Thomist theory of grace and predestination

[LouisIX]

It's not that he objects at all. It's that he objects by stating that Thomists are "lazy" or half-witted. He usually doesn't actually get into the speculative territory of his disagreement. He places obstacles to that kind of discussion before it begins.

Oh bullshit.

I mean, just a few posts ago you said this:

Actually, adherence to Thomism seems all too often to be an excuse for intellectual laziness.

[LouisIX]

Fr. Most uses the same Thomistic texts to reach conclusions disparate from Banezian adherents. If Thomas was so clear, how is this possible?

This is like asking how it's possible for Augustine to be so clear if both Protestants and Catholics read him. I mean, Rahner considers himself a Thomist. Does the existence of Rahner alone prove that St. Thomas is ambiguous?

The reason for much of the disparity is that St. Thomas' writings on the matter depend upon the whole of the scientia which he has built in his corpus. He doesn't, for example, describe the whole of the mechanism behind predestination within the articles which described it. For that, one must pull from the treatise on grace, what he has to say about motion in the Prima Pars and in the ScG, some varied comments on predestination in De veritate, his comments on evil in De malo, etc.

Consider Bernard Lonergan as another example. Lonergan's entire treatment of St. Thomas on grace and predestination is anti-Banezian and significantly different from every other Catholic theologian in history. What is the source of such a novel account? It begins with a variation in how he understands the property of operation on the metaphysical level.

These are complicated matters. St. Thomas did not write in such a way that he explicitly answers objections from ideas which had not yet been developed, so there is always room for disagreement. That doesn't necessarily say anything about St. Thomas' writing.

[Quaremerepulisti]

I think I understand your concerns here. I admit that it is very difficult to explain the doctrine of St. Augustine and St. Thomas on predestination while avoiding making God seem like a capricious monster who chooses favourites and damns the rest, but I think that's more due to the complexity of their teaching (mirroring the complexity of the problem itself, which must be one of the most complex in all theology), than to its falsity or inadequacy.

OTOH, maybe it really is false or inadequate.  Maybe the reason it is "very difficult" to explain the doctrine of St. Augustine and St. Thomas on predestination without avoiding making God seem like a capricious monster is because in fact that conclusion is entailed by the doctrine.

Molinist and Semi-Pelagian explanations of predestination (I am not accusing Molinism of being Semi-Pelagian) avoid making God seem malevolent for picking favourites or allowing millions to suffer in hell forever, but they seem to give man, through his free-will, a certain power over God which seems not to agree with God's being.

Not to mention the philosophically incoherent concept of scientia media (in Molinism).  So maybe it's time for a third way, and to critically examine the assumptions which underlie both Thomism and Molinism.

Quote from a Thomist blog:

The problem here, as it often is, is that terms are thrown around without them being precisely defined: specifically, how they apply to God, as opposed to how they apply to humans in the ordinary use of language.  Therefore, implicitly they are applied in a univocal way to God, and as we know, they only apply analogically.

God chose from all eternity that certain men will USE THEIR FREE WILL to cooperate with His grace and thus merit (in a certain sense) their salvation.
(predestination to salvation)

What does it mean for God to "choose"?  What does it mean for Him to do so "from all eternity"?  And by "what does it mean", I mean from the ontological viewpoint.

And finally for men, what does it mean to "cooperate with grace"?  Is this a separate act of the will?  If not, then what?  Until all this is precisely fleshed out, everything that follows is going to be a mass of confusion, as we see.

Corollary:

God chose from all eternity that certain men will NOT use their free will to cooperate with His grace and thus merit (in a certain sense) their damnation.
(negative reprobation)

Well, to be technical, this is positive reprobation: negative reprobation is that God did not choose from eternity that certain men will use their free will...

The mystery / philosophical complexity is: how can God choose something, while leaving man's free-will intact? How God can decide that a man will use His free-will in a certain way, without impeding upon its freedom?

And the answer is that this impossible, using the term "choose" and "decide" univocally with respect to God in the same way these terms are meant with men.  And I say: this is not a mystery.  It is not a complexity.  It is a contradiction.  If God has decided or determined "from eternity" that I am going to the store, then I, by definition, cannot be the one deciding or determining it, since it has already been determined.

But this refutes the objection against Thomism that it makes God out to be a capricious monster, because it's not that God is choosing favourites and damning the rest without any regard to their free-will / merits; rather, it's that God has preordained that some men will use their free-will to damn themselves; so the malice in their will and not in God's.

No, it doesn't refute the objection, any more than putting lipstick on a pig makes it other than a pig, or that claiming a used-car salesman isn't in reality such, but a seller of "pre-owned vehicles".  This defense of Thomism is constantly made, and it is entirely intellectually vacuous.  God's choice is ontologically prior to free will / merits.  Therefore, He is choosing to save or not save (which He knows entails damnation for adults) without regard to them.

But the question is: why didn't God preordain it so that more men, or all men, would freely co-operate with His grace and merit salvation? It's this question that has only one answer, the one St. Paul gives: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways!"

No, this is not an answer, simply an evasion.  The real answer is that He does not, in reality, love them.

[Quaremerepulisti]

I mean, just a few posts ago you said this:

Yeah, I know.  That doesn't mean that I hardly ever discuss the speculative territory of the disagreement.  I've asked the following questions time and time again, and they remain unanswered by Thomists.  I believe the Eastern charge of an unrecognized anthropomorphism(cf. David Bentley Hart) in this aspect of Thomism to be correct.

What EXACTLY is it for God to "determine", "decide", "choose", "cause", or "will", and for Him to do so "from all eternity" (from an ontological standpoint)?  What EXACTLY is different between two worlds where God wills X and doesn't will X, (other than the obvious fact X exists in the one and not the other)?

[Quaremerepulisti]

I am always open to the idea that I may be wrong on any issue which is not de fide, and St. Thomas' views on grace and predestination are not explicitly de fide. Moreover, I have (I think) complimented you numerous times on these threads as giving penetrating and important objections. If I wasn't interested in what you had to say, I wouldn't continue to engage with you.

OK good.

Suffice it for now to state that, this isn't false advertising. It's a difference between Catholics regarding the approach to theology and catechesis. The implication that you're making is that Thomists intentionally deceive people as to what they believe. I don't think that that is true.

No, the implication is that apologetics is contradicted by theology, which either makes apologetics false advertising or theology false.

[LouisIX]

I mean, just a few posts ago you said this:

Yeah, I know.  That doesn't mean that I hardly ever discuss the speculative territory of the disagreement.  I've asked the following questions time and time again, and they remain unanswered by Thomists.  I believe the Eastern charge of an unrecognized anthropomorphism(cf. David Bentley Hart) in this aspect of Thomism to be correct.

What EXACTLY is it for God to "determine", "decide", "choose", "cause", or "will", and for Him to do so "from all eternity" (from an ontological standpoint)?  What EXACTLY is different between two worlds where God wills X and doesn't will X, (other than the obvious fact X exists in the one and not the other)?

See, I think that this critique is a good one (though I disagre with it), and we've discussed it before. It requires that we make a distinction between the divine will and the object of the willing. For God, all created objects of the will are ad extra precisely because there are no accidents in actus purus.

I would here respond by stating that DBH's critique seems to me to be overly anthropomorphizing God because it does not recognize the great difference between a divine and a human mover. Lonergan misses this point as well, but from the other direction. He states that there can be no difference between Peter sitting and Peter not sitting because he is placing the divine mechanism of operation into the human agent. DBH, missing the same distinction, creates a critique wherein the difference between being potentially moving and actually moving applies to God within the Thomistic system.

I think that this is an especially impossible objection for a practicing Christian to hold given that the objection, if tenable, renders any necessary relation of the creature to God to transgress the divine simplicity. This would, of course, include the very act of creation. One begins to ask how it might be the case that God is unaltered when He creates vs. does not create the universe. Either God can cause ad extra without a change in Himself or He cannot. It hardly makes a difference whether that causation is creation or movement. The type of causation is accidental to the critique itself.

[LouisIX]

I am always open to the idea that I may be wrong on any issue which is not de fide, and St. Thomas' views on grace and predestination are not explicitly de fide. Moreover, I have (I think) complimented you numerous times on these threads as giving penetrating and important objections. If I wasn't interested in what you had to say, I wouldn't continue to engage with you.

OK good.

Suffice it for now to state that, this isn't false advertising. It's a difference between Catholics regarding the approach to theology and catechesis. The implication that you're making is that Thomists intentionally deceive people as to what they believe. I don't think that that is true.

No, the implication is that apologetics is contradicted by theology, which either makes apologetics false advertising or theology false.

Well, there have been a lot of bad apologists. This is due, in large part, to the (at least recent) split between apologetics and speculative theology.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Well, there have been a lot of bad apologists. This is due, in large part, to the (at least recent) split between apologetics and speculative theology.

OK, is it also maybe possible there have been a lot of bad theologians?

[Quaremerepulisti]

See, I think that this critique is a good one (though I disagre with it), and we've discussed it before. It requires that we make a distinction between the divine will and the object of the willing. For God, all created objects of the will are ad extra precisely because there are no accidents in actus purus.

This is equivocation on the terms "object of the willing" or "created objects of the will".  You use them to mean "God's willing X" when you want to promote God as First Cause, but you use them to simply mean X when you want to evade arguments based on X being necessary from Divine simplicity.

What this really requires is that you make a distinction between God's will (which is identical to God's existence, per Divine simplicity) and God's willing X (not to be conflated with X).  Fine.  But what, then, is God's willing X?  It can't be His existence (His being actus purus), with the need to make such distinction.  And it can't be an accident.  But if you say it's ad extra then it's something outside of God and not "God's" in any usual definition of the term.  And, if "God's willing X" is First Cause of X, but "God's willing X" is not God, then God is not First Cause and the Five Ways just ended up in the Recycle Bin.

DBH, missing the same distinction, creates a critique wherein the difference between being potentially moving and actually moving applies to God within the Thomistic system.

OK, but Thomism has not described precisely what the distinction between God moving and God not moving is.  Because it can't, because in Thomism there are no categories of reality beyond actuality and potency.

I think that this is an especially impossible objection for a practicing Christian to hold given that the objection, if tenable, renders any necessary relation of the creature to God to transgress the divine simplicity.

Unless you take Perry Robinson's tack and go Orthodox and deny simplicity and embrace essence-energies.

One begins to ask how it might be the case that God is unaltered when He creates vs. does not create the universe. Either God can cause ad extra without a change in Himself or He cannot. It hardly makes a difference whether that causation is creation or movement. The type of causation is accidental to the critique itself.

Yeah, one begins to ask that, and realizes Thomism doesn't have the answer, even though it must be true.  All Thomism can do is proclaim that it isn't true.

[John Lamb]

But what, then, is God's willing X?  It can't be His existence (His being actus purus), with the need to make such distinction.

God does will X, Y, Z through one simple act of will which is identical to His existence, as all X, Y, Z, etc., are in Him as one: "the material immaterially and the many unitedly."

Thereby it can be shown, however, that in willing Himself God also wills other things.

For to whom it belongs to win the end principally, to him it belongs to will the things that are ordered to the end for the sake of the end. Now, God Himself is the ultimate end of things, as appears somewhat from what has been said. Hence, because He wills Himself to be, He likewise wills other things, which are ordered to Him as to the end.

...

Moreover, will accompanies intellect. But by His intellect God principally understands Himself, and He understands other things in Himself. In the same way, therefore, He principally wills Himself, and wills all other things in willing Himself.

...

From this result it follows that God wills Himself and other things by one act of will.

Again, since God wills Himself always, if He wills Himself and other things by different acts it will follow that there are at once two acts of will in Him. This is impossible, since one simple power does not have at once two operations.

Furthermore, in every act of the will the object willed is to the one willing as a mover to the moved. If, then, there be some action of the divine will, by which God wills things other than Himself, which is diverse from the action by which He wills Himself, there will be in Him some other mover of the divine will. This is impossible.

Moreover, God's willing is His being, as has been proved. But in God there is only one being. Therefore, there is in Him only one willing.

Again, willing belongs to God according as He is intelligent. Therefore, just as by one act He understands Himself and other things, in so far as His essence is the exemplar of all things, so by one act He wills Himself and other things, in so far as His goodness is the likeness of all goodness.

...

From this it follows that the multitude of the objects of the will is not opposed to the unity and simplicity of the divine substance.

For acts are distinguished according to their objects. If, then, the many objects that God wills caused a multitude in Him, it would follow that there was not in Him solely one operation of the will. This is against what has been proved above.

Again, it has been shown that God wills other things in so far as He wills His own goodness. Hence, other things are to His will in the manner in which they are comprehended by His goodness. But all things in His goodness are one, since other things are in Him according to His way, namely, "the material immaterially and the many unitedly," as appears from what has been said. It remains, then, that the multitude of the objects of the will does not multiply the divine substance.

Moreover, the divine intellect and will are of an equal simplicity, for both are the divine substance, as has been proved. But the multitude of intellectual objects does not cause a multitude in the divine essence, nor a composition in the divine intellect. Neither, therefore, does a multitude of the objects of the will cause either a diversity in the divine essence or a composition in the divine will

...

But, if the divine will of necessity wills the divine goodness and the divine being, it might seem to someone that it wills of necessity other things as well, since God wills all other things in willing His own goodness, as was proved above. Nevertheless, if we consider the matter correctly, it appears that He does not will other things necessarily.

For God wills other things as ordered to the end of His goodness. But the will is not directed to what is for the sake of the end if the end can be without it. For, on the basis of his intention to heal, a doctor does not necessarily have to give to a sick person the medicine without which the sick person can nevertheless be healed. Since, then, the divine goodness can be without other things, and, indeed, is in no way increased by other things, it is under no necessity to will other things from the fact of willing its own goodness.

...

Moreover, God, in willing His own goodness, wills things other than Himself to be in so far as they participate in His goodness. But, since the divine goodness is infinite, it can be participated in infinite ways, and in ways other than it is participated in by the creatures that now exist. if, then, as a result of willing His own goodness, God necessarily willed the things that participate in it, it would follow that He would will the existence of an infinity of creatures participating in His goodness in an infinity of ways. This is patently false, because, if He willed them, they would be, since His will is the principle of being for things, as will be shown later on. Therefore, God does not necessarily will even the things that now exist..

[Kreuzritter]

What this really requires is that you make a distinction between God's will (which is identical to God's existence, per Divine simplicity) and God's willing X (not to be conflated with X).  Fine.  But what, then, is God's willing X?  It can't be His existence (His being actus purus), with the need to make such distinction.  And it can't be an accident.  But if you say it's ad extra then it's something outside of God and not "God's" in any usual definition of the term.  And, if "God's willing X" is First Cause of X, but "God's willing X" is not God, then God is not First Cause and the Five Ways just ended up in the Recycle Bin.

This is a Scheinproblem arising from a falsche Verdinglichung. Why are we treating acts as though they were things?

Why even restrict the question to the will? What about perception? What about comprehension? Does God's perception contradict actus purus? Does His comphrehension contradict divine simplicity? If not, must they not be God's "in any usual definition of the term"?

What is perceived is not within me; I perceive it. What is comphrehened is not within me; I comprehend it. And what is willed is not within me; I will it. Yet my peceiving, comprehending, and willing are my own, and not the perceiving, nor the comprehending, nor the willing is a thing.

ACTS are not things that they might be causes; AGENTS who act are causes.

Not "God's willing X causes X", but God, in his willing X, causes X. An agents acts, his acting drives a process taking something from one state to another, and I end with the effect of which I call the agent the efficient cause.

The problem is all in your imagination.

[LouisIX]

Well, there have been a lot of bad apologists. This is due, in large part, to the (at least recent) split between apologetics and speculative theology.

OK, is it also maybe possible there have been a lot of bad theologians?

Hah. I don't think that there's any question about that!

[LouisIX]

See, I think that this critique is a good one (though I disagre with it), and we've discussed it before. It requires that we make a distinction between the divine will and the object of the willing. For God, all created objects of the will are ad extra precisely because there are no accidents in actus purus.

This is equivocation on the terms "object of the willing" or "created objects of the will".  You use them to mean "God's willing X" when you want to promote God as First Cause, but you use them to simply mean X when you want to evade arguments based on X being necessary from Divine simplicity.

What this really requires is that you make a distinction between God's will (which is identical to God's existence, per Divine simplicity) and God's willing X (not to be conflated with X).  Fine.  But what, then, is God's willing X?  It can't be His existence (His being actus purus), with the need to make such distinction.  And it can't be an accident.  But if you say it's ad extra then it's something outside of God and not "God's" in any usual definition of the term.  And, if "God's willing X" is First Cause of X, but "God's willing X" is not God, then God is not First Cause and the Five Ways just ended up in the Recycle Bin.

No, I deny the consequent. Unlike in the created agent, which moves from being potentially moving X from actually moving X, no such movement takes place in God. I recognize that this is an absurdity when considered according to created agency, but divine agency doesn't work like created agency given the fact that God is actus purus. It's a kind of motion which reduces nothing potential in the mover. The unification of "God wills x" with the divine nature is an anthropomorphizing of the divine nature. That God wills unceasingly is in accord with God's nature. That X comes about when He wills it is a corollary of the divine simplicity only under the condition that He wills X. It places no necessity in regard to the divine simplicity that He wills X at all because the object of the movement is entirely ad extra. Again, I'm not stating that it is entirely possible for us to fully apprehend what it means to will entirely ad extra because that is entirely beyond human experience, just as all of the divine perfections are.

DBH, missing the same distinction, creates a critique wherein the difference between being potentially moving and actually moving applies to God within the Thomistic system.

OK, but Thomism has not described precisely what the distinction between God moving and God not moving is.  Because it can't, because in Thomism there are no categories of reality beyond actuality and potency.

It depends upon what we mean by divine motion. Do we mean motion as act? In that case, the distinction is the distinction between God existing and God not existing. If to be God is to be I AM (actus purus) then a God which is not in act is a nothingness, the opposite of God.

If by motion we mean something in the moved, (which is precisely what Thomists claim premotion is) then there is absolutely no difference between God moving and God not moving, which Lonergan points out well, because, in this particular case, the movement implies no change in the mover.

One begins to ask how it might be the case that God is unaltered when He creates vs. does not create the universe. Either God can cause ad extra without a change in Himself or He cannot. It hardly makes a difference whether that causation is creation or movement. The type of causation is accidental to the critique itself.

Yeah, one begins to ask that, and realizes Thomism doesn't have the answer, even though it must be true.  All Thomism can do is proclaim that it isn't true.

I propose that the objection which you are giving (which is indeed an intelligent one) is, nonetheless, not a real objection given the difference between human and divine willing. If the objection attacks not just Thomistic premotion but also the traditional Christian idea of creatio then perhaps it is the objection which is wanting.

In all fairness, to claim that the objection is a true one, the one making the objection ought to be able to show how the objection does not destroy theistic creation itself. It seems to me that there are only these two options:

a) the divine simplicity can be preserved in the face of creation but not in the face of Thomistic premotion.

• If true, Thomistic premotion is wrong.

OR

b) the divine simplicity cannot be preserved in the face of creation nor Thomistic premotion.

• If true, the answer is either 1) that the objection is ultimately invalid or that 2) classical theism is refuted.

[Quaremerepulisti]

God does will X, Y, Z through one simple act of will which is identical to His existence, as all X, Y, Z, etc., are in Him as one: "the material immaterially and the many unitedly."

But if God's willing X, Y, Z is identical to His existence, and God's existence is necessary, then God's willing X, Y, and Z is necessary, and therefore X, Y, and Z are necessary.

This argument is valid, and sound given the premises.  To be clear, this is not a necessity of supposition but an absolute necessity being talked about here.

Since Thomism posits X, Y, and Z are not necessary absolutely, it is caught in a logical contradiction.

[Quaremerepulisti]

This is a Scheinproblem arising from a falsche Verdinglichung. Why are we treating acts as though they were things?

Well, they are either things or accidents, in Thomism.  If you are trying to argue that, in fact, there is more to reality then potency and act then you are agreeing with me and against Thomism.

Yet my peceiving, comprehending, and willing are my own, and not the perceiving, nor the comprehending, nor the willing is a thing.

Fine, but my willing of this or that is an accident of me, in Thomism.

ACTS are not things that they might be causes; AGENTS who act are causes.

Adopt agent causality all you wish, but it still the remains the case that the agent must be moved from potentially acting to actually acting.

Not "God's willing X causes X", but God, in his willing X, causes X. An agents acts, his acting drives a process taking something from one state to another, and I end with the effect of which I call the agent the efficient cause.

The problem is all in your imagination.

You don't even understand the problem.  Is God's willing X identical to God, and is that identical to God causing X?