Indeed, this last objection is at the heart of the Molinist argument that
the necessity of supposition merely shows that God’s causation of the act
is contingent, and not that the act is itself free. Consequently, it is important to consider why Thomists think that God can infallibly move someone to perform an action freely.
III. Why Only God Can Predetermine the Will
Thomists connect contingency with secondary causation. A contingent
event is one that cannot be known from the secondary causes alone.The
contingent event does not preexist determinately in the secondary cause.
A free human action is contingent because it is caused not by secondary
causes but by the agent’s power of free choice, which is an ability to
choose otherwise. If an agent has this ability, then his action is not determined by other secondary causes. Consequently, although Thomists think
that free action is incompatible with this kind of determination, they also
think that every event is predetermined by God. This position does not
simply rest on the fact that God’s causation is mysterious, but rather on
the belief that God’s motion is infallible and that he is the source of
contingency. Consequently, he infallibly moves even contingent events
without making the events necessary.
A characteristic feature of the Thomist approach is the sharp distinction between primary and secondary causality. God and creatures do not
cause effects in the same manner. Creatures act on their own and yet at
the same time God is causing their action. Thomas writes, “the same
effect is not attributed to the natural cause and the divine power as if it
is partly done by God and partly by the natural agent, but the whole is
caused by both, according to a different way.”47 It is not as if free acts
were partially caused by God and partially by the human agent. Instead,
both the human agent and God are entire causes of the free act. The
human is the secondary cause, and God is the primary cause.
Some thinkers base their position that God cannot predetermine a
freely elicited human act on the fact that no creatures can do so. For
example,Thomas Flint argues that if another agent determines someone
47 “Non sic effectus causae naturali et divinae virtuti attribuitur quasi partim a Deo,

et partim a naturali agente fiat, sed totus ab utroque, secundum alium modum.”
Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 70. I use the Leonine edition as reprinted
in Liber de veritate Catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium seu Summa contra Gentiles,
vol. 3, (Turin: Marietti, 1961), 99.

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(Cuthbert) is to buy an iguana, then Cuthbert is not truly free.48 Flint
thinks that Thomists would agree with him with respect to every determining agent other than God. Only God can so predetermine a free
action. Although he thinks that the Thomists have difficulty in accounting for how God causes the substance of an evil act, his main point seems
to be that they do not adhere to what he describes as a traditional libertarianism. He inclines to the view that “the causal activity of all other
agents up to and at the time of the action be compatible both with the
agent’s freely performing the act and with the agent’s freely refraining
from performing the act.”49 He thinks that God is a member of that set
of agents whose causal activity must be compatible with either alternative’s being chosen by the agent. I shall argue that this approach does not
address how Thomists claim that the predetermination of an act must be
compatible with the agent’s ability to do otherwise.50 Indeed, the
Thomist account rests on the fact that only the creator can move the will
because he creates the power to choose between alternative possibilities
and then efficiently causes the whole act, including its contingent mode.
If God physically predetermined the will through intermediate causes,
then in Thomist language such motion would not be predetermination
but determination, and consequently incompatible with free choice.
Only the creator can so move the will. Some recent writers, such as
David Burrell, think that a recognition of God’s creative activity makes it
unnecessary to resort to the traditional account of premotion and predetermination.51 Burrell does not reduce God’s causality to creation and
conservation, but he thinks that the traditional understanding of premotion does not take into account that God’s movement of creatures is in
the context of creation. But the defenders of premotion do take God’s
creation into account, even though they distinguish between God’s
creation and his motion.52 This distinction is not in God but it is in creatures. Humans are all created by God. Nevertheless, not every motion
48 Flint, Divine Providence, 87–89.
49 Ibid., 89.
50 Stump and Kretzmann attribute this understanding of God’s causality to Thomas

himself.They confuse his statement that free choice is an ability to act differently
with their own position that it is an ability to act differently even with respect
to God’s will. See Kretzmann and Stump,“Reply to Shanley,” 441, no. 8. For the
importance of this distinction, see John of St.Thomas, Philosophia naturalis, IV, q.
12, a. 3 (Cursus philosophicus, vol. 3, 399).
51 Burrell, Freedom and Creation, 95–138. See also idem, “God’s Knowledge of
Future Contingents: A Reply to William Craig,” Thomist 58 (1994): 317–22;
Shanley, “Divine Causation and Human Freedom,” 115–17, 120–21.
52 Garrigou-Lagrange, “Prémotion,” 39–41.

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received from God is a creative act. Our ability to choose presupposes
that God has created us with free choice.We do not freely choose whether
to be created, even though once created we can choose between alternatives.We have no choice over whether we have free choice, although once
we have free choice we can exercise it. Every free decision presupposes
creation, but it also presupposes an additional movement toward one good
rather than another.This additional movement must ultimately come from
God. Although the agent moves himself to the good, the agent is not the
first mover.
Thomists emphasize that God’s creation of the will explains why only
he can move it efficaciously not merely as the will’s object but also as its
first mover.53 God gives the will its inclination and moves it interiorly.
Even angels can only move the human will through persuasion by showing it a good or by exciting the passions.54 This point is important
because it shows how Thomists are able to give a reason why only God
can predetermine the act. The distinction between God and secondary
causes is not made in an ad hoc fashion only in order to preserve God’s
providence over human acts, but is a basic element of their natural theology. A key difference between Thomists and their critics is in the understanding of God’s causality.55 Many critics appear to think that God’s
causality is on a par with that of creatures. Both must freely contribute to
the act. In contrast, Thomists think that the difference is in the type of
causality. God causes the free decision as the universal cause, whereas the
agent causes it as the proximate cause. But both completely cause the act.
It is important to recognize that there is no intermediate between
God’s causal activity and the will.56 The Thomist position has been
recently interpreted as holding that there is a created real term (intentio)
by which God moves the will, and that this term is part of a causal mechanism that threatens God’s transcendence.57 Although Thomists do not
express themselves identically on this issue, John of St.Thomas and other
Thomists do think that in addition to God’s will and the creature’s movement there must also be that received motion that is in the moved
53 ST I, q. 105, a. 4.
54 ST I, q. 106, a. 2; q. 111, a. 2.
55 The critics of the Thomist position seem to assume an Ockhamist understand-

ing of God’s causality. Some of their arguments are not that different from
Ockham’s arguments against Thomas. See Marilyn McCord Adams, William
Ockham, 2 vols. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), vol.
2, 1304–11.
56 Dummermuth, Thomas et doctrina praemotionis physicae, 49–52; Del Prado, De gratia
et libero arbitrio, vol. 2, 141–200.
57 Shanley, “Divine Causation and Human Freedom,” 115–16.

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object.58 These Thomists see themselves as following Thomas in stating
that God’s action does not have being as a natural thing does, although it
does have intentional being.59 Indeed, there is such intentional being in
every motion.What is the purpose of stating that there is such intentional
being? This position simply follows from the wider understanding of how
all creatures receive God’s motion.Thomists follow Thomas in saying that
all created events have such being insofar as they are moved by God.The
reception of God’s motion is not the same as motion by secondary causes
or self-movement. Such reception has intentional being.With respect to
free acts, there is a reception of the movement by the agent that is distinct
from the agent’s self-movement. Both God and the agent cause the
action, but they do not belong to the same order.They are not two partial
causes of the act, but instead God is the superior cause and the agent is
the inferior cause. This point does not entail that there is an intermediate real being that does the work in moving the will. Indeed, if there were
such a being, then it could not predetermine the will so that the agent
acts freely. Only the first cause can do so.
The opponents of Thomism seem to assume that God’s action is
constrained by a creature’s necessity or contingency. But Thomists emphasize that God belongs to an entirely different order.Thomas himself writes:
The divine will should be thought of as being outside the ordering of
existent things. It is the cause which grounds every existent, and all the
differences there are between them. One of the differences between
existents is between those that are possible and those that are necessary.
Hence necessity and contingency in things have their origin in the
divine will, as does the distinction between them, which follows from
the description of their proximate causes.60

A creature’s freedom does not enable it to act against God’s will of good
pleasure. God’s omnipotence is not constrained by what someone might
58 Dummermuth, Thomas et doctrina praemotionis physicae, 50–51. For a discussion of

three different Thomist approaches, see John of St.Thomas, Philosophia naturalis,
I, q. 25, a. 2 (Cursus philosophicus, vol. 2, 500–503).
59 “Id quod a Deo fit in re naturali, quo actualiter agat, est ut intentio sola, habens
esse quodam incompletum, per modum quo colores sunt in aëre, et virtus artis
in instrumento artificis.”Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, q. 3,
a. 7, ad 7, in Quaestiones dispuatae, 2 vols, 8th ed, eds. P. Bazzi et al. (Turin: Marietti, 1949), 59. John of St.Thomas, Philosophia naturalis I, q. 25, a. 2 (Cursus philosophicus, vol. 2, 501), notes that this motion is not a permanent and habitual
quality. See Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 110, a. 2.
60 In libri peri hermenias, lib.1, lect. 14, no. 22 (Leonine 1, 70), trans. Martin, 44–55.
See also ST I, q. 19, a. 8.

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try to do. God makes it possible for someone to freely act and then moves
that person to act in a determinate way. However, the very meaning of
what it is to be contingent makes it impossible for God to determine a
free action through secondary causes. It is important to recognize that the
discussion here is not about logical possibility, but the possibility of an
effect with respect to a proximate cause. In order to be free, the action
must be contingent. A contingent action must be undetermined with
respect to its proximate causes. If premotion were some sort of intermediate and real proximate cause, then an act so determined would also be a
necessary act. As I have indicated,Thomists often use the word “predetermination” and not “determination” in order to indicate that the discussion
is only about determination with respect to God’s eternal decrees and not
about a determination like that which results from a proximate cause.
Nevertheless, John of St.Thomas notes that sometimes Thomas does use
“determination” to describe how a contingent cause is moved to its
effect.61 But, strictly speaking, God does not determine the will. Indeed,
such a claim would be nonsensical, since it would place God’s causation
on par with that of creatures.The Thomist doctrine preserves God’s transcendence by asserting that only he can predetermine the will because as
the ultimate cause only he is the root of necessity and contingency.
John of St. Thomas emphasizes that God’s operation with respect to
the human will is twofold.62 First, he gives the agent its powers (virtutes)
and conserves them in being. Second, he moves and applies them to
action. In free creatures, God causes not only a potency to opposites but
he also moves them to one of them.The second operation does not frustrate the first. His premotion of the will does not take away from his
creating it as the kind of thing that has a potency to opposite acts. God
conserves the will’s liberty even as he moves it to a particular good. Only
God can do this because he alone is the root of our liberty.63 An example might help to illustrate his point. Suppose Socrates freely chooses to
sit. God not only moves him to sit, but he gives Socrates the powers
61 For example, in the prima pars, see q. 10, a. 3, ad 5; q. 105, a. 1, ad 3. For texts and

a discussion, see John of St.Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 25, a. 4, no. 11 (Solesmes
ed., vol. 3, 192).
62 John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 25, a. 4, nos. 3–8 (Solesmes ed., vol. 3,
187–90); d. 25, a. 5, nos. 1–7 (Solesmes ed., vol. 3, 199–203). See also Philosophia
naturalis, d. 25, a. 2 (Cursus philosophicus, vol. 2, 502–3); ST I, q. 105, a. 5.
63 John of St.Thomas, Cursus theologicus, d. 25, a. 4, no. 1 (Solesmes ed., vol. 3, 186);
d. 27, a. 4, nos. 40–41 (Solesmes, vol. 3, 388–89). For a convincing argument that
this is indeed the position of Thomas, see John of St.Thomas, Cursus theologicus,
d. 25, a. 4, nos. 9–11 (Solesmes ed., vol. 3, 191–93). He gives a fair sampling of
texts. See also Kondoleon, “God’s Knowledge,” 136–39.

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629

through which he can make such a choice. Socrates’s sitting does not take
away from his power of free choice. God causes both the substance of the
act and its mode; he causes not only Socrates’s sitting but also his freely
sitting. God takes away Socrates’s indifference to sitting or not doing so,
but God does not take away Socrates’s ability to sit or not sit.64
The Thomist understanding of God as the source of a free act’s mode
explains why an act can be freely chosen even though it is necessary
when considered in conjunction with God’s eternal decree that the act
occur. Flint and others think that for an agent to freely choose an act he
must be able to do otherwise irrespective of God’s causal contribution to
the action.Thomists admit that the agent must be able to do otherwise,
but they have a different understanding of what this ability entails. God
does not merely contribute to the action, but he gives Socrates his free
choice and moves him to sit freely. Before Socrates freely decides to sit,
he is free to sit or not to sit.This freedom is rooted in the free choice that
God has given to him. Once Socrates decides to sit, he is no longer able
not to sit at the moment in which he sits. Nevertheless, this necessity does
not take away from his ability to have done otherwise. He has free choice
because his intellect and will are not taken away. Moreover, his sitting is
contingent in a way that the motion of the heavenly bodies or his being
a rational animal are not. Finally, although God predetermines that
Socrates sit, this predetermination does not take away his intellect and
will. As the first cause, God infallibly moves Socrates to sit freely, even
though Socrates is the free secondary cause of the act. Because of these
distinctions, Thomists can consistently hold that Socrates freely sits even
though his sitting is predetermined by God. Socrates was able not to sit.
The understanding of the necessity of supposition with respect to the
past and present helps the Thomists to argue that human acts can be
contingent and yet have a necessity of supposition with respect to God’s
decrees. Events can be necessary because they are taking place or have
taken place, and yet contingent because they were not determined by
their secondary causes. Similarly, a human action can be contingent and
yet necessary with respect to God’s decrees because they are not determined by anything but the agent’s free choice and God’s decrees.The real
difference between Thomists and their critics seems over whether God
can be the cause of the act’s mode. If the Thomist claim is granted, then
64 “Sufficit dicere, quod positis omnibus requisitis, etiam motione Dei, prout prae-

bet determinationem ad actum tollendo quidem indifferentiam potentialem et
suspensivam, praebendo autem et conservando modum indifferentiae actualis et
potestatis dominativae, potest oppositum facere voluntas.” John of St. Thomas,
Philosophia naturalis, IV, q. 12, a. 3 (Cursus philosophicus, vol. 3, 399).

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there is no difficulty in maintaining that the act could have occurred
otherwise even though it has a secundum quid necessity with respect to
God’s eternal decrees.
Are Thomists compatibilists about God’s predetermination and human
freedom? Compatibilism is the position that human freedom is compatible with necessitation. A Thomist should think that compatibilism is at
best ambiguous when applied to God and secondary causes. If the relevant concept of necessity is taken from our discussion of the order of
secondary causes, then this concept cannot apply to God’s premotion.
God is the source of contingency and the first mover of contingent
events.With respect to free human acts, he both gives the power of free
choice and moves the agent to make a decision freely.Thomism is a kind
of compatibilism only if by “compatibilism” we mean that free choice is
compatibile with predetermination by the first cause. But this kind of
compatibilism differs from others in that God causes an event to be either
necessary or contingent with respect to their secondary causes. Ultimately, God is the source not only of all his effects, but also of their
necessity and contingency.
Indeed, from the Thomist view it is a serious conceptual confusion to
assimilate the question of whether human acts are determined to the
question of whether God’s premotion is compatible with human freedom.An event is contingent with respect to its proximate cause. Disputes
over whether events are in themselves necessary or contingent are consequently disputes that are either over that necessity that results from a
creature’s nature or that necessity that results from an effect’s necessarily
following upon its proximate cause. If contingency is required for free
choice, then human choices cannot be determined by some proximate
cause. The question of whether God predetermines is irrelevant to such
a dispute. It is not the case that Thomists are libertarians with respect to
secondary causes and compatibilists with respect to God’s causality, but
rather that the terms do not properly apply to God’s causality.
I have argued that the standard objections to premotion do not work
when considered in the context of the wider Thomist understanding of
God as the root of a creature’s contingency and freedom. Although the
arguments may work if a non-Thomist account of God’s causality is
granted, those who reject premotion do not give reasons why their own
accounts should be assumed. If contemporary philosophers of religion
introduce the Thomist doctrine of premotion into their discussions, then
they should either show that its presuppositions are incorrect or that
there is some sort of internal inconsistency. As the discussion stands, critics of Thomism usually ignore the Thomist account of necessity and

Thomist Premotion and Philosophy of Religion

631

contingency or provide supposed counterexamples that to the Thomist
merely suggest that free choice is incompatible with determination by
another secondary cause. These counterexamples cannot defeat the
Thomist position because Thomists agree that there is such an incompatibility.The real disagreement is over whether the examples are counterexamples.To the best of my knowledge, no one in the contemporary
literature has directly attacked the Thomist account of how free decisions
are predetermined by the first cause.
N&V

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633

Von Balthasar and Journet on
the Universal Possibility of Salvation
and the Twofold Will of God
THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

IT IS A matter of agreed historical record that the Augustinian tradition
has generated numerous parodies of Christian faith on the subjects of grace,
predestination, and salvation.The Magisterium of the Catholic Church has
repeatedly opposed, for example, double predestinationist teachings, affirmations that grace is offered only to a select few and is irresistible, and
theologies placing limitations on the salvation offered by the Cross of Christ
(so-called limited atonement theory).1 More recently, the idea of damnation
due to the contraction of original sin alone is seen as a subject for reconsideration (in the absence of the doctrine of limbo, and due to the modern
sensitivity to injustices accrued to the unborn through the phenomena of
technological abortion).2 And increasingly, against the idea that only those
who are visibly and evidently members of the Church can be saved, as well
as in contradistinction to an Augustinian theology of selective election, the
modern Magisterium has consistently insisted upon the fact that God offers
the real possibility of salvation to each human person.3 It is this last thesis
1 On the first point, see Orange II, in Denz., no. 200; Quiersy, in Denz., no. 316;

Valence III, in Denz., nos. 321–22;Trent, in Denz., no. 827. On the second and
third, see the condemnations of five errors of Cornelius Jansen, in Denz., nos.
1092–1096.
2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1261; Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, no.
99.
3 Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, no. 22: “For since Christ died for all (Rom
8:32), and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is

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Thomas Joseph White

that I wish to examine in this essay. Essentially my argument will be this:
God upholds all creatures in being and offers to all human beings (in
diverse fashions) the grace that renders possible their salvation. If this grace
is effective in them, the primary cause of their salvation is God; if a creature refuses this grace by withdrawing from it (and persisting in this state),
it alone is the “cause” of its eternal loss. Aquinas’s theology of the
antecedent and consequent will of God as it is appropriated by Charles
Journet allows us to speak credibly of this mystery in the terms I have
alluded to above. Hans Urs von Balthasar’s rejection of this same distinction causes his thought to tend inevitably toward a doctrine of necessary
universal salvation (apokatastasis panton).
Introduction to the Question:
Can All Come to Salvation?
A theology that wishes to consider the question of the possibility of salvation for every human person, and a corresponding real possibility of eternal loss, must try to keep in balance three theological affirmations. First,
God’s grace comes to the aid of each one: There is no selective divine
decision to exclude any creature from the possibility of salvation. Second,
God is the unique primary cause of the existence, life, and movement of
spiritual creatures, whom he sustains in being and governs providentially.
Third,“hell” as a definitive state of separation from God has its origins in
the spiritual creature insofar as it refuses God’s providential commandments and grace, incurring the judgment of God.4 Therefore, this situation (of refusal) is not of God’s own making, but rather of his permission.
These affirmations correlate to divine attributes found in God. In sum, to
expound the first proposition is to defend the divine goodness and
wisdom of God as it has manifested itself in the universal love of Christ
on the Cross.The second relates to God’s omnipotence as the creator and
sovereign Lord of history who creates and moves all beings. The third
divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God alone, in the Pascal mystery” (emphasis added). For historical precedents, see already Quiersy in 853 (Denz., no. 318) against Gottschalk’s
doctrine. In modernity, the teaching was reaffirmed by Pius IX (Denz., no.
1677), Pius XII (Denz., nos. 3866–3872, with respect to the teaching of Feeney),
John Paul II, (in Redemptoris Missio, no. 28, and many other texts), and the Catechism, nos. 851, 1037, and 1058. A valuable treatment of these themes can be
found in Bernard Sesboüé, Hors de l’Eglise pas de salut (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer,
2004).
4 As noted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1033, hell is precipitated by
an act of self-exclusion from communion with God on the part of the creature.

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relates to God’s innocence with regard to moral evil that proceeds from
the spiritual creature in revolt against God. Historical theology may
consider various doctrines excessive or defective in some respect with
regard to one or more of these positions. So the theology of the later
Augustine, it could be argued, was defective with regard to the first attribute; the thought of Molina (Thomists would claim) with respect to the
second; Calvin and Jansenism with regard to the third (along with
Origenism and the eschatology of Barth in others ways). One of the
riches of the perspective of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s treatment of this
question, meanwhile, is that he attempts to defend in some respect each
of these propositions, and to understand them in an integrated way.
However, to say that we must believe that every human person is
offered the possibility of being saved (and that we may and should therefore hope and pray for the salvation of each one) is not the same as saying
that we must hope for the universal salvation of all persons. Nor is it to
say that it is incumbent upon us to believe that an infinite divine love
should eventually overcome a finite creature’s free refusal of the grace of
God (“eventually” in this life or in the perpetuity of the world to come).
Least of all is it identical with the claim that if the creation is to be a
“successful” expression of God’s absolute freedom and infinite love, then
all men must be saved. It is in the ambiguous region between such diverse
affirmations that Balthasar’s expression of an anti-Augustinian theology
of salvation lies, and it is this ambiguity that is problematic.Without being
either irenic or profoundly unsympathetic, a consideration of Balthasar’s
protest on the subject of hell can profitably compare (juxtapose) his
perspective with that of Charles Journet. Each of them tries to delineate
the contours of a Catholic understanding of the possibility of salvation
offered to all, but they do so in irreducibly different ways.5
In the first part of the essay, then, I will discuss the terms in which both
thinkers articulate the conviction that Catholic theology must confess
5 For the purposes of this essay I will examine in particular Balthasar’s doctrine in

the collection of essays titled in English Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”?
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), in which his latest and most developed
position is achieved. However, I will also refer in particular to Theo-DramaV (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 269–322, in which Balthasar discusses the same
doctrine, to underscore the continuity of his thought in both these important
texts. My consideration of Journet’s thinking will focus principally, but not
uniquely, on his The Meaning of Grace (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1960), The Meaning of Evil (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1963), and sections from l’Eglise du Verbe
Incarné, vol. 4, Essai de théologie de l’histoire du salut (St-Just-La-Pendue: St.Augustin,
2004).

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God’s universal will for the salvation of all. I will show that each of them
attempts to find paths away from some of the conundrums referred to
above (stemming from extreme Augustinianism), and that both object most
especially to the idea of a restricted election on the part of God. In the
second section of the essay, I will show how their reflections hinge on
differing points of confrontation with or continuity with the Augustinian
tradition.This difference is characterized especially in terms of their reactions to Aquinas’s use of Damascene’s distinction of the antecedent and
consequent will of God.The distinction is not Augustinian in origin, and
in fact, as I will point out, offers a remedy to extreme tendencies in Augustinian thought. What I will argue below is that Balthasar’s refusal of this
distinction paradoxically takes him further toward Augustine on the question of the vanquishing will of God (and more precisely toward Barth’s
Calvinist inversion of predestination). Whether he wishes it or not, this
places him in close proximity to a doctrine of universal restoration
(apokatastasis panton). Journet’s use of the distinction, by contrast, takes him
away from Augustine’s theodicy of a selective election. According to his
view, God’s “antecedent” universal will to salvation is an axiomatic prerogative of the divine economy inscribed in the very logic of God’s will to
create in love and wisdom.Yet God also wills to make this process of salvation “conditional” upon the loving consent of each creature to the initiatives of grace. Journet thus conceives of hell uniquely in light of the
“innocence” of God who is in no way a cause of moral evil, but who tolerates and even sustains in being and activity a creature that refuses and
rebuffs the prerogatives of grace and love.
In the third section of the essay, I will show how the two thinkers differ
on the question of sufficient, resistible grace, itself a corollary to the notion
of God’s conditional will for the salvation of all. Balthasar’s thought is characterized by a refusal to consider the will of God “vanquished” by any creaturely refusal of divine love. Influenced by Barth, he articulates this refusal
in “dramatic” terms by means of a theology of Christ’s descent into hell.
Because Christ takes the place of the sinner in his separation from God, we
are permitted to hope that ultimately the infinite love of God may overcome all finite resistances. Meanwhile, Journet focuses on the real possibility of a creaturely refusal of love, and the mystery of God’s permission of
sin in the finite personal creature. God wills the salvation of all, and hell—
as a reality stemming from the refusal of God’s wisdom and love—is of
angelic and human origin alone, without divine origin.Yet it has real consequences and true existence. By his complex but unified perspective, Journet manages more successfully than Balthasar to avoid the excesses of either
an Augustinian selective election or an Origenist universalism. His theol-

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637

ogy recognizes simultaneously both the goodness and innocence of God,
even in the wake of creaturely evil. He does this, moreover, as I will argue,
while fully recognizing the sovereignty of divine omnipotence and the
primacy of divine initiative in all the creaturely actions and motions of
nature and grace.
I. Balthasar and Journet on the
Universal Possibility of Salvation
Von Balthasar Against Augustinian Restrictions on Elective Grace
At the heart of Balthasar’s “protest” against a kind of traditional theology
of damnation is his opposition to the theology of the late Augustine and
his theological heirs.This protest opposes the Latin doctor especially on
two points: (1) concerning the idea that “we must affirm with certain
knowledge” that some men are in hell, and (2) concerning the idea that
God elects to save only some, leaving others to their condemnation due
to the prerogatives of a transcendent wisdom and justice. The first idea
relates to the way we interpret the prophetic admonitions in the New
Testament.The second considers the topic of the scope of God’s election.
To reorient theological exegesis in a direction that steers away from
Augustine on both of these points, Balthasar insists in multiple places in
Dare We Hope on the irreducible duality of two sets of texts in the New
Testament.6 The first set communicates a warning of the real possibility
of damnation, while the second communicates a divinely inspired hope
for the salvation of all.7 The existence of the Christian is left suspended
between the two affirmations in an unresolved tension, a salvific tension
filled—so we are told—with true evangelical hope. On the one hand, we
are warned that “each of us,” including myself, is under judgment (thus
doing away with any form of unwarranted presumption). On the other
hand, we have reason to hope, from the standpoint of God’s love and
mercy, that everyone may be saved.8
6 Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 20–2, 29–46, 177, 183–4. For an identical distinction,

see Theo-Drama V, 269.
7 So for example: Mt 5:22, 29f.; 7:23; 10:28; 23:33; 25:30; Mk 9:43, 48, speak of

final judgment, eternal punishment,“outer darkness,” and the fire of hell. But we
are also told that God desires the salvation of all men (I Tim 2:1–6), that Christ
will draw all to himself ( Jn 12:32), and that “God consigned all men to disobedience that he might have mercy upon all.” (Rom 11:32.) See Balthasar, Dare We
Hope, 20–21, and esp. 29–46.
8 Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 85, 87, 96: “Even if someone could know himself as
being in the ‘certainty’ inherent in Christian hope, he still does not know
whether he will not transgress against love and thereby also forfeit the certainty

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Thomas Joseph White

Much can be said about the theological options and shortcomings of
this textual division. Richard Schenk has posed (rightly, it seems to me)
questions about the tenability of the decision on Balthasar’s part to
consider all of the “prophetic” texts of the New Testament concerning hell
as “merely” threats, and not as genuine foretelling.9 My interest here,
however, is simply to note one underlying point at which Balthasar’s interests seem to intersect undeniably with the teachings of the modern
magisterium: He holds resolutely that God wills the salvation of all
human beings.And he rightly identifies an Augustinian doctrine of selective election to be the chief traditional locus of opposition to this theological affirmation.10 As the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger remarks
with regard to Balthasar’s thought:
In several passages Balthasar expresses the opinion that the tightening
vice of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination, which sets a final limit
to the Church’s ability to aid and bear the sinner, is gradually beginning to
open up again today. Not that Balthasar, the great scholar and translator of Origen, intends to argue in favor of Origenism in the sense of a
doctrine of apokatastasis. He is well aware that such a [doctrine] jeopardizes every notion of election. . . . But he teaches us again more
plainly to leave to God what is God’s and not to take it upon ourselves
to fix the decision ahead of time in one direction or another—in
Origenian or extreme Augustinian fashion.11

of hope. . . . From being addressed in this way, it follows that I may leave concern
for the salvation of others up to divine mercy and must concentrate on my own
situation before God. . . . God is primarily merciful and reacts with anger only
to the unmercifulness of man.” Likewise, see Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 290–4.
9 See R. Schenk, "The Epoché of Factical Damnation: On the Costs of Bracketing Out the Likelihood of Final Loss," Logos 1 (1997): 122–54.
10 For what seems to be a doctrine of restricted election, see Augustine’s On the
Predestination of the Saints, I, 8; and Enchridion, no. 103. It is not the case, however,
that Balthasar’s historical treatment of St. Augustine is always fair. Many of his
theses may be more appropriately attributed to certain disciples of Augustine
rather than the Latin doctor himself. Furthermore, Balthasar often affirms or
implies that one who believes in selective election must necessarily have an ignoble, and even dangerous certitude of his own salvation. (See the censure of
Augustine in Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 191.) This is not true of Augustine’s spiritual attitude historically, nor is it theoretically defensible. See Schenk, “The
Epoché of Factical Damnation,” 126–28; and Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo:A
Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 432.
11 Joseph Ratzinger, “Christian Universalism: On Two Collections of Papers by
Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Communio International Catholic Review 22 (1995): 555,
emphasis added.

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639

Cardinal Ratzinger’s compelling claim here is that Balthasar has rightly
identified a problematic theological limitation imposed historically by
the doctrine of a restricted offer of salvation only to some.The sensus fidei
of the Church has progressively perceived in the New Testament a competing, and more fundamentally true claim: that the scope of Catholic hope
is universal.12 It is necessary to insist, then, on the real possibility of salvation for each person, without prejudging the question based upon what
are ultimately inconclusive appeals to the biblical text. A corollary to this
point is that it is necessary to hold that those who will be lost, presuming such loss is in fact foretold in Scripture, will have refused the genuine
graces and initiatives of God that they were offered. The theologically
enlivening and theoretically challenging dimension of Balthasar’s protest
against Augustinianism is located precisely at this point.13 How is this
universal offer of salvation to be understood in relation to the larger
issues of theology surrounding the mystery of grace and God’s seeming
permissions of human refusal? That is the question. Before I go on to
discuss this question, however, I wish to underscore the continuity
between Journet and Balthasar on this first point.
Journet on the Wisdom and Goodness of God the Redeemer
Three points need to be made here concerning Journet’s analysis of the
gift of salvation, showing how he reinterprets the mystery of predestination so as to exclude the possibility of a “selective election.”14 First of all,
12 See Jean Miguel Garrigues,“La perseverance de Dieu dans son dessein universel

de grace,” Nova et Vetera (French) 4 (2002): 35–59, on the emergence of this
authoritative teaching already in the early debates between Augustinians and
semi-Pelagians, but more forcefully against Calvinism and particularly in reaction
to the Jansenist tradition. In particular, the Church rejected against the latter
(Denz., no. 1291) the Augustinian notion (according to the Latin reading of
Rom 5:12) that all sinned mortally in Adam. This led to the eventual doctrinal
understanding that God would not choose to deprive some of the possibility of
salvation based upon the demerits of Adam’s sin alone, irrespective of personal
sin.The latter perspective is evidenced by Gaudium et Spes, no. 22.
13 I am also certainly willing to concede to Cardinal Ratzinger (for the sake of
argument) as regards Balthasar’s intention with respect to Origenism.Yet, to have
the intention to avoid apokatastasis as an axiomatic doctrine is distinct from effectively avoiding it as a seemingly necessary conclusion. As I will show, Balthasar’s
theology is problematic in this latter respect, and this is related to the fact that he
refuses the twofold distinction as regards God’s salvific will. For Joseph
Ratzinger’s own criticisms of the Origenist theology of the “universal restoration
of all,” see Eschatologie—Tod und ewiges Leben (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 1977), 176.
14 It is not my intention in this essay to undertake a comprehensive comparison of
Journet’s teaching on predestination, reprobation, and evil and the teaching of

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he emphasizes that the omnipotence by which God has created the
universe and by which he sustains it in being also identifies with his eternal goodness and wisdom, as well as his justice. How these “dimensions”
of God’s eternal life relate to his providential design for human creatures,
then, cannot be “known in advance” by calculation derived from natural
theology (that is, how his justice relates to his mercy with regard to man),
due to God’s transcendence and freedom with respect to our limited
understanding. But his providential dispensation can be perceived a
posteriori in revelation, and then understood as “congruent” with natural theology and “befitting” in its intrinsic integrity and order as an
economic manifestation of the intrinsic wisdom of God. This means,
quite simply, that we cannot determine the ambitions of God’s mercy
with respect to his fairness or justice (or vice versa) a priori without
recourse to revelation and its inner content.15
Secondly, in light of the first point, Journet draws a conclusion concerning the fact that God seeks to offer the grace of salvation to all: This is
revealed to us not as a necessity of something due to rational creatures in
justice, but instead as something God himself necessarily wishes in conformity with his own wisdom and goodness. God as he is revealed to us in Christ’s
redemption does not contradict in himself this original decision of love and
justice initiated by creation.The revelation of God’s wisdom and goodness
Aquinas on these issues (a teaching which itself evolved in disputed ways). In at
least one later text (ST I, q. 23, a. 3), St.Thomas adopted an Augustinian perspective on restricted election that Journet chooses not to appropriate.Yet, in many
ways Aquinas also developed the elements for the solution Journet proposes. I will,
therefore, underscore the continuity between Aquinas and Journet on multiple
fronts. Diverse, but partially compatible treatments of the historical and theological issues are offered by Joseph Wawrykow, Grace and Human Action: Merit in the
Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1996); and Francois Daguet in his Théologie du dessein divin chez Thomas d’Aquin:
Finis Omnium Ecclesia (Paris:Vrin, 2003).Also of importance are the historical studies of Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom and Gratia Operans, in vol. 1 of The
Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), to
which I will refer below.
15 This is a general theme of Journet’s The Wisdom of Faith (Westminster: Newman
Press, 1952) See 56–57: “When the theologian advances reasons in support of
divine decisions which he knows were entirely gratuitous and which could be
entirely different or might never have existed at all . . . he does all this under the
impulsion of a secret yet forceful instinct that these arguments from suitability are
very precious, since, as far as this is possible here below, they justify to us the actual
choices that God has made, and since in the light of eternity they will appear to
contain more truth than can be proved in our actual state.” Similarly, see ST I–II,
q. 112, a. 5, where Aquinas affirms that the transcendent will of God (with respect
to the work of grace in any man) cannot be known except by revelation.

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in the New Testament teaches us that God has created each spiritual creature for a mystery of divine inhabitation, a sharing in divine life by grace,
culminating in the beatific vision of the divine essence.16 He is thus
“committed” by the goodness of his own wisdom to give graces which, if
not refused, will bring persons to eternal life.17 It is God’s very desire in
creating rational, intellectual creatures to elevate them to the life of beatitude in him, and he cannot forego this desire if he is to be true to himself
in that dispensation. Like Balthasar, Journet emphasizes the universal love
of the crucified Lord, and consequently seeks to understand theologically
how his offer of divine life extends to all human persons.18
Thirdly, in commenting upon the New Testament, Journet draws his
own distinction between two kinds of “calling” denoted in the scriptural
texts, both of which concern God’s predestination: those that allude to
16 Essai de théologie de l’histoire du salut, 149–52. Cf. ST I, q. 43, a. 3.
17 Journet, Grace, 44: “God is doubtless free to give his children different and

unequal graces. . . . But he is not free to deprive any soul of what is necessary to
it. He is bound by his justice and love to give each of them those graces which,
if not refused, will bring them to the threshold of their heavenly country.”
18 The universal extension of the life of grace is a major theme in Journet’s work.
Essai de théologie de l’histoire du salut, in particular considers at length the universal offer of beatitude to angels and men at different stages of the divine economy
and in differing modes.Yet, Journet is less consistent on this point than Balthasar,
since he considers theologically normative the Church’s traditional doctrine of
limbo as a final state of life for unbaptized children who die before the age of
reason. (See Essai de théologie de l’histoire du salut, 491–95.) Two tendencies in his
thought are significant in this respect. First, his reflections on this point emphasize that God’s grace comes to the aid of human beings who are not baptized
from the first moment of the development of their rational self-determination,
and thereby offers them each the effective possibility of salvation. For Journet the
reality of limbo underscores the catastrophic effects of original sin, for which
God is guiltless (Essai de théologie de l’histoire du salut, 492), but from which God
draws a certain good: the realization of a state of purely natural beatitude (l’Eglise
du Verbe Incarné, vol. 3, La Structure Interne de l’Eglise et son Unité Catholique [StJust-La-Pendue: St.Augustin, 2000], 1286–87).Thus outside of the boundaries where
he feels restricted by this particular doctrine, Journet insists that salvation is offered to
all, and in a repeated way. Secondly, however, the form his teaching takes on this
point makes evidently clear that he does not think that the gift of grace is in any
way a “right” due to the human person, but stems instead from God’s gratuitous
goodness. See in particular La Structure Interne de l’Eglise et son Unité Catholique,
1278–87, where, following De Malo, q. 5, a. 3, Journet insists on the “natural” if
imperfect beatitude of the souls in limbo according to St.Thomas. It is in no way
unjust, he insists, that this state exists. For an insightful study on this aspect of
Aquinas’s thought with respect to the grace/nature distinction, see Serge Thomas
Bonino, “La théorie des limbes et le mystère du surnaturel chez saint Thomas
d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 101 (2001): 131–66.

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God’s freedom to elect or reprobate whom he wills for a particular temporal mission or degree of sanctity, versus those that refer to God’s universal
will to offer the possibility of eternal salvation to all.19 The first kind of
elective choice may exclude some: that which provisioned to select
groups or individuals a temporal mission or a degree of sanctity in accord
with the wisdom of God. The other form of elective choice, however,
stems from God’s universal will for salvation, and this concerns all.20 The
mystery of predestination to eternal life excludes some, therefore, not
because of predetermined selective choice, but because God knows from
all eternity the refusal of some who will not receive the gift of life.21
In this sense, Journet, like Balthasar is determined to avoid a reading of
Scripture that would identify therein a mystery of exclusive choice on God’s
19 The Meaning of Grace, 35–50.
20 Ibid., 45–47: So for example, Rom 9: 10–13 (“Jacob I loved but Esau I hated”)

can be read either as referring to a selective temporal election by God: that of the
mission of Israel initially, and later that of the gentiles within the Church. Or it
can be read as referring to the mystery of eternal salvation, in which case it
denotes God’s “supreme initiative” of love on behalf of both Jacob and Esau, and
of the latter’s refusal of this love, for which he is subject to judgment.
21 Ibid., 36–38: “If any one is not predestined, it is because he refuses the call, and
not only once, like the fallen angels, for again and again divine grace returns to,
and even importunes, the human heart. . . . So if anyone is not among the predestined, it is in consequence of a refusal for which he bears and always will bear
the responsibility. . . . God does not predestine [these. Rather,] God abandons and
rejects those who, as he sees from all eternity, themselves take the first initiative in
the final refusal of his prevenient grace. From eternity, he takes account of their
free refusal in the establishment of his immutable and eternal plan.” For a similar teaching in Aquinas, see his commentary on Romans (In Rom., c. 9, lec. 2,
no. 764), where he excludes the possibility of a temporally antecedent or consequent reprobation by God, and claims instead that God “foresees” human evil
from all eternity, without causing it to be. Thus, God reprobates those who sin
due to his foreknowledge of their refusal of love for which they alone are culpable. Bernard Lonergan commenting on this text (Grace and Freedom, 116) offers
an interpretation of Aquinas that closely resembles that of Journet:“Both predestination and reprobation are eternal. But while predestination gives the elect
both their merits and their consequent reward, the reprobate have their sins from
themselves alone, and thus sin is a cause of punishment in a way in which merit
is not a cause of glory.” He goes on to contrast this with the Bañezian Thomist
viewpoint, in which “God’s policy of inactivity makes the defect of sin
inevitable.” Lonergan insists that even such texts as ST I, q. 23, a. 3 (in which St.
Thomas, under the weight of the Augustinian heritage, clearly articulates a theology of selective election) should be interpreted in light of the Thomistic affirmation that God is never the cause of the defect of the sinful act, a teaching
found in the article itself (ad 2) and further developed in later texts (ST I–II, q.
72, a. 1–3; De Malo, q. 3, aa. 1–2). See on this Lonergan, Gratia Operans, 328–48.

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part to save some to the exclusion of others (through non-election). In this,
he too is countering the historical tendencies of extreme Augustinianism.
At the conclusion of this first juncture, we can see that these two
thinkers stand in close proximity on this point, and seek ways to avoid the
pitfalls of an inherited tradition that would claim that some are excluded
from the offer of salvation by God’s selective choice. However, they part
ways on the question of the antecedent and consequent will of God, and
its relation to the human capacity for the acceptance or refusal of grace.
II. Balthasar and Journet on the Antecedent
and Consequent Will of God
Balthasar’s Rejection of the Distinction
If we return to the relation between divine attributes mentioned above,
we can say that scriptural teaching manifests both a universal will of salvation for all men on the part of God, as well as the threat of (or perhaps
prophecy of) real eternal loss or damnation for some. The mystery of
God’s goodness is revealed alongside the insistence on his just judgment,
presumably implying his guiltlessness and the real culpability of human
beings. Balthasar is certainly correct, therefore, to insist on a contrasting
emphasis in his “two sets” of texts in the New Testament. On the one
hand, we are told that God desires the salvation of all, and that Christ has
come to redeem the entire world. On the other hand, we are also warned
that there will be those who refuse such initiatives, who come under the
judgment of God. One evident solution to this textual “dualism” is
offered by the distinction between the antecedent and consequent will of
God, a solution that arises from within the classical theological tradition.
The distinction as it was formulated by Aquinas stems from a text of
Damascene who in turn has inherited it from Maximus the Confessor.
According to this way of conceiving the divine initiatives of grace, God
desires the salvation of all by his antecedent will (that is to say, by his
“fundamental” and basic will for creatures). And yet, this will is conditional because he simultaneously desires that this salvation be embraced
freely, that is to say, through cooperative consent to the movements of
grace effectuated in the souls of personal creatures.
One must bear in mind that God’s original wish was that all should be
saved and come to his Kingdom. For it was not for punishment that He
formed us but to share in his goodness, inasmuch as He is a good God.
But inasmuch as He is a just God, his will is that sinners should suffer
punishment.The first then is called God’s antecedent will and pleasure,
and springs from Himself, while the second is called God’s consequent

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will and permission, and has its origin in us. . . . Of actions that are in our
hands the good ones depend on his antecedent goodwill and pleasure,
while the wicked ones depend neither on his antecedent nor on his
consequent will, but are a concession to free-will.22

This principle, absent in Augustine, allows one to conceive of God both
positing and actively willing a universal election even while permitting spiritual creatures to withdraw from and refuse his initiatives of salvation.
Furthermore, it is precisely for this purpose that Aquinas at times adopted
the distinction, differentiating the vision of universal election it offered
from the idea of a “restricted application” of God’s salvific will found in
the later works of Augustine.23
22 John Damascene, De Fide Orth., trans. S. Salmond (Oxford: James Parker, 1899),

II, 29.This teaching has its proximate origins in Maximus’s doctrine where it was
formulated directly as a response to the problems of Origenist universalism. See
Ambigua 7, 1069A11–1102C4, and particularly 1085C9–1089D3. In this latter
section of the text Maximus clearly affirms that God truly wills the salvation of
all but also truly permits the eternal loss of those who refuse his grace.This loss
has its origins in the non-consent to God’s design of salvation, and represents a
“failure” to cooperate with the economy of salvation, a failure instigated by the
creature. See the study of this issue and text by Brian Daley, “Apokatastasis and
‘the Honorable Silence’ in the Eschatology of Maximus the Confessor,” in
Maximus Confessor, eds. F. Heinzer and C. Schönborn (Fribourg: Fribourg
University Press, 1982), 309–39, esp. 327–30. Significantly, in his Cosmic Liturgy:
The Universe according to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press:
2003), Balthasar forgoes any serious discussion of this theme in Maximus’s
thought, and in fact claims that Maximus holds for an implicit but only hinted
at doctrine of apokatastasis panton (354–58). Daley (“Apokatastasis and ‘the
Honorable Silence,’ ” 318–27) argues convincingly that such a claim is indeed
textually ill founded and notes (317, n. 39) the Barth-like interpretation of
Maximus at work in Balthasar’s analysis, focused on the “infinitely just, infinitely
loving mystery of God,” to the detriment of a transparent recognition of the real
existence (according to Maximus) of creatures in whom there is an enduring
refusal of grace. Balthasar responds to this article in Dare We Hope, 246–47, and
Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 318, in a rather minimalist fashion, without refuting sufficiently the formidable textual evidence amassed by Daley for the presence of the
antecedent/consequent distinction in Maximus’s thought.
23 In the Enchridion, no. 103, Augustine seems to claim in an overt way that in fact
God does not will the salvation of all. Such a claim was, at any rate, indicative of
some trends in later Augustinian theology. See ST I, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1, where
Aquinas alludes to this text as teaching a “restricted application” of God’s will for
salvation. He then contrasts it disfavorably with Damascene’s idea of God’s
antecedent universal will for the salvation of all. In his response to objection 3
he goes on to qualify the notion of this will as one that implies conditional
permissions. Nothing occurs in the realm of secondary causes that escapes the
order of God’s providence, so that even when moral evil occurs, although God

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Seen in this light, the one set of texts of Balthasar’s Dare We Hope
points toward the goodness and wisdom of Christ, revealed at the Cross:
the desire for the salvation of all.The other set of texts denotes the “innocence” of God with respect to those who refuse the offer of life. The
supposedly “irreducible” character of the “two sets” of texts could then
be collapsed into a single movement of God’s divine economy, undergirded by this twofold dimension of God’s will.24 God desires the salvation of all creatures, and Christ came into the world for all sinners, yet
God wills that this salvation be embraced in the way that is proper to a
rational creature, through deliberative, free actions.25 Part of the mystery
of creaturely freedom (continually maintained in existence by God) is the
possibility of defecting from the motions of nature and grace that would
conduct the creature to glory.26
However, Balthasar readily dismisses this solution in a noteworthy
passage.
But what, then, becomes of the statements of the second series, in which
God’s redemptive work for the sinful world as undertaken by Christ is
represented as a complete triumph over all things contrary to God? Here
does not will it, he does will to permit it. In fact,Aquinas contrasted Damascene’s
doctrine favorably with the teaching of Augustine from an early period. See I
Sent. d. 46, q. 1, a. 1; d. 47, q. 1, a. 2; De veritate, q. 23, a. 2; In I Tim., c. 2, lect. 1;
Metaph., VI, lec. 3, and the important study of this issue by L. M. Antoniotti,“La
volonté divine antécédente et conséquente selon saint Jean Damascène et saint
Thomas d’Aquin” Revue Thomiste 65 (1965): 52–77.
24 As Aquinas notes (ST I, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1), the will of God in itself has no “before”
and “after.”The antecedent and consequent distinction refers to what God wills
in his effects and signifies that God’s will for the salvation of all is qualified (secundum quid). It wills this salvation on the condition of the creature’s consent to God’s
initiatives of grace, and thus signified presumes the absence of a moral deficiency
in the creature that places an obstacle to grace. The consequent will of God is
the will of God for judgment of the creature, in light of its own moral malice.
25 In ST I, q. 19, a. 8, Aquinas notes that human free will and moral deliberation
are created and governed by God as “contingent” rather than “necessary” causes,
subject to a self-determination and contingency in a way that is proper to the
human spirit.This is entirely consistent, for Aquinas, with the fact that God is the
primary cause of all that exists in the being and motion of spiritual creatures.
26 ST I, q. 19, a. 9: God causes “natural evils” only in an indirect way insofar as they
accrue per accidens from the actuation of one good to the detriment of another
(such as when a lion eats a stag), and he may will indirectly the “evils” of chastisements and punishments for sin insofar as these accrue from his desire to
maintain the order of his goodness, justice, and mercy in the face of human sin.
But he in no way wills moral evil either directly or indirectly.The unique “first
cause” of moral evil is the perverted will of the spiritual creature who refuses the
initiatives of God’s grace.

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one cannot get by without making distinctions that, while retaining the
notion of God’s benevolent will, nevertheless allow it to be frustrated by
man’s wickedness. “God desires all men to be saved . . .” (1 Tim 2:4f.).
Permit us, Lord, to make a small distinction in your will: “God wills in
advance [voluntate antecedente] that all men achieve salvation, but subsequently [consequenter] he wills that certain men be damned in accordance
with the requirements of his justice” (ST I, q. 9, a. 6, ad 1; De veritate,
23:2). One can also speak of God’s having an “absolute” and a “conditional” will (I Sent. d. 46, q. 1, a. 1, and ad 2). . . . But what about Jesus’
triumphant words when he looks forward to the effect of his Passion:
“Now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up
from the earth will draw all men to myself ” ( Jn 12:31f.)? Oh, he will
perhaps attempt to draw them all but will not succeed in holding them
all. “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” ( Jn 16:33). Unfortunately, only half of it, despite your efforts, Lord. “The grace of God has
appeared for the salvation of all men” (Tit 2:11)—let us say, more
precisely, to offer salvation, since how many will accept it is questionable
. . . [and so on with many other examples]. I do not wish to contradict
anyone who, as a Christian, cannot be happy without denying the
universality of hope to us so that he can be certain of his full hell: that
was, after all, the view of a large number of followers of Augustine. But,
in return, I would like to request that one be permitted to hope that
God’s redemptive work for his creation might succeed [emphasis added].
Certainty cannot be attained, but hope can be justified.27

This dismissal is extremely significant. What is at stake for the Swiss
theologian in his refusal to unify or integrate these two sets of texts into
one intelligible theology? Evidently Balthasar’s own theological project
does not set out first and foremost to justify the use of Thomistic principles. Rather, his evaluation of Aquinas on this point must ultimately be
understood within the context of his larger dramatic theory of redemption.While Balthasar’s theodramatic conception of salvation is a vast topic
that exceeds the scope of this essay, three essential issues should be
discussed here insofar as they touch upon this topic.
First, it is necessary to emphasize that Balthasar’s goal in Dare We Hope,
as in Theo-Drama V, is to envisage salvation from within the parameters
of his own dramatic theology of Trinitarian self-emptying.This portrayal
of redemption hinges especially upon Christ’s descent into hell on behalf
of the salvation of all persons.28 Because such a narrative structures his
27 Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 183–84, 187.
28 For evidence of this theological stance, see for example, Theo-Drama, vol. 5,

247–69. I will return to this point in the following section of the essay. For
convincing expository arguments concerning the centrality of this dramatic
motif throughout Balthasar’s work, particularly with regard to his soteriology and

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theology, this same narrative consequently conditions his understanding
of the role of human freedom and its final “resolution” in light of the
Incarnation and Pascal mystery. Secondly, given the intrinsically sequential
character of this dramatic perspective on human history, there can be no
final “resolution” of the problem of human evil before the “last act” of the
story.29 The form of Christian hope that Balthasar advocates would be
undermined by the affirmation that we know that God would permit a
creature to persist in the refusal of salvation.30 Such a “premature” affirmation overlooks the “unresolved” character of the ongoing story of
salvation. Because this is the case, one may deduce that the distinction
between antecedent and consequent willing in God is a threat to the
narrative structure of Balthasar’s theology of redemption precisely
because it resolves a key element of the drama prior to the last act. It tells us
precisely that God can and will allow a creature to definitively refuse his
offer of grace. Balthasar’s refusal to admit such a conception of the
“permissive will” of God, by contrast, allows him to insist in marked fashion upon the irresolution of the drama of human freedom as it stands
before the infinite freedom of God in Christ. By maintaining this tension
without any dissolution, Balthasar prolongs the dramatic possibility that
ultimately, due to Christ’s self-emptying and experience of abandonment
by God, it may be that no creature can persist in the refusal of God’s grace. And
likewise, God’s grace might vanquish all human resistances.31
eschatology, see Margaret M.Turek,“Dare We Hope ‘That All Men Be Saved’ (1
Tim 2:4)?: On von Balthasar’s Trinitarian Grounds for Christian Hope,” Logos 1
(1997): 92–121; and Nicolas J. Healy, The Eschatology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar:
Being as Communion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
29 Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 283–84: “ ‘The judgment of the Cross is final, but the Lord
waits until the Last Day to reveal its complete result . . . thus the mission of the
Cross points forward to the conclusion of the mission at the end of the world,
where what was accomplished on the Cross interiorly by suffering, must be
manifested externally in power.’ If all sins are undercut and under-girded by
God’s infinite love, it suggests that sin, evil, must be finite and must come to an end
in the love that envelops it” (emphasis added). (The citation in the text is from Von
Speyr, whose words Balthasar makes his own.)
30 Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 27:“On his earthly pilgrimage, man is, of course, placed
between fear and hope, simply because he is under judgment and does not know
. . . but precisely the knowing (about the ultimate futility of the Cross) renders
impossible this state of suspension of those on pilgrimage.”
31 Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 311—12:“The Son ‘has used his divine omnipresence in the
Incarnation in such a way that, wherever men are pursuing some path, he is
there’. . . . In other words, anyone who tries to choose complete forsakenness- in
order to prove himself absolute vis-à-vis God- finds himself confronted by the
figure of someone even ‘more absolutely’ forsaken than himself. . . . Now there
can be no talk of doing violence to freedom if God appears in the loneliness of

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Thirdly, this points us toward a deeper presupposition: It is the infinite love
of God that must ultimately determine the final ending of the drama of
salvation. Given this premise, it is impossible for Balthasar to reconcile the
“two sets of texts” of the New Testament (one affirming the real possibility
of eternal loss, and the other affirming that the work of God’s salvation
embraces all) by recourse to the distinction between the antecedent and
consequent will of God.That distinction allows the act of human refusal to
put the drama of salvation to an end in a definitively negative way. Instead,
both sets of text are to be read in light of the one affirmation of the infinite
love and freedom of God, over and against man.The latter set of texts (see
Dare We Hope, 177) are thus understood as speaking of an effective will of
God to convert all by the freedom of his infinite love, while the former set
reveals our situation “under judgment” (an incessant refrain of Balthasar) by
that same infinite love.The continuity between the two sets of “irreconcilable”
statements is the fact that in each case the situation of man is finally determined uniquely by the infinite love of God, as either judge on the one hand or
as liberator on the other. It is the infinite love of Christ that will have the “last
word” in the drama of salvation.32 Our hope for the salvation of all is not
certain (against Origenism) precisely because the judgment belongs to the
infinite love of God and not to us.Yet, it is possible (against Augustinianism)
due to the potential efficacy and freedom of such a love.33

the one who has chosen the total loneliness of living only for himself (or perhaps
one should say: who thinks that is how he has chosen) and shows himself to be
as the One who is still lonelier than the sinner.” [The citation is from Von Speyr.]
32 Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 295:“Human freedom is not self-constituted: it is appointed
by God to operate in its limited area; ultimately it depends on absolute freedom
and must necessarily transcend itself it that direction. . . .While infinite freedom
will respect the decisions of finite freedom, it will not allow itself to be compelled,
or restricted in its own freedom, by the latter.” Dare We Hope, 15: “Man is under
judgment and must choose.The question is whether God, with respect to his plan
of salvation, ultimately depends, and wants to depend, upon man’s choice; or whether his
freedom, which wills only salvation and is absolute, might not remain above things human,
created, and therefore relative” (emphasis added).
33 Dare We Hope, 26, 178:“How does [one] know this- that Jesus died on the Cross
not only for all sinners, which is dogma, but also because he was incapable of
redeeming them, since hell was and will remain stronger than him? . . . I do not
know, but I think it is permissible to hope that the light of divine love will ultimately be able to penetrate every human darkness and refusal” (emphases added).
In the absence of the above-mentioned distinction, the question has become one
of the ability of God’s will, a truism, since this will is infinite. To fail to hope in
this way, Balthasar would seem to imply, is to fail acknowledge the truly infinite
character of God’s love.

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It is true that these affirmations coexist with an insistent claim on
Balthasar’s part that man can refuse the love of God and thereby create his
own hell. Indeed, the finite freedom of the creature is intrinsically constitutive of all theological drama.34 Consequently, Balthasar can be categorical about the fact that hell (as a result of misused human freedom) is not of
divine making, and that if it exists, it leaves God “innocent” of blame. He
cites many theological allies who stand beside him on this point.35 Despite
these incessant qualifications, however, the basic structure of his thought
“displaces” the locus of mystery away from God’s permissions of moral evil
(and the creature’s persistence in such evil) toward the question of our
ambivalent status before the twofold dimension of an infinite divine love,
as that which can either freely condemn us, or liberate us.The rejection of
Damascene’s distinction epitomizes this shift of dramatic focus. The only
question then becomes: Will God ultimately seek to overcome all finite
resistance to his will? He certainly can, but will he chose to? Are we certain
that he will not? Are we permitted to hope this of him?
From the above observations, one can draw a preliminary conclusion.
Underlying Balthasar’s “retelling” of the narrative of salvation, there is a
concern about misrepresenting who God is.To posit a conditional will for
salvation in God is to misperceive something vital about divine love.36 To
hope in the universal salvation of all men over and against their refusals of
divine love, by contrast, is precisely to hope in the success of the divine
will, and its effectiveness.This is to hope, in short, that God in his freedom
and love is not a failure, but will eventually overcome all human resistance.
While Balthasar’s sarcasm functions at times as an unfortunate substitute
for argumentation,37 on a deeper level it denotes a profound conviction:
34 This point is emphasized in many places, but is especially developed in Theo-

Drama, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990): 173–316; and in Theo-Drama, vol. 3,
33–40.
35 See Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 53–58, with citations of Schmaus, Martelet, Rahner,
C. S. Lewis, and Ratzinger. A similar list is found in Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 278.
36 Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 23: “We might, however, make quite clear to ourselves
how outrageous it is to blunt God’s triune will for salvation, which is directed at
the entire world . . . by describing it as ‘conditional’ and calling absolute only that
divine will in which God allows his total will for salvation to be thwarted by man.”
37 The caricatures of scholasticism are unhelpful. See Daguet, Finis Omnium Ecclesia,
ch. 6, which studies how, for Aquinas, the two titles of antecedent and consequent
relate to the ways in which God’s will effects a unique plan of salvation within
creation, both “anterior” and “posterior” to angelic and human sin.This perspective
sidesteps, then, Balthasar’s claim that this “scholastic” innovation is a mere projection of human logic onto the simplicity of divine love. On the contrary, the distinction safeguards that simplicity and shows how this one love produces diverse effects
in a providential order that allows for but also responds to sinful human beings.

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that God’s accepting (permitting) his saving graces to be refused by human
freedom would constitute a kind of a failure, a failure of Christ himself in
his saving work, a failure of the infinite love and freedom of God.
But, as I have stated above, the biblical statements cited by Balthasar
need not imply this perspective. The will to save all men translates into
an effective offer of the possibility of salvation, but it does not alleviate a
mystery of human cooperation. Indeed, according to the Council of
Trent, God requires such cooperation from his creatures in the plan of
redemption, and correspondingly allows his inspirations of created grace
to be resisted and refused.38 It is because of his “hyper-Augustinianism”
inherited from Barth that Balthasar refuses the idea of such a permissive
will in God as a “dimension” of his antecedent will for the salvation of
all. Before I argue for this, however, I will present briefly Journet’s use of
the differentiation between the antecedent and consequent will of God
in order to explain the possibility of the finite creature’s persistence in
moral evil despite the providential will of God (and not because of it).
God’s Antecedent and Consequent Will
for Salvation According to Journet
Journet’s grand division for understanding the mystery of grace and the
problem of man’s refusal consists in his distinction between the positive
line of ascent to God through movements of grace and nature (in which
God as the primary cause is always the source of being and action in the
creature), and the negative line of refusal, in which the creature alone is the
first cause of sin.39 This understanding appeals, in effect, directly to the
distinction between the antecedent and consequent will of God. The
positive line of growth toward beatitude in the creature springs from the
initiatives of God’s antecedent will. By the very fact that God has created
human beings in his wisdom and goodness, he desires to beatify them.Yet
this desire springs from a conditional will insofar as it invites creaturely
consent to the initiatives of grace.The negative line of refusal arises due
to the fact that God permits the creature in its poorly used freedom to
38 Decree on Justification, ch. 5; and canons 4, 5, and 17 (Denz., nos. 797, 814, 816,

827). See also the condemnation of C. Jansen’s second proposition: that grace is
always irresistible (Denz., no. 1093), repeated in a variety of forms against P.
Quesnel (Denz., nos. 1359–1382).
39 This conceptual formulation of the problem originates in the thought of Jacques
Maritain, Existence and the Existent (New York:Vintage Books, 1966) and God and
the Permissions of Evil (Milwaukee:The Bruce Publishing Co., 1966). It arises in
many places in Journet’s work. See, for example, The Meaning of Grace, 17–34;
The Meaning of Evil, 152–82; Essai de théologie de l’histoire du salut, 207–86.

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contradict his will for its salvation and even to persist in this refusal
despite his will. His judgment of the sinful person is a manifestation of
the consequent will of God.
God wishes to save all men. . . . If they are saved, the glory is his. . . . If
we are not saved, the fault is ours. . . . Before moving us with his sovereignly efficacious influence, God subjects us to an influence which we
are able to resist. In this case, the whole initiative of refusal comes from
us alone: indeed, while God alone can be the first Cause of being and
goodness, the creature alone can be the first cause of evil, and can alone
take the initiative in doing what is nothingness and reducing to nothing the divine influx. In God’s saving intentions, the influence which
can be resisted is subordinated to [an] irresistible influence, as the flower
to the fruit, as the grain of wheat to the ear; if it is not resisted, it immediately gives way to the saving influence which carries all before it; if it
is resisted, the impetus which moves all creatures to act will, through
the fault of the free creature, be turned aside towards evil. No angel or
adult human being is lost except by having freely refused God’s
advance. . . . A parallel to the distinction between resistible and irresistible influence can be found in the distinction drawn by theologians
between antecedent divine will and consequent divine will, between so
called “sufficient” grace and “efficacious” grace.40

Three things need to be said here about Journet’s understanding of the
permissions of evil insofar as they contradict the antecedent will of God.
First of all, if God creates spiritual creatures in statu viatoris who can accept
beatitude as a gift, by the same token, he allows these same creatures to
misuse this possibility in order to refuse divine life.41 However, this state of
40 Journet, Evil, 155–57.
41 Ibid., 148–49: “It is of the essence of any free, intelligent creature, by an act of

choice, to have the capacity to hold fast to its mysterious and absolutely transcendent supreme law or not.To do away with this capacity and suppose a free creature,
man or angel which by nature did not possess the possibility or capacity to sin,
would be to suppose a creature which was its own supreme law, a creature which
was the Creator.‘If there is free will, the creature must be able to hold fast or otherwise to the Cause on which it depends. Now to say that it cannot sin would be to
say that it is unable not to hold fast to its Cause; from which arises a contradiction.’ ”
The citation is from Aquinas, II Sent. d. 23, q. 1, a. 1. See also ScG III, c. 109; and
ST I, q. 63, a. 1. Journet is following Aquinas here in affirming that any spiritual
creature by its very nature (due to the potency and imperfection of its will) is naturally capable of sinning. As Aquinas states plainly, God cannot even in his absolute
omnipotence create a free creature that is not naturally capable of sin.This would be
tantamount to an intrinsic contradiction.A state in which sin is impossible, therefore,
can only come about through grace for Aquinas (ST I, q. 63, a. 1). See the study by
Maritain on this topic, The Sin of the Angel (Westminster: Newman Press, 1959).

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affairs only exists due to the permission of God’s will. In allowing creatures
to resist his grace, God does indeed allow them to contradict his “ordered
will” for the salvation of all, but in doing so they may not violate his
“absolute will,” that is to say, his omnipotence.42
Secondly, then, the creature who sins depends, even in its very act of
sinning, upon the creative activity of God. While God sustains in being
even the very action of the creature who sins, he is not the cause of the
moral deformation of this act insofar as it is sinful.The creature that refuses
grace acts by a movement of will that depends upon God for its existence
and mobility.Yet this act stems uniquely from the sinner insofar as it is disordered and therefore implies a privation of goodness.43 This can be the case
due to the fact that the creature may employ the gift of its being-in-action
“parasitically” so as to cling to goods that it already possesses in such a way
so as to refuse or withdraw from higher initiatives of grace. The latter would
permit the creature to become “more” than it already is.Yet, a soul may
culpably prefer a lesser good to a greater good, and in doing so refuse to

42 See Journet, Evil, 152–61. On the absolute versus the ordered power of God, see

ST I, q. 25, a. 5, ad 1. I have alluded already to the fact that God does not will
evil, but does will to permit it. Perhaps in his “absolute power,” God could create
beings in a state of beatific vision such that sin would be impossible. In fact,
however, he creates creatures in a state of imperfection, in which sin is possible
(De veritate, 24, a. 1, ad 16; ST I–II, q. 5, a. 7). In Comp. Theo., c. 142, Aquinas
explains that God in permitting evils does not detract from his own goodness:
“The role of providence is not to condemn the nature of the beings it governs
but to save them. . . . If evil were totally excluded from things, they would not be
regulated according to their nature by the divine providence.” Clearly, it is natural for
spiritual creatures to welcome beatitude freely and deliberately, moved in will
and intellect by God in subordination to and cooperation with God’s initiatives
of grace.Yet, this also allows for the possibility of sin.As Journet frequently notes,
this complex condition is befitting due to the analogy of love between the
Creator and creatures:The mystery of God’s life is freely offered in love so that
it can be freely consented to in love.
43 This is the explicit teaching of Aquinas: ST I–II, q. 79, a. 2:“The act of sin is both
a being and an act. In both respects it is from God. . . . But sin denotes a being
and an action with a defect: and this is from a created cause, namely, the free will,
as falling away from the order of the First Agent, namely, God. Consequently, this
defect is not reduced to God as its cause, but to the free-will, even as the defect of
limping is reduced to a crooked leg as its cause, but not to the motive power. . . .
Accordingly God is the cause of the act of sin: and yet He is not the cause of sin,
because He does not cause the act to have a defect” (emphasis added). See also,
De Malo, q. 3, a. 1 and 2; and Journet’s commentary, Evil, 166–67.

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refer itself rationally to a higher law of truth and goodness.44 In itself, such
sin (as contempt for the moral law and the law of God) constitutes a certain
privation, and even a kind of nothingness as regards existence, the true, and
the good.45 In this way creatures who resist initiatives of grace are permitted to diminish (or “negate”) themselves ontologically, in refusing the
economic dispensation of God.
Thirdly, therefore, Journet (following both Augustine and Aquinas)
affirms that the creature alone is the first “cause” of sin. God is innocent
with regard to moral evil and does not will it either directly or indirectly.
Yet for all this, he in no way cedes his omnipotence with respect to the
creature. Rather, in his tolerance of sin, he wills to permit the creature
who depends entirely upon him for its being to directly violate his loving
will.46 The persistent refusal of God’s grace that leads to perennial separation from him (the state of hell) is therefore a “thorn in the heart of God”
not willed by God.47 Yet this refusal does not constitute a “failure” of the
44 Of course, in performing such evil actions, creatures do not intend a privation as

such (for its own sake). Man can only desire the good per se. Sin occurs through
a deliberate, culpable, disordered attachment to an inferior good that turns the
creature away from its true final end. Journet, The Meaning of Evil, 71:“That evil
only introduces itself into the world hidden beneath something good is true also
in the moral order of voluntary agents.The sinner does not desire a privation but a
particular good, yet he cannot chose it without turning himself away from his final
end and laying himself open to disaster. God is desired per se and evil per accidens.”
Likewise, see Aquinas, II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; and De Malo, q. 1, a. 1 and a. 3.
45 ScG III, c. 7: “Evil is simply a privation of something which a subject is entitled
by its origin to possess and which it ought to have. This is what everyone calls
‘evil.’ Now privation is not an essence; it is, rather, a negation in a substance. Evil
therefore is not an essence in things.”
46 I Sent., d. 47, q. 1, a. 2, ad 1:“Those who are not with God are, so far as in them
lies, against God, from the fact that they go against the antecedent divine will.”
ST I, q. 19, a. 9: “God in no way wills the evil of sin.” ST I–II, q. 79, a. 1: “It is
impossible that God should be, for himself or for others, the cause of rebellion
against the order which is in himself.” ST I–II, q. 79, a. 1, ad 3: One who sins is
“like a servant who acts against his master’s command.” As Journet shows against
Calvin (Evil, 162), this idea that evil originates from the creature alone and not
from the will of God is also taught by Augustine in the 83 Questions, no. 21, De
libro arbitrio, I, 1, 2, and maintained even in the later Contra Julianum, c. 7, 52, 61,
64. Aquinas and Journet, on this point, are working out of the classical Augustinian position. It is reaffirmed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 311.
47 See Evil, 183, where Journet adopts as his own the words of Maritain:“Sin does not
only deprive the universe of something good, it also deprives God himself of something which was conditionally but really willed by him. Moral defect affects God,
though not in himself, since he is invulnerable, but in the things and effects which
he wills and loves. In this, God can be said to be the most vulnerable of beings.”

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divine economy, because this refusal is known by God from all eternity
(without being in any way caused by him as sin),48 and therefore his providence accounts for it by a compensatory good of some kind.49
III. Balthasar and Journet on Sufficient Grace
Balthasar’s Hope for the Infinite Will of God
to Overcome All Human Refusal
As my arguments above have made clear, Balthasar is ill at ease with the
notion of a permissive will of God (a conditional will, related to God’s
tolerance of moral evil). In fact, the corollary of my claim is a second assertion that his vision of the effective character of grace originates from the
Augustinian tradition, and even bears some resemblances to certain
formulations of Jansenism, or the Protestantism of a Calvin. More to the
point, it is seemingly deeply indebted to the inversion of Calvinism that
is proper to the thought of Barth.50As students of the Barthian doctrine
48 God is obliged in fidelity to himself to assert the goodness of his truth and holi-

ness even to the creature that refuses him, and in this way expresses the mystery
of his justice. In this sense he wills the “punitive dimension” of damnation only
in an indirect way, as a response to those creaturely evils that are not caused by
him but only tolerated. See Evil, 179, 184–86; and Aquinas, ST I, q. 19, a. 9.
49 It should be noted here that in his Grace and Freedom, 94–118, Lonergan presents
a historical analysis of Aquinas’s doctrine that largely concurs with the three
points mentioned above. More generally, Journet and Lonergan—while not identical in all respects—agree on the following points in their reading of Aquinas:
(1) God wills and knows contingent creaturely action infallibly from all eternity
as contingent action, and therefore knows evil actions from all eternity. (2) Moral
evil is contrary to God’s antecedent will for the salvation of all, but is not
contrary to his omnipotence insofar as God wills to permit evil. (3) God creates
and sustains actions of evil in being qua action without being in any way a cause
of the defectiveness of such acts. Rather, creatures alone in the misuse of their
liberty are the first cause of moral evil.Therefore predestination occurs prior to
foreseen merits while reprobation only occurs in the wake of foreseen demerits.
(4) Moral evil contradicts specific goods of the divine government and therefore
contradicts the order willed by God, but also is accounted for by God’s desire to
bring forth greater goods in spite of such evil. (5) Such evil constitutes an absurd
“absence” of being and truthfulness which stems not from an absence of initiative on God’s part, but from a defect in human liberty. (Lonergan speaks of an
“irrational surd” of “objective falsity” present in the deformity of human freedom, while Journet speaks of God having “no divine idea” of moral evil, insofar
as it is an ontological privation of goodness and truth.) Both of these latter positions recall the words of Christ in judgment to those who are condemned: “I
never knew you. I do not know you” (Mt 7:21–23; 25:12).
50 Barth’s influence over Balthasar is an immense subject that certainly exceeds the
scope of this essay.Yet, it is also a topic that merits further research from theological

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of election know, the great Swiss Reformed thinker takes from Calvin the
idea that election should direct thinking about the meaning of creation,
Christology and dogmatics as a whole. However, he inverts this received
schema, so that Calvin’s doctrine of “double-predestination” (of some to
glory and some to damnation) is rejected.51 Instead, he insists that Christ
alone is designated as reprobate on behalf of all, so that in and through the
passion and “descent into hell,” all men can in turn become the subjects
of election through him.52 This election becomes—in Barth’s thought—
the basis for a hope in favor of the universal effectuation of salvation.53 In
historians. In a letter to Maritain on August 9, 1945, Journet describes a letter he has
recently received from the young Jesuit chaplain of Bâle in which the latter
describes himself as a student of Barth, and claims that he follows the Swiss Protestant thinker in holding to some version of the doctrine of apokatastasis, as reinterpreted in light of the mystery of Holy Saturday. (Journet-Maritain Correspondance, vol.
3 [Saint-Augustin: St-Just-La-Pendue, 1998], 336–37.) Does this accurately describe
the thought of Balthasar in 1945? In his 1951 work on Barth’s theology (published
in English asThe Theology of Karl Barth [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992], 185–87),
Balthasar offers nuanced criticisms of Barth precisely as a proponent of apokatastasis. In his 1966 work, Love Alone:The Way of Revelation (first published in English in
1968 by Sheed and Ward [London], 78–80), he expresses the idea of universal salvation for all as a hope, rather than a certitude.Yet, he does characterize this hope as
one pertaining to the “effective” intervention of God in the lives of all persons, over
and above all their finite refusals (79).This “effective” grace Balthasar speaks of is the
subject of my considerations in this part of my essay.
51 On Barth’s doctrine of election, as related to Calvinism and his purposeful inversion, see Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 20–23, 455–63. On the Christological character of Barth’s doctrine of election, see his essay “Grace and being: the role of
God’s gracious election in Karl Barth’s theological ontology,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 92–110. Calvin’s own doctrine of Christ’s descent into hell on
behalf of the faithful can be found in Institutes of the Christian Religion II, ch. 16,
nos. 10–12. His doctrine of double predestination is discussed in III, ch. 21–24.
52 Church Dogmatics II, 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), n. 35. P. 451: “The Elect
both willed to be and was the Rejected as well . . . the rejection merited by all
others was his—the only One who did not merit rejection—and therefore no
longer theirs.” On Christ’s acceptation of the state of judgment and separation
from God for us, see CD IV, I, no. 59, part 2. Balthasar studies this idea in his The
Theology of Karl Barth: 174–88. He accepts and develops these themes with some
qualifications: see Theo-Drama, vol. 4 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 284ff.,
and Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 272ff.
53 Church Dogmatics II, 2, 417–18:“If we are to respect the freedom of divine grace, we
cannot venture the statement that it must and will finally be coincident with the
world of man as such (as in the doctrine of the so-called apokatastasis). . . . But again,
in grateful recognition of the grace of the divine freedom, we cannot venture the
opposite statement that there cannot and will not be this final opening up and

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continuity with the Protestant heritage, Barth himself categorically rejects
the notion of a conditional will in God, which would allow its “effects of
grace” to be subject to the refusals of human willing. Precisely in his
discussion of the grace of election effectuated by the redemption of Christ
(and in explicit opposition to Catholic doctrine), he opposes forcefully
any notion of a resistible grace or of a “merely sufficient” grace that would
not already be somehow effective.54
Balthasar’s thought is not identical with that of Barth.Yet, he does retain
many elements from this composite of ideas, recasting them in a distinctly
“theo-dramatic” fashion. Eluding any form of facile optimism, he emphasizes the reality of man’s true separation from God by sin.Yet this reality of
self-exclusion from God is, as it were, taken account of from all eternity by
the Trinitarian God through the dramatic movement of a Christological
reprobation on our behalf.55 Most notably, Balthasar claims that the biblical concept of “hell” takes on a new definition in light of Christ’s separation
from God on the Cross: All finite separations of sinful human beings must
now be understood as encompassed by the “ever-greater” separation of
Christ from the Father in his descent into hell.56 This separation occurring
enlargement of the circle of election and calling.” Balthasar’s structure of thought
is very similar to that of Barth: Man is suspended between the judgment of an
omnipotent love, and the freedom of that same love to save all persons.
54 Church Dogmatics IV, 1, no. 58 (London: Continuum, 2004), 86–88:“Is grace as such
ever sufficiens without being efficax? Is it ever effective objectively without being
effective subjectively? . . . Does the fact that man believes he can evade or resist it
mean that we can speak of a grace which is not effective? . . . But the grace of the
one God and the one Christ, and therefore the objective grace which never comes
to man except from God, must always be understood as the one complete grace,
which is subjectively strong and effective in its divine objectivity, the grace which
does actually reconcile man with God.” For further analysis of this aspect of Barth’s
thought, with abundant textual citations, see Alister McGrath, Justitia Dei, vol. 2
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 177–84.
55 See in particular, Theo-Drama, vol. 4, 317–50, where this theme is developed in
depth.
56 Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 277:“Karl Barth is quite right when he says that we must put
out of our minds any ‘complete balance’ between God’s elective mercy and his
condemnatory righteousness (Church Dogmatics II, 2). In fact we can go a step
further than Barth; for he conceives (“double”) predestination in such a way that
Christ is the One chosen to be solely condemned on behalf of all the
condemned.This comprehensive formula is too close, however, to the view that
the sufferings of the Cross were a punishment. . . .The Crucified Son does not
simply suffer the hell deserved by sinners; he suffers something below and
beyond this, namely, being forsaken by God in the pure obedience of love. Only
he, as Son, is capable of this, and it is qualitatively deeper than any possible hell.
This signifies an even more radical abandonment.”

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in Christ in turn allows us to hope that God may overcome the refusal of
every human person, precisely in his or her greatest distance from God.57
Second, based on this perspective, Balthasar will also follow Barth in
casting suspicion upon any notion of a “conditional” offer of grace.The
descent into hell is precisely the dramatic sign that God does not will the
refusal of the sinner to have a perennial character. As a dramatic concept,
it proclaims above all the unconditional love of God, a love that per se is
not subject to any human refusal, and which knows no boundaries. Such
love is a dimension of the “infinite freedom” of God that I have referred
to above.This freedom, which Christ’s mission embodies, should be seen
to have the final word in the “last act” of the human and divine drama.58
Its “resolution” of the divine economy must not be seen as merely
“consequent” to any finite human refusal.
Third, then, (and also in parallel to Barth) the notion of sufficient
grace (a resistible grace) is expressly rejected by Balthasar in Dare We
Hope. Such a notion is problematic precisely because it is seen as falsely
portraying both God’s resolution of the divine economy and man’s
capacity for refusal of that resolution. It would suggest, rather, a kind of
velleity on the part of God. The infinite love of the latter would be
subject to human refusal, foreseen in advance to be inefficacious and
offered only so that the creature (who inevitably refuses this non-effective movement of the soul) is earmarked as one rightly condemned for
having rejected grace. Such “resistible” grace, while classically called
“sufficient grace” is therefore of nebulous sufficiency.
Can human defiance really resist to the end the representative assumption of its sins by the incarnate God? . . . [T]hen the theologians will
57 See Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 247–69. Compare Balthasar’s citation of Adrienne von

Speyr, whose seemingly Calvinistic ruminations echo Barth:“Yet our darkness is
not related to his [God’s] light as one absolute to another. Even the darkness of
sin does not fall outside God’s power.Therefore it is possible that God graciously
overshadows our sinful darkness with his greater darkness [on the Cross].”
(Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 80.) The citation is from Von Speyr, John I (1949), 61.
It is fair to say that for von Speyr as for Barth, the reprobation of Christ (the
“darkness of the Cross”) is the condition of our “darkness of sin” being annulled
and “overcome” by the totally unequal, infinite power of divine love.
58 Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 284: “ ‘There is nothing partial in Christ’s suffering and
dying. And since everyone is created with a view to Christ, God applies to them
the measuring rod of Christ’s unconditional life. He chooses and rejects them
according to the measure of Christ. In doing so he does justice to what Christ
has done for us; and Christ has suffered unconditionally to bring about the totality of redemption.’ ” (The citation is again from Von Speyr, who Balthasar cites
for his own doctrine.)

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again have to set up strange distinctions within God’s will for grace:
there is a “sufficient grace” (gratia sufficiens), characterized as something
that, from God’s view point, would have to be sufficient for converting
the sinner yet is rejected by the sinner in such a way that it is actually
not sufficient for achieving its purpose; and an “efficacious grace” (gratia
efficax), which is capable of attaining its goal. . . . But how, then are we
to understand the grace that is effected through the representative work
of Christ . . . ? Grace is “efficacious” when it presents my freedom with
an image of itself so evident that it cannot do other than freely seize
itself, while grace would be merely “sufficient” if this image did not
really induce my freedom to affirm itself but left it preferring to persist
in its self-contradiction. . . . It would be in God’s power to allow the
grace that flows into the world from the self-sacrifice of his Son (2 Cor
5:19) to grow powerful enough to become his “efficacious” grace for
all sinners. But precisely this is something that we can only hope for.59

Behind this criticism lies the presumption that all real work of the infinite, all holy God is necessarily effectual. It stems from an infinite love.
Where there is non-acceptance, then, there is non-activity. Shall we
believe in a grace “sufficient” for salvation but “resistible”? This would
entail the admission that the love of God might somehow fail.
Balthasar’s reflections on this last point are significant and revelatory.
We have mentioned above that for Balthasar, the biblical texts claiming a
possibility of eternal loss and the texts claiming the universal will to salvation stand in a contrast that is irresolvable and can only be lived out by
each Christian in non-presumptuous hope for himself and for others.Yet
this text cited above alludes to the fact that the possibility of a hell stemming from human sin alone (which Balthasar quite rightly insists upon)
is a possibility that is excluded by the presence of effective grace.Therefore, the hope for universal salvation is not a hope that all men may
receive the grace of God by which they will be saved if they consent, but
that God will chose (in the end: whether in this world or the next) to
overcome all human resistances effectively. It is therefore more than a
hope that God’s grace be offered to all, and that each one have the possibility of salvation (the claim I have evoked sympathetically at the start of
this essay). It is in fact also a hope that even if human beings initially
refuse grace, God will eventually convert by his effective will the hearts
and minds of each person in a way that leaves no ultimate space for
damnation, no place for an enduring refusal. This is a hope, then, for
59 Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 208–10. Despite all the parallels with Barth that are pres-

ent here, one can observe the distinctly Catholic insistence on intrinsic transformation of the will as a necessary dimension of grace.

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apokatastasis panton in the “last act” of the drama of redemption, in spite
of the (temporary) permissions of creaturely evil.60 Of course Balthasar
does not affirm that this state of affairs will take place. On the contrary,
he repeatedly mounts criticism of both Origenism and Barth on this
point.61 Instead, Balthasar defends the Catholic’s right not to affirm categorically, but to live in hope that this state of affairs will come to pass.62 In
this sense, he is hoping against the possibility of hell for anyone, due to
the will of divine love to overcome all evil.This tendency of thought goes
hand in hand with his refusal of the Thomistic distinction mentioned
above that would allow for a divine permission of the permanent creaturely refusal of grace. As such, it places his “hope” squarely on a trajectory toward the results obtained in the doctrine of Barth.63
60 See the approving citation of W. Kreck in Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 299:“In spite of all

the compelling negative evidence I have, it is beyond my abilities and competence to assess to what extent, ultimately, a man is really persisting in, or can persist
in, resistance to Christ” (emphasis added). Balthasar does affirm in various texts that
creatures may freely reject God’s grace: see Theo-Drama, vol. 3 (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1992), 33–40; Theo-Drama, vol. 4, 350; and esp., Theo-Drama, vol.
5, 285–90, where he cites Von Speyr (288) in claiming that “[i]t is possible for
[man] to become so hardened in his freedom that he must pursue to the end the
path he has chosen in opposition to God.”As Dare We Hope makes clear, however,
he is ill at ease with the idea that this rejection could be permanent, and in fact
dares to hope precisely that it will be overcome by the grace of Christ’s descent
into hell on behalf of all human refusal. See also Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 311–14,
where Balthasar questions the possibility of persistence in opposition to God’s
will, hoping that ultimately Christ’s “God-forsakenness” in its ever-greater separation from God than that instigated by sin, may overcome definitely all forms
of human refusal. Page 311: “But the Son has placed himself in man’s way: even
if man has turned his back on God, he still finds the Son in front of him and
must go toward him. Thus the sinner can move toward God, albeit unaware or
reluctantly.” Resistance to God, therefore, appears as but one “scene” within a
larger Trinitarian drama of final reconciliation. The dramatic tension is as yet
unresolved, but the Cross points us toward the resolution.
61 See Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 94, where he claims that Barth’s reserve concerning
apokatastasis panton is “merely rhetorical” since the doctrine flows naturally from
the Reformed theologian’s affirmation of universal election and the sovereign
and effective character of the divine will over creatures. He is repeating the position taken in The Theology of Karl Barth, 185–86. For Balthasar’s comparison of
Barth and Origen in this respect, see “Christlicher Universalismus,” in Antwort:
Karl Barth zum siebzigsten Geburtstag am 10. Mai 1956 (Zürich: Evangelischer
Verlag, 1956), 241–45.
62 See Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 210; and Theo-Drama V, 316–21.
63 Both Emil Brunner (Dogmatik, vol. 1, Die christiche Lehre von Gott [Zurich:
Zwingli-Verlag, 1946], 375–79), and Alister McGrath (Justitia Dei, 177–84) have
described as “gnostic” the theme in Barth’s Christology by which all that has

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Further evidence of this tendency can be found by considering the
parallels between Barth’s treatment of Calvin and Balthasar’s vision of
extreme Augustinianism. When Balthasar in Dare We Hope criticizes the
Reformers and Jansenism for their double predestinationist tendencies, his
pattern of thought strongly resembles Barth’s criticisms of the Calvinist
doctrine of double-predestination.64 But like Barth with respect to Calvin,
he is himself holding to a perspective about the effectiveness of the divine
will virtually identical with that of his adversaries, now conditioned by a
universal extension of application, rather than a selective one (a contrary
position in the same genre).This idea quite simply is that God’s will (or in
Balthasar’s case, God’s love) cannot and will not tolerate resistance, or else
it would fail. It is a perspective inherited from the later Augustine, and one
which is common to Barth as well as Calvin.65 The Jansenists used this idea
to ground their refusal of any notion of “sufficient” (that is, resistible) grace,
come to pass in history—including evil that is permitted by God—has as its
precondition that which exists in God the Trinity from all eternity. In this case,
we encounter in history a divine will that “makes use of ” the drama of human
sin to unveil the eternal history of God in the cross-event, as election, redemption, and reconciliation. Although it cannot be treated sufficiently here, it is
important to note a parallel between Balthasar’s rejection of the antecedent and
consequent will of God in the doctrine of Maximus, and his non-employment
of the distinction between the “rational” and “natural” will of Christ at Gethsemane as developed by the same thinker. In Mysterium Pascale (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2000), 80–82, 105–7, Balthasar envisages Gethsemane as a revelation of the “divine will” of the Son, obedient to the Father, and therefore as
expressive of an eternal “intra-Trinitarian” obedience which preexists the creation.
Such a perspective seemingly ignores Maximus’s understanding of Gethsemane
as a mystery of natural human repugnance in the will of Christ to the onslaught
of moral evil, an evil that the man Jesus knows is permitted but not willed by the
Father. In the absence of such distinctions, the economy of sin tends to appear—
for Barth and Balthasar alike—not as something that contradicts God’s will, but
as the necessary occasion for the revelation of the intra-Trinitarian life of obedience of the Son with regard to the Father. But is the passion of Christ not first
and foremost the revelation of a response by divine love to human sin insofar as
the latter violates the will of God? And is this not exemplified in a human way at
Gethsemane by the natural repugnance of Christ’s human will to sin, suffering,
and death?
64 See Balthasar, Dare We Hope, 65, 192–97, where Balthasar says as much himself.
65 See the Enchiridion, no. 103, where Augustine teaches categorically that the
omnipotent will of God must be carried out, and that, therefore, all grace given
by God is irresistibly effective (in the predestined ).This teaching was axiomatic
for the Reformers as for the Jansenists. In fact, both Luther (in The Bondage of the
Will,WA 18, 614–20, 630–39) and Calvin (Institutes, III, ch. 23, n. 8 and ch. 24)
expressly refuse the distinction between God’s will and his permissions. God’s
will and his grace are always irresistible.

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and to claim that an (uniquely) effective grace of salvation is given only to
the few elect. Grace is irresistible because it stems from the infallible will
of God, and therefore those not in a state of grace simply have not received
grace because they are not selected by God’s will.66 Balthasar seemingly
inverts this pattern of thought, and recasts it in a dramatic tone, by insisting that the divine choice of salvation in Christ’s descent into hell should
be seen as applying to all rather than some. Furthermore, he places primary
emphasis on the love of God, rather than divine omnipotence.Yet like these
other hyper-Augustinian thinkers, he centers the debate on the “infinite
freedom” of God to effectuate what he wills: in this case, the salvation of
all creatures.67 True, he does maintain the carefully qualified hope (rather
than categorical affirmation) that the will of God will triumph over sin (as
does Barth as well, in several passages).Yet the gravitational tendency of this
thought is toward a conclusion that Christian hope, if it is to be adequate
to the mystery of God’s infinite freedom in love, should and must aspire to
the belief that all will be saved.
Sufficient but Resistible Grace According to Journet
I have argued that a corollary of Balthasar’s refusal of the notion of a
conditional will of God is his hesitation (at least in his eschatological
views) concerning the notion of a sufficient but resistible grace. Journet,
by contrast, who embraces the above-mentioned distinction, also
embraces its corollary: the notion of a grace that is sufficient for salvation,
but which must be consented to freely.68 Here I wish to make two points
concerning this idea.
66 With regard to the problematic presuppositions of Jansenism, see the reflections

of Jean Miguel Garrigues, “La perseverance,” and “Miséricorde et Justice,” Nova
et Vetera (French) 4 (2004): 9–18.
67 Theo-Drama, vol. 5, 303–4:“In Christ, the life of the Trinity is bent on reconciling the world to God. In this perspective, therefore, if a man tries to exclude
himself from it in order to be his own private hell, he is still embraced by the
curve of Christ’s being. To that extent he is still determined by its essence and
meaning, which aims to communicate to the world the freedom of the absolute
good. . . .These remarks are designed to shed light on the internal limitations and
difficulties involved in the idea that man has absolute power and freedom to turn
his back, totally, on God.”
68 As Bernard Lonergan has shown in his doctoral thesis, the notion of grace as
“sufficient” and “efficient” in Aquinas pertains not to two distinct kinds of grace,
but to the same grace considered as sufficient for salvation and effective when it
is not refused. See Lonergan, Gratia Operans, 333, 441. However, the notion of a
distinct form of grace that can be refused versus a grace that is irresistible was
developed in the post-Tridentine period by Thomists to oppose Jansenism and
Protestantism on the one hand, and Molinism on the other. Journet takes up their

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First, such grace, according to Journet, is “sufficient” for salvation insofar as it constitutes a genuine “movement” of the will, a positive influx of
natural being and grace, that will lead a creature to justification, sanctification, and eternal life.These fruits of grace (which may take on an eventually “infallibly efficacious” character) are offered by the very first
instigations of the Holy Spirit in the human heart.69 This operative character of the grace God gives can become cooperative (that is to say, can
be participated in by the inner life of the heart) if the will does not withdraw from its activity.This is, however, an instinct of the human heart that
must be embraced freely, and which, therefore, may also be resisted, as
well as refused.70
use of the terms “sufficient” and “efficient” for these two forms of grace. I have
preferred to use the terms “resistible” versus “irresistible” so as to avoid confusion.
Aquinas, at any rate, most certainly teaches throughout his theological corpus that
grace is (at least much of the time) capable of being refused, or “resistible.” For a
clear example, see ScG III, c. 159–60.
69 Pascal’s mockeries of the notion of a sufficient grace that is not truly sufficient,
because it does not move the human will, are reasonable, according to Journet,
if such grace constitutes only a “power to act,” but not a genuine inclination and
movement that the human will can resist. See The Meaning of Grace, 28–29. A
view resembling that criticized by Journet is in fact exposited by R. GarrigouLagrange in Grace (New York: B. Herder, 1957), 218–19, 231.
70 Journet’s affirmation (following Jacques Maritain) that the creature alone is the first
cause of moral evil by its refusal of grace, independently of an “anterior permissive
decree” on the part of the will of God, has recently been criticized by Steven Long
(“Providence, liberté et loi naturelle,” Revue Thomiste 102 [2002]: 355–406) and
Gilles Emery (“The Question of Evil and the Mystery of God in Charles Journet,”
Nova et Vetera (English) 4 [2006]). Their criticisms are informed by the Thomist
commentary tradition (Cajetan, Bañez, John of St. Thomas) concerning God’s
“antecedent permissive will” as regards evil, which tends to affirm a selective election of the predestined on the part of God. (This tradition was “adjudicated” by
Popes Benedict XIII and XIV in wake of the De auxiliis controversy, such that it
enjoys the right of being considered a permissible theological opinion for Catholic
theologians.) Their objections to Journet’s thesis are largely based on a metaphysical argument. The idea of a creature that commits evil without being previously
abandoned by God’s movements of nature and grace constitutes an ontological
absurdity, they claim, since this would render God relative to creatures in their
temporal acts, as a mere being among beings. For Journet, they argue, all would be
elected antecedently, but God would be dependent upon the free reactions of those
offered grace to confer this election, and therefore would relate to creatures as does
another creature, in expectancy and waiting, rather than in his omnipotence.This
is absurd because it amounts to a denial of God’s causality as creator.While much
of what I have written above suggests that I think the claims these authors make
on this topic should be rejected, a prolonged treatment of their position exceeds
the scope of this essay.Two brief points can be made in this context, however. First,
Long’s interpretation runs the risk of identifying moral evil with natural evil. A

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Secondly, Journet claims that such “resistible” movements of grace are
not only sufficient for conversion, but also constitute the ordinary way of
human salvation.71 There is a miraculous process by which God converts
the will “infallibly” from the first instant of his activity in the soul.Yet the
sinful act, he claims, is like a “decaying animal cadaver” that tends toward disaggregation and non-existence because it lacks the needed resources of a life-principle.This lack, which inhabits sinful action, is the inevitable result of a tendency
of the will toward privation, due to the natural “entropy” of created being which
tends toward nothingness. (Long appeals here to ST I–II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2, as his
base text.) Because of this tendency, sin occurs necessarily in the wake of God’s
inactivity (that is, his permissive will to not aid the creature who will otherwise
sin), rather than by a moral deformation resulting from the creature’s refusal of
the inspired movements of natural and supernatural goodness. In this case, the
human act of sin is interpreted primarily as an act lacking the necessary stimulus from God such that sin would be avoidable. Both Maritain and Lonergan
have argued cogently that this position seems to make God more a cause of
moral deficiency than the creature itself, since God chooses to withhold
resources from certain creatures such they must necessarily choose evil. (See in
particular, Lonergan, Gratia Operans, 339–45.) Secondly, one may consider sin as
a negation of being and goodness that comes from the creature alone as a “first
cause” without this implying any ontological autonomy on the part of the creature.The reason for this is that sinful acts involve a form of negation that is parasitical upon created being. It is because God maintains a moral agent in existence
with stable possession of a certain number of “lower” goods that it can prefer
these goods to those of a “higher” order. In this way, the creature can negate the
coming-into-being (in itself or others) of a higher order (of grace or nature) by
refusing the offer of this order, willing instead (wrongly and absurdly) to cling to
a lower good or goods (such the love of its own autonomy), in preference to the
wisdom and will of God. For Aquinas, as I have noted above, this can occur even
while the creature remains ontically dependent upon God for its being-inaction. A helpful theological reflection that criticizes the position of Long and
Emery can be found in the essay of Jean-Hervé Nicolas, “La volunté salvifique
de Dieu contrariée par le péché,” Revue Thomiste 92 (1992): 177–96, where the
author retracts his earlier position (which Long and Emery adhere to) and argues
in favor of a similar version of the viewpoint adopted by Maritain and Journet
on this question, also rejoining many of the insights of Lonergan.
71 Journet, Evil, 158. On this point Journet’s thought contrasts importantly with
that of Garrigou-Lagrange who (in Grace, 230–31) rejects—against Marin-Sola—
the idea that “sufficient” resistible grace might be a more ordinary form of sanctifying grace than that which is intrinsically efficient. However, in reaction to the
condemnations of Jansenism, Garrigou-Lagrange’s thought at times resembles in
certain respects Journet’s position on God’s universal will of salvation. See The
One God (St. Louis and London: B. Herder, 1943), 554–56, 683–88; and Predestination (Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1998), 175–77. His perspective here is selfconsciously indebted to René Billuart (Summa Summae S.Thomae, vol. I, d. 7, a.
3–7; d. 9, a. 5, 6), in contrast to the perspectives of commentators such as Bañez
and John of St.Thomas.

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process of invitation and “enticement” by a grace that requires consent
typifies the way in which grace and sanctification take place for members
of the human race.72 The reason for this is that God’s economy places
great emphasis on the mystery of mutual, consenting love.73
The consequences of this position are clear: God offers salvation to all
creatures, but this salvation may truly be definitively rejected by some.
This rejection is not due to an absence of assistance by God, but stems
from the creature’s free refusal. On the last day, the creature who has
chosen a life apart from God, in opposition to the truth about itself
before God, will stand without excuse before the history of initiatives
taken by God in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.
Having freely rejected God as their supernatural end, they have also
freely rejected him as a natural end.They detest him through a free act
in which they are set, and prefer the false beatitude they have chosen,
their pride, to their true beatitude.That is the ultimate end they desire
above all, even at the price of all sorts of suffering and privation—their
beatitude is to be gods by their own strength.They cannot take back this
choice, because this has to do with their last end and has been made in
the full light of the mind, fixing the will in it in such a way that all
subsequent acts of will can only be effected in virtue of that act.And so
there is remorse but no repentance, they ask no forgiveness and would
refuse it if it were given them—they wish to continue in this state.74

Conclusion
Why should we not fully embrace Balthasar’s “hope for the salvation of
all”? Balthasar’s perspective presents a profound meditation on the theological problem of hell, and offers necessary corrections to an extremist
Augustinianism that would deny to some the possibility of salvation.Yet,
as appealing as this point of view is in many respects, it is seriously prob72 Journet, Evil, 157: “This is the ordinary way in which the subordinated divine

will acts. In it grace is given to free creatures while taking into account the treatment required by the nature of free creatures, which, being in themselves fallible, are able not to turn to God.” Aquinas has an analysis of God’s simultaneous
offer of grace to all and man’s capacity to impede the process of salvation in ScG
III, c. 159–60; In ScG III, c. 161, he goes on to describe an activity of grace which
is irresistible—but expressly compares such grace to the “miraculous” as something exceptional, rather than the norm.
73 Essai de théologie de l’histoire du salut, 153: Journet develops the idea that God in
the wisdom of his love created spiritual beings in a state of imperfection so that
they could, by grace, exercise a free, deliberate love of preference for him over all
creatures. Compare De veritate, q. 24, a. 1, ad 16.
74 Jacques Maritain, Nine Lessons in Moral Philosophy, as cited by Journet, Evil, 206–7.

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lematic in at least two ways. Firstly, it fails to take seriously the reality of
moral evil as a phenomenon directed against the will of God, for which
creatures are responsible over and against the initiatives of divine wisdom
and goodness. Evil occurs “outside” the scope of God’s universal will for
salvation (without, of course, being “outside” the realm of his omnipotence and omniscience, which tolerate sin). It is therefore something
violent with regard to the divine economy, and irreducible to God’s basic
desire for beatitude in all spiritual creatures (even if God’s economy of
redemption draws greater goods even out of human events of sinfulness).
Secondly, and most seriously, Balthasar’s thought can be seen as clearly
intimating that a world in which hell exists is a world in which the love of
God has failed. This touches on the heart of the issue. Who exactly has
failed when moral evil occurs, and when the spiritual creature “perseveres”
in resistance to the divine good? Is it God or the creature? If, following
Damascene and Aquinas, we adopt the distinction between the antecedent
and consequent will of God, we can say clearly that it is the creature. By
refusing the instigations and movements of nature and grace that would
rectify his or her use of free will, the human person (or angel) alone is to
be seen at the origins of the mystery of hell. Balthasar seeks at many points
to vindicate God against any blame for this condition, yet his theology is
fragile at this juncture. He has defended the universal extension of God’s
goodness as it is revealed in Christ, but does he defend sufficiently his innocence in the wake of the human refusal of love? In fact, this limitation
springs from his Augustinianism. In refusing to appropriate the abovementioned distinction, he rejects along with it an authentic reception of
the Catholic Tradition’s teaching on the “resistible” character of saving
grace, and the corresponding reality of God’s permissive will of evil.
Consequently, persisting moral evil must necessarily be seen as a reality
engendered by the absence of the divine initiative toward the heart of the creature who “stands under judgment” by an infinite love.We are confronted,
then, with the possibility of either a restricted election or of a universal
N&V
restoration. Neither can do justice to the teaching of the Gospel.

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667

Discussion
The Paradox of Nature and Grace:
On John Milbank’s The Suspended Middle:
Henri de Lubac and the Debate
Concerning the Supernatural
EDWARD T. OAKES, SJ
Mundelein Seminary
Mundelein, Illinois

I
W HEN DID modernity begin? Or can something that emerged only
slowly from the chrysalis of the Middle Ages even be said to have
“begun” at one easy-to-spot moment? No doubt, the transition from the
Middle Ages to modern times was gradual. But just as what would later
be known as Protestantism began before Martin Luther (with Jan Hus,
Matthew Tyndale, and others), even though historians conventionally set
the date for the onset of the Reformation at 1517, when Luther posted
his ninety-five theses, so too I like to think that the birth of modernity
can be dated to that fateful moment when the first Renaissance scholar
first realized how much he disliked medieval theology and philosophy.
Long before John Dewey pilloried medieval philosophy for asking how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin, indeed even well before
David Hume sneered at Christian odium theologicum, the European intelligentsia of the Renaissance lamented the alleged sterility of scholastic
theology. Although a lot of this criticism proved to be based on ignorance or laziness, it has to be admitted that some topics that provoked
heated debate among scholastic theologians do seem, to modern minds,

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numbingly arcane—and perhaps never more than the scholastic debates
over grace.
Just think of the distinctions—so many different kinds of grace! Reading a typical scholastic tractate on grace can give uninitiated readers the
impression that they have suddenly stumbled into the theological equivalent of the paint section of a hardware store, with esoteric names for all
the different shades of blue affixed to the tabs of paint samples: Just as
Sherwin-Williams Paints will distinguish between sky blue, azure blue,
zephyr blue, Mediterranean blue, Grecian blue, cobalt blue, Wedgwood
blue, and so on, so too scholastic theologies of grace will insist on subtle
distinctions between habitual grace, sanctifying grace, prevenient grace,
actual grace, sufficient grace, condign grace.What is all this about?
As a matter of fact, a great deal rides on how the Church interprets
grace. Consider for a moment the question of pluralism, meaning here
the plurality of religions. If God is the Lord of his creation, why are there
so many religions in the world? What does this plethora of religions say
about God’s intentions for the world? Prescinding for a moment from the
many possible positions adopted by theologians in their attempts to come
to terms with this plurality, one can detect two basic approaches: Either
one can say that “it’s all the same God anyway,” and thus each religion is
ineluctably moving toward some Transcendent Meaning, however
defined; or one can say that these various religions are making incompatible truth claims that have to be adjudicated on terms other than the
naive positing a transcendent element in human beings that provides a
more or less direct access to God.
A moment’s reflection will show that both options help to determine,
and are determined by, one’s views on the relationship of nature and
grace. If all men are naturally religious (even when they are avowed secularists and atheists), and if all religions (and ideologies) give equal access
to the transcendent, then this must imply that there is a more or less
seamless transition from (man’s) nature to (God’s) grace. But if one religion (Christianity, say) raises a truth claim over all the others that can be
shown on its own grounds to be true over against the truth claims of all
the other religions (and ideologies), then this too must imply that grace
is somehow radically distinct from man’s religious nature, without which
grace man will wander in darkness until he encounters the true grace of
the one true religion.
If the latter position is the option one takes, then the witness of the
Bible raises even more difficult problems regarding a theology of grace.
There we hear stories of God’s choice of Abel over Cain, of Jacob over
Esau, indeed of Israel over the other nations (the name “Israel,” it should

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be remembered is a patronymic for the nation as a whole drawn from the
name given to Jacob after he wrestled with the angel of the Lord). But
even the election of Israel is internally volatile: for within Israel itself a
“Remnant” of tribes ( Judah and Levi) survives the vicissitudes of history,
while the so-called “lost tribes” are wiped out of history by the Assyrians. Not even election, it would seem, proves to be that gracious!
Now whether theologians first decide to solve the problem of pluralism in religion and then develop a theology of grace to justify that position, or first work out a theology of grace and nature and then draw out
the implications of that theology when taking up the question of pluralism, is itself an intriguing methodological question, one that need not
detain us here. For the real point is simply that the two issues are inextricably linked—and deeply relevant. What should strike the reader as
immediately obvious is that one’s position regarding pluralism in religion
both determines and is determined by the position one adopts regarding
the relationship of nature to grace. The closer the link between nature
and grace, the easier it will be to detect signs of grace in all the religions
of the world without exception, including even those ideological “religions” like secularism and communism. Even atheism can be looked on
as an episode of grace, given the right perspective.1
1 A telling example of such a shift in perspective would be Vatican Council II’s

Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes):
“Atheism results not rarely from a violent protest against the evil in this world,
or from the absolute character with which certain human values are unduly
invested, and which thereby already accords them the stature of God. . . . Yet
believers themselves frequently bear some responsibility for this situation. . . .
Hence believers have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism. . . .While
rejecting atheism, root and branch, the Church sincerely professes that all men,
believers and unbelievers alike, ought to work for the rightful betterment of this
world in which all alike live” (Gaudium et Spes nos. 19, 21). In light of that document, the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI at his Wednesday allocution of November 30, 2005, are highly relevant here:“We want to commend to St. Augustine a
further meditation on our psalm [137, Vulgate 136]. In it, this Father of the
Church introduces a surprising element of great timeliness: He knows that also
among the inhabitants of Babylon there are people who are committed to peace
and the good of the community, despite the fact that they do not share the biblical faith, that they do not know the hope of the Eternal City to which we aspire.
They have a spark of desire for the unknown, for the greatest, for the transcendent, for a genuine redemption.
“And he says that among the persecutors, among the nonbelievers, there are
people with this spark, with a kind of faith, of hope, in the measure that is possible for them in the circumstances in which they live. With this faith in an
unknown reality, they are really on the way to the authentic Jerusalem, to Christ.
And with this opening of hope, valid also for the Babylonians—as Augustine calls

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But if grace is regarded as more or less “extrinsic” to human nature,
landing upon some people and not others, then we are forced to look for
signs of God’s presence in the world using a different norm than the
ubiquity of religion as an anthropological constant. In other words, with
an “extrinsic” view of grace, we are leaving open the possibility that God
speaks to some and not others, chooses some and not others, saves some
and not others. If that is the case, then we must admit a greater distinction between nature and grace than some theologies will allow.
In any event, the point about the debate on nature and grace is that,
at least when conducted properly, decisions on these matters should not
be determined by an individual’s preference for how he would like God
to act; rather, the decision should be made according to an analysis of
what it actually means for a nature to have a nature, and for grace to be
a grace. Nature and grace are concepts that operate within theology by
certain inherent “laws” of conceptual clarity, which is why scholastic
theology felt compelled to draw so many fine distinctions as it became
increasingly clear how subtle is the relationship between nature, free will,
grace, predestination, justification, and so forth.
To keep things on a purely conceptual plane for a moment, let us take
the use of the word “grace” in ordinary language. One of the words
frequently used in English that is derived from the Latin word for grace

them—for those who do not know Christ, and not even God, and who nevertheless desire the unknown, the eternal, he exhorts us not to look only at the
material things of the present moment, but to persevere in the path to God. Only
with this greater hope can we transform this world in a just way.
“St. Augustine says it with these words:‘If we are citizens of Jerusalem . . . and
we have to live on this earth, in the confusion of the present world, in the present Babylon, where we do not live as citizens but are prisoners, it is necessary that
we not only sing what the Psalm says, but that we live it:This is achieved with a
profound aspiration of the heart, fully and religiously desirous of the Eternal City.’
“And making reference to the ‘earthly city called Babylon,’ he adds: In it ‘there
are people who, moved by love for it, contrive to ensure peace, temporal peace,
without nourishing another hope in their hearts than the joy of working for peace.
And we see them make every effort to be useful to the earthly society. However, if
they are committed with a pure conscience in these tasks, God will not allow them
to perish with Babylon, having predestined them to be citizens of Jerusalem, on the
condition, however, that, living in Babylon, they do not seek pride, outdated pomp
and arrogance. . . . He sees their service and will show them the other city, toward
which they must really long and orient all their effort’ (Commentaries on the Psalms
136, 1–2: New Augustinian Library, XXVIII, [Rome, 1977], 397, 399).” Pope Benedict XVI,“Commentary on Psalm 136(137):‘A National Hymn of Sorrow,’ ” Zenit,
November 30, 2005, www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=80896.

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(gratia) is “gratuitous,” which carries the meaning of “unowed,” as in a
gratuity or tip offered to a waiter. According to the laws of justice and
economic equity, one must pay one’s restaurant bill; but one is under no
(legal) obligation to pay a tip, at least in most American restaurants (ugly
stares upon leaving the restaurant without giving a tip do not count here).
Not surprisingly, therefore, one of the central concerns of the Magisterium of the Church has always been to preserve a teaching on grace
that guarantees its essential gratuity: God does not owe us grace. Merit
does not count. Justice is irrelevant. Rights do not cut it. God gives to
whom he will, and that seems to be the end of the matter. No appeal, no
complaint, no whining allowed. If Cain’s sacrifice is repugnant to the
nostrils of the Lord, but Abel’s is pleasing, that is just Cain’s tough luck.
And does not the essential gratuity of grace seem to be reflected in
salvation history? In other words, do not the stories we have already
cited—Abel, not Cain; Jacob, not Esau; Israel, not the Gentiles; the tribes
of Levi and Judah, not the other ten “lost tribes” of Israel; the Remnant,
not the massa damnata—do not these stories illuminate the very point
entailed by insisting on the essential gratuity of grace?
Yet there is another meaning to the word “gratuitous,” which often is
applied to behavior that seems unjust or unwarranted, as in “gratuitous
slur.” Is not God unjust in choosing but one nation (and in the eyes of
world history a rather pathetic one at that) among all other nations for
his Chosen People? And not that God treated them with much special
care either, bullied and browbeaten as they were by one empire after
another, or so it would seem.
If St.Augustine can say “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest
in You,” is it not unfair of God to withhold his grace from natures who
seem destined for only one fulfillment, the fulfillment that comes from
full union with God? If all human beings need, by virtue of their nature,
union with God and long for it, why are there so many religions? Do
they all give more or less equal access to God? Is grace therefore universal? Are religions merely symbolic systems that give ritual grammar to a
universally present divine grace?
Needless to say, I am not raising these questions to resolve them, only
to highlight how debates on grace influence—and even determine—
their resolution, and why so much rides on the outcome of these seemingly arcane debates.To go from the Crusades to interreligious dialogue
is, among other things, to move from one understanding of grace to
another. Look to the headlines, and behind them you will see an implied
theology of nature and grace at work.

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II
Henri de Lubac, the great French historian of theology, was, by almost
universal consent, the theologian who almost single-handedly altered the
terms of this debate in the twentieth century, at least for Catholics; a man
whose efforts to rethink this knotty issue helped to determine the
outcome of the Second Vatican Council, itself a headline-generating
event if there ever was one.2
For all these reasons and more, John Milbank’s fine—albeit rather
short—monograph, The Suspended Middle, on de Lubac’s theology of
grace is particularly welcome.3 Although too sketchy in much of its argument, especially when the author has to argue some of his more controversial and counterintuitive points, Milbank’s exegesis of de Lubac’s
revolutionary work at times reaches the brilliance of his subject, de Lubac
himself, which perhaps is not surprising, given that he is a noted Anglican theologian in his own right and one of the founding inspirations of
the theological school called “Radical Orthodoxy.”
The book has one central thesis, with a few additional points added to
give greater highlight to the main point of the book. Here is the main thesis:
If Creation implies both autonomous being and entirely heteronomous
gift, while grace implies a raising of oneself as oneself to the beyond
oneself, then the natural desire of the supernatural implies the dynamic
link between the two orders that constitutes spirit, such that this link is
at once entirely an aspect of the Creation and entirely also the work,
in advance of itself, of grace which unites human creatures to the
Creator. (39)

Here is the dilemma in a nutshell: According to Aristotle, what belongs
to a nature belongs to it necessarily.Thus if man is a “rational animal,” the
faculty of rationality cannot be removed from that animal if it is still to
remain human—rationality, in other words, is necessary to humanity.
Furthermore, desires essential to the fulfillment of each nature must also
necessarily be fulfilled; otherwise the essential nature of the being in
2 One of the problems entailed in the interpretation of Vatican II in the postcon-

ciliar period stems from the fact that that epochal Council did not promulgate
an explicit teaching on nature and grace, although it clearly operated out of a
shift in perspective, one largely (almost single-handedly, one might say) effected
by Henri de Lubac, which highlights once more how deeply relevant this issue—
and this man—is for the life of the Church.
3 The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate Concerning the Supernatural by
John Milbank (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005),
117 pp. Page numbers to this book will immediately follow any quotation; all
other citations will be footnoted.

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question is frustrated, distorting and even destroying that being.Thus the
hunger for food is both necessary to animality and must be fulfilled if the
animal is to survive as the being it is.
But if the human creature is created specifically for God, and thus
desires God as part of its essence, then it would seem that such a desire
cannot stand frustrated without warping and even destroying that creature specifically as a human creature. But then what happens to the gratuity of grace? What happens to the elevation of man to a state beyond his
natural constitution if that elevation is but the seamless fulfillment of a
natural desire?
De Lubac’s solution to this perennial theological conundrum was first
to admit the paradoxicality in the juxtaposition of the two concepts of
nature and grace, a paradox that he then sought to resolve through what
Milbank rightly calls a revisionary ontology:
[De Lubac’s] account of grace and the supernatural is ontologically revisionary.The natural desire cannot be frustrated, yet it cannot be of itself
fulfilled. Human nature in its self-exceeding seems in justice to require
a gift—yet the gift of grace remains beyond all justice and all requirement.This paradox is for de Lubac only to be entertained because one
must remember that the just requirement for the gift in humanity is
itself a created gift. (30; original emphasis)

The reason that Milbank (rightly, in my opinion) finds de Lubac’s theology of grace to be so ontologically revolutionary is because de Lubac realized, perhaps more than any other theologian of the twentieth century,
that the presence of spirit in the cosmos requires a revision in the standard
terms under which debates on grace and nature took place. In other
words, spirit is a different kind of nature from the natural forms found in the
rest of the natural world, and thus requires a different kind of ontology
than Aristotle’s more biologically determined ontology can provide. To be
spirit is to be receptive; moreover, it is to be conscious of reception:
To receive spirit, according to de Lubac, is always to be conscious of
partial reception: one knows that one is not all of possible knowing and
willing and feeling and moreover that, since our share of these things is
what we are, we do not really command them, after the mode of a
recipient of possessions. Hence to will, know, and feel is to render gratitude, else we would refuse ourselves as constituted as gift. Such gratitude to an implied infinite source can only be, as gratitude, openness to
an unlimited reception from this source which is tantamount to a desire
to know the giver. (44)

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In other words, even though the invocation of the concepts of nature
and grace must rely on their own internal logic of consistently applied
terms (nature referring to what is necessary and grace to what is gratuitous), spirit too demands its own logic, one that can resolve, in a way not
done since Thomas Aquinas, the often sterile and unhelpful tractates of
the past:
Hence for de Lubac . . . the logic of spirit as gift governs both the realm
of nature and the realm of grace and the hinge between them that is
the mystery of the supernatural. Were one to allow the thesis of pure
nature, says de Lubac, no gratuity of grace would thereby be established, but only the kind of gratuity proper to a this-worldly ontic gift
offered to an already present and “ungiven” recipient. This model
cannot reach radical divine ontological gratuity. (44–45)

Again, these reflections might seem almost pointlessly abstruse; but in fact,
as we pointed out in Section I of this review, a great deal rides on them, to
such an extent that not to get them right can cause a lot of damage both
to theology and to the pastoral outreach of the Church. Moreover, the
missteps that followed in the wake of Thomas when the concept of pure
nature was introduced into his thought, missteps that de Lubac did so much
to counteract, can do much to explain the dialectic between Duns Scotus
and Martin Luther, whose irresolvability helped to contribute to the
Reformation and to the breakup of the Western Church:
[With the concept of “pure nature”] one still faces the sort of problems
which plagued all theologians after Scotus and especially those of the
seventeenth century: namely, how does the pure nature receive the
gift—of its own volition or by the gift as standing over against its natural ungivenness? The first solution is Pelagian; the second, in Lutheran
fashion, sees grace as overriding our freedom. (45)

One of the great contributions of this eminently lucid book is the way
Milbank is able to show how much was lost in this debate when the term
influentia was no longer interpreted according to the neo-Platonic
schema of participation (especially in Proclus) but was seen as merely
external influence. Using a happy image, Milbank contrasts these two
different metaphysics of causality by comparing a teenager doing her
evening’s homework as against the influence of a mystic influencing a
person’s whole approach to life’s duties:
On the older, fundamentally Proclean model, the higher and especially
the highest cause is always more deeply active at a lower level than any

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

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secondary cause. [ST I, q. 105, a. 5]. . . . But on the newer view, a higher
cause operating on a lower level is just “one other” causal factor—like
homework set by a teacher for the evening which is only one factor,
alongside the demands of boyfriends and girlfriends, what’s on downtown, etc., determining how the evening will actually be spent. It is
quite unlike the instructions of a mystical master which might “inform”
the entire way one spent the evening. (92)

It always pays to notice the metaphors used by a theologian in explaining knotty issues. For example, Bonaventure took theology on a fateful
turn when he explained the simultaneous influence of grace and free will
on the analogy of two men pulling along one barge upstream, an image
that Adolf von Harnack for one (rightly, in my view) saw as implicitly Pelagian.Thomas Aquinas, however, preferred the analogy of art (in the inclusive sense, embracing also craftwork), as lucidly explained by Milbank:
Hence Aquinas argues that intellect properly governs the whole cosmos
and that material things are there for the instrumental use of the intellect: they are the instruments of its art, such as when, to give his example, a man deploys an axe to give to some lumber the form of a bench
that he has intellectually conceived. Spirits, though, are in turn ordered
to the divine end. This then means that, whereas natural things are
governed by immanent spirit, the latter as self-governing is also directly
governed by something trans-cosmic and supernatural. . . . Because the
divine art creates spirits, God can “instrumentalize,” treat as his raw
material, even mind.Therefore, grace, one might say, is “the art of spiritgoverning.” Just as human beings fulfill, for example, the proper potential of wood by making a table and yet wood would never “tableize” by
itself, but needs to be “given” the form of table, so we are elevated (with
the angels) by a divine art that does not abolish but fulfills our nature,
though in a contingent, unexpected way. (99–100; original emphasis)

And this insight then allows Milbank to justify the central thesis of the
book, that excess of expectation can yet represent a fulfillment of deepest longing, but which yet remains entirely gratuitous (wood can hardly
“demand” to be turned into a table; yet when wood becomes table, it
receives a whole new form that is nonetheless still entirely consonant
with its nature as wood):
In this way . . . de Lubac turned the tables on his opponents.The supposition of an actual identifiable pure nature in fact ruins the articulation
of divine gratuity and can historically be shown to have done so. The
gift of deification is guaranteed by no contrast, not even with Creation,
never mind nature. How could it be, since like the Creation, it is a gift

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676

to a gift which, in this spiritual instance, the gift then gives to itself in
order to sustain its only nature? How could it be guaranteed by
contrast, since the gift of deification is so much in excess of Creation
that it entirely includes it? (46)

III
So far, so good. But Milbank’s book does not mean to be purely exegetical, brilliant as his exegesis often proves to be. For together with these
expository passages, the author also wishes to argue several other ancillary
theses, the main ones being: (1) the incompatibility of de Lubac’s theology with Pius XII’s condemnation of the denial of natura pura in his
encyclical Humani Generis; (2) the inadequacy of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s
theology over against de Lubac’s; and (3) the failure of both de Lubac and
Balthasar to let de Lubac’s revolutionary ontology influence their respective ecclesiologies.We shall take up each of these theses in turn.
1. As to Humani Generis, it is universally acknowledged among de Lubac
scholars that the French Jesuit modified the views he set forth in the
1946 edition of Surnaturel after Pius XII promulgated his encyclical
on August 12, 1950, with its famous gauntlet thrown down to the
proponents of the nouvelle théologie:“Others destroy the gratuity of the
supernatural order, since God, they say, cannot create intellectual
beings without ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.”4
Subsequent to that encyclical (the publication of which led the Jesuit
Order to force de Lubac to withdraw Surnaturel from circulation), de
Lubac published a vastly expanded version of his earlier study, which
came out in two volumes, Augustinianism and Modern Theology and The
Mystery of the Supernatural. As all de Lubac scholars recognize, in that
latter volume de Lubac made important concessions to the legitimacy
of the concept of pure nature, concessions that Milbank not only
regrets but finds incoherent to his genuine theory.5
Over against this objection a number of points can be registered,
not least of which is that Milbank needs to update his library, for he
uses the 1958 translation of The Mystery of the Supernatural and not
the more recent 1998 edition put out by Crossroad. Admittedly, the
latter edition still uses lucid translation by the Rosemary Sheed (with
4 In The Papal Encyclicals: 1939–1958, ed. Claudia Carlen (Raleigh: McGrath, 1981),

175–86 at no. 26.
5 “After Humani Generis, outside his historical work, de Lubac comes across as a

stuttering, somewhat traumatized theologian, only able to articulate his convictions in somewhat oblique fragments. . . . His reaction to the encyclical . . .
provoked in him severe theoretical incoherence” (7, 8).

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most of the quotes in Latin, which were left standing in the 1958
edition, now translated for monoglot students). But the new edition
also carries an important introductory essay on the significance of
the book by David L. Schindler, which contains this telling anecdote:
When Pius XII learned through de Lubac’s Superiors and the mediation of Cardinal Bea of the continuing criticisms of de Lubac, he
had Cardinal Bea send a letter to de Lubac “whose every word he
dictated,” in which he thanked de Lubac “for the work accomplished up until then” and encouraged him about continuing such
work since it “promised much fruit for the Church.”6

Furthermore, de Lubac himself did not see the encyclical as
condemning his central thesis in Surnaturel, a point he stressed in a
letter to a friend who sought his reaction to Humani Generis:
It seems to me, like many other ecclesiastical documents, unilateral;
that is almost the law of the genre; but I have read nothing in it,
doctrinally, that affects me. The only passage where I recognize an
implicit reference to me is a phrase bearing on the question of the
6 David L. Schindler, introduction, in Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Super-

natural, trans. Rosemary Sheed and John M. Pepino (New York: Crossroad
Publishing Company, 1998), xxii–xxiii. Unfortunately, Milbank does not seem to
be aware of this passage because he is using the 1967 Geoffrey Chapman edition
of the Sheed translation and not the revised 1998 version from Eerdmans (as we
will see later, this is not the only instance where the author will demonstrate that
he needs to update his library). Because of the importance of this letter from Bea
for both de Lubac’s reputation and for the right interpretation of Humani
Generis, de Lubac reproduced the letter in his Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits,
which reads as follows: “I [that is, Father Bea] am happy to be able to communicate to you that the Holy Father has accepted with truly paternal kindness and
with great joy the homage of your four volumes, which you presented to him
through my hands, along with your beautiful declaration of dispositions of faith,
obedience and affection toward the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. The Holy
Father had a lively interest in the topics of your books and particularly of the fine
work Méditation sur l’Église. He was delighted to see the scientific soundness
attested to by the numerous notes and quotations.The Holy Father asked me to
communicate his great gratitude and to tell you that he expects much more from
the talents the Lord has given you for the good of the Church. He sends you
wholeheartedly his blessing for your person, particularly for your health, and for
all your works, and he encourages you to continue with much confidence your
scientific activity from which much fruit is promised for the Church.” Cited in
Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances that Occasioned His Writings, trans.Anne Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1993), 89–90.

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Edward T. Oakes, SJ
supernatural; now it is rather curious to note that this phrase, intending to recall the true doctrine on this subject, reproduces exactly
what I said about it two years earlier in an article in Recherches de
science religieuse.7

One could, I suppose, argue that both letters were meant to be
palliative and do not really address the core of the issue, but are only
trying to let a sleeping dragon continue his exhausted slumbers. But
since Milbank does not bother letting Pius XII and de Lubac speak
for themselves here (he quotes neither letter), he cannot take up that
argument. But since he clearly sees Pius and de Lubac as adopting
entirely antithetical positions, let us assume that would be his argument and see if the issue between them is really all that irresolvable.
First of all, it must be stressed that the pope is dealing with a pure
hypothetical: He is condemning a denial of what God could (but in
fact did not) do. De Lubac, however, is dealing solely with what God
did do. Nor is this distinction between ex hypothesi and de facto as
irrelevant or as hairsplitting as it might seem, otherwise philosophers
would never be able to devise thought-experiments to illuminate
their positions.Take, for example, the possibility of intelligent life on
other planets, the confirmation of which some think would represent another body-blow to the Christian conception of God’s
universal salvific will for the whole of the universe, an even greater
crisis than that represented by the discovery of long-established civilizations in the Far East by the missionaries of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Here an a priori limit placed (by us!) on what
God could do would directly affect how Christians would react to
such a discovery.8
7 Ibid., 71; unfortunately, de Lubac does not cite either the sentence in Humani

Generis or where that same phrase may be found in his writings.
8 I am not making any statement here about the likelihood or unlikelihood of

their being intelligent life on other planets, on which question I am entirely
agnostic, except for maybe the hunch that if there is such life, we are not likely
to ever hear about it, at least if intelligent life on other planets has evolved in the
same way as it did on this planet. For whatever else evolution teaches, it tells us
how sheerly provisional organic life is on earth, how late comes intelligence and
how self-destructive it is. Given the constraints of the speed of light and the vast
distances involved in communicating from one star to another (even within one
galaxy!), direct two-way communications between interplanetary life forms
seems precluded. Furthermore, some scientists argue on de facto grounds that the
unique contours of the solar system are absolutely essential for organic evolution
and are not likely to be repeated anywhere else in the universe. See Simon
Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge:

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

679

Needless to say, the debate surrounding the issue of pure nature
was not conducted with this issue of extraterrestrial intelligence in
mind, which I raise only to point to its later (possible) future relevance and to why one should not dismiss Pius XII’s concerns too
readily. At all events, and as everyone recognizes, the concept of pure
nature was introduced to provide a conceptual safeguard to the concept
of the supernatural, which by definition must be gratuitous if it is to
represent the free mercy of God freely bestowed. And this conceptual
utility of the concept of pure nature de Lubac did not deny, a point Milbank
does his best to obscure but which de Lubac himself openly avows:
The question is thus a circumscribed one, but none the less important for that. In effect, one of the chief motives that have led modern
theology to develop its hypothesis of “pure nature” to such an extent
that it has become the basis of all speculation about man’s last end
has been the anxiety to establish (as against the apparent deviations
of Augustinianism) the supernatural as being a totally free gift. In
practice it has succeeded. One may wonder, however, whether a more
rigorous reflection would not fault the theory from this point of
view. It would not be the only example in the history of theology
of a theory which, though achieving its immediate goal in practice, did not
succeed in satisfying the mind from every aspect. Since, then, our
way of looking at things today cannot be the same at all points as
that of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians, one may
ask whether the theory elaborated by some of them can be adequate
as a permanent safeguard for the dogma of the complete gratuitousness of the supernatural. Is it sufficient? Does it not require at least
some modification? Without being a slave to philosophical fashion,
without servilely accepting every new system of thought, one
cannot prevent time from doing its work. One cannot, if one is to
act intelligently—and theology requires that we should—refuse to
answer real problems in the form in which they are presented. It is
not this or that individual who dictates these changes in the formulation of problems; it is not something we ourselves do. They are
imposed upon us as upon everyone else.To recognize them does not
involve any conniving with the spirit of the age, nor any relativism
in regard to doctrine: without recognizing them, one is unlikely to
be able to say anything relevant at all. As will be seen, we can in fact
return through them to the most traditional lines of thought.9
Cambridge University Press, 2003). If, however, one assumes, pace Conway Morris,
that the extraordinarily large number of stars makes intelligent life likely, one
must still concede that the distances entailed make communication between
intelligent life forms in the universe virtually impossible. At that point, then, the
concept of pure nature might not prove to be so pointless after all.
9 De Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, 53–54, emphases added.

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Edward T. Oakes, SJ

Here perhaps is the most nuanced yet clearest and most succinct
statement from de Lubac on his reaction to Humani Generis and the
controversy that it provoked. Concepts, after all, have a life of their
own; and what serves one generation well can take on implications
they did not have (or were not perceived to have) when first
proposed.10 And that is the real issue. What began as a conceptual
distinction, to make the gratuity of grace stand out more clearly, took
on a life of its own and became attached to what Newman calls “the
prejudices of birth, education, place and party” and gradually became
something different, much different: an implied apologetics for secular man! In one of those reversals that make history largely an
account of ironic outcomes (history always obeys the Law of Unintended Consequences), the concept of pure nature became a kind of
theological bacillus that started to eat away at the presuppositions of
the Credo itself, as de Lubac makes clear in this telling passage:
It is said that a universe might have existed in which man, though
without necessarily excluding any other desire, would have his
rational ambitions limited to some lower, purely human, beatitude.
Certainly I do not deny it. But having said that, one is obliged to
admit—indeed one is automatically affirming—that in our world as
it is this is not the case: in fact the “ambitions” of man as he is cannot
be limited in this way. Further, the word “ambitions” is no longer
the right one, nor, as one must see even more clearly, is the word
“limits.” In me, a real and personal human being, in my concrete
nature—that nature I have in common with all real men, to judge
by what my faith teaches me, and regardless of what is or is not
revealed to me either by reflective analysis or by reasoning—the
“desire to see God” cannot be permanently frustrated without an
essential suffering. To deny this is to undermine my entire Credo.
For is not this, in effect, the definition of the “pain of the damned”?
And consequently—at least in appearance—a good and just God
10 Even perfectly orthodox ideas can end up as distortions when the constraints of

history and human nature act upon them, as Cardinal Newman was one of the
first to see: “Considering that Christians, from the nature of the case, live under
the bias of the doctrines, and in the very midst of the facts, and during the
process of the controversies, which are to be the subject of criticism, since they
are exposed to the prejudices of birth, education, place, personal attachment,
engagements, and party, it can hardly be maintained that in matter of fact a true
development carries with it always its own certainty even to the learned, or that
history, past or present, is secure from the possibility of a variety of interpretations.” John Henry Newman, “An Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine” (1845), in Conscience, Consensus, and the Development of Doctrine (New
York: Doubleday, 1992), 101.

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681

could hardly frustrate me, unless I, through my own fault, turn away
from him by choice.The infinite importance of the desire implanted
in me by my Creator is what constitutes the infinite importance of
the drama of human existence.11

These passages, one should recall, come from the very book that
Milbank claims represents a declension from the bolder statements in
Surnaturel, a devolution of boldness allegedly due to de Lubac’s
craven obeisance to Humani Generis. On the contrary, de Lubac is
only clarifying and nuancing a position he consistently maintained,
but which required a more subtle formulation to take account of
what he had never denied but which needed stressing after the
encyclical’s publication. And what was there to deny? Certainly, de
Lubac had no intention of denying history. For did not Aquinas say
“Every intellect naturally desires the vision of the divine substance”
(SCG III, 57)? Did he not assert “Homo factus erat ad videndum
Deum non in principio, sed in ultimo suae perfectionis” (De veritate,
q. 18, a. 1, ad 7)? In other words,
this desire is not some “accident” in me. It does not result from some
peculiarity, possibly alterable, of my individual being, or from some
historical contingency whose effects are more or less transitory. . . .
It is in me as a result of my belonging to humanity as it is, that
humanity which is, as we say, “called.” For God’s call is constitutive.
My finality, which is expressed by this desire, is inscribed upon my
very being as it has been put into this universe by God. And, by
God’s will, I now have no other genuine end, no end really assigned
to my nature or presented for my free acceptance under any guise,
except that of “seeing God.”12

2. Linked to Milbank’s thesis that the views of Pius XII and de Lubac
are incompatible is another claim: that the theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar, if not directly incompatible with de Lubac’s theology (as it
was, allegedly, with the teachings of Pius XII), is at least not as consistently brilliant and revolutionary as de Lubac’s. This judgment is
partly an outcome of some of Milbank’s more extreme formulations
of de Lubac’s achievement, such as this startling claim late in his
book: “Arguably he is, along with Sergei Bulgakov, one of the two
truly great theologians of the twentieth century” (104). Likewise,
according to Milbank,“it can now be seen that the Surnaturel of 1946
was almost as important an event of cultural revision as Being and
11 De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 54, emphases added.
12 Ibid., 54–55.

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Time or the Philosophical Investigations” (64). Given these large claims,
one is not surprised that the author would judge Balthasar’s theology
as not quite measuring up.
But leaving aside the extremism of Milbank’s admiration for de
Lubac, which I would not wish to take away from him (for one
thing, it helps motivate the author to give a sympathetic, and at times
brilliant, analysis of de Lubac’s fundamental intent), I believe his
denigration of Balthasar in relation to de Lubac will not stand
scrutiny. Early on, Milbank even admits that the phrase that he used
for the title of his book, The Suspended Middle, comes from Balthasar
and is used to describe the very thesis that Milbank will use to
describe de Lubac’s more important contribution.13
Still, Balthasar, both as an interpreter of de Lubac and as a theologian in his own right, is judged to fall short of Milbank’s admittedly
extraordinarily high standards.This judgment might seem eccentric,
even perverse,14 until one finally realizes why Milbank so admires de
Lubac and why he judges Balthasar to be so inadequate: for Milbank’s
admiration for de Lubac seems ultimately grounded, at least as I read
his text, in his insistence that de Lubac was really the first advocate,
avant la lettre, of Radical Orthodoxy: “In effect, the surnaturel thesis
deconstructs the possibility of dogmatical theology as previously
understood in modern times, just as it equally deconstructs the possibility of philosophical theology or even of a clearly autonomous
philosophy tout court” (11). All of these assertions represent key
themes in the Radically Orthodox argument,15 but whether they
13 “De Lubac soon realized that his position moved into a suspended middle in

which he could not practice any philosophy without its transcendence into theology, but also any theology without its essential inner structure of philosophy.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac:An Overview, trans. Joseph
Fessio, SJ and Michael M.Waldstein (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 15.
14 I found Milbank’s exaggerated enthusiasm for de Lubac amusing because
Balthasar himself sometimes indulges in counterintuitive praise, as when he
called Gustav Siewerth the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. A
sympathetic interpretation of that judgment would concede that Balthasar is not
referring to Siewerth’s influence (otherwise Heidegger or Wittgenstein would
have to be given the nod) but to this philosopher’s position:Thomist rather than
Heideggerian or Wittgensteinian. But if that is Balthasar’s point, should not the
nod have gone to Etienne Gilson? Similarly, if Milbank wishes to praise de Lubac
over, say, Karl Barth, fine; but if that is the issue, does he really wish to claim that
de Lubac is a greater theologian than Balthasar?
15 See John Milbank,“Only Theology Overcomes Metaphysics,” in idem, The Word
Made Strange:Theology, Language, Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 36–52.

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

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represent the real de Lubac is certainly a dubitable assertion, especially given his later work in ecclesiology (on which more later).
No wonder, then, that Milbank denigrates Balthasar’s own theology, not to mention Balthasar’s interpretation of de Lubac, for this is
hardly a man of whom it could be said that he “deconstructs the
possibility of dogmatical theology.” No wonder, too, that Milbank
will have this to say of Balthasar:
His concessions to Humani generis were arguably more real and
substantial than those of de Lubac,16 as evidenced in the way his
work more readily assumes the idioms of metaphysics, foundational
theology, and positive dogmatics. This is no mere formal contrast: a
corresponding substantive difference emerges in the way von
Balthasar’s dogmatics seems to float free of ontological conceptualizations into a “mythical” realm that is highly voluntarist and personalist, and in the end at times only tendentiously orthodox. (13)

These passages occur in the opening chapter of the book, where
Milbank is adumbrating themes that will be taken up in more detail
later. So one must turn to the sixth chapter (“de Lubac and von
Balthasar Contrasted”) to see the argument in detail, although even
here, partly due no doubt to the brevity of the book, there really is
not so much of an argument as there is a catena of raw assertions,
which I think should best be listed in order before one sees whether
these obiter dicta measure up to Balthasar’s texts (which are only
skimpily cited by Milbank). A lower-case letter is attached to each
quote for ease of later reference:
(a) For von Balthasar this issue is sometimes one of “how much” to grant
to grace and “how much” to nature. But for de Lubac of course there
can be no such question. Indeed that is his whole point. (67)
(b) The always paradoxical French theologian, much more consistently
than von Balthasar, insisted on a dialectical genealogy: it was not,
according to de Lubac, the properly theological celebration of Man
but the pious concern to conserve the gratuity of grace that engendered the monstrous titanic child of atheist humanism. (68)
(c) There is . . . [a] transition in Balthasar from aesthetics to dramatics
[which results in] an increasingly mythological rather than ontological register. (69)
16 Milbank also claims that Balthasar is inconsistent here, for Balthasar also accuses

de Lubac (as Milbank rightly notes) of conceding too much to Humani generis.
But that is just what Milbank accused de Lubac of doing! So perhaps the inconsistency is Milbank’s, who can hardly have it both ways.

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Edward T. Oakes, SJ
(d) Balthasar’s view [is] that the aesthetic, unlike the dramatic, is not
interpersonal and interactive. Drama as interpersonal must mean
either the real-world drama or else the internal dynamics of the
stage; it cannot refer to the relation between a drama and its audience where the edge of the stage is conventionally inviolable.
Clearly for Balthasar this “passive spectacle” aspect of the theatre is
coincident with its merely aesthetic aspect. But such a notion
betrays a profoundly Kantian attitude to the aesthetic, where the
paradigm of the beautiful is the lonely spectator looking at a
picture, not the participant in a dance or the dweller within a building (to invoke Gadamer’s critique of the Kantian paradigm). (72)
(e) For what becomes ultimate within this perspective is the invisible
divine decree and our interior response to it. (The lack of any real
historical, political, and ecclesial dimension to Balthasar’s dramatics
fits in with this picture.) (73)
(f) One can argue that such a division is alien to the spirit of de Lubac,
and that von Balthasar entertains it just because he ultimately encourages an abandonment of the metaphysics of cosmic harmony in favor
of a Gnostic hypostasization of the violence of the Cross. (73)
(g) The ontological difference is forgotten when von Balthasar speaks
of a real “gain” to the Trinity from the suffering humanity of Jesus
(even if for von Balthasar the Trinity has decided to receive from
the Creation what it might have received within itself). (74)

Some of these statements are clearly wrongheaded; others are
intriguing but need further amplification; and others are perhaps true
accounts of Balthasar’s thought but are defensible on their own
terms, independently of whether or not de Lubac or Milbank would
agree with them.
Surely the most absurd claim in this catena of assertions would be (d),
for a more complete misunderstanding of both Balthasar’s aesthetics and
dramatics could hardly be imagined. First of all, Balthasar’s sympathetic
use of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author in his Prolegomena to his five-volume Theo-Drama 17 and of Bertolt Brecht’s “alienation technique” in Creator Spirit, the third volume of his Explorations in
Theology,18 shows that he in no way considers the boundary between
proscenium and audience hall to be inviolate. In fact, he explicitly says
17 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama:Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 1, Prolegom-

ena, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 244–248.
18 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Bertolt Brecht: The Question About the Good,” in

idem, Explorations in Theology, vol. 3, Creator Spirit, trans. Brian McNeil, CRV (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 413–59.

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

685

that the transition from worldly drama to theodrama entails the spectator being yanked up on stage to play his part.19 Balthasarian aesthetics is not remotely Kantian but is inherently involving, as he makes
abundantly clear in this passage early on in the first volume of The
Glory of the Lord:
Before the beautiful—no, not really before but within the beautiful—
the whole person quivers. He not only “finds” the beautiful moving;
rather, he experiences himself as being moved and possessed by it.
The more complete this experience is, the less does a person seek
and enjoy only the delight that comes through the senses or even
through any act of his own; the less also does he reflect on his own
acts and states. Such a person has been taken up wholesale into the
reality of the beautiful and is now fully subordinate to it, determined
by it, animated by it.20

One of the most acute of Balthasar’s interpreters, Aidan Nichols,
alerts us to a bit of slang used in teenage jargon, when an adolescent
girl will say that a cute boy “sends” her, which amusingly gets at just
what Balthasar means by the experience of divine beauty:
The one who has been encountered by beauty is not only challenged in his freedom, he is also branded for life, and thus becomes
conscious of election.The elect person feels obliged to proclaim the
Logos. Having a glimpse of the divine beauty sends the one thus
privileged not only in the idiomatic sense of rendering him ecstatic
(a coining for which we are indebted to the culture of Pop) but also
in the theological sense of mandating him to go forth on a mission.
The wonder of Being, communicating itself in the beautiful, tends
of its nature to produce dramatic heroes—however ordinary (or
extraordinary) their missions may be.21

A passage like this should also suffice to refute another of
Milbank’s peremptory “descriptions” of Balthasar’s thought: subthesis
(e), that all Balthasar has given us is a theology of an “invisible divine
decree and our interior response to it.”As to his claim of there being
19 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama:Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 2, Dramatis

Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1990), 54–62.
20 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord:A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1, Seeing
the Form, trans. Erasmo Leivà-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 247.
21 Aidan Nichols, OP, No Bloodless Myth: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Dramatics
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 5–6, original emphasis.

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Edward T. Oakes, SJ

a “lack of any real historical, political, and ecclesial dimension to
Balthasar’s dramatics,” the claim can be refuted by even a cursory
glance at his books A Theology of History, A Theological Anthropology,
and the fourth volume of Explorations in Theology, called Spirit and
Institution, which treat each of these issues in turn.
More mystifying is claim (c), that Balthasar’s theology becomes
more “mythological” (whatever that is) than “ontological” when he
moves from his aesthetics to his theo-dramatics, an odd claim coming
from someone who is so Radically Orthodox that he can praise de
Lubac precisely because, in a line we have already encountered, “the
surnaturel thesis deconstructs the possibility of dogmatical theology as
previously understood in modern times, just as it equally deconstructs the possibility of philosophical theology or even of a clearly
autonomous philosophy tout court” (11)! But as to the direct charge
of Balthasar’s alleged remythologization, we may cite in refutation
this analysis by Gerard O’Hanlon:
Balthasar accepts the basic position [of God as Pure Act], with
important differences however. These differences are due largely to
his understanding of the way in which theology influences philosophy—and, in particular, to the way in which a theology of trinitarian divine love may affect a philosophy of God as Pure Act.Within
this latter context he retains the foundational philosophical conclusion that there can be no created change or suffering in God. He
does so because he accepts the reasoning which comes to such
conclusions, and judges that the metaphysical system supporting
these reasons is adequate to account for an understanding of the
finite world and to point in the direction of its infinite creator.That
God is simple would accordingly be acceptable to Balthasar at a
basic level. He suggests, however, that the inner-trinitarian relations
involve a receptivity and “ever-more” within the Pure Act and
simplicity of God which is somewhat analogous to created potency,
becoming, change and suffering. In doing so he goes beyond the use
of the Trinity as support for the fact that God can be love without
creation to a use which transforms the philosophical notion of
being. . . . It is an utterly coherent position which has the great
advantage of obviating any reduction of God to the mythological
level of a changing Zeus or Apollo, ultimately as helplessly
embroiled in the ambiguities of world history as the devotees to
whom they respond.22

22 Gerard F. O’Hanlon, The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von

Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 147.

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

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In other words, Milbank is confused on two fronts, both of which
reinforce the other: Far from abdicating his philosophical responsibilities for the sake of mythology, Balthasar accepts the deliverances
of philosophical theology for his own work; but (in a manner neatly
paralleled in de Lubac!) he also has no hesitation in turning the tables
over to let theology instruct philosophy—and in a way that reforms
philosophical theology without becoming mythological.
Balthasar, in other words, is consistently theological, which should
itself make us suspicious of Milbank’s further charge (f) that
one can argue that such a division [between interior response and
historical mission] is alien to the spirit of de Lubac, and that von
Balthasar entertains it just because he ultimately encourages an
abandonment of the metaphysics of cosmic harmony in favor of a
Gnostic hypostasization of the violence of the Cross. (73)

One suspects that Milbank’s patently binary approach to de Lubac
(pope vs. persecuted Jesuit) is also determining his contrast between
Balthasar and de Lubac, with de Lubac representing solely the
harmony side, with Balthasar spinning out a theology whole-cloth
from an alleged Gnostic hypostasization of the violence of the Cross
(an intriguing phrase, that, but left quite undefined).
But given Milbank’s almost exclusive focus on de Lubac’s contribution to the nature/grace debate, the real issue where Milbank
claims Balthasar has misunderstood both de Lubac and the theology
of grace comes from the first accusation (a), that “for von Balthasar
this issue is sometimes one of ‘how much’ to grant to grace and ‘how
much’ to nature. But for de Lubac of course there can be no such
question. Indeed that is his whole point.” Again, the misunderstandings of Balthasar’s theology here are total—and made all the easier for
Milbank to express both because they are so sweepingly formulated
and are so little undergirded by any citation of texts from Balthasar’s
writings on the topic.
So what did Balthasar actually hold on this topic? It is of course
not the purpose of this review to present his theology of nature and
grace in all its contours; but an accurate presentation of his theology
here can also illuminate exactly what he learned from de Lubac and
in this way highlight the latter’s achievement in a way less exaggerated than what Milbank has managed to convey.
First of all, Balthasar accepts de Lubac’s (essentially historical) point
that Thomas Aquinas knew only one end for nature, a supernatural

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Edward T. Oakes, SJ

one.23 But contrary to the impression left by that result of historical
research, this essentially historical point does not necessarily render
later theological distinctions invalid. Using a fascinating analogy
drawn from the Christological debates of the fifth century, Balthasar
shows how the concept of pure nature might have evolved in a way
that would not have been recognized by earlier theologians yet which
still retains its validity although it goes beyond the intent of Aquinas:
It is a well-established fact that the crucial theses of Baius, Jansen and
Quesnel that the Church condemned can be found, almost word for
word, in Augustine and to some extent in the canons of the Council of Orange (A.D. 527).The Church, however was not contradicting herself here any more than she once did at the Council of
Chalcedon (453) when she explicitly rejected the very formulate of
the one nature of Christ (mia physis) that she had previously
approved at the Council of Ephesus (431). For the expression “one
nature in Christ” at Ephesus meant: Christ was one single being in
whom God and man were bonded not only through love and inclination (“morally”) but also ontically (“physically”). But when Eutyches sought to interpret this unity as a fusion of the natures of God
and man, the Council of Chalcedon had to refine the conceptual
material and distinguish between nature and person in Christ.24

Nor is this analogy merely a formal one, because both developments
required a refinement in the concept of nature in order to avoid the
heretical implications of a too one-sided interpretation of the meaning
of the word “nature,” as Balthasar explains in this lucid analysis:
Now a similar development occurred in the history of dogma
between the time of Augustine and Baius, at least in outline: in the
first case of the Chalcedonian shift to speak of two natures where
previously Christ had been defined in terms of one nature, the issue
was the Christological concept of nature as the presupposition for the
true soteriological unity in Christ. In the second example, the issue
was the universal and theological concept of nature as the presupposition for the charismatic union between God and man in Adam and
in every human being endowed with grace. In other words, it was
precisely because there was a need to understand the bonding that
23 “Henri de Lubac in his ‘Études historiques,’ which he published as Surnaturel

(1946), discussed this issue so lucidly (see esp. 431–80) that we no longer need
to recapitulate the mains lines of his argument.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, The
Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes, SJ (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 267, n1.
24 Ibid., 270.

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

689

took place in grace between God and man that God and the creature
had to be differentiated in the pure concept of nature.25

This concession might seem to confirm all of Milbank’s worries
that Balthasar has missed the deepest import of de Lubac’s researches,
that the concept of pure nature has unintentionally given a theological justification for secular man’s sense that he has no need of God’s
grace for a fulfilled and fulfilling human life. But this would be like
saying the Council of Ephesus illegitimately used its concept of nature
because later heretics misused its definition. Similarly, the moves by
later theologians to counteract Baius can be seen as legitimate in their
own time, but they harbor problems for later ages, which can only be
counteracted using further and more careful distinctions.
In that regard, I believe Balthasar represents a real advance in the
debate, for he makes a move that, it would seem, de Lubac never made,
or at least never made as fully as Balthasar did: the insight that man’s
nature is essentially a culture-creating nature. In fact, Milbank praises de
Lubac precisely for not making this move, at least not forthrightly:
More explicitly than de Lubac [Balthasar] saw that the “middle”
sphere of continuous event and sign is precisely the sphere of
culture. He also was a Christian humanist; without Christian
culture, he argued, there is only a nominal, not a mediated grace,
which must remain uncomprehended and without real effect. (13)

It remains baffling to me why this would count as a criticism. For
what has so often been missing from the nature/grace debate in
Augustine, Aquinas, Suarez, Cajetan, Molina, and even to a lesser
extent in de Lubac (except perhaps in his Drama of Atheist Humanism)
is a sense that culture is so determinative (though not all-determinative) as part of man’s end.Where else does culture arise except from
man’s spiritual nature? And it is precisely a look at culture that shows
how we can understand grace operative throughout the kingdom of
nature. Drawing on the insights of the nineteenth-century Italian
theologian Domenico Palmieri (1829–1909), Balthasar notes that the
very gradations of nature point to a grace-determined world:
How would it work if we used the term “claim” as the criterion for
the content of the concept of nature? The whole of creation and its
order is undoubtedly the free gift of God to which no creature has
a “claim.” Only within the already posited world order does this
25 Ibid., 271.

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Edward T. Oakes, SJ
concept have any meaning. But even here there remains the widest
latitude for something like “grace.” Palmieri enumerates five
moments that can throw light on this (purely natural) “grace”:
1. Every act of conceding that something is “necessary” in nature
belongs to an infinite hierarch of gradations, of which each one
can seem like a “grace” to the other, narrower gradations.
2. The de facto immense wealth of creation, for example, of the
animals and plants ordered to man, has a specific “graced” character as such.
3. Much that corresponds to human nature in general is not meant
for each individual, for example, bodily and mental integrity,
prosperity, and so on, especially since certain natural laws
exclude the possibility that each isolated individual can partake
of all these goods.They are thus, for the individual [who is lucky
enough to possess them in prosperity], “grace” in a preeminent
way.
4. God could have ordered the world in many other different ways:
that he chose this total arrangement that furnishes so much
beneficence to the individual as well as to the whole can
certainly be characterized as a “grace.”
5. Finally the whole environment, necessarily ordered to an innate
dynamic as such, is de facto and constantly contingent and so has
a “gracious” character to it in all its details.26

An example drawn from Peter Shaeffer’s play Amadeus can, I think,
illustrate the point nicely. The play recounts the jealousy of Antonio
Salieri, appointed court musician by the Austro-Hungarian emperor
in Vienna—an appointment that Salieri attributes to his private vow
to God to be a faithful Christian, and especially to keep his marriage
vows in a court culture not exactly known for its high regard for
marital fidelity. But with the arrival of Mozart on the scene, Salieri
suddenly realizes that he has just enough talent to recognize Mozart’s
genius—and his own mediocrity.Yet the young adult Mozart acts like
an immature adolescent and traduces all the norms of decorum that
Salieri has maintained in his bargain with God. It is not fair! God has
given Mozart the “grace” of genius gratuitously!
The play was written well after Balthasar’s Barth book (although in
his later Prolegomena to his five-volume Theo-Drama, he does cite
other plays that make roughly the same point, especially Shakespeare’s
26 Ibid., 277–78; the numbered points are drawn from Domenico Palmieri, Tracta-

tus de gratia divina actualis (Galopiae: M. Alberts, 1885), 7–8.

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

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Measure for Measure), but Shaeffer’s point nicely confirms Balthasar’s
more nuanced view that the nature of culture continually reflects a
kind of “natural gratuity” in man’s Lebenswelt.27
Drawing on these natural manifestations of a kind of “natural” grace
in culture, Balthasar is then free to come to the same insight that
Milbank praises de Lubac for having reached earlier. As this crucial
passage makes clear, Balthasar and de Lubac are in complete agreement:
The positive definition of grace can only be given through grace itself. God
must himself reveal what he is within himself. The creature cannot
delimit itself in relation to this Unknown reality. Nor can the creature, as a theologically understood “pure” nature, ever know wherein
it specifically is different from God. Only the light of revelation can
draw this distinction and make this clear—not a philosophy that
ascends from the world to God, or even (especially!) the mysticism
of a Plotinus. But philosophy cannot do it even where what is called
its charis has already been touched by the light of the reality of revelation. If we are to understand grace in the theological sense strictly
as coming “from above to us below,” then it does not suffice for us
to settle on the one meaning of “freedom from debt” as a definition
of grace. Even creation and still more everything within it is undeserved and holds no claim of debt. Grace is a participation in God’s
own life and, in common with creation, it also has—secondarily but
necessarily—the character of being free of debt, unmerited.28

Although it can be no part of the brief of this review of Milbank’s
book to provide a fully fleshed-out delineation of Balthasar’s view of
the nature/grace problem, these quotes show, I believe, that Milbank’s
views on the alleged tension between de Lubac and Balthasar suffer
27 The French theologian Jean Daujat makes roughly the same point, that the events

of the social world are both a parable and a reflection of grace (and its absence):
“As we understand the deeper meaning of the word ‘grace’ [in ordinary language],
we see that it always implies that human beings are not walled up, enclosed, imprisoned in themselves, in what separates them from others, with their exacting
requirements and well-defined rights, but that there is intercourse and frankness
between them: that they are open with one another, and there is some mutual selfgiving to another, and a sharing of something in common. The world of Sartre,
with its abyss of nothingness between men, is a world without grace. Grace can be
found only in a world of generosity.The Marxist world of struggle and hatred is a
world without grace, for grace can be found only in a world where love is included
in the very fundamental concepts of life, where even the existence of material
things is a springing forth of love.” Jean Daujat, A Theology of Grace, trans. a nun of
Stanbrook Abbey (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1959), 12.
28 Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, 279, original emphasis.

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from a superficial view of the latter’s views, especially when
compared to the much more sympathetic (if also at time problematic) analysis he devotes to the former.29
3. Finally, there is an issue that binds Balthasar much more closely to de
Lubac than Milbank would prefer: their similar ecclesiologies. In fact,
where Milbank becomes most critical of de Lubac is in his ecclesiology, which is perhaps not surprising, since he thinks Pius XII and
de Lubac were once poles apart but that de Lubac “caved in” to the
pope after Humani Generis and by doing so only made his theology
incoherent.
But at least Milbank sees, rightly, that Balthasar’s and de Lubac’s
visions of the Church are animated by the same spirit, even if for that
very reason are equally to be deplored:
Yet the lacunae in [de Lubac’s] work were partly shaped by his battles
with authority. Is there not some contradiction here between his and
von Balthasar’s formal capitulation to papal authority on the one
hand, and their ecclesiology on the other, which stressed the
primacy of the sacramental influence of the bishops as Eucharistic
mediators? (104)

That rhetorical question only works if one first buys into the
common motif of all liberal ecclesiologies without exception: that
the institutional and juridical aspects of the Church are always and by
essence incompatible with the charismatic and sacramental. Again,
because this review must deal more with de Lubac than Balthasar, I
29 Once again, Milbank needs to update his personal library. Part of the reason for his

superficial analysis of Balthasar’s thought is that he relies on the outmoded translation of Balthasar’s Barth book done by John Drury in 1971. However, that translation, besides its numerous inaccuracies, left out about one-fourth of the original
German—and precisely those technical passages treating the nature/grace debate
in Catholic thought (presumably because the translator or publisher thought them
too arcane for the English-speaking reader), an omission that irked Balthasar.After
the book went out of print and the rights reverted to the author, the publisher
(Holt, Reinhart and Winston) sought to reissue it, but Balthasar refused and gave
the rights over the Ignatius Press, which then commissioned an unabridged translation from the author of this review. I hope the reader of this review will permit
its author a small bleat of pain that the considerable worked entailed in translating
this demanding text proved to be in vain when it came time for Milbank to use
de Lubac to attack Balthasar so tendentiously and inaccurately. I am sure that if he
updates his library, Milbank will discover how unnuanced and schematic his juxtaposition of Balthasar and de Lubac proves to be, as the above passages (which do
not appear in the Drury translation) make abundantly clear.

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

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shall pass over Balthasar’s ecclesiology, except to say that he devoted
most of the fourth volume of his Explorations in Theology (called Spirit
and Institution) to an explanation of why the charismatic and intuitional aspects of the Church are mutually dependent and mutually
reinforcing. But for de Lubac I would say that to ignore his ecclesiological reflections written subsequent to Humani Generis (in particular The Splendor of the Church) would be to miss an essential aspect
to his theology of grace.
This becomes particularly evident in de Lubac’s critique of trends
following in the wake of Vatican II. For in the postconciliar years he
spotted an error at work, which, for him, was the mirror-opposite of
the extrinsicism he fought before the Council: the opposite, but
twin, error of intrinsicism. Intrinsicism comes to the opposite
conclusion as extrinsicism but uses the same logic: Instead of preserving the gratuity of grace by positing a “pure nature,” which then takes
on a life of its own, unintentionally giving theological justification
for secular independence of religion, intrinsicism so fuses nature and
grace that anything natural becomes, by the very fact that it is natural, a form of grace, which again justifies secular man!30
Again we are faced with the irony of history: Although it uses a
different minor premise in its syllogism, intrinsicism ends up giving
a mirror-image justification for secular independence from God.
Admittedly, intrinsicism comes to the opposite conclusion from that
drawn by extrinsicism—that grace more or less automatically wells
up from within nature rather than confronting it extrinsically from
the outside—but, in one of those ironies that have marked the life of
the Church after Vatican II, this “naturalized grace” ends up justifying secular independence from religion, too, a trend that deeply
worried de Lubac after the Council:
A necessary reaction [to the anti-Modernist exaggerations prior to
the Council], a precondition for the necessary “opening” [called for
30 In other words, both intrinsicism and extrinsicism share an implied major prem-

ise, that grace and nature can be placed on a continuum.This might seem obvious in the case of intrinsicism and surprising in the case of extrinsicism, but
Susan Wood has caught out the implied presupposition in her succinct account
of de Lubac’s theology of grace:“One of the problems with the concept of pure
nature and extrinsic, superimposed supernatural finality is that there is a
tendency to see in the supernatural a continuation of the natural.That is, nature
and supernature are conceived of as two species of the same genus.” Susan Wood,
“The Nature-Grace Problematic Within Henri de Lubac’s Christological Paradox,” Communio: International Catholic Review 19 (1992): 395.

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by John XXIII], was taken to be revolutionary, and, in public opinion, which was very poorly informed, it was the tradition of the
Church herself, with all her fertile but misunderstood richness, that
seemed to be crushed. Many were no longer attentive to the very
work of the Council, to the substance of its teachings, to the spirit
that emanated from it: for them, through them, it was a new
“modernity,” in restless excitement but without a compass, that
triumphed over a petrified modernity.What can be said, since then,
of the new powers of the day, who, in the reverse situation, suffer
from a blindness that is more dense and all the more confident!31

Surely any interpreter of de Lubac cannot fail to notice his deep
passion for the Church.32 But Milbank does more than slight de
Lubac’s ecclesiology. Insofar as he takes note of it (and that only
cursorily), he sees it as the snag that threatens to undo de Lubac’s
achievement, and Balthasar’s, too: “Is there not some contradiction
here between his and von Balthasar’s formal capitulation to papal
authority on the one hand, and their ecclesiology on the other,
which stressed the primacy of the sacramental influence of the bishops as Eucharistic mediators?” (104). I, however, rather think that it
is Milbank’s ecclesiology of binary opposites (to the extent he reveals
it in his laconic asides) that threatens to undo his critique of de Lubac
and Balthasar. Even worse, he comes close to Gnosticism himself
(ironically, given his accusations of that heresy against Balthasar)
when he equates the eschatological Church with the Godhead. At
least he seems to make that Gnostic equation, if I understand him
correctly in this gnomic (and rather clumsy) passage:
There is a failure here to think of all the Church, in her bridal
essence, as actively as well as passively Sophianic, as able potentially
to meet the Bridegroom with an equal deified response since the
Church, as the heavenly divine temple ( Jerusalem who always abides
with God above), is, one might venture to say, collectively, primordially and eschatologically enhypostasized by the Holy Spirit. (106)
31 Henri de Lubac, “A Glance at My Work (1975),” in idem, At the Service of the

Church, 145.
32 Another example from the same essay quoted above: “I see with sadness the

spread of an indifference, when it is not a flaunted scorn or a resentment full of
bitter hatred, with respect to this tradition [of the Church], which alone has the
promise of life and of renewal because it is the bearer of eternity. . . . How I
would like to be able to try out with the same persuasive tone to those of my
brethren who are letting themselves be seduced by this music of perdition what
in the last century Newman declared to his contemporaries!” (Ibid., 146).

On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle

695

Nor are the reader’s worries here much assuaged, indeed they are
greatly exacerbated, by the openly avowed Gnostic implications of this
eternalizing of the Church: “This interplay [between God and the
now-divinized Church], this essence, is also the active/passive (infinitely dynamic yet infinitely replete) Sophia which names the Christian Godhead (in its unified essence) as ‘goddess’ ” (107).The Church is
eternal, divine and feminine—and also so identified with the Godhead
as to make God, too, eternal, divine . . . and feminine! These passages,
as I say, are gnomic in their suggestiveness but clearly Gnostic in their
implications (a problem that afflicts more than one Radically Orthodox theologian, in my opinion). Milbank is the very last theologian
who should be accusing Balthasar of Gnosticizing tendencies.
IV
Part II of this review was meant to express my appreciation of Milbank’s
monograph and to celebrate its insights; while Part III pointed out what
I saw as its flaws, its lacunae, and its distortions. But I do not want to end
on a merely critical note. Milbank’s short tract actually began as an
overview article for a reference work, the third edition of The Modern
Theologians,33 where many of the themes discussed in his short book were
first adumbrated. So clearly, the author thought he was on to something
in the article that could be more usefully expanded in a book. True
enough, but this book is hardly less of a sketch than the article was: Its
theses are too controversial, its citation of the supporting literature too
cursory, its formulations too gnomic, its exposure to the total corpus of
de Lubac’s writings too sketchy, to make the book convincing. But
provocative and worth reading the book certainly is. I just hope that this
critical review will prompt this influential theologian to write a full-scale
monograph covering the total theological witness of Henri de Lubac, his
ecclesiology very much included. If he is, as Milbank claims, one of the
two most important theologians of the twentieth century, then he
N&V
deserves no less.

33 John Milbank,“Henri de Lubac,” in The Modern Theologians, 3rd ed., ed. David F.

Ford with Rachel Muers (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 76–91.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 3 (2006): 697–708

697

John T. Noonan’s A Church that Can
and Cannot Change: An Evaluation
L AWRENCE J. W ELCH
Kenrick-Glennon Seminary
St. Louis, Missouri

J OHN T. N OONAN is a federal judge of the United States of Court
of Appeals and a scholar well known for his work in the history of ethics.
The present work takes up the problem of doctrinal development and
change with regard to slavery, usury, religious freedom, and the pope’s
authority to dissolve natural marriages.The subject of doctrinal development and change has been an interest of Noonan’s for some time, stretching back to 1947 when he studied the question of religious freedom and
in a 1951 philosophy dissertation on usury. Judge Noonan is also known
from his days on the so-called Papal Birth-Control Commission when he
sided with those who argued for a change and reversal in the Church’s
teaching on contraception.
The title of the present book expresses Noonan’s conviction that while
the Church cannot expand or reduce the deposit of faith entrusted to her,
the Church can change in “continuity with her roots.”1 It is undeniable
that doctrine develops.The central argument in Noonan’s book seems to
be that doctrinal development in many instances involves a complete reversal of prior Church teaching that was mistaken and erroneous. Noonan
thinks that development is directed by the rule of faith. He explains this
rule of faith with the help of Augustine who claimed that true understanding of divine revelation is the kind that will build up the “double love
of God and neighbor.”2 Development springs up from human experience
that is deepened by faith. Social change and the identification with the
1 John T. Noonan, A Church That Can and Cannot Change (Notre Dame, IN: Notre

Dame, 2005), 7.
2 Ibid., 222.

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experience of “the other” allow Christians to overcome their moral errors.
Slavery, religious freedom, usury, and divorce (applied to non-sacramental
marriages) all serve as examples.
The chapters discussing the Church and slavery comprise more than
50 percent of the book. Noonan argues that for most of her history the
Church accepted slavery as an institution that was simply part of society.
Although the New Testament did not confront the institution of slavery,
Noonan believes, correctly, that it laid down the paradigms that eventually undermined it over a long period of time. The commandment to
love one’s neighbor as one’s self, Paul’s injunction to treat a slave with
love (Letter to Philemon) and his proclamation that in Christ Jesus there
is neither slave nor free, were all things that worked against the moral
acceptability of slavery. Nevertheless, Christians, even some popes, owned
slaves. No Father or Doctor of the Church, no pope, and no conciliar
decree of a Church council ever made a comprehensive and complete
condemnation of slavery. Noonan does acknowledge that the Church did
work to soften the effects of slavery in some ways. The Church upheld
certain rights for slaves and the popes forbade the enslavement of the
native populations of the Americas. Sometimes, according to Noonan,
the Church had to be prodded into denouncing the evils that went along
with slavery.The story behind the papal bull of 1839, In Supremo Apostolatus Fastigio, in which Gregory XVI condemned the African slave trade,
serves as a prime example.All of these things, though, fell short of a direct
and sweeping condemnation of slavery as an institution.
It is questionable whether Noonan completely does justice to the
history of the Church’s efforts to ease the evils of slavery. Some of his
handling of the historical materials seems isolated and flattened out at
times. For instance, take Noonan’s account of the events surrounding
Pope Gregory XVI’s 1839 condemnation of the slave trade.3 In Noonan’s
telling of the story it took the urging of Protestant Great Britain to lead
Gregory XVI into condemning the trade. Were the pleas of the British
government the only reason the pope moved to repudiate the cruel trade
in Africans across the Atlantic? Why was the pope so receptive to the
British request? Noonan’s account leaves these important questions
unanswered. He observes that a previous request in 1822 for a papal
denunciation of the slave trade was unsuccessful. The Congregation for
Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, made up primarily of cardinals who
advised the pope, reported that although the trade caused suffering,
nevertheless, slavery was not contrary to the natural law and that the Old
3 Ibid., 104–08.

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699

Testament approved it in principle. But in 1839, according to Noonan,
the same body of cardinal-advisors considered another British request for
a condemnation of the African slave trade. The Roman Curia prepared
the state of the question to the assembled papal advisors and reported to
them that “ ‘the most competent among the authors and theologians’
refuted arguments in favor of slavery and the slave trade.”4 The cardinaladvisors accepted the Curia’s statement of the problem and this time,
Noonan reports, the advisors proceeded to assist the pope in the formulation of a prohibition of the slave trade. But Noonan leaves obvious
questions unanswered.Why did the papal advisors in 1839 give the pope
a completely opposite conclusion about the trade from the one it gave in
1822? What was going on in Catholic thought at the time that lead the
advisors to these different conclusions in a span of only seventeen years?
The reader is left to wonder about this missing part of the story and its
importance for understanding the background of the papal bull that
excoriated the slave trade.
What is important for Noonan, ultimately, is showing that in the case
of slavery what was formerly thought not to be sinful was later declared
intrinsically evil, meaning that it was always and everywhere evil. He
contrasts the thoughts of John Henry Newman, the preeminent authority
on the development of doctrine, with the papal teaching of Pope John
Paul II. Newman once commented on a lecture given by William Allies,
a Catholic convert, who argued that slavery was intrinsically evil.
Newman responded that while slavery was bad, and ought to disappear, it
was not intrinsically evil. Though evil, slavery was not always and everywhere evil. Not every form of it was evil per se. As much as he disliked
slavery, Newman explained that the inspired writers of the Scriptures,
especially Paul, held him back from pronouncing slavery as intrinsically
evil. Paul did not say to Philemon: “Liberate all your slaves immediately.”
Rather, he left slavery to the slow working out of Christian principles.
On the other hand, Pope John Paul taught that slavery was intrinsically evil. Noonan argues that this change in doctrine came about primarily in 1993 in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, which included slavery in
a list of social evils that are said to be intrinsically evil. He points also to
a speech the pope gave in Senegal on the Island of Goree at the site of
the infamous “House of Slaves,” where he denounced slavery and the
slave trade.There the pope said:“It is fitting there be confessed in all truth
and humility this sin of man against God.” Noonan remarks that what
was not mentioned in this confession was how recently the sin had been
4 Ibid., 106.

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discovered. But the reader is not alerted to the full context of the pope’s
speech, the tone of which stresses continuity with a statement of one of
Pope John Paul’s predecessors. The pope quotes Pope Pius II, who, in a
letter to a missionary, called the treatment of blacks an “enormous crime,”
magnum scelus. Seen in context, the speech of Pope John Paul at Goree is
not a kind of dramatic reversal of prior Church teaching.There is nothing in the pope’s speech that indicates that he understood himself to be
making a change in Catholic doctrine.
Noonan has a stronger argument than is taught in Veritatis Splendor,
number 80. His argument might appear, at first glance, to be unassailable:
Pope John Paul said what previous Church teaching did not, and what
theologians like Newman were unwilling to say: Slavery is intrinsically
evil, always and everywhere evil. The pope therefore reversed previous
Church teaching. Noonan’s argument here seems to be very strong. Or
is it? Did the pope mean to condemn every form of slavery as evil per
se? Did he really mean to correct the teaching of Paul, the Fathers of the
Church and that of previous popes? Was Veritatis Splendor really this kind
of reversal of previous teaching?
For one thing, it is crucial to ascertain what the pope meant by slavery (servitus) in Veritatis Splendor, number 80.What meaning and scope did
he give to the word? Historically, there has been the kind of slavery that
is absolute bondage, which deprives human persons all personal rights.
There have been other forms of slavery that have deprived persons of
many but not all personal rights, and there have been many lesser forms
of servitude that could be considered today as amounting to slavery for
all practical purposes. Did the pope intend for the word servitus to
encompass every form of slavery that appeared in history when he gave
it as an example of something intrinsically evil? Readers looking for
answers to these questions will be disappointed. Noonan does not attend
to them and they are important for interpreting the teaching of Veritatis
Splendor. He supposes the meaning of term servitus in the encyclical to be
obvious. It turns out, though, the pope used the term in the same general
way that Noonan acknowledges that Gaudium et Spes, number 27, did
when it included slavery in its list of social evils that are shameful and
offensive to human dignity. Noonan admits that Gaudium et Spes, number
27, used the word servitus “without definition or elaboration, or explanation”.5 But this applies to Veritatis Splendor as well, because when the
encyclical mentions servitus as being among the social evils that are intrinsically evil it quotes verbatim the list from Gaudium et Spes, number 27!
5 Ibid., 120.

On Noonan’s A Church that Can and Cannot Change

701

This problem alone should have lead Noonan to be cautious about
concluding that the pope meant to declare slavery in all its forms to be
intrinsically evil and thereby intended to correct his predecessors, many
Fathers of the Church, and the sacred writers such as Paul. Such conclusions seem rash without any consideration of what the pope intended
servitus to mean, especially, in light of the fact he took it over verbatim
Gaudium et Spes, which used the word without precision.
There are other difficulties in interpretation, too. For instance, Veritatis
Splendor, number 80, condemns deportation as intrinsically evil. If the
pope meant to condemn every form of slavery as intrinsically evil then
presumably he meant to condemn every form of deportation as well.
Are we to believe that it is intrinsically evil for a state to deport aliens
who are a threat to its national security? Surely, the pontiff left room for
some distinctions and qualifications that Noonan overlooks. None of this
is to say that there is not something new about what the pope taught in
Veritatis Splendor about slavery or that he intended to say, at the very least,
that certain forms of it are evil per se.Whatever development there is in
Veritatis Splendor, number 80, Noonan has not made the case that it is the
kind of revolution in Catholic moral doctrine whereby a pope completely
reversed the erroneous teachings of his predecessors, Church Fathers, and
biblical writers in toto.
It seems that Noonan intends to say that if Church teachings in one area,
like slavery, can be reversed, they can be reversed in other areas as well. In
a telling passage Noonan chides the late John Ford, S.J., who, with Gerald
Kelly, published a manual of moral theology that condemned “chattel slavery” without being aware, according to Noonan, that such a condemnation
was a “major mutation” in moral doctrine.6 Ford was inconsistent because
he admitted a change in the Church’s teaching on slavery but was unwilling to admit the possibility of any development on contraception. The
“development” Noonan calls for here with regard to contraception can
only mean a reversal of the Church’s traditional teaching that contraception is always evil. Noonan’s argument seems clear enough:The change in
the Church’s teaching on slavery means that other moral doctrines such the
one against contraception can change or be reversed, too.
There are numerous problems with this argument. It is an example of
the book’s failure to make important distinctions and do justice to the
complexity of the development of doctrine. There is a great difference
from the complex history of the Church’s teaching on slavery and her
teaching on contraception. For one thing, nowhere does Noonan show
6 Ibid., 117.

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that the Church’s previous acceptance of slavery, as something that was
believed to belong to the structure of society, was definitive Church
teaching understood to be irreversible. The Church’s doctrine responding to the evil of contraception, an evil which always involves rejecting
the divine design for the martial covenant, is something altogether different and is quite clearly definitive Church teaching as the last pontificate
pointed out on a number of occasions. Even admitting that the Church’s
teaching on slavery changed for the better, it is also true that the Church’s
earlier toleration of slavery and the lack of a total condemnation of it did
not rule out the possibility that the Church might later forbid it as
sinful—especially given the fact the Church viewed it as a penalty for sin
rooted in the Fall of Adam and taught, with Paul, that in Christ no one
is a slave. Change and development in the Church’s teaching was arguably
a greater fidelity to these principles.There would be nothing of anything
like this in a reversal of the Church’s teaching on contraception that
would involve declaring, after teaching many centuries to the contrary,
that the intentional frustration of the human procreative capacity in the
act of sexual intercourse is no longer something that is always evil.
In three short sober chapters Noonan gives a fair and highly informative presentation of the interaction between the Church’s doctrine on
usury and new forms of economics that emerged in the early modern
age. He shows how the Church’s teaching on usury was adapted to make
room for new economic circumstances, to permit just compensation for
the risk of loss of a loan, for losses incurred in collecting a loan, and for
the costs associated with the business of banking. Noonan makes the
argument that development of the teaching on usury was not due simply
to economic circumstances. Development was also due to the “changes
in the analyses made by theologians and to their acceptance of the experience of other human beings.”7 Noonan argues the example of usury
demonstrates that the development of the Church’s moral teaching does
take place by human experience, which leads to a sharper and better
understanding of human nature.
The case of the adaptation of the doctrine on usury to changing
economic circumstances and human experience does not seem to amount
to a complete reversal of the original doctrine. After all, the teaching on
usury, albeit narrowly interpreted, still remains as Noonan has acknowledged in his previous work. Catholic moral principles still forbid unjust or
exorbitant rates of interest. Even if one were to concede, for the sake of
argument, that human experience has lead to a better understanding of
7 Ibid., 213.

On Noonan’s A Church that Can and Cannot Change

703

human nature, it does not necessarily follow that therefore the Church’s
moral doctrine on other issues involving human nature are subject to the
same kind of development.The example of usury does not give us reason
for thinking that certain intrinsically evil acts such as contraception are
capable of a similar adaptation.
For Noonan, the issue of religious freedom and the teaching of the
Second Vatican Council in the declaration Dignitatis Humanae serve as an
example of how a general council of the Church definitively rejected
some 1,500 years of its magisterial teaching as well as the thought of
Augustine and Aquinas on the issue. Noonan argues that Vatican II
affirmed that the freedom to believe was a sacred right but it did not
explain how previous teaching,“the old message of intolerance,” could be
swept aside by one pope and a council.The discontinuity between Vatican II’s teaching and previous Church doctrine is presented as radical.
Ironically, in seeing nothing but a total reversal of Church doctrine,
Noonan comes to the same conclusion, albeit for different reasons, as that
notorious opponent of Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II, Marcel Lefebvre.
It is certainly true Dignitatis Humanae’s declaration of religious freedom
as a right of the human person and its recognition that the Church should
not expect most modern secular political societies to give it special recognition and privileges were new things. Noonan, however, exaggerates
Dignitatis Humanae’s discontinuity with the Church’s past teaching.There
are plenty of reasons to think that Vatican II’s teaching on religious liberty
was not one of complete discontinuity with previous Church teaching. It
is disappointing that Noonan does not acknowledge and discuss them in
his chapters. For example, Noonan passes over in complete silence
evidence in Dignitatis Humanae itself that shows that the council Fathers
did not understand that what they were teaching was the kind of development that amounted to a complete reversal of earlier Church teachings.
Dignitatis Humanae, number 1, declares that “the council intends to
develop the doctrine of recent popes on the inviolable rights of the
human person and the constitutional order of society.” There would be
little point in the Fathers putting it this way if all they saw themselves
doing was simply reversing earlier Church teaching rather adapting and
developing some of the implications of prior teachings in a new context.
During the debates at the council, Emile De Smedt, bishop of Bruges and
the spokesman for the commission that composed and edited the text of
Dignitatis Humanae, argued that its teaching was compatible with previous
Church teachings. Noonan does not mention that numerous theologians
defended Dignitatis Humanae as actually standing in greater continuity
with the tradition of the Church against those who saw nothing in it but

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a change in the faith of the Church. Even John Courtney Murray, who
was of the opinion that the Church was late in acknowledging religious
liberty as an ethical principle, personally and collectively, still argued that
“[T]he legitimate conclusion is that between Leo XII and the Second
Vatican Council there was an authentic development of doctrine in the
sense of Vincent of Lerins, ‘an authentic progress, not a change of faith.’ ”
He also argued that Vatican II put aside “an older theory of civil tolerance
in favor of a new doctrine of religious freedom more in harmony with
the authentic and more fully understood tradition of the Church.” The
lack of any mention of this important evidence to the contrary of
Noonan’s claim that Dignitatis Humanae was a flat-out reversal and rejection of previous Church teaching (157) will leave the untutored reader
misinformed.As later commentators have observed, what documents such
as Mirari Vos condemned was not religious freedom itself but a particular
and certain philosophical concept of religious freedom that was bound up
with relativism and an antireligious secularism. Commenting on the need
for theologians to carefully discern the process of change through continuity, Pope Benedict XVI recently observed that the Church has to reject
a view that sees religious freedom as expressing the inability of mankind
to discover the truth. Such a view entails relativism as the norm for society.There is an enormous difference between this view of religious freedom and an understanding that follows from the truth that the freedom
to believe must come from within and cannot be imposed from the
outside or a view that sees religious freedom as something required for
peaceful human coexistence. Understood against this background,
explaining the development of the Church’s teaching on religious liberty
at Vatican II mainly in terms of the reversal and rejection of prior Church
teaching does not do justice to the task that lies before the theologian.
In four chapters Noonan takes up the Church’s dissolution of nonsacramental marriages on the grounds of the Pauline privilege and the
Petrine privilege, in “favor of the faith.” For Noonan, the complex
history of the privileges shows that there has been development of the
Church’s doctrine on “divorce” for the unbaptized. This acceptance of
divorce is said to reveal a new understanding of the natural law and a
developing interpretation of the New Testament.8 Judge Noonan argues
that the biblical teaching “What God has joined together let no man
separate” appears to be exceptionless and comprehensive. But no rule or
formula is strong enough to “forestall bending or an end run.”9 Paul was
8 Ibid., 214.
9 Ibid., 212.

On Noonan’s A Church that Can and Cannot Change

705

the first to bend it and make an exception to it when he permitted a
married believer to separate from an unbelieving spouse.
Noonan’s approach to the divine commandment on marriage and
Paul’s interpretation of it is very legalistic. Nothing really changes for
marriage with the coming of Christ except for a repetition of a rule. In
Noonan’s consideration of the biblical teaching, Christ has nothing more
to say, nothing more to give to man for marriage. It never seems to occur
to Noonan that Paul, and his interpreters, had good reasons for thinking
that the marriages between a believer and a non-believer and the marriages
between believers are different because of a relationship to Christ.There
is something new that Christ gives to marriage. Noonan does not
consider that new life in Christ gives the grace that enables the keeping
of the commandment. Nor does he ever really deal with the importance
of how the marriage bond is elevated in sacramental marriage.
Noonan discusses how the Church interpreted Paul’s text as the basis
for permitting the believing party to remarry. He observes that the
prevailing view of theologians around the time of Aquinas was that the
convert’s second marriage as a Christian dissolved the first marriage
contracted prior to baptism. He notes that Aquinas explained that “the
more firm” dissolved “the less firm.” Noonan claims even though there
was the doctrine that marriage was naturally indissoluble, major theologians did not challenge the exception. But, in fact, the thought of theologians, such as Aquinas went a long way toward explaining how the
Church could dissolve non-sacramental marriage and still remain faithful
to the biblical teaching. For example, Aquinas explained that in the
baptism of a convert there is a kind of death, akin to natural death, which,
in effect, dissolves the corporeal bond of natural marriage. When a
convert is baptized he is regenerated and dies to his former life. He is
longer bound in his life to those things to which he was bound in his old
life “since the generation of one thing is the corruption of another.” A
man who is regenerated in Christ “is even corporeally buried together
with Christ unto death” and so is freed of the obligation to “pay the
marriage debt” even though the natural marriage has been consummated. Aquinas refers here to the corporeal bond of natural marriage. A
wife only has a right to her husband’s body insofar as he remained in the
life in which he had married, since only when the husband dies is the
wife delivered from the law of her husband. (Rom 7:3). Just as unbelievers (and believers for that matter) are no longer bound to one’s spouse
after natural death, so an unbeliever who takes baptism and dies in Christ,
is no longer bound to one’s unbelieving spouse (Summa Theologiae,
Suppl., q. 59, a. 4; cf. ad. 2).

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St.Thomas Aquinas, like Augustine, knew of a difference between the
natural bond and the supernatural bond of marriage. The difference
between the bonds was to be found in their holiness and what they signified. St. Thomas shows how the Church understands that there exists a
certain hierarchy of marriage bonds. He explained that natural marriage
is imperfect, and therefore “less firm,” because it has to do only with the
perfection of nature, while sacramental marriage, is a perfection in grace
(Suppl., q. 59, a. 2). Sacramental marriage for St. Thomas, of course,
participates in the indissoluble unity between Christ and his Church.
Marriage in Christ binds “more firmly” because it is perfect. “Now the
firmer tie always looses the weaker if it is contrary to it” (Suppl., q. 59, a.
5, ad. 1). It is on account of this distinction that St.Thomas can speak not
of a divorce but of a dissolution of natural marriage. In this light, the
Pauline privilege can be seen as something that stands in complete continuity with the divine commandment, a commandment that is brought to
perfection and fulfillment in Christ and his union with the Church.
Dissolution of the natural bond between a non-baptized person and a
newly baptized person is given in view of the possibility for the baptized
believer to enter into the perfection of a sacramental marriage with
another believer.
The whole subject of the pope’s power to dissolve non-sacramental
marriages, even between two non-baptized parties, is a complex one.
Noonan, though, believes the dissolution of non-sacramental marriage in
favor of the faith is something of an exception to the indissolubility of
marriage. He thinks there has never really been an adequate explanation of
either the privilege itself or the mode of its exercise. Noonan accuses Pope
John Paul II of continuing the exercise of the privilege but without reconciling what he calls “papal divorce” with the doctrine of indissolubility.10
Of course, what the pope defended, like his many predecessors, was the
absolute indissolubility of sacramental marriages.The papal dissolution of a
non-sacramental marriage in favor of the faith is only granted under very
strict conditions but Noonan never indicates this fact. He makes it seem
otherwise when he says that the marriages of the unbaptized seem to be
unlikely candidates for papal dissolution because they are really no different in degree from the marriages of the baptized as they are caring, loving,
faithful, and fruitful unions, too.11 Noonan’s lack of any real attention to
the meaning of the sacramentality of marriage and its implications, his failure to consider how Christ brings about the perfection and elevation of
10 Ibid., 189–90.
11 Ibid., 180.

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707

the natural marriage bond, makes it difficult for him see the privilege as
anything other than legalistic, arbitrary, and divorce by another name.
The key to understanding the pope’s power to dissolve non-sacramental marriages in favor of the faith, and the limits to that power, is the
newness that Christ brings to marriage.This is something more than the
verbal repetition of a law. It is the perfection of the very things that are
intrinsic to marriage—unity and indissolubility. It follows if Christ
perfects natural marriage, raising it to the level of a sacrament, then he
has governance over non-sacramental marriage. The pope, the Vicar of
Christ and successor of Peter, whom Catholics believe the Lord made the
rock and key bearer of the Church, shares in this governance.The pope’s
participation in Christ’s authority over natural marriage is part of the
power of the keys and the authority to bind and loose given by Christ.
Understood against this setting, the Petrine privilege does not involve
an end run around a divine command but a privilege that is given to be
exercised at the service of the divine command given in Genesis and
repeated by Christ. Non-sacramental marriages have been dissolved in
favor of the faith so that those who have been freed to marry might
know, or might have the hope of knowing, the perfection that is given in
sacramental marriage.The case that Noonan cites from 1959, where Pope
John XXIII dissolved a non-sacramental marriage so that a Catholic
could enter into a marriage with a non-believer, can be understood as
standing in the service of perfection of marriage in Christ because there
was the hope that the non-believer might be evangelized and converted
and thus enter into the perfection of sacramental marriage.That the privilege stands at the service of evangelization can be seen in the current
norms.These require a non-baptized person, who has been freed from a
previous marriage bond in order to marry a Catholic, to declare that he
or she is prepared to permit the Catholic spouse the freedom to practice
his or her religion and to baptize and educate their children as Catholics.
The deep respect that the Church has for the natural marriage bond is
illustrated by the requirement of the current norms that the petitioner
cannot be “the culpable, exclusive, or prevalent cause of the destruction
of conjugal living,” of the non-sacramental marriage that is to be
dissolved in favor of the faith. Nor can the other party, with whom the
new marriage is to be contracted, be guilty of provoking the separation
of the spouses of the non-sacramental union. None of these things
inform Noonan’s presentation.They are of prime importance for understanding how the privilege is exercised within narrowly prescribed limits
respecting, on the one hand, the dignity of the natural bond of marriage,
and, on the other hand, the Church’s responsibility to evangelize.

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Noonan claims that the development from words of Jesus in Mark
about marriage has been great. If the full meaning of the sacramentality
of marriage is kept in mind, which entails a certain understanding of a
hierarchy of marriage bonds, “the less firm” and “the more firm,” then
the development is not of the kind that Noonan imagines it to be. It does
not involve an end run around the doctrine of indissolubility. If anything,
development has been and still is a matter of the Church discerning the
implications of the sacramental meaning of marriage and applying them
to new pastoral circumstances in the interest of realizing what Christ
intends for the perfection of marriage.
The strength of Noonan’s work lies chiefly in the data and facts he has
discovered in his research. Even if he has a tendency to present what he
has discovered in an uneven and one-sided way, his research will have to
be fully addressed by anyone who wants to explain development of the
Church’s doctrine in the areas that Noonan treats. It cannot be said
though that he has succeeded in demonstrating his thesis that doctrinal
development often means a flat-out reversal of Church teachings that
were mistaken and erroneous. This thesis does not do justice to the
historical data that Noonan himself uncovers.
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Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 3 (2006): 709–718

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Book Reviews
Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom by David Bradshaw (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
xiv + 297 pp.
W ELCOME TO an amazingly erudite work, ranging from Aristotle’s
prime mover to Palamas’s “divine energies,” with a sustained focus on the
uses of energeia (with its Western counterparts—act, and esse) as its uses
expanded from Aristotle through Philo, Numenius and Alcinus, to Plotinus, and (thence in the West) from Porphyry and the anonymous
Parmenides commentary to Marius Victorinus and Boethius; returning
then to Eastern sources—the Corpus Hermeticum, Iamblichus, and Proclus.
This background presentation testifies to the rich resources the Cappadocians—St. Basil of Caeserea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory
Nazianzen—could draw upon for their initiatives in trinitarian theology,
notably in developing the key notions of energeia [act] and ousia [substance],
culminating in participation, especially as this notion structures the dense
inquiries of Dionysius the Areopagite. These philosophical strategies bore
fruit in the work of St. Maximus, St. John of Damascus, and Gregory of
Cyprus.At this point we encounter Augustine, to set up a kind of exchange
between Thomas Aquinas and St. Gregory Palamas; an attempt at exchange
that introduces the culminating chapter, where the author takes stock of his
endeavor, leaving us with a challenging agenda to assess the potential for
mutual illumination between East and West by articulating central philosophical strategies needed to elucidate our shared Christian heritage.This
impressively scholarly endeavor not only intends to inform us of the philosophical landscape of theologies of the Christian East, but would lead us to
learn from their practice by undertaking comparative explorations, exemplified by the exchange he sets up between Aquinas and Palamas.
The initial eight chapters of the book, five of which stem from Bradshaw’s doctoral dissertation in the ancient philosophy program at University
of Texas in Austin, abundantly serve that first intent, testifying as well to the
richness of his philosophical formation.We are instructed throughout, and

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in a manner that works to display how these ideas can serve as strategies for
elucidating of theological conundra, thereby offering more than a “history
of ideas” narrative—though the presentation will serve that purpose as well
for those of us who sorely need it. So it is disappointing that the second
intent, of mutual theological illumination, fails to exploit this rich background, skewed as it is by an apologetic goal of showing the inherent superiority—religiously as well as conceptually—of the Eastern tradition, largely
by relying on quite dated “neo-Thomist” readings of Palamas’s interlocutor,
Thomas Aquinas, while overlooking recent retrievals of Aquinas’s theological resources. One cannot but miss (in the bibliography) secondary sources
like Edward Booth (1987), Rudi teVelde (2000), Peter Adamson (2001), and
Gilles Emery (2002), to mention but a few. Moreover, among Aquinas’s
texts, the omission of the highly formative Liber de causis is especially telling,
as it might have kept the author from taking (at face value) Aquinas’s “loose”
use of efficient cause for God’s creating and sustaining action, to read it in the
decidedly un-Aristotelian mode of a “cause of being.” Nor is this a pedantic contention (though it may be unfair, since some of these may not have
been available before this work went to press), for this growing body of
work (see Levering 2004) offers author and reader alike an Aquinas more
amenable to Palamas’s intent in invoking “divine energies” than the neoThomist “purely philosophical” construct could ever hope to do. Moreover,
when the culminating chapter attempts an exchange between East and West
in the persons of two giants, Aquinas and Palamas, and fails to inform itself
of this work, it will inevitably fail in its intent, for it contrasts a richly
contextualized Palamas (who could invoke a historically articulated sense of
energeia) with a flatly “philosophical” and ahistorical Aquinas, whose understanding of the unique relation of creatures to their creator is left unexplicated, notably in the discussion of (divine and human) freedom where
modern “libertarian” constructs are simply presumed. So, for example, his
critique turns on a relatively untutored polemic against Aquinas’s insistence
on divine simpleness, which will conclude that “the difficulty with such a
view is that of reconciling it with God’s capacity for free choice. I have
argued that Aquinas failed to resolve this difficulty” (267–68).Yet work on
“divine simpleness” by Timothy McDermott, Brian Davies, and others
identifies it primarily as a philosophical strategy to articulate what Robert
Sokolowski dubs “the Christian distinction,” so securing the unique
creator/creatures relation shared by all Christians (as well as, analogously, by
Jews and Muslims).
The resulting imparity in treating these two paradigmatic East/West
figures also impedes this reviewer from helping to advance the question
by taking issue with particulars in that attempt, since doing so would

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711

require engaging in a didactic pedagogy of filling in the gaps—particularly unseemly with regard to an inquirer whose work I had already come
to find a valuable resource in these recondite domains.
So what could we hope for, were the author to return to the drawing
board? For starters, his assessment of the nefarious influence of “Augustinian assumptions,” leading, via “efficient causality [to] a kind of practical
dualism . . . at the heart of Western spiritual practice” (265–66) could be
nuanced by employing (rather than merely citing) Anna Williams’s work,
The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas—one of those “new
studies” that I have recommended (268, n.8); and those “assumptions”
contextualized by spelling out the telescoped narrative of cultural developments (in the West) leading to presuming “a sphere of ‘natural reason’ independent of revelation” (266). More philosophically, we “Westerners” will
inevitably inquire into the ontological status these “divine energies” will
require to manifest the divine essence. Is that untoward? I suspect not;
moreover, responding to that inquiry would allow us to invoke traditional
discussions of “divine attributes,” fulfilling the goal of “mutual illumination” among Abrahamic faiths as well as between Christians East and West.
More generally, the animus that informs this study needs to be exposed to
more judicious scrutiny. In his culminating peroration, the author reminds
us that “the East has no concept of God. It views God not as an essence to
be grasped intellectually, but as a personal reality known through his acts,
above all by oneself sharing in those acts” (275).Yet my (1979) critical study
of Aquinas made those very points (excessively polemically, I fear) precisely
on behalf of Aquinas against a familiar “Thomism,” so that is hardly an
East/West thing, even though such “Thomists” will perdure, where they
do, in the West! He goes on:“A similar difference can be observed in regard
to religious morality as a whole. For the East morality is not primarily a
matter of conformance to law, nor (in a more Aristotelian vein) of achieving human excellence by acquiring the virtues. It is a matter of coming to
know God by sharing in His acts and manifesting His image” (275–66).
This point fairly summarizes the trenchant critique offered by Bernard
Haring of the dominant Catholic moral thought of fifty years ago. The
study ends with a culture critique of religion in the West, implying that its
characteristic modes of “doing” theology have contributed “to the long
movement of the West toward unbelief ” (275).That “religion” continues to
contribute to its own demise is hardly contestable; in fact, John Paul II said
as much in his celebrated “confession” during Lent in St. Peter’s in 2000.
But how much difference can we find between “East and West” in this
regard? My social location in Jerusalem leads me to particularly jaundiced
views of the roles of any of our churches in witnessing to the gospel in this

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difficult place and time, but especially of Greek Orthodoxy! Yet theologies
aside, each of our churches has little room for anything but nostra culpa.
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How do we say that in Greek?
David B. Burrell, CSC
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

Promising and the Good by Guy Mansini, OSB (Naples, FL: Sapientia
Press, 2005), xii +188 pp.
T HIS WORK is a reflection on the theme of promising. It begins as an
analytical philosophy treatise and becomes progressively more theological, when, toward the end of the work, Christology and sacramental
theology are brought into the picture.
In the early sections there are some deft comparisons of the thought
of Hobbes and Nietzsche on the topic of making promises, as well as of
Descartes, Suarez, and St.Thomas. Mansini observes that whereas Hobbes
locates promising imaginatively in the political economy of the incipient
bourgeois state, Nietzsche locates it in his construction of an antique
noble society of warriors. Nietzsche takes seriously the idea that glory
and pride may act as motives for promise-keeping, while Hobbes prefers
to rely on the authority of the state to sanction breaches of promise.
Descartes considers promising an abandonment of freedom, and anticipates Hobbes’s location of obligation in state coercion, while Suarez ties
obligation to command and command to the will of a superior. In
contrast to all of these, St.Thomas treats the theme of promise-making in
the context of his study of friendship.
Of all the juxtapositions the most stark and best articulated is that
between the Christian, broadly construed, and the Nietzschean. Mansini
concludes that “whereas Nietzsche makes memory the product of blood
and pain, God makes use of an altogether different kind of aide-demémoire, the beautiful bow, whose arc outlines something of the transcendence of God himself ”(p. 98).
In the more explicitly theological chapters, Mansini draws on the
Balthasarian theme of the mission of Christ as a context for analyzing
sacred promises, particularly those made at the time of marriage and ordination. Mansini takes up the principle central to Balthasar’s theodramatics and de Lubac’s critique of secular humanism, that we discover a
self-identity through discovering our mission in Christ.Thus, whereas the
Nietzschean self is wholly self-created, the Christian self is received. In
baptism we are remade in Christ. And while we make no explicit prom-

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713

ises at baptism, there is a profession of faith and a rejection of the promises of the devil. In this context Mansini quotes from St. Cyril—“when
you renounce Satan, trampling under foot all covenant with him, you
break the ancient treaties with hell”—and from St. John Chrysostom
who likens the contract with Christ to a nuptial bond, where the profession of faith is a dowry given to the Bridegroom.
With reference to the notion of a mission in the Balthasarian sense,
Mansini argues that whereas Balthasar wants a young man to ask himself,
“Am I called to the priesthood or not?,” John Paul II allowed him to ask,
“Am I called to the priesthood or to married life?” For John Paul II the
promises of a Christian marriage do share in the mission of Christ.
Mansini further observes that promising is not an affair of freedom
alone, but an affair of timed, embodied freedom; thus it is fitting that the
content of life-promising concern the body—“by our bodies, we are in
that realm of half actuality, where there can be such a thing as progress, a
further realization of act in potency, a further shaping of what can have
but does not yet have the shape of maturity”(p. 140).The whole territory
of sexual ethics is not limited to a list of divine mandates and prohibitions; it includes, at a very intimate level, the promises we make to one
another and the language and meaning of bodily gestures.
The middle cluster of chapters focuses on the theme of God’s promises to humanity, moving from the idea of creation as surety for God’s
promises in the theology of the Old Testament, to the role of Christ as
the fulfilment of God’s promises and the Holy Spirit as both the
substance and pledge of God’s promise in the New Testament. Mansini
notes that Christ is presented in scripture as announcing the fulfilment
of past promises (Mk 1:15); as being in himself the fulfilment of past
promises (Mk 14:62); as providing a covenant between God and man
with his own body and blood (Mk 14:24); as the pattern of our obedience to God ( Jn 15:10), the one who receives the promise of God on
our behalf (Gal 3:16); as guarantee or guarantor of the promise God
makes to us (Letter to the Hebrews); and last, as making promises of his
own to us (The Apocalypse of St. John). (Other scriptural references are
also cited).
In the final section of the work there is another series of juxtapositions, including the difference between religious and marriage vows and
their capacity to be dispensed; between Christian and classical pagan
conceptions of marriage vows, and between Christian and neo-pagan—
or what Mansini calls “modernity’s”—conceptions of marriage. Mansini
notes that whereas fidelity is a common theme in Christian and classical
pagan accounts of marriage, between Christians and classical pagans there

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are differences in the resolution with which marriage is entered into and
maintained. There are many goods of marriage that only Christians can
recognize. For example, for Christians children are not merely potential
civic leaders, but also potential subjects in the kingdom of heaven. On the
other hand, the contrast of what marriage is for Christians and what it is
for modernity involves something more than a recognition of different
goods. The more basic issue here is different accounts of binding. For
Christians and classical pagans, the good binds. For neo-pagans, or what
Mansini calls “moderns,” the will, never itself bound, binds.
In his comparison of the Church’s teaching on the possibility of receiving a dispensation from religious vows and the contrasting indissolubility
of marriage vows, Mansini defends the magisterial teaching by reference
to the argument that whereas a dispensation from a renunciation of the
goods of marriage (in religious vows) is not a direct attack on the goods
for the sake of which the renunciation was undertaken, but aims at the
restoration of the renounced goods; the dispensation of marriage vows
would touch the very goods the vows respond to and would not amount
to a restoration of a lost good.
Implicit within the essays is the idea that not enough attention is given
to the meaning and purpose of human promises and the importance of
holding people to account for the breach of their promises. Mansini
concludes that the tendency to privatize promises has come at a huge
social cost—“goods lose some of their luster where they cannot be
publicly acclaimed as universally to be guarded by the commonwealth
itself in its concern for the common good”(p. 83).
In this context Mansini takes on board some of the observations about
contemporary liberalism of the French philosopher Pierre Manent.
Manent has observed that although “modern man” is neither magnanimous nor humble, he wants to be consulted. Mansini then makes the
point that the ethos of an hierarchical Church runs counter to this orientation, and that “existing in private space in the bosom of a democratised
and egalitarian state, the temptation will be great to think of the Church
on the lines of a modern state, where all citizens are equal, where there is
rule of law, and where authority depends on the consent of the governed”
(p. 82). The call for collaborative ministry and collaborative leadership
constantly eats away at the charismatic and sacred authority of the priesthood and episcopacy. Mansini predicts that the relevance of different
measures of holiness, of the personal authority of apostolic ministers, and
of obedience to the Gospel will be harder and harder to keep focused as
the democratizing tendencies of the secular world find their way into the
mental outlook of the People of God. Here his comments dovetail with

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715

those of Robert P. Kraynak, who argued, in his Christian Faith and Modern
Democracy, that the levelling effects of democracy undermine the hierarchical doctrine of the two cities, undermining the primary claim of the
city of God over the earthly city.When democratic values are championed
by Catholic leaders for institutions beyond the jurisdiction of the Church,
it invites the question: “Why the dramatic difference between the structures of the Church and the structures of the world?”
This work will be of interest to Catholic ethicists, especially those who
welcome a more interdisciplinary approach, incorporating scriptural reflections, themes in systematic theology and canon law, the conceptual clarity of the analytical philosophy tradition, and even insights from political
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philosophy.
Tracey Rowland
John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family
Melbourne, Australia

A Short History of Thomism by Romanus Cessario, OP (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), xi + 106 pp.
WHILE ROMANUS Cessario’s A Short History of Thomism is indeed short,
it is filled with interesting facts, significant commentary, and creative
insights.After a small blip of almost thirty years following the Second Vatican Council, the study of St. Thomas Aquinas is once again flourishing,
not only among Dominicans and Catholic scholars (surprisingly and often
to the chagrin of his confreres, a Franciscan may be amongst them), but
also among Protestants.What appeared, hopefully to some, to be the end
of Thomism has given rise instead to a new generation of faithful and yet
imaginative Thomistic scholars, who, I believe, are the real hope of
Catholic theology today. Those theologians who began their academic
careers in the late 1960s and ’70s and who thought Aquinas had finally
become simply a relic (though, as a saint, his bones literally are that) have
themselves become irrelevant, used merely as noteworthy but bothersome
theological foils for presenting a truly creative and relevant theology
founded upon Scripture, Tradition, and—the teaching of St. Thomas
Aquinas. Cessario would not be surprised by this contemporary turn of
theological events for his book makes abundantly clear that while the
teaching of Aquinas may have had periods of decline, it always rose again
to address the needs of the Church and the culture of its time.
Cessario begins his book with a brief history of Aquinas’s teaching and
literary career. However, the first two interesting questions that he addresses
are: Who is a Thomist? and What is Thomism? To the second question,

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Cessario agrees with Weisheipl that Thomism is “a theological and philosophical movement that begins in the thirteenth century, and embodies a
systematic attempt to understand and develop the basic principles and
conclusions of St.Thomas Aquinas in order to relate them to the problems
and needs of each generation” (13–14). While some “Thomists” over the
years have developed the thought of Aquinas with “creative fidelity,” others
have adopted “a woolly spirit” (14). Cessario believes that there is a “wide”
Thomism, that is, those who faithfully follow the spirit and insights of
Aquinas.“Eclectic”Thomism is practiced by those willing “to import large
portions of other philosophical and theological systems so that they are led
to relativize the principles and conclusions that constitute the Thomism of
Thomas Aquinas” (18). Among such eclectic Thomists are the “transcendental Thomists,” who allowed Kant to trump Aquinas.
Nonetheless, the issues of “Who is a Thomist?” and “What is Thomism?”
can only be answered when one delineates the central and defining teachings of Aquinas himself. Cessario does just that. Besides the judicious use
of Aristotle,Thomists are faithful to Aquinas’s teaching on natural philosophy, for example, that physical beings are composed of matter and form,
and that the soul is the substantial form of the body.Thomists also follow
Aquinas’s basic principles with regard to the moral and virtuous life.They
are also metaphysical realists and hold for the distinction between essence
and being.They are epistemological realists as well, believing that human
beings can obtain true knowledge through their senses and intellect.They
equally accept that God embodies the fullness of being and so is pure act.
While Cessario gives a fuller presentation of what is required for
authentic Thomism and of a genuine Thomist, what strikes this reviewer is
that almost all of what he lays down as defining Thomism and Thomists is
on philosophical grounds. Actual Christian or Catholic doctrine does not
seem to play much of a role in the defining process.This is not so much a
criticism of Cessario’s delineation as a question as to why this is the case. I
think there are at least three reasons. Firstly,Aquinas never espoused a theological position that is contrary to the doctrinal tradition and dogmatic
teaching of the Catholic Church (even his questioning of the Immaculate
Conception was in the midst of doctrinal development and theological
debate).Thus, to be a “good Thomist” one simply has to be, doctrinally, a
“good Catholic.” However, I think there is a second and more significant
reason, which is that most of the historical debates that involved Thomists
were philosophical in nature. Moreover, thirdly, the revival of Thomism in
our most recent history of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries
consisted primarily of a renewal of Thomistic philosophy among philosophical Thomists, Maritain and Gilson being excellent examples. It is only

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in our present day that we find a revival of Thomism that is truly theological and doctrinal—taking into account Aquinas’s teaching on the Trinity,
the Incarnation, Salvation, and so on. This is partly due to the renewed
interest in Aquinas’s scriptural commentaries. What Aquinas can teach
contemporary systematic theologians, having allowed Christian doctrine to
set the philosophical parameters, is the manner in which philosophical
distinctions need to be made in order to clarify doctrine so as to make it
serve the modern needs of the Church and thus make it more luminous.
Thomas primarily utilized philosophy not for its own sake but as a
means to conceive clearly and to articulate accurately Christian doctrine,
and in order to do so philosophical issues had to be addressed and philosophical distinctions had to be made that had never before been fully
envisaged or articulated—the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist being examples. However, these were
issues of doctrine, not of philosophy; they were issues of faith, not of
reason. Yet philosophy and reason came to faith’s assistance. If Cessario
were to write a history of Thomism one hundred years from now, I am
confident he would have to include some doctrinal components and
some principles on how philosophy must be employed in relationship to
doctrine that would make up the definition of genuine Thomism and
authentic Thomists. It is interesting that after summarizing the various
manners in which one could divide the history of Thomism, Cessario
states: “Nonetheless, what united all these followers of Thomas Aquinas,
and continues to unite those who seriously study his works, is the
conviction that the teaching of Thomas Aquinas provides a sure guide to
the truth of the Catholic faith” (35).
Chapter two is the longest chapter within this small work. Cessario
treats exceedingly well the history of Thomism from Aquinas himself to
the end of the French Revolution. While Bishop Tempier of Paris in
1270 proscribed thirteen problematic theses that arose from the use of
Aristotle, the defense and study of Aquinas continued to grow and prosper. Thomism took root not only among the Dominicans within the
most prestigious universities, but also, “by the end of the fourteenth
century, Thomist authors can be found working in Armenia, Bohemia,
Poland, Scandinavia, and Spain: in short, the Thomist school became
active in places beyond the university centers of Cologne, Oxford, Paris,
and Bologna” (58).
While I had heard that there were even Byzantines who espoused
Thomism, Cessario confirms this, though he states that their work was
“mostly literary,” that is, translations of Aquinas’s works (57). Nonetheless,
those Byzantines who did the translating and those who studied the

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translations must have been influenced by what they read. Would that
such an ecumenical and open-minded attitude existed today.
Cessario obviously lists and treats a great many Thomistic authors
through the centuries, but he gives pride of place to Capreolus and Cajetan. The former, Cessario believes, rightly deserves the title Princeps
Thomistarum (61).The latter’s place as a preeminent Thomist “is above all
secured by the fact that his commentary on the Summa Theologiae enjoys
quasi-official status by reason of its being included in the critical edition
of the Summa Theologiae commissioned by Pope Leo XIII” (68). Cessario
also rightly sings the praises of the Thomists at the Council of Trent:“The
achievement of Thomist authors at the Council of Trent is expressed not
only in their influence on the decrees of the Council, especially those on
justification, on the sacraments in general, and on the Eucharist in particular, but also in their work on the Roman Catechism that was published by
the Dominican Pope Pius V in 1566” (74).
Chapter three, which examines Thomism after the French Revolution,
is very brief; and while it treats Thomism’s encounters with Hegelianism
and the rise of neo-Thomism, one would have wished for a fuller treatment of this era. This is especially true of Cessario’s treatment of more
modern and contemporary Thomism, especially of specific authors. I
would have appreciated, for example, a little more commentary on the
significance of Maritain and Gilson and their differences. Being a “Gilsonian” myself, it would have been fascinating to see where Cessario himself
stood, but then, he is attempting to write objective history.
Cessario is absolutely correct, having examined the history of Thomism,
when he states: “Obviously, an intellectual movement that has lasted for
more than seven centuries merits a place among the great traditions of Western thought. One can speak of Thomism in the same breath as Aristotelianism, Platonism, (with all of its sub-varieties), and Augustinianism” (94).
Cessario gives us a little book that is very informative, edifying, and
enjoyable to read. It testifies to the great Thomistic tradition that has
provided so much light to both reason and faith. What makes it even
more pleasing is when one would like to believe that one is a member of
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this great Thomistic tradition. Romanus Cessario surely is.
Thomas G.Weinandy, OFM Cap.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Washington, DC