41. Human freedom and divine grace
41. HUMAN FREEDOM AND DIVINE GRACE
Does God cause me to choose what I seem to choose by my own free will, or not? If so, how can I be free? If not, how can His grace make a difference to my choices?
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 for one thing to be cause of another it does not need to be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves (other) causes both natural (involuntary) and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes (e.g., winds, and dogs) He does not prevent their acts being natural (windy and doggy), so by moving voluntary causes (our free will) He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary (free). But rather He is the cause of this very thing in them, for He operates in each thing according to its nature (I,83,1).
Two kinds of determinism threaten free will: from below (by material forces, as in Marx, Darwin, and Freud) and from above (by a Calvinist rather than Catholic God). We must avoid both deterministic philosophies.
Two errors are possible about the relationship between God’s grace and our free will. We can deny either the sovereignty and sufficiency and primacy of grace, or the reality of free will. This dilemma is not easy to solve, because we must reconcile rather than deny the two things that here seem to exclude each other. If God pulls my strings, I seem to be a mere puppet. If He does not, He seems no longer to be the universal First Cause.
St. Thomas strongly affirms both halves of this dilemma and reconciles them by the principle that grace perfects the nature it created rather than destroying it, reducing it, or opposing it. God operates in each thing according to its nature. He is the friend, not the enemy, of all nature and therefore especially of our nature and its perfection, especially its moral perfection, which necessarily and essentially includes free choice.
Here are three analogies for the relation between grace and nature. God is like light, salt, or knowledge. Light does not rival any color but reveals all colors. Salt does not destroy food but preserves it and brings out the flavor of each. Knowledge does not destroy its material objects, as one material object destroys another, but gives all its objects a second life, a spiritual life, in the mind. So God’s grace moves our free will to freely choose the good, not as one domino moves another but as a playwright moves his characters. Puppets do not make good characters, and God is a perfect author.
It is therefore foolish to fear the loss of our liberty and freedom and self-mastery when we surrender totally to God. For God is not a slave master but a creative author. Our surrender to Him is in fact the only way we can be totally free. He is not our rival in the same universe, like Zeus; He is the Creator. Sometimes we need to get free from our imperfect fathers on earth, but never from our perfect Father in Heaven.
This is not just a clever solution to a tricky theological and philosophical problem. It makes a great difference to our lives, because it preserves both our total personal responsibility (we really are free, therefore we really are responsible for our choices) and our reliance on divine grace (we really are dependent on it, we really do receive it, and it really makes a difference: an eternal difference).
It’s not either / or, it’s both / and.
And it’s not 50% ours and 50% His; it’s 100% ours and 100% His.
It’s like love.
It is love.