God’s Gift of Efficacious Grace

God’s Gift of Efficacious Grace

God’s Gift of Efficacious Grace

Now that we have an understanding of God’s antecedent and consequent wills, we examine in detail the mystery of efficacious grace. Let’s review what we have presented thus far. With sufficient grace, God gives man the power to perform the salutary act; with efficacious grace, God actually causes man to freely perform the act (although God doesn’t coerce man; man remains free). With sufficient grace, man’s power to perform the salutary act remains in potency and is never actualized (because God allows man to resist the grace). With efficacious grace, man’s power to resist the grace is in potency and is never actualized (because God moves man to freely respond to the grace).¹ With the latter, the grace is intrinsically efficacious; with the former, it is inefficacious but truly sufficient. This means that God is the cause of all good and salvation, and man is responsible for all evil and damnation.

Because God grants grace according to the eternal decrees of His will, Thomists generally hold that the antecedent will is the principle of sufficient grace, and the consequent will is the principle of efficacious grace.² In His antecedent will, God wills all men to be saved and thus gives all men sufficient grace to that end (God considers each person absolutely). But in view of the greater good of the universe, He consequently wills to infallibly save His elect, and to permit the reprobate to be damned (God considers each person relative to the whole). It follows that the good that God antecedently wills, and the sufficient grace He grants to all men, are not efficacious, whereas His consequent will and the related grace He eternally decrees for His elect are efficacious. Thus, St. Thomas says, “[I]t is clear that whatever God simply [consequently] wills takes place; although what He wills antecedently may not take place.”³

Because God unconditionally elects man to salvation based on His decree and not foreseen merits, man does not determine the type of grace he receives. God has decreed the grace He would bestow upon man from all eternity. As St. Paul says, “Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?” (1 Cor. 4:7). St.Thomas comments on this verse: “Who is it that distinguisheth thee from the mass of those who are lost? This is more than thou canst do. Who is it that makes thee superior to another? Thou thyself canst not do this, and therefore why art thou proud of thyself?”⁴ That one man receives sufficient grace, and another man efficacious grace, must be sought for in the will of God, not man. St. Thomas further explains:

Hence the first cause of this diversity is to be sought on the part of God, Who dispenses His gifts of grace variously, in order that the beauty and perfection of the Church may result from these various degrees; even as He instituted various conditions of things, that the universe might be perfect.⁵

Just as God decrees man’s end independently of anything in man, so He decrees the means to that end independently of anything in man. Thus, when Scripture says “God is not a respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34), it means there is nothing in man that determines his election, outside of what God willed to give him. God decrees His predestination plan in eternity, and implements the plan in time. God does this by granting man sufficient and efficacious graces.⁶ In this way, God orders all men to their end for His greater glory and for the perfection of the universe.

Because God predestines the elect “according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:5), St. Thomas explains efficacious grace in terms of the efficacy of the divine will.⁷ Put very simply, if God wills someone to receive grace efficaciously, that person will infallibly receive it. St. Thomas says, “Hence if God intends, while moving, that the one whose heart He moves should attain to grace, he will infallibly attain to it, according to John 6:45: Every one that hath heard the Father, and hath learned, cometh to Me.”⁸ St. Thomas also says, “Since, then, the will of God is the universal cause of all things, it is impossible that the divine will should not produce its effect.”⁹ This, of course, refers to God’s consequent or simple will. St. Thomas echoes St. Augustine’s famous teaching that “by God’s good gifts whoever is liberated, is most certainly liberated.”¹⁰

St. Thomas’s teachings are consistent with the scriptures that reveal that nothing can resist God’s will: “O Lord, Lord, almighty king, for all things are in thy power, and there is none that can resist thy will” (Esth. 13:9); “Thou art Lord of all, and there is none that can resist thy majesty (Esth. 13:11); “But our God is in heaven: he hath done all things whatsoever he would” (Ps. 113:11); “As the divisions of waters, so the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord:whithersoever he will he shall turn it” (Prov. 21:1).

We also recall St. Paul’s rhetorical questions in Romans 9: “Thou wilt say therefore to me: Why doth he then find fault? for who resisteth his will?” (v.19); and also Joseph of the Old Testament: “Fear not: can we resist the will of God?” (Gen. 50:19); and David: “Thou art terrible, and who shall resist thee?” (Ps. 75:8); and Solomon: “who shall resist the strength of thy arm?” (Wis.11:22); and, God Himself: “I will stir him up, like one that is cruel: for who can resist my countenance?” (Job 41:1). This means that when God wills a person to perform a salutary act (e.g., prayer, good works), He grants him the means (an efficacious grace) that infallibly produces the end (the act willed by God). If God wills to permit a person to resist His grace, He grants him a sufficient, and not an efficacious, grace.¹¹

Moreover, God’s efficacious will causes things to be done precisely the way He wants them done, as St. Thomas says: “From the very fact that nothing resists the divine will, it follows that not only those things happen that God wills to happen, but that they happen necessarily or contingently according to His will.”¹² St. Thomas also says, “Since then the divine will is perfectly efficacious, it follows not only that things are done, which God wills to be done, but also that they are done in the way that He wills. Now God wills some things to be done necessarily, some things contingently, to the right ordering of things, for the building up of the universe.”¹³ In the mystery of God’s providence, all things happen according to God’s simple will. For the elect, who receive the efficacious grace of final perseverance, “all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints” (Rom. 8:28).

Many Protestants falsely believe that Catholics try to “earn” their salvation by good works. Such a view demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of efficacious grace and the power of God’s will (not to mention Catholic teaching). Whenever we do anything beneficial to our salvation (faith, works, prayer), it is God’s efficacious grace working in us to produce the result. While God requires both faith and works for salvation, He brings about our faith and works by His efficacious grace. St. Paul states this clearly when he says, “For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.”¹⁴ As we saw in Romans 9:21, because we are merely clay in the potter’s hands, St. Paul says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us” (1 Cor. 4:7). Thus, St. Augustine rightly says that “God does not crown your merits as your merits, but as His gifts.”¹⁵ In quoting St. Augustine, the Catechism also says, “God brings to completion in us what he has begun, ‘since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it’” (CCC 2001).

Elsewhere in Scripture, St. Paul emphasizes the intrinsic efficacy of grace working within us. For example, St. Paul says, “Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is from God” (1 Cor. 3:5). He also says, “But by the grace of God, I am what I am; and his grace in me hath not been void, but I have labored more abundantly than all they: yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Cor. 15:10). St. Paul is clear that God both begins and completes the salutary act for us by His grace: “Being confident of this very thing, that he, who hath begun a good work in you, will perfect it unto the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6); for He “is able to do all things more abundantly than we desire or understand, according to the power that worketh in us” (Eph. 3:20). St. Paul also says, “Wherein also I labor, striving according to his working which he worketh in me in power” (Col. 1:29). When God so wills, man is “not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit” (Acts 6:10). Because “Christ liveth in me,” St. Paul is able to say, “I cast not away the grace of God” (Gal. 2:20-21). Isaias also attributes our good works to God, not man: “Lord, thou wilt give us peace: for thou hast wrought all our works for us” (Isa. 26:12).

St. Paul reveals that God is able to direct a man to salvation if He so wills it: “The Lord hath delivered me from every evil work: and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen;”¹⁶ and, “To his own lord he standeth or falleth. And he shall stand: for God is able to make him stand” (Rom. 14:4). St. Jude similarly says, “Now to him who is able to preserve you without sin, and to present you spotless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 24). St. Peter also reveals that the elect “by the power of God, are kept by faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5). David also says, “For the Lord loveth judgment, and will not forsake his saints: they shall be preserved forever” (Ps. 36:28).

In the Book of Ezechiel, after revealing the promise of baptism (36:25), God tells us how His Spirit can change the heart of man and cause him to obey His commandments: “And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in the midst of you: and I will cause you to walk in my commandments, and to keep my judgments, and do them” (36:26-27). The Lord also revealed to Moses: “The Lord thy God will circumcise they heart, and the heart of thy seed: that thou mayst love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayst live” (Deut. 30:6). David also says, “Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels” (Ps.51:12). These and countless other scriptures reveal how the power of God’s efficacious grace works in man to produce the result that God wills.

The particular councils of the Church reveal the intrinsic efficacy of certain grace and man’s complete dependence on such grace. For example, canon 9 of the Council of Orange (529), entitled The Assistance of God, says, “It is a divine gift, both when we think rightly and when we restrain our feet from falsity and injustice; for as often as we do good, God operates in us and with us, that we may work.”¹⁷ In canon 16, the Council says, “Let no one glory in that which he seems to possess, as if he did not receive [it] … Whoever has, has from Him, but whoever denies that he has from Him, either does not truly possess, or that, which he possesses, is taken away from him [Matt. 25:29].”¹⁸

In canon 20, entitled That Without God Man Can Do No Good, the Council of Orange says, “God does many good things in man, which man does not do;indeed man can do no good that God does not expect that man do.”¹⁹ In canon 22, the same Council says, “No one has anything of his own except lying and sin. But if man has any truth and justice, it is from that fountain for which we ought to thirst in this desert, that bedewed by some drops of water from it, we may not falter on the way.”²⁰ The Council of Sens (1140) condemned the idea that “free will is sufficient in itself for any good.”²¹ The Ecumenical Council of Trent also condemns the position that man can persevere “without a special help of God.”²²

THE WILL REMAINS FREE

While God works in man both to will and to accomplish His end, man remains free under the influence of efficacious grace. This is because man’s will by nature is free, and God’s grace works upon nature.²³ Thus, efficacious grace does not compel man’s will, such as many Calvinists believe; but neither does its efficacy depend on man’s will, such as most Arminians believe. Rather, efficacious grace elicits the freedom of the will, so that man freely chooses the good and does not want to resist. As David says, “The Lord God hath opened my ear, and I do not resist” (Ps. 50:5). The Catechism also says, “the divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man.”²⁴ In other words, this grace perfects the will so that it chooses the good God created it to desire and possess. St. Thomas rightly describes the effect of efficacious grace on the will: “God moves the will immutably on account of the efficacy of the moving power which cannot fail; but on account of the nature of the will that is moved, which is indifferently disposed to various things, the will is not necessitated but remains free.”²⁵

St. Thomas also says, “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.”²⁶ St. Thomas also says, “God changes the will without forcing it. But He can change the will from the fact that He Himself operates in the will as He does in nature.”²⁷ He also says, “Only … God can move the will as an agent without violence”²⁸ and, “Always … does man choose this thing, according as God works in his will.”²⁹

In canon 4 on justification, the Council of Trent declares that man does not remain passive under the influence of justifying grace: “If anyone shall say that man’s free will moved and aroused by God does not cooperate by assenting to God who rouses and calls, whereby it disposes and prepares itself to obtain the grace of justification; and that it cannot dissent, if it wishes, but that like something inanimate it does nothing at all and is merely in a passive state: let him be anathema.”³⁰ In canon 23, the Council of Orange further says that when men serve the divine will, “willingly they do what they do, nevertheless, it is the will of Him by whom what they will is both prepared and ordered.”³¹

St. Thomas divides efficacious grace into operating grace and cooperating grace, which are the two effects of the same efficacious grace. With operating grace, God moves man’s mind to will the good. This interior movement of the will is entirely the work of God who is Prime Mover and First Agent of all being and action. Thus, St. Thomas says, “Hence in that effect in which our mind is moved and does not move, but in which God is the sole mover, the operation is attributed to God, and it is with reference to this that we speak of operating grace.”³² The Catechism also says that God “touches and directly moves the heart of man” (CCC 2002). Thus, all of our holy desires are caused by God’s efficacious will and not our will, and solely because of His mercy and not our foreseen merits. As St. Thomas says, “[A]ll man’s good is from God.”³³ This is why St. Paul says, “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:16).

With cooperating grace, God’s operating movement causes man to freely choose the good that God wills for him. Because man is freely choosing the good, the operation can, in a sense, be attributable to man.³⁴ However, man is able to choose the good only because God continues to operate in his will, making him capable of performing the act. St. Thomas explains that “because God assists us in this act, both by strengthening our will interiorly so as to attain to the act, and by granting outwardly the capability of operating, it is with respect to this that we speak of cooperating grace.”³⁵ Because the will remains free even though its movement is caused by God, St. Thomas says, “[T]he determination of the action and the end is placed in the power of free will; hence it retains its dominion over its act, though not in the same way as does the first agent.”³⁶ As St. Paul says, God works within us, “For in him we live, and move, and are” (Acts 17:28).

Thus, God both moves man’s will interiorly and makes man capable outwardly of performing all salutary acts. This is why St. Paul says that God “worketh in you, both to will (operating grace) and to accomplish (cooperating grace), according to his good will” (Phil. 2:13). Salvation is the work of God, not man. As St. Thomas says, “Therefore, all movements of will and choice must be traced to the divine will: and not to any other cause, because God alone is the cause of our willing and choosing.”³⁷ Thus, “[W]hatsoever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord” (Eph. 6:8), for God “worketh all in all” (1 Cor. 12:6).

That man performs salutary acts freely is the reason why man can have merit before God. If man weren’t free, St. Thomas says that “rewards and punishments would be in vain.”³⁸ In Catholic theology, the word merit (or reward)means “deserving justly,” and is the effect of efficacious grace. One deserves justly when he performs the work he was required to do, and this satisfies justice. However, because justice pertains to equality, and there is infinite inequality between God and man, man has no strict right to merit anything from God. Nevertheless, God rewards us on account of His gratuitous justice whenever we do His will. That is, God rewards us for doing what He gave us the power to do. This does not make God our debtor, for God lacks nothing. Rather, it gives God all the glory, for it is due to God that creatures carry out His will. St. Thomas says, “Hence we merit from God, not that by our works anything accrues to Him, but inasmuch as we work for His glory.”³⁹

While Thomists hold that God is the primary cause of our salutary acts and man is the subordinated secondary cause (and only because God applies man’s will to act), Molina considered the primary and secondary causes as two partial and coordinated causes, like two men pulling a boat.⁴⁰ In this view, God does not move the secondary cause to act; rather, the two causes act simultaneously, and require the concurrence of each other to produce the effect. Thus, the total effect (the salutary act) is said to come from both God and man, without one being primary in causality over the other.

In light of the teachings of Scripture as explained by Church councils and St. Thomas, the Molinist position appears incorrect. If the divine motion happens simultaneously with the human action, then God is no longer the Prime Mover and the First Agent with respect to secondary causes. This would mean that something would move from potency to act while escaping God’s universal causality and divine decree, which is impossible. Further, if the divine motion requires the concurrence of the human motion, then God who is pure Act is determined and not determining, which is also impossible. Finally, if God as the primary cause does not apply the will to act as a secondary cause, then some good (the human action) does not come from the Source of all good. The greater would come from the lesser. This, again, is impossible. St. Thomas properly explains the chain of causality:

Again it is to be observed that where there are several agents in order, the second always acts in virtue of the first: for the first agent moves the second to act. And thus all agents act in virtue of God Himself: and therefore He is the cause of action in every agent.⁴¹

Because God is the cause of action in every agent, even man’s free will determination to do good comes from God. We have seen that this determination comes entirely from God as first cause (operating grace), and from us as secondary cause (cooperating grace). St. Thomas is clear on this point: “Now there is no distinction between what flows from free will, and what is of predestination; as there is no distinction between what flows from a secondary cause and from a first cause.”⁴² Thus, God willed efficaciously that Mary would freely utter her fiat to become the Mother of God, and that Jesus would freely offer His life on the Cross for the forgiveness of sins. These divine actions were freely decreed and determined by God in eternity as first cause, and freely chosen by Mary and Jesus as secondary causes.⁴³ Both acts were free because God efficaciously willed both acts to be performed freely. Many other examples, of course, could be provided.

Because the will remains free and is not coerced by efficacious grace, the will truly has the power to resist the grace. Yet as we have said, this power is never actualized but remains in potency. This is why Scripture reveals that the elect have the power to fall away, although they do not fall away. For example, Jesus says, “For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) the elect” (Matt.24:24).⁴⁴ In his second letter to Timothy, St. Paul says that he “endures all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation” (2 Tim.2:10). In reference to this same elect, St.Paul then says, “If we deny him, he will also deny us. If we believe not, he continueth faithful, he can not deny himself ” (v. 12). St. Paul reveals that the elect have the power to deny God, but they do not because God in His mercy prevents them from doing so. As David says, “[M]y God, his mercy shall prevent me” (Ps. 58:11).

Although Scripture is clear that God grants man grace that he resists, this refers to sufficient grace and not efficacious grace. Thus, it is incorrect to say that man’s resistance of sufficient grace deprives him of efficacious grace. God wills to permit man to resist sufficient grace independently of His will to grant him efficacious grace. If God wills to grant man efficacious grace, He will grant it to him. As St.Thomas teaches, “[I]f God intends, while moving, that the one whose heart He moves should attain to grace, he will infallibly attain to it.”⁴⁵ Man never determines God or the grace He gives man. Further, if resisting sufficient grace would deprive man of efficacious grace, then no one would receive efficacious grace. Why? Because all men resist sufficient grace by sinning. If one sins, one has resisted sufficient grace. If no one receives efficacious grace, then no one goes to heaven, for man cannot attain heaven unless God grants him the efficacious grace of final perseverance.

Molinists often argue that God deprives man of efficacious grace when he resists sufficient grace (as if man’s cooperation or non-resistance, and not God’s will, determined the efficacy of the grace). They often refer to the following statement by the Council of Trent (note that this statement was not part of the council’s dogmatic canons): “For God, unless men be wanting in His grace, as He has begun a good work, so will He perfect it, working ‘to will and to accomplish.’”⁴⁶ Trent’s teaching does not say that man is deprived of efficacious grace if he resists sufficient grace. In fact, Trent’s statement does not refer to man’s will or conduct at all. It simply says that God perfects His work in man unless man lacks grace. God does not perfect the work He begins in man with sufficient grace because man “is wanting,” that is, he fails His grace by resisting it. Thus, Trent reiterates the truth that man can do no supernatural good without God’s grace.

In his classic book Predestination, Dominican Thomist Fr. Reginald Gar-rigou-Lagrange appears to make this Molinist argument. Although he accurately presents the Thomistic principles on sufficient and efficacious grace, he seems to fall into the trappings of Molinism when he attempts to apply them. For example, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange rightly says, “Grace is a gratuitous gift and God grants sufficient grace to all those who have the obligation to keep His commandments.”⁴⁷ But in the next sentence, he says, “If they resist it, they merit thus to be deprived of the efficacious help which was virtually offered to them in the preceding grace.”⁴⁸

In this statement, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange seems to say that man (his cooperation or resistance) determines God (His granting or denial of efficacious grace). Although Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange espouses the Thomist position, this particular view violates many principles of Thomism, including God as Prime Mover and divine predilection.From a Thomist perspective, “efficacious help” is determined by God’s eternal decrees and not man’s actions. Moreover, “efficacious help” cannot fail if it is truly efficacious. Finally, a Thomist would not say God “virtually” offers efficacious grace to man. As St. Thomas teaches, if God intends man to attain to grace, man will infallibly attain to it because of God’s efficacious will.

In support of his opinion, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange refers to St. Augustine, who says that if efficacious grace is granted to one, it is because of God’s mercy; if it is refused to a certain other, it is because of His justice.⁴⁹ Although this statement is true, it does not mean that God refuses efficacious grace because of man’s sin. As we have seen, Scripture says just the opposite. In Romans 9, God reveals that He has mercy on some, and exacts justice upon others, according to the purpose of His will, and not man’s will. As with Jacob and Esau, God makes these determinations before we are born, and before we have done any good or evil, so that the purpose of His election might stand (see Rom. 9:11). This is why St. Paul says, “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (v. 16).

Fr.Garrigou-Lagrange further says that “nobody is deprived of an efficacious grace that is necessary for salvation except through his own fault” and that God refuses “efficacious grace on account of this sin.”⁵⁰ It is also fair to hold these conclusions as a-Thomistic, if not erroneous, because God gives the elect the efficacious grace of final perseverance even though they have sinned throughout their lives. This truth demonstrates that human action (sin) is not dispositive in determining whether God grants efficacious grace.⁵¹ Rather, God’s eternal decrees determine the type of grace that He grants man. While God withholds grace out of justice, He grants efficacious grace out of His mercy. Both the withholding and the granting of grace must be sought for in the eternal decrees of God, and not in the will of man.

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange seems to confuse the distinction between sufficient and efficacious grace when he says, “[S]ufficient grace virtually contains the efficacious grace that is offered to us in it, as the flower contains the fruit … This efficacious grace is thus within our power, though certainly not something that can be produced by us, but as a gift that would be granted to us if our will did not resist sufficient grace … Thus it is true to say that man is deprived of efficacious grace because he resisted sufficient grace.”⁵² Like his other statements, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange effectively says that man can convert sufficient grace into efficacious grace by his own will. St.Thomas never taught such a principle. Rather, St. Thomas teaches that “all movements of will and choice must be traced to the divine will: and not to any other cause, because God alone is the cause of our willing and choosing.”⁵³

Hence, efficacious grace does not depend upon man’s power, but upon God’s will, who “sheweth mercy.” If man could make grace efficacious by his cooperation or non-resistance, then the good of cooperation or non-resistance would be attributable to man and not to God. God, the author of all good, would no longer produce all the good in man. Something good would escape God’s divine causality, and God’s efficacious will would depend upon man’s will. Such a theology would necessarily hold that one man could be better than another without being loved more or helped more by God. Such a theology would also mean that man could boast in his good works and not in God. Man would be operating independently of God’s eternal decrees and God would be determined, not determining. These propositions, from a Thomistic perspective, are absurd.⁵⁴

A “MOST” UNUSUAL ALTERNATIVE

In his book, Grace, Predestination and the Salvific Will of God, Fr. William Most introduces a brand new theory about efficacious grace: that the absence of a decision not to resist makes grace efficacious.⁵⁵ Fr. Most’s non-resistance theory makes the efficacy of grace conditioned upon something in man while at the same time claiming that man’s non-resistance is not a salutary act. Fr. Most says, “St. Paul excluded from man’s unaided power only the ability of performing or initiating any positive salutary good without grace. He did not say that man could not control whether or not he would resist grace.”⁵⁶

Thus, Fr. Most makes a distinction between a positive decision not to resist grace (which he admits is a salutary act caused by grace) and a negative, non-decision concerning the grace, which he claims is a non-salutary act that also renders grace efficacious. Notwithstanding his claims to the contrary, Fr. Most’s novel theory falls into the trap of giving man—and not grace—credit for the salutary act. Thus, Fr.Most’s interpretation runs afoul of St.Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor. 4:7 (the Thomist interpretation of which Fr. Most rejects). Even though all good comes from God, Fr. Most’s theory makes man the principal determiner of his salvation. Because he says “in this negative way he can control whether or not he attains salvation,” Fr. Most declares that man is not dependent upon God for everything. Although Fr. Most claims his non-resistance theory is the proper interpretation of St. Thomas, as we will see, neither St. Thomas nor the Church has ever taught such a principle. This may be why the subtitle to Fr. Most’s book is New Answers to Old Questions.⁵⁷

Fr. Most describes his schema as follows:

God first makes a decision to send to man a grace by which He wills to move a man to a specified effect.⁵⁸ Grace makes the beginning, for, as the Council of Orange says, it is not we who begin. Grace makes the beginning by presenting good to our intellect, causing it to perceive the good, and moving our will to an initial complacency in this good … Next, a man can resist or not-resist grace. If he merely does nothing against these effects, he does not resist. He does not even make a decision: I will not resist.⁵⁹ On condition of this non-resistance, grace moves him to the positive consent, but in such a way that man becomes active too, for he is not like something passive … Even though God begins the process and begins it with the purpose of moving a man to a specified thing, yet the first decisive step comes from man, for by his resistance or lack of resistance man really controls an outcome, an outcome which is not predetermined by God in advance of this negative determination by man.⁶⁰

Fr. Most even goes on to say, “God does not move to positive consent until the condition of non-resistance is verified in man.”⁶¹ There are many problems with this schema from a Thomist perspective.

We first note that St. Thomas expressly disagrees with Fr. Most. St. Thomas says, “We must say that the very fact that a man does not place an obstacle proceeds from grace.”⁶² St. Thomas teaches that man’s non-resistance is the work of grace in man, not a condition of “non-being” in man. If it is the work of grace, then God willed the non-resistance from the very beginning, because nothing escapes God’s universal causality. As St. Thomas says, “Since then, all particular causes are included under the universal cause, it could not be that any effect should take place outside the range of that universal cause.”⁶³ St. Thomas also says, “We must hold that the will of God is the cause of things.”⁶⁴ Knowing these principles, Fr. Most admits that the non-resistance is “produced by grace” and that “doing nothing is sustained by grace inasmuch as grace attracts us, and maintains the two effects in our minds and wills by its own power, without any contribution from us.”⁶⁵ Fr. Most also says “such an absence of resistance is merely doing nothing—a doing nothing that is sustained by grace itself.”⁶⁶

But these admissions are fatal to Fr. Most’s theory. Because the will of God is the cause of all things⁶⁷ and God alone is the cause of grace,⁶⁸ God wills the nonresistance in man. This means “the first decisive step” does not come from man as Fr. Most argues, but from God.⁶⁹ If this weren’t true, then man has something that he didn’t receive from God, and man could boast in his works. Yet St. Paul says that we are saved by grace, “and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man may glory” (Eph.2:8-9) and that nothing “distinguisheth thee” one from another except by God’s will and intention (1 Cor.4:7). For example, if God is not willing the non-resistance in John, but He is willing Peter to make a positive decision not to resist, then He is giving Peter more help than John, and yet the grace is efficacious for both of them.⁷⁰

This means John can boast in his works and claim he is intrinsically better than Peter, even though Scripture says that John’s good comes from God and not from himself (and both Peter and John come from “the slime of the earth”).⁷¹ St. Thomas says, “Wherefore it cannot be said that anything begun in us can be the reason of the effect of predestination.”⁷² But, according to Fr. Most, non-resistance is a condition that “begun in us” (the “first decisive step”) and therefore it cannot be the reason for the graces of the predestinate. Fr. Most contradicts the teaching of St. Thomas by claiming that God “positively predestines as soon as He sees that there is not a present condition which would require their rejection.”⁷³ But God did not predestine Christ because there wasn’t a “present condition” in Him that would have prevented His predestination. Because “Christ’s predestination is the exemplar of ours”⁷⁴ (Christ who was not predestined because of non-resistance but due to God’s eternal decree), Fr. Most’s theory is false.

We also do not see how Fr. Most can argue that non-resistance is “nonbeing” because non-resistance is a condition of being (that is, the condition of man who is being). It is thus erroneous, from a metaphysical perspective, to label non-resistance in man as non-being. Rather, non-resistance in man is resistance in potency, and potency exists in being, not non-being. This is true because man has the power to resist, as Fr. Most admits. According to the spiritual axiom agere sequitur esse (action follows being), man, as being, either acts to cooperate with the grace (caused by God’s will in the case of efficacious grace) or acts to resist the grace (caused by man’s will in the case of sufficient grace).

If the resistance is not actualized, it is because God efficaciously willed to move man to freely cooperate with the grace. As Scripture says, “And how could any thing endure, if thou wouldst not? or be preserved, if not called by thee” (Wis. 11:26). Although Fr. Most says that grace is made efficacious “on condition of this non-resistance,” non-being has no such influence because non-being doesn’t exist. Grace operates in man on account of his being, not his non-being. As Fr. Most admits, non-resistance is an “ontological zero.”⁷⁵ Grace also operates efficaciously in man on account of good (that is, the good that God moves man to freely choose), and not on account of evil (Fr. Most admits that “non-being” is “evil”).⁷⁶

We thus maintain that non-resistance comes from man’s positive decision not to resist, which is caused by efficacious grace (and not from man’s “non-decision” to “do nothing”). Because action follows being, and grace acts upon the will, man positively responds to that action with his own action (a positive decision to cooperate or resist). As Fr. Most describes this first stage of the process: “[G]race initiates the process by presenting a good to our mind, which God wishes us to perform, and by moving our will to take pleasure in that good.”⁷⁷ Because the grace begins to move man’s mind from potency to act, man will either resist the grace (in which case the grace will have been merely sufficient and has an operating effect), or will be moved to cooperate with it (in which case the grace will have been efficacious and has a cooperating effect). Man will respond to the positive movement of grace with a positive movement of his own, not a non-movement from a non-decision to do nothing.⁷⁸ Fr. Most admits the same when he acknowledges that man “perceives” the grace that causes the mind to see good and then calls non-resistance a “positive consent.”⁷⁹

When describing operating and cooperating grace, St. Thomas never says that the grace’s efficacy is conditioned upon man’s power to omit resistance or his non-decision to do nothing. Rather, St. Thomas says that man responds to the interior grace by an exterior act of his will. St. Thomas explains: “First, there is the interior act of the will, and with regard to this act the will is a thing moved, and God is the mover … But there is another, exterior act; and since it is commanded by the will … the operation of this act is attributed to the will.”⁸⁰ St. Thomas further says, “God does not justify us without ourselves, because whilst we are being justified we consent to God’s justification (justitiae)by a movement of our free will.”⁸¹

Whereas St. Thomas says that man responds to the operating grace by a movement of his free will, Fr. Most says that man’s will may not be involved at all. Under the influence of operating grace, in the non-resistance scenario, Fr. Most says that “the will does not move itself at all, in the first part of the process” and that “the will does not make a decision” for or against the operating grace.

Fr. Most sees his theory in St. Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians: “And we helping do exhort you, that you receive not the grace of God in vain” (1 Cor.6:1). In light of St.Paul’s statement, Fr. Most says, “Scripture also plainly supposes that still another negative thing is in our power, namely: when grace is offered, we can at least merely do nothing, or not resist grace.”⁸² However, St. Paul is urging the Corinthians to respond to God’s grace, not to make a non-decision to do nothing. The word for “receive” (dechomai) in 1 Corinthians 6:1 is an aorist tense verb in the middle voice, which implies an act of the will (to receive, take, approve, get, etc.). St. Paul uses the word five other times in the same letter, and it always refers to a positive decision to act, not a negative free condition not to act.⁸³

In support of his theory, Fr. Most also refers to Trent’s canon 4 on justification: “If anyone shall say that man’s free will moved and aroused by God does not cooperate by assenting to God who rouses and calls, whereby it disposes and prepares itself to obtain the grace of justification, and that it cannot dissent, if it wishes, but that like something inanimate it does nothing at all and is merely in a passive state: let him be anathema.”⁸⁴ Because Trent says that man’s will can dissent “if it wishes,” Fr. Most concludes that man’s ability not to dissent is the equivalent of a non-decision not to resist. In other words, a decision not to dissent is really the absence of an evil decision to dissent. Actually, Trent’s canon only hurts Fr. Most’s position.

First, Trent is talking about man’s free will. The canon says that man’s free will can dissent if it “wishes” —a clear reference to an act of the will. Trent says nothing about a “non-wishing” of resistance which, according to Fr.Most, is not a movement of the will at all. Secondly, the canon provides only two alternative responses to grace: cooperation or dissent (both of which are acts of the will). Man can “cooperate by assenting to God who rouses and calls” (in the case of efficacious grace) or can “dissent if it wishes” (in the case of sufficient grace). Trent never mentions a third alternative whereby “the will does not move itself at all” resulting in “non-resistance.” Thirdly, the canon seems to anathematize Fr. Most’s theory. In the non-resistance scenario, Fr. Most claims that the will “does nothing.” However, Trent condemns the view that the will “does nothing at all and is merely in a passive state” at the moment where non-resistance would occur. As St. Thomas teaches, the will does not remain inactive, but moves either to cooperate or dissent, depending on the nature of the grace.

Fr. Most also refers to St. Thomas’s teaching that “this is in the power of free will [namely] to impede or not to impede the reception of divine grace … but they only are deprived of grace who set up an impediment to grace in themselves.”⁸⁵ But again, in Fr. Most’s non-resistance scenario, not impeding grace does not come from “the power of free will;” it is a condition in man that exists independently of his free will. Like Trent, St. Thomas says that it is in the power of man’s will to impede (dissent) or not to impede (cooperate). St.Thomas does not say that it is not in the power of free will, but rather a condition in man, not to impede the reception of grace. Neither St. Thomas nor any Church council ever introduced such an alternative where the efficacy of grace is conditioned upon a non-decision in man to do nothing.

When St. Thomas says that it “is in the power of free will to impede or not to impede” grace, he is simply teaching that man’s power to impede grace is in potency. If the grace is efficacious, the power remains in potency. If the grace is sufficient, the potency is actualized. This must be true if the salutary act comes from God and the defect of sin comes from man. St. Thomas does not say that man actually impedes grace by his own free will when God efficaciously wills him to receive it. Man does have the power to resist efficacious grace, but he does not actually resist it. The corollary follows: If man actually resists a certain grace, then the grace did not produce the non-resistance (since not placing an obstacle to grace “proceeds from grace”). Because not placing an obstacle is a work of grace, if man does place an obstacle, God did not give him the grace of non-resistance. By concluding that man can impede or not impede any grace, Fr. Most confuses potency with act. What man has the power to do and what he actually does are two different things.

Because St. Thomas says, “[B]ut they only are deprived of grace who set up an impediment to grace,” Fr. Most concludes: “St. Thomas makes it entirely clear that the distinction between those who are saved and those who are not saved depends on the two conditions, namely, to impede or not to impede grace.”⁸⁶ Yet Fr.Most’s conclusion is erroneous, because St.Thomas’s statement is addressing only the impediment side of the equation, not the salvation side. St. Thomas does not say that “man is saved because he doesn’t impede grace.” Such a statement would make salvation the work of man, not God. Rather, St. Thomas simply says that those who are deprived of grace have set up an obstacle to the grace. This happens in the case of sufficient grace, whereby God permits man to place the obstacle, and not efficacious grace, which removes the obstacle. Thus, with this teaching, St. Thomas is explaining the reason for reprobation, not salvation.

To further argue that man’s condition of non-resistance determines the efficacy of grace, Fr. Most refers to St. Thomas’s statement: “God wills the nonoccurrence of moral faults in His antecedent will, but not in His consequent will except in the case of those whom He knows do not will to commit moral fault: because the consequent will takes in [consideration] the condition of the creature.”⁸⁷ Yet the condition to which St. Thomas refers is not the unwilled non-resistance of the creature but the creature’s positive will not to commit a moral fault. So St. Thomas does not say what Fr. Most claims he says. Furthermore, God considers this good condition in the creature inasmuch as He created it and rewards him for it. Similarly, God considers the bad condition in the creature inasmuch as He permitted it and punishes him for it. Thus, God considers the condition of the creature, not because the creature is good, but because God wills the creature good and moves him to do good (or permits him to do evil).

Fr.Most also refers to St.Thomas’s statement: “[W]e must say that although the divine will is not impeded or changed by anything else, yet according to the order of wisdom, it directs itself to a thing according to the condition of that thing; and thus something from our part is attributed to the divine will.”⁸⁸ As with St.Thomas’s previous teaching, God’s will directs itself according to man’s condition inasmuch as He has created the condition (if it is good) or permitted the condition (if it is bad). In the case of efficacious grace, God’s will directs itself to the good condition in us because, after He has moved us, He assists us “both by strengthening our will interiorly so as to attain to the act, and by granting outwardly the capability of operating.”⁸⁹ Yet because we are freely choosing the good under the influence of this grace, “something from our part is attributed to the divine will.”

In another similar statement, St.Thomas says, “God, so far as He is concerned, communicates Himself to all in accordance with their capacity hence, the fact that anything falls away from participation in His goodness comes from the fact that there is found in it some impediment to the divine participation.”⁹⁰ Again, St. Thomas says nothing about negative decisions or ontological zeros. God communicates Himself in accordance with man’s capacity because God’s eternal decrees have determined man’s capacity. As we will further see in the next chapter, God gives all men the capacity to cooperate with grace. However, God wills to permit some to fail in their capacity and others to realize their capacity, according to His plan of predestination.⁹¹

Because Fr. Most wishes to claim that the efficacy of grace is primarily determined by man’s non-resistance, he claims that efficacious grace, which infallibly moves man to act, happens only in extraordinary circumstances. He says, “[I]t is clear that infrustrable movements are extraordinary.”⁹² However, St. Thomas teaches that such graces are extraordinary only in the case of hardened sinners, but not in the case of most people. St. Thomas says, “Although he who sins places an impediment to grace, and, so far as the order of things calls for, should not receive grace: nevertheless, since God can work beyond the order that is built into things, as He does when He gives sight to a blind man or raises a dead man, sometimes God, out of the abundance of His goodness, forestalls by His help even those who place the impediment to grace, and turns them from evil and converts them to good.”⁹³

By comparing the sinner to a “blind man” or a “dead man,” St. Thomas is not referring to the average sinner, but to a hardened sinner who has habitually resisted grace. For this type of sinner, God must “work beyond the order that is built into things” and remove his resistance through a miraculous grace. This does not mean that all efficacious graces are miraculous. In fact, contrary to the teaching of Fr. Most, St. Thomas says that “the justification of the ungodly is not miraculous, because the soul is naturally capable of grace; since from its having been made to the likeness of God, it is fit to receive God by grace.”⁹⁴ This demonstrates that God chooses, according to His plan of election, who He will save in His mercy, and who He will punish in His justice, irrespective of anything in man.

Thus, St. Thomas does not teach that average sinners don’t also receive efficacious grace, or that these graces are limited to extraordinary providence. St.Thomas simply teaches that “if God intends, while moving, that the one whose heart He moves should attain to grace, he will infallibly attain to it.”⁹⁵ In this article, St. Thomas is speaking of the average, “whoever” sinner. The article is even entitled, “Whether Grace is Necessarily Given to Whoever Prepares Himself for It, or to Whoever Does What He Can?”⁹⁶ St. Thomas’s teaching immediately follows St. Augustine’s statement that “whoever is liberated, is most certainly liberated” (emphasis added), and immediately precedes the quote from John 6:45: “Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to me” (emphasis added). Thus, God infallibly moves by efficacious graces, not just blinded sinners but “whoever” He wills, for “he hath mercy on whom he will” (Rom. 9:18).

Because God’s will is the cause of all good, any salutary act we perform must be attributable to this efficacious and infallible will, whether it is saying a prayer, doing a good work, or even thinking of God. As St. Thomas teaches, man cannot wish or do any good without grace, nor even know any truth without being moved by grace.⁹⁷ This means that God grants efficacious graces all the time. As we will further examine, Jesus says, “No man can come to me, except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him” (John 6:44). Anyone who comes to Christ is being drawn by God’s efficacious grace. This means that God does not limit such graces to extraordinary circumstances; in fact, millions of men come to Christ every single day. This also means that God gives efficacious grace to both the elect and the reprobate (because many of the reprobate come to Christ but do not remain with Him).

In summary, then, Fr. Most incorrectly believes there is only one kind of grace, which man can either impede or not impede, and not two kinds of graces (sufficient and efficacious). Of course, if there is only one kind of grace, then salvation is ultimately determined by man, not God.

EFFICACIOUS GRACE AND CALVINISM

Like Thomists, Calvinists believe in the intrinsic efficacy of grace. Further, like Thomists (and all Catholics), Calvinists correctly believe that man cannot do or wish any spiritual good without God’s grace. Unlike Thomists, who believe that efficacious grace applies man’s free will to act, Calvinists believe that God’s efficacious grace operates completely independently of man’s will. In fact, because Calvinists view man as a spiritual corpse, they generally deny that man has a free will. Rather, they believe that fallen man is totally corrupt, rotten to the core, and in complete bondage to the devil prior to being saved. Calvinists call man’s fallen condition “Total Depravity” (one of the “Five Points” of Calvinism). Because God’s grace operates independently of fallen man’s depraved will, Calvinists also say that God’s grace is never resisted but always efficacious. Calvinists call this grace “Irresistible Grace,” another of Calvinism’s Five Points.⁹⁸

TOTAL DEPRAVITY AND SLAVERY TO SIN

The doctrine of “total depravity” was the principal idea that led Luther to ignite the Protestant revolt. Luther stated that “the flesh cannot think, say, or do anything except what is diabolical and opposed to God.”⁹⁹ In his commentary on the Galatians, Luther also says that “everything you think, speak, or do is opposed to God.”¹⁰⁰ Consequently, Luther said that “free will is a fiction, a name without substance.”¹⁰¹ In response to these heresies, the Council of Trent (1545) declared: “If anyone shall say that after the sin of Adam man’s free will was lost and destroyed, or that it is a thing in name only, indeed a title without a reality, a fiction, moreover, brought into the Church by Satan: let him be anathema.”¹⁰²

Calvin adopted Luther’s view of man’s complete depravity and viewed unregenerate man as one who thinks and does only evil. Calvin taught this throughout his Institutes of the Christian Religion. For example, he says, “For our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil, that it can never be idle.”¹⁰³ The Canons of Dort, which are official statements of Calvinist theology, state, “Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin.”¹⁰⁴ The London Baptist Confession also says that man “is dead in sin and altogether opposed to that which is good.”¹⁰⁵

Today’s Calvinists have a variety of views on the extent of man’s depravity. Calvinists not only disagree with each other on the question but even contradict themselves. For example, in his book The Potter’s Freedom, Calvinist James White says, “Scripture tells us that man does not understand and does not seek after God,”¹⁰⁶ and he repudiates the Arminian position that “the unregenerate man can, to some extent, know, understand … spiritual things.”¹⁰⁷ However, in the same chapter, White says, “Calvinists surely do believe that unsaved people can and do understand the truth of the Gospel”¹⁰⁸ and that “unregenerate man is fully capable of understanding the facts of the gospel.”¹⁰⁹ Which one is it? Do spiritually dead men understand the gospel or not?

The Church has always defended the free will of man, and long before Luther and Calvin’s time. For example, the Council of Arles (475) condemns the idea that “after the fall of the first man the free choice of the will was totally destroyed” and proclaims that “the human will was not destroyed but enfeebled and weakened.”¹¹⁰ The Council of Orange (529) says that “through the sin of the first man free will was so changed and so weakened that afterwards no one could either love God as he ought, or believe in God, or perform what is good on account of God, unless the grace of divine mercy reached him first.”¹¹¹ The council also says, “Freedom of the will weakened in the first man cannot be repaired except through the grace of baptism.”¹¹² The Council of Quiersy (853) states, “The freedom of will which we lost in the first man, we have received back through Christ our Lord; and we have free will for good, preceded and aided by grace, and we have free will for evil, abandoned by grace. Moreover, because freed by grace and by grace healed from corruption, we have free will.”¹¹³ The Council of Valence (855) describes our free will as “weakened through sin in our first parents, but reintegrated and healed through the grace of our Lord Jesus for His faithful.”¹¹⁴

If God did not give man a free will, then His many injunctions to choose good and reject evil would be nonsensical. For example, the Lord said to His people through Moses: “I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deut.30:19). The Preacher also says, “Before man is life and death, good and evil, that which he shall choose shall be given him” (Ecclus. 15:18). God commands His people that they “shall keep my Sabbaths, and shall choose the things that please me, and shall hold fast my covenant” (Isa. 56:4). These and many other like commands presuppose that man has a free will to choose good and avoid evil through God’s grace.

St. Thomas affirms the teachings of Scripture and the Church, that man has a free will.¹¹⁵ St. Thomas teaches that man’s free will exists because he is a rational creature. Even though his nature has been wounded by sin, he still acts from judgment through his reasoning abilities. St.Thomas says, “[B]ecause this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things … And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free will.”¹¹⁶ As Scripture teaches, “God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel” (Ecclus.15:14). If man weren’t left to his own counsel, then everything happens of necessity—including sin—and this makes God the author of evil.

To prove man’s total depravity, Calvinists refer to Jesus’ statement to the Jews, “[W]hosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). Jesus is clear that those who commit sin are slaves to sin. However, Calvinists erroneously equate slavery to sin with total depravity, which means the absence of free will. Calvinist James White says, “Slavery is antithetical to free will.”¹¹⁷ This is incorrect. Why? Because regenerated man continues to sin, as Calvinists would admit. Even St. Paul continued to sin after his conversion, as he says, “[T]he evil which I will not, that I do” (Rom.7:19). If regenerated man continues to sin (which he does), that would mean he is still a slave and not regenerated, according to the Calvinist argument. But this is not true (Calvinists say St. Paul was regenerated and no longer a slave to sin). This means that Jesus’use of servitude to sin refers not to an ontological depravity but to the act of sin itself. St. Peter confirms the same when he says, “For by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave” (2 Pet. 2:19).

In fact, St. Peter is referring to those who have already been freed from sins through Jesus Christ and who have become “again entangled in them and overcome” (v. 20).¹¹⁸ St. Peter is revealing the truth that regenerated man can fall back into sin by resisting God’s sufficient grace, and by an act of his free will. This is also the context of Jesus’ statement in John 8:34. Jesus was speaking “to those Jews, who believed him” (v. 31). Jesus tells them, “If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (vv.31-32). It is obvious that those who “committeth sin” and become “again entangled” in sin are not lacking a free will. Rather, they have the ability both to believe in God (God moving them to believe) and to resist His grace (God permitting them to resist).

Calvinists also refer to many verses from St. Paul. For example, in his letter to the Romans, St. Paul says, “There is not any man just. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. All have turned out of the way; they are become unprofitable together: there is none that doth good, there is not so much as one” (vv. 10-12). St. Paul’s teaching simply affirms that man can do nothing spiritually without God’s grace (the Catholic position). St. Paul does not say that God’s grace cannot apply man’s will to choose freely because of some kind of pervasive depravity. Such a view actually limits the power of God’s grace. Further, St. Paul is quoting from Psalm 13, which begins with the statement: “The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God” (v. 1). Hence, St. Paul’s indictment in Romans 3 primarily relates to those who deny God’s existence, which St. Paul elsewhere in the letter says is contrary to reason (Rom.1:18-21).

Calvinists also point to Romans 8:6-7: “For the wisdom of the flesh is death;but the wisdom of the spirit is life and peace. Because the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be.” Again, St. Paul is teaching that carnal man is not capable of doing anything spiritually good outside of God’s grace (Catholics agree). Fallen man needs God’s efficacious grace to move him to act. But note that St. Paul is addressing Christians: “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die: but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live” (vv. 12-13). That St. Paul is warning “saved” Christians not to live according to the flesh means that God’s grace is not always irresistible, as Calvinists maintain. Rather, God also provides sufficient grace after “regeneration,” which man resists by turning back to the flesh.

St. Paul also writes to the Corinthians: “But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined” (1 Cor. 2:14). Of course, because spiritual things surpass man’s nature, he cannot attain to them without the supernatural help of God. In fact, as we will further see below, St. Thomas teaches that even in the state of integrity man “needs the help of God as First Mover, to do or wish any good whatsoever.”¹¹⁹ From a Thomist perspective, the Calvinist argument for man’s inability without God’s grace is a straw man. Moreover, Scripture never says that man is so depraved that he does not choose freely under the influence of God’s grace. As St. Thomas teaches, God’s grace does not cause man’s choosing to be involuntary, just as His moving natural causes does not cause them to be unnatural.

Calvinists also refer to St. Paul’s descriptions of man as “dead” in sin. For example, St. Paul tells the Ephesians, “[Y]ou were dead in your offenses, and sins, [w]herein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief … and were by nature children of wrath” (2:1-3). Two verses later, St. Paul again says, “Even when we were dead in sins, [God] hath quickened us together in Christ (by whose grace you are saved)” (2:5). He similarly tells the Colossians, “[Y]ou were dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh; he hath quickened together with him, forgiving you all offenses” (2:13). St. Paul uses “dead” as a metaphor to describe those who are outside God’s grace, which is the source of spiritual “life.”

IRRESISTIBLE GRACE AND THE LAZARUS EXAMPLE

Whereas St. Paul in these verses is describing the spiritual death of fallen man, Calvinists view fallen man in the same light as the physical death of Lazarus in John 11. Because Jesus raised the physically dead Lazarus from the dead without “asking him permission,” Calvinists argue that God raises spiritually dead men to new life independently of any action on their part. That is, because Lazarus was physically raised to new life without regard to his free will, fallen man is spiritually raised to new life without regard to his free will. In using the Lazarus example, the Calvinist has a very noble goal: He wants to demonstrate the complete sovereignty and mercy of God in saving sinful man. However, using the Lazarus analogy to explain spiritual regeneration is a faulty hermeneutic for a number of reasons.

First, from a Thomist perspective, using the Lazarus example to emphasize God’s sovereign grace and mercy is unnecessary. As we have stated, Thomists agree that God grants His grace completely independently of anything in man, and that man can do nothing spiritually beneficial without the grace of God.¹²⁰ We remember the verse: “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:16). Man cannot even know truth unless His intellect is moved by God.¹²¹ Although the Calvinist seeks to give all the glory to God in saving the sinner, the Thomist position in fact gives God more glory. This is because in Calvinism God bypasses man’s will, whereas in Thomism God applies man’s free will to act. God is so powerful that He moves man to freely choose what He wills Him to choose. God does not ignore the nature He gave man when He saves him but rather uses it in His divine operation. In Catholic theology, God’s grace is more powerful than in Calvinism.

Secondly, it is illogical to analogize the physical resurrection of Lazarus with the spiritual resurrection of fallen man. There are obvious differences between physical and spiritual death and resurrection. A spiritually dead man is still a rational creature, whereas a physically dead man is not, for he no longer has use of his intellective or appetitive powers. This fact makes the Calvinist analogy completely inappropriate. According to Calvinists, a spiritually dead man can understand the gospel message; however, a physically dead man cannot understand anything. Also, according to Calvinists, a spiritually dead man is active in doing evil; however, a physically dead man is not active at all.

Further, in his (pre-Parousia) resurrected state, Lazarus was both a sinner and in a state of grace. However, at the General Judgment, when all the dead will be raised, it will be one or the other. The elect will be perfected in grace and the reprobate will be completely without grace. There is simply no exegetical or hermeneutical basis to use Lazarus as an example of spiritual resurrection. Rather, if one wants to use the physical body as an analogy to describe fallen man, it is more accurate to call him injured—yes, even seriously injured—but not dead (which is how the Catholic Church has always described fallen man). This is because fallen man still has natural abilities to know God and truth and to reason as a rational creature. In his tomb, Lazarus was not a rational creature; he was a dead one.

In fact, the primary focus of John 11 is the physical, not spiritual, resurrection of Lazarus and all men. When Jesus tells Martha that her brother “shall rise again” (v.23), Martha responds by saying, “I know that he shall rise again, in the resurrection on the last day” (v.24). The phrase “last day” (Greek, eschatos hemera)is used only six other times, all of which occur in the same Gospel of John.¹²² In each usage, the phrase refers to the physical resurrection of man at the end of the world. As Jesus will be the one who raises dead men to life on the “last day,” He responds to Martha by saying, “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live” (v. 25). Jesus then physically raised Lazarus from the dead, which foreshadows the physical resurrection of all men at the end of time (v.44). There is nothing in this account that suggests it is even remotely about a spiritual resurrection based on faith in Jesus Christ.

The story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 best describes a “spiritual resurrection,” because it provides an example of a living person who falls from grace and then rises to grace again (Calvinists don’t use this parable to explain grace and free will because it defeats their theology). In this well-known parable, the younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance before his father dies, and then he squanders it on an evil lifestyle. When he becomes impoverished, he realizes how foolish he was and returns to his father, begging for forgiveness. When his father sees him returning in the distance, he runs out to meet his son to embrace and kiss him. And the son says to the father, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, I am not now worthy to be called thy son” (v. 21).

The father replies by ordering his servants to clothe his son with the best robe and to put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. The father also orders the servants to kill the fatted calf for a feast, “Because this my son was dead, and is come to life again:was lost, and is found” (v.24). When the elder brother discovers how his younger brother is being treated, he, who was always faithful to the father, refuses to celebrate his brother’s return. But the father pleads with the elder brother by explaining his younger brother’s “spiritual resurrection” in the same words he used with the servants: “But it was fit that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is come to life again; he was lost, and is found” (v. 32).

In two separate verses, the father describes the younger son’s former spiritual condition as “dead” (verses 24 and 32). The word for “dead” in these verses (Greek, nekros) is the same word St. Paul uses in Ephesians 2:1, 5 and in Colossians 2:13 to describe those who are “dead” in sin.¹²³ Surely, St. Paul knew of the parable of the Prodigal Son through apostolic Tradition. Thus, Luke 15 provides us with a sound interpretation of the meaning of being “dead” in sin, namely, that fallen man is not a spiritual corpse, but is able to know and do the Father’s will by God’s grace.

Calvinists may be tempted to argue that the Prodigal Son proves their case:that the sinful lifestyle of the younger son shows he was totally depraved, and his complete turnaround was a product of God’s gift of irresistible grace. But although the son’s conversion was certainly the result of God’s efficacious grace, the father’s description of his son’s condition strikes a critical blow to Calvinist theology. The father says that the Prodigal Son “is come to life again” (vv. 24, 32). Clearly, the father is referring to the son’s spiritual condition. The Greek verb for “come to life again” is anazao, which literally means “revived.” It is used only two other times in the New Testament in the context of “resurrection,” and both times to describe a resurrection from a previous state of grace.¹²⁴ Thus, being “revived” (anazao) describes only those who once had the life of grace, and not those who never had it.

This is why Calvinists don’t use the term “revived” or “restored” when referring to the spiritual resurrection of a sinner (even though they unwittingly do when they refer to the Prodigal Son parable). In Calvinism, fallen man never had spiritual life to begin with. He is “dead in sin” until he is born again in Christ. Prior to being born again, he is totally depraved and at enmity with God. Further, Calvinists maintain that once man is born again, his grace of conversion is irresistible and he can never fall away from grace (more on this erroneous view in the last chapter on God’s gift of perseverance).

The parable of the Prodigal Son refutes these positions. The Prodigal Son’s being “revived” to life presupposes that he was in a state of grace before falling. Indeed, the Prodigal Son’s life with his father prior to acquiring the inheritance represents his life of grace with God the Father before falling from grace through sin. Further, the son’s returning to his father in repentance represents his restoration to grace by the Father’s efficacious will. In short, the parable reveals the dynamic relationship between God’s grace and human free will, namely, that man can reject sufficient grace and fall away from God, and then can return to God through efficacious grace.

PREVENIENT GRACE AND REGENERATION

The story of Lazarus also brings up the issues of prevenient grace and regeneration. Calvinists and most other Protestants use the term “regeneration” to describe the moment one is “born again” in Christ and experiences a “spiritual resurrection.” That is, when one is regenerated he is saved in Christ. Most Protestants say this happens when one “accepts Jesus as personal Lord and Savior.” For the Calvinist, as we have explained, when one is born again one transitions from total depravity to salvation through an irresistible grace. Because man is totally depraved, he can be moved only by an irresistible grace, which bypasses his corrupted will and regenerates him on the spot.

Because of man’s “total depravity,” Calvinists do not believe that man receives any graces that precede regeneration and dispose him to salvation. These graces, which the Church calls prevenient (or “actual”) graces, are those that come before salvation, and which move man to good and prepare him for rebirth in Christ. Rather, Calvinists take an “all or nothing” view of regenerating grace.¹²⁵ Man goes from being totally depraved to being saved at once, without first being moved by preceding graces. In the Calvinist system, just as grace cannot be resisted, grace cannot precede regeneration.¹²⁶

First, we note that regeneration occurs not when one “accepts Christ as Savior,”but when one is baptized into Christ. Briefly, when Nicodemus asks Jesus how a man can be “born again,” Jesus says, “Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Previous to this passage, St. John connects “water” and “Spirit” to baptism (see John 1:31-33). Immediately following the passage, St. John explains that the disciples went into Judea and baptized (see John 3:23; 4:1-2). This is why the early Church Fathers were unanimous in their interpretation of John 3:5 as referring to baptism.¹²⁷

Further, in his letter to Titus, St. Paul uses the word “regeneration” to describe baptism: “Not by the works of justice, which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us, by the laver of regeneration, and renovation of the Holy Ghost” (3:5). The “laver of regeneration” literally means the “bath of rebirth” or being “born again of water,” and the “Holy Ghost” is, of course, the Spirit.¹²⁸ Baptism regenerates the sinner and infuses his soul with faith, hope and charity (see Rom. 5:1-5). This is why St. Peter says that “baptism … now saveth you” (1 Pet.3:21). In reference to baptism, St.Paul also says, “[Y]ou are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).

Secondly, while Calvinists are correct to say that man is not saved until he is regenerated (although they err on what regeneration is), they are wrong to deny the existence of prevenient grace. Most Calvinists reject prevenient grace because they confuse the Arminian understanding of prevenient grace with the Catholic understanding. Arminians view prevenient grace in a similar way that Thomists view sufficient grace—grace that gives man the power to act but which he may resist (in the Thomist school, man does resist sufficient grace). The Arminian understanding of prevenient grace is not the same as the Catholic doctrine.

In Catholicism, prevenient grace efficaciously leads the person to salvation (regeneration).¹²⁹ For example, prevenient grace moves a person to listen to a sermon about Christ, which then leads the person to baptism (regeneration). Thus, prevenient grace is an efficacious grace that precedes regeneration. Prevenient grace produces a temporal effect willed by God (listening to a sermon), which precedes a subsequent effect (baptism). St. Thomas further says, “And hence grace, inasmuch as it causes the first effect in us, is called prevenient with respect to the second, and inasmuch as it causes the second, it is called subsequent with respect to the first effect.”¹³⁰ In fact, the irresistible grace of Calvinism is also a prevenient grace with respect to heavenly glory, because it precedes salvation and leads a person to it.

Calvinists deny that efficacious grace can precede regeneration. Calvinists view efficacious grace (in their words, “irresistible grace”) only as regenerating grace. In Calvinism, if grace doesn’t regenerate, then it is not efficacious; and if it is not efficacious, it’s not grace at all; and if man doesn’t have grace, then he remains totally depraved and can do nothing spiritually beneficial for himself or pleasing to God. This all-or-nothing view is a fundamental error. The Calvinist is hard-pressed to deny the role that prevenient grace played in his own conversion. When one asks a Calvinist how he came to Christ, he might say that he began reading the Bible or attending a church. When you ask him when he was “saved,” he invariably provides you with some date after his Bible studies or church attendance (sometimes long after).

Clearly, the Calvinist would agree that these spiritual activities leading to his regeneration were good and pleasing to God. He wouldn’t say that reading Scripture is an evil activity. But since he was totally depraved (unregenerate) during this time, how could he do anything that pleased God? How could he be moved to read Scripture or attend church outside of God’s grace and favor? We again refer to St. Paul’s question, “[W]hat hast thou that thou hast not received?” (1 Cor. 4:7), and to Jesus’ admonition, “[F]or without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). If the Calvinist admits that he was moved by an initial efficacious but non-regenerating grace (which he must have been),¹³¹ then he must also admit that Calvinism’s notions of total depravity and irresistible grace are erroneous. Man can please God and do spiritual good before he is regenerated because of the intrinsic efficacy of prevenient grace. Scripture also supports the Catholic position.

Let’s go back to the parable of the Prodigal Son. The son represents a sinner who rejected sufficient grace (by leaving the Father) and who repented of his sin through efficacious grace (by returning to the Father). After the son falls from grace and realizes he has done evil, he says, “I will arise, and will go to my father, and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee” (Luke 15:18). At this point, the son is still estranged from his father (represented by his being in a foreign land). He also speaks in the future tense about asking for his father’s forgiveness.¹³² He has not yet asked his father for forgiveness and thus remains in a state of sin. Even when he approaches his father’s house, he is said to be “a great way off” (v.20). It is only when the father embraces him and he confesses his sins that the father says, “[T]his my son was dead, and is come to life again” (v. 24). This means that God efficaciously moved the son by prevenient grace prior to his regeneration (or rather, prior to his restoration, since the parable symbolizes that the son was living in the father’s grace before he sinned).

The conversion of St. Paul is an outstanding real-life example of prevenient grace. Calvinists love to use St. Paul’s experience on the Damascus road to demonstrate God’s irresistible grace. When Christ revealed Himself to St. Paul on his way to Damascus, Calvinists claim that He converted St. Paul on the spot.¹³³ They say that St. Paul was immediately regenerated by an irresistible grace, and irrespective of his free will. To further support immediate regeneration, Calvinists point out that Jesus’ Damascus road revelation to St. Paul included explaining to him his mission: “To open their eyes, that they may be converted from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and a lot among the saints, by the faith that is in me” (Acts 26:18). By all accounts, the Calvinist argues, St. Paul is regenerated and his sins are forgiven on the Damascus road.

Scripture, however, tells a different story. After St. Paul’s companions bring him to Damascus, where he doesn’t eat or drink for three days, St. Paul is greeted by Ananias who tells him, “Rise up, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, invoking his name” (Acts 22:16); “ … and rising up, he was baptized” (Acts 9:18). But wait a minute. According to Calvinism, St. Paul’s sins were already washed away several days earlier (on the road to Damascus) when he was regenerated by the irresistible grace of Christ’s revelation. Yet here Scripture reveals that St. Paul’s sins were washed away in baptism days later (in the city of Damascus). What does this mean for the Calvinist?

It means that his theology is wrong. If St. Paul was really regenerated by an irresistible grace on the Damascus road, then the Calvinist must admit that it didn’t wash away his sins because Ananias declared that St. Paul was still in his sins (the Calvinist, of course, would admit no such thing). If St. Paul were actually regenerated and his sins forgiven in baptism, then the Calvinist must admit that St. Paul received an efficacious but non-regenerating grace—that is, a prevenient grace—on the Damascus road that led to his salvation days later. The Calvinist must also admit that water baptism is the “laver of regeneration” that St. Paul reveals in Titus 3:5. In other words, the Calvinist must abandon his Calvinism and embrace the Catholic position.

We also recall that St. Paul refers to baptism as being “washed, sanctified, and justified” in Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor. 6:11). The Greek word for “washed” (apolouo) is used only one other time in the New Testament: in Acts 22:16 when Ananias tells St. Paul to be baptized and “wash away thy sins.” It is no wonder that St. Paul uses apolouo (wash) in 1 Corinthians 6:11; he heard Ananias use the same word at his own baptism. This usage connects 1 Corinthians 6:11 and Acts 22:16, and demonstrates that baptism is the act of regeneration because it sanctifies and justifies man by washing away his sin.

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch in the Acts of the Apostles provides another clear example of the workings of prevenient grace. In chapter 8, we learn that the eunuch came to Jerusalem seeking God. Although we don’t know much about the eunuch, it is safe to conclude that he did not have any relationship with or even know the true God. In other words, he was totally depraved. Having been a eunuch (castrating boys was practiced in the ancient Near East) meant that he would have been forbidden from entering into the Mosaic Covenant (see Deut. 23:1). He also was not a Christian. Nevertheless, because in his chariot he was reading Sacred Scripture (from the prophet Isaias), God was efficaciously moving him by prevenient grace to salvation in Christ before his regeneration.

When Philip discovered that the eunuch was reading Isaias, he asked him: “Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest?” (v.30). The eunuch responded, “And how can I, unless some man shew me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him” (v. 31). After the eunuch showed Philip what he was reading, he asked Philip, “I beseech thee, of whom doth the prophet speak this? Of himself, or of some other man?” (v.34). Philip explained to the eunuch that Isaias was speaking about Jesus Christ. Thereafter, after they went on their way, the eunuch sees water and desires baptism: “See, here is water: what doth hinder me from being baptized? (v. 36). Philip responded, “If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest” (v.37). The eunuch answered, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God … and they went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch: and he baptized him” (v. 37-38).

The story of the Ethiopian is another clear-cut example of someone whom God efficaciously moves by a prevenient grace before He regenerates him. God first moves the eunuch to come to Jerusalem to find God; God then moves him to read Scripture; thereafter God moves him to ask Philip for an interpretation of Scripture; ¹³⁴ He then moves him to desire baptism, and then to confess his faith in Jesus Christ. Finally, God regenerates the eunuch in baptism and he goes on his way rejoicing (v. 39). Was the eunuch totally depraved before his confession of faith in Christ? Was he fixated only on evil before his baptism? Was he totally opposed to good as he read Scripture and sought God? No, he wasn’t, due to the prevenient grace of God.

We emphasize that the good acts that one does prior to baptism do not save the person; they only dispose the person to salvation. Moreover, the acts are the product of God’s efficacious grace, which moves man’s will to freely perform them. The point is that God’s prevenient grace is intrinsically efficacious but it precedes regeneration. Under the influence of prevenient grace, God moves man to salvation by good deeds (reading Scripture; seeking truth) even though he is still under God’s condemnation. St. Paul acknowledges the same when he says, “Not by the works of justice, which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us, by the laver of regeneration” (Titus 3:5).

In fact, St. Paul says that man is capable of incredible things under God’s prevenient grace. These include speaking in tongues, prophesying, knowing all divine mysteries, having faith that can move mountains, giving away all one’s goods to the poor, and even giving one’s body over to be burned! (see 1 Cor.13:1-3). These are certainly not actions of one who is totally depraved and intoxicated by evil. Nevertheless, St. Paul says that if one does all these good deeds, and doesn’t have the theological virtue of charity, “it profiteth me nothing” (v. 3). God gives us charity in the laver of baptism, when “the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us” (Rom.5:5). Thus, while Calvinists are correct to say that God’s regenerating grace is always efficacious, they err when they deny the efficacy of prevenient grace, which precedes regeneration.

Calvinists and other Reformed theologians deny the truth of prevenient grace because of their erroneous understanding of Adam’s Fall. Because they view grace only as irresistible, Calvinists say that God didn’t infuse Adam with any grace before the Fall (otherwise, he wouldn’t have sinned). Rather, God gave Adam free will and let him utilize it according to his own natural powers (Luther and Calvin falsely believed that Adam was the only man who ever had free will).¹³⁵ Once Adam sinned, Calvinists say that Adam lost free will and became totally depraved and incapable of coming back to God without irresistible grace.

However, the Church teaches that God infused Adam with sufficient grace to resist temptation and to perform his duties with charity. St.Thomas says that “neither in the state of perfect nature, nor in the state of corrupt nature can man fulfill the commandments of the law without grace.”¹³⁶ God, however, willed to permit Adam to reject His grace and to sin. Once Adam sinned, his soul lost its state of sanctifying grace, but he was still able to respond to God through prevenient grace. When God called upon Adam after his sin, Adam responded and still feared God (see Gen. 3:9-10). Adam also obeyed God’s commandment to be fruitful and multiply by knowing his wife Eve.¹³⁷ Like the Prodigal Son, God moved Adam to repentance and obedience through prevenient, efficacious graces prior to regenerating his soul with infused grace.

MORE FROM THE CHURCH AND ST. THOMAS ON FREE WILL AND GRACE

Hence, prevenient grace is not a “Pelagian” idea, as many Calvinists contend. The Church is clear that man cannot exercise his free will for the good without the aid of grace, a truth that was rejected by Pelagius (d. 420). Pelagius believed that man could move himself toward God by an act of his will without the prompting of grace, and that grace is needed only to assist the will. In other words, man takes the first step in his salvation.¹³⁸ Guided by the teachings of St. Augustine, the Council of Carthage (418) responded to the Pelagian heresy stating: “It has likewise been decided that whoever says that the grace of justification is given to us for this reason: that what we are ordered to do through free will, we may be able to accomplish more easily through grace, just as if, even if grace were not given, we could nevertheless fulfill the divine commands without it, though not indeed easily, let him be anathema.”¹³⁹

Semi-Pelagianism was a subtler form of Pelganiasm introduced by Faustus of Riez (d. 490). Semi-Pelagians held that man initiated his salvation by his free will and that God provided equal grace to everyone (denying divine predilection). In response to this heresy, the Council of Orange issued her canons on grace and predestination. Canon 4 says, “If anyone contends that in order that we may be cleansed from sin, God waits for our good will, but does not acknowledge that even the wish to be purged is produced in us through the infusion and operation of the Holy Spirit, he opposes the Holy Spirit Himself, who says through Solomon: Good will is prepared by the Lord” [Prov. 8:35].¹⁴⁰

Canon 6 says, “If anyone asserts that without the grace of God mercy is divinely given to us when we believe, will, desire, try, labor, pray, watch, study, seek, ask, urge, but does not confess that through the infusion and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in us, it is brought about that we believe, wish, or are able to do all these things as we ought, and does not join either to human humility or obedience the help of grace, not agree that it is the gift of His grace that we are obedient and humble, opposes the Apostle who says: ‘What have you, that you have not received?’ [1 Cor. 4:7]; and: ‘By the grace of God I am that, which I am’” [1 Cor. 15:10; cf. St. Augustine and St. Prosper of Aquitaine].¹⁴¹

Canon 7 says:

If anyone affirms that without the illumination and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all sweetness in consenting to and believing in the truth, through the strength of nature he can think anything good which pertains to the salvation of eternal life, as he should, or choose, or consent to salvation, that is to the evangelical proclamation, he is deceived by a heretical spirit, not understanding the voice of God speaking in the Gospel: “Without me you can do nothing” [ John 15:5]; and that of the Apostle: Not that we are fit to think everything by ourselves as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God [1 Cor. 3:5; cf. St.Augustine].”¹⁴²

We also have seen that the Council of Sens (1140) condemned the idea that free will is sufficient in itself for any good.¹⁴³

The Council of Trent specifically teaches about the efficacy of prevenient grace, which leads to baptism:

Now they are disposed to that justice [can. 7 and 9] when, aroused and assisted by divine grace, receiving faith “by hearing” [Rom. 10:17], they are freely moved toward God … and when knowing that they are sinners, turning themselves away from the fear of divine justice, by which they are profitably aroused [can. 8], to a consideration of the mercy of God, they are raised to hope, trusting that God will be merciful to them for the sake of Christ, and they begin to love him as the source of all justice and therefore moved against sins by a certain hatred and detestation [can. 9], that is, by that repentance, which must be performed before baptism [Acts 2:38]; and finally when they resolve to receive baptism, to begin a new life and to keep the commandments of God.¹⁴⁴

The Council of Trent also reiterated the Church’s long-standing teachings on the necessity of grace to perform salutary acts. In its first canon on justification, the council says, “If anyone shall say that man can be justified before God by his own works which are done either by his own natural powers … without divine grace through Christ Jesus: let him be anathema.”¹⁴⁵ Also, in canon 3, the council says, “If anyone shall say that without the anticipatory inspiration of the Holy Spirit and without His assistance man can believe, hope, and love or be repentant, as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be conferred upon him: let him be anathema.”¹⁴⁶

St. Thomas beautifully explains the Church’s teachings on the necessity of grace in his Summa. As we have previously indicated, St. Thomas is clear that man cannot know any truth without God’s assistance. God as Prime Mover must move man’s intellect to its proper object, which is truth. This is the case not only for supernatural knowledge but for natural knowledge as well. St.Thomas says, “Hence we must say that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs Divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act.”¹⁴⁷ Even though man has free will to exercise his deliberate reason, his deliberations are based on a series of previous deliberations. That being the case, St. Thomas says “[S]ince it cannot go on to infinity, we must come at length to this, that man’s free will is moved by an extrinsic principle, which is above the human mind, to wit by God.”¹⁴⁸

St.Thomas is also clear that fallen man cannot do or wish any spiritual good without God’s grace. This was the case for Adam and Eve even before the Fall. As we said at the beginning of the book, because attaining supernatural life is beyond man’s natural abilities, he must be directed to that end by God (which is predestination). St. Thomas explains, “And thus in the state of perfect nature man needs a gratuitous strength superadded to natural strength for one reason, viz., in order to do and wish supernatural good; but for two reasons, in the state of corrupt nature, viz., in order to be healed, and furthermore in order to carry out works of supernatural value, which are meritorious. Beyond this, in both states man needs the Divine help, that he may be moved to act well.”¹⁴⁹ More-over, even if God continues to give a certain man efficacious graces, St.Thomas teaches that God must preserve him in that state of grace: “for every creature needs to be preserved in the good received from Him … since man will need the Divine help even in the state of glory.”¹⁵⁰

In fact, St.Thomas teaches that man needs God’s grace even to prepare himself to receive grace. This is because God is Prime Mover and it is by His motion that creatures seek the good. St.Thomas explains the preparation to receive grace as follows: “Now to prepare oneself for grace is, as it were, to be turned to God; just as, whoever has his eyes turned away from the light of the sun, prepares himself to receive the sun’s light, by turning his eyes towards the sun. Hence it is clear that man cannot prepare himself to receive the light of grace except by the gratuitous help of God moving him inwardly.”¹⁵¹ St.Thomas also says, “Hence even a man who already possesses grace needs a further assistance of grace in order to live righteously.”¹⁵²

While St. Thomas says that man turns to God by his own free will, he explains that “free-will can only be turned to God, when God turns it, according to Jeremias 31:18: ‘Convert me and I shall be converted, for Thou art the Lord, my God’; and Lamentations 5:21: ‘Convert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted.’”¹⁵³ St.Thomas also refers to John 6:44: “No man can come to me, except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him,” and then explains: “But if man could prepare himself, he would not need to be drawn by another. Hence man cannot prepare himself without the help of grace.”¹⁵⁴ Based on Scripture and the teachings of the Church, St. Thomas is clear that man cannot do anything spiritually without being moved by God’s intrinsically efficacious grace.

¹. We recall that Molinism and Arminianism deny that grace is intrinsically efficacious, holding instead that it is extrinsically efficacious by virtue of man’s cooperation. Such a concept renders God determined and not determining, which is incompatible with God who is pure Act.

². See, for example, Garrigou-LaGrange, Predestination, pp. 74, 80. While this may be a helpful way to understand the distinction, God’s consequent will determines both election and reprobation.

³. ST, Pt I, Q 19, Art 6.

⁴. Commentary on 1 Cor. 4:7.

⁵. ST, Pt I-II, Q 112, Art 4.

⁶. As we have said, anyone (predestined or reprobated) who performs a salutary act does so by the power of efficacious grace. But the elect alone receive the efficacious grace of final perseverance.

⁷. Fr. Most claims that St. Thomas never taught the distinction between sufficient and efficacious grace just because he didn’t use those terms specifically in ST, Pt I-II, Q 111 where he divides grace into many categories. This is a misleading attempt to prove the erroneous view that there is only one kind of grace. First, St. Thomas does describe sufficient and efficacious graces in terms of their operating and cooperating effects (ST, Pt I-II, Q 111, Art 2) and in terms of God’s antecedent and consequent wills (ST, Pt I, Q 19, Art 6). Second, St. Thomas does use the terminology “sufficient” and “efficacious” (or “effective”) throughout his works to describe the effects of grace procured by Christ’s Passion (see, for example, ST, Pt III, Q 79, Art 2; Pt I-II, Q 106, Art 2;CG, 4.55; De veritate, Q 29, Art 7; III Sent. d. 13, Q 2, Art 2; Commentary on 1 Tim. 2:5).

⁸. ST, Pt I-II, Q 112, Art 3.

⁹. ST, Pt I, Q 19, Art 6.

¹⁰. Ibid., citing De Dono Persev. xiv.

¹¹. As we have seen, God wills to permit the elect to resist sufficient grace to spiritually heal them, and the reprobate to resist sufficient grace to spiritually blind them. ST, Pt I-II, Q 79, Art

¹². ST, Pt I, Q 19, Art 8.

¹³. Ibid.

¹⁴. Phil. 2:13. Notice that St. Paul says “according to his good will,” and not according to foreseen merits or anything else in us.

¹⁵. De gratia et libero arbitrio, 6.15. Many such quotes from St. Augustine could be provided. See also CCC 2009.

¹⁶. 2 Tim. 4:18. God presumably gave St. Paul a revelation of his own election, perhaps when he was raptured into heaven (1 Cor. 12:1-6).

¹⁷. Denz., 182; quoting St. Prosper.

¹⁸. Denz., 189; quoting St. Prosper.

¹⁹. Denz., 193; quoting St. Prosper.

²⁰. Denz., 194, quoting St. Prosper.

²¹. Denz., 373; condemnation of the errors of Peter Abelard.

²². Denz., 832.

²³. We will look at the Calvinist understanding of free will and man’s “total depravity” later in the book. As we will see, while man’s will is wounded by sin, it is free to perform natural good, and God’s grace moves it to perform supernatural good.

²⁴. CCC 2022 (emphasis added).

²⁵. De malo, Q 6, Art 1 (emphasis added).

²⁶. ST, Pt I, Q 83, Art 1 (emphasis added).

²⁷. De veritate, 22:9.

²⁸. CG, 3.88-89.

²⁹. CG, 3.92.

³⁰. Denz., 814.

³¹. Denz., 196; quoting St. Prosper (emphasis added).

³². ST, Pt I-II, Q 111, Art 2. Thomists uses the term “premotion” to describe the divine motion that moves secondary causes to act.

³³. ST, Pt I-II, Q 114, Art 1.

³⁴. We make this statement only to refute the claim that God’s efficacious grace makes man an automaton or robot. It does not. Rather, efficacious grace causes man to freely desire and choose the good, which beings without free will are unable to do.

³⁵. ST, Pt I, Q 111, Art 2.

³⁶. 2 Sent. d.25, Q 1, Art 1, ad 3. We thus can properly understand St. Thomas’s statement: “Now man is master of his actions through his reason and will” (ST, Pt I-II, Q 1, Art 1). Man is the master of his reason and will insofar as he freely chooses the good under the influence of cooperating (efficacious) grace, and freely rejects the good under the influence of operating (sufficient) grace.

³⁷. CG, 3.91, in Predestination, p. 284.

³⁸. ST, Pt I, Q 83, Art 1.

³⁹. ST, Pt I, Q 114, Art 1. The Catechism also says, “Man’s merit, moreover, is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit” (CCC 2008).

⁴⁰. See, Predestination, p. 245.

⁴¹. ST, Pt I, Q 105, Art 5.

⁴². ST, Pt I, Q 23, Art 5.

⁴³. The inspiration of Sacred Scripture also comes to mind. The sacred authors remained free even though they were writing under the direction and dictation of the Holy Ghost.

⁴⁴. See also Mark 13:22. Jesus also threatens to blot the elect’s names out of the “book of life” (Apoc. 3:5; 22:19), where the “book of life” refers to those predestined to glory (see ST, Pt I, Q 24, Art 1-3). This means the elect have the potency to fall away, but God preserves them in grace to the end.

⁴⁵. ST, Pt I-II, Q 112, Art 3.

⁴⁶. Denz., 806.

⁴⁷. Predestination, p. 181.

⁴⁸. Ibid., p. 181-182. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange also says, “God’s withdrawal of efficacious grace is a punishment” (p. 209). But efficacious grace automatically applies man’s will to act, and so it is odd to speak about the “withdrawal” of efficacious grace. Further, while God does withhold grace as a punishment for sin, God alone (and not man’s sin) determines the type of grace He gives man.

⁴⁹. Ibid., p. 182.

⁵⁰. Ibid., p. 208.

⁵¹. It is correct to say that man is deprived of sufficient grace through his own fault, but not so with efficacious grace. That is because with sufficient grace, God wills to permit man to resist it, while with efficacious grace God wills man to receive it infallibly.

⁵². Pp. 331-333.

⁵³. CG, 3.91.

⁵⁴. If one takes Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s apparent conclusions to their logical end (that man determines grace’s efficacy), one would have to conclude that man determines God’s election, and not vice-versa.

⁵⁵. Fr. Most’s theory differs from that of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange appears to hold that a positive decision not to resist the grace results in an efficacious grace, whereas Fr. Most holds that the absence of a decision (a “negative,” non-decision) also results in an efficacious grace. Note that Fr. Most does acknowledge St. Thomas’s teaching that man can respond to operating grace by his free will (a positive decision). Thus, Fr. Most’s non-resistance scenario is posited as an alternative way in which grace is rendered efficacious (the absence of an evil decision).

⁵⁶. GPS, p. 142.

⁵⁷. Fr. Most admits the novelty of his position and yet proclaims: “Is it not presumptuous for an ordinary man to think he can see the solution that was obscure or unknown to the great Saints and Doctors of the Church? The answer is: No” (p.629). Likewise, this author does not believe it is presumptuous for a lay attorney—professionally trained to examine the written word—to humbly expose the errors of an esteemed theologian and to side with the greatest saints and doctors of the Church.

⁵⁸. Thomists could stop here: God wills man to cooperate with grace, or to permit man to resist the grace. If God “wills to move a man to a specified effect,” then man will be so moved.

⁵⁹. Fr. Most says, “The absence of resistance of which we speak is not a positive decision or act of the will made under the form of explicitly making a decision to abstain from sin” (GPS, p. 6, ft 7, emphasis added). Note that such qualifying language indicates that a position is imprecise. If the decision is not explicit, does Fr. Most mean it is implicit?

⁶⁰. GPS, p. 159.

⁶¹. GPS, p. 167. We cannot imagine a theory more violative of Thomism. By attributing the “decisive step” and the “outcome” to man, Fr. Most in this one sentence denies the Thomistic principles of universal causality, eternal decrees, predilection, election, and pure Act, and makes salvation ultimately the work of man. We don’t believe it is too harsh to say that Fr. Most’s theory is Arminian, if not Pelagian.

⁶². Cap XII. Lect. III 689, cited in GPS, p. 197.

⁶³. ST, Pt I, Q 22, Art 2. In confirming the Council of Orange, Pope Boniface II says, “[I]t clearly appears that the faith by which we believe in Christ, just as all blessings, comes to each man from the gift of supernatural grace, not from the power of human nature.” The “power of human nature” can be equated to the condition of non-resistance that is the “decisive step” in Fr. Most’s theory.

⁶⁴. ST, Pt I, Q 19, Art 4.

⁶⁵. GPS, p. 140.

⁶⁶. GPS, p. 141.

⁶⁷. See ST, Pt I, Q 19, Art 4.

⁶⁸. See ST, Pt I-II, Q 112, Art 1.

⁶⁹. We fail to understand how non-resistance is “produced by grace” and yet the “first decisive step” of non-resistance comes from man.

⁷⁰. Fr. Most admits that “it is not more glorious to use greater power so as to produce a lesser result” (GPS, p. 165), but he doesn’t see the same problem with a lesser power producing the same result as a greater power.

⁷¹. See Gen. 2:7.

⁷². ST, Pt I, Q 23, Art 5.

⁷³. GPS, p. 399 (emphasis in original).

⁷⁴. ST, Pt III, Q 24, Art 3.

⁷⁵. GPS, p. 469. Fr. Most contradicts himself when he says that “causality is not required for non-beings,” and in the next sentence that “God wills that these non-beings be the conditions according to which He will or will not move man” (GPS, p. 188). If God’s will is the cause of all things and He wills non-beings to be conditions, then causality is required for non-beings (although we question how non-being can be a condition willed by God if non-being doesn’t exist. How can nothing bring about something outside of God’s causality?). St. Thomas confirms that non-being comes forth into being “from His knowledge according to His plan” (De veritate, 2.8.c).

⁷⁶. GPS, p. 490.

⁷⁷. GPS, p. 140.

⁷⁸. Such a “non-resistance” theory is reminiscent of the heresy of quietism, where man’s mind is wholly inactive (at least in this “first stage”) and does not think or will on its own account, but remains passive while God acts within it. It also flirts with the condemnation of the Council of Trent, which declared that man does not remain passive under the influence of grace (even though in Fr. Most’s theory man does remain passive—in a state of “do nothing” —under the influence of this first stage of grace).

⁷⁹. GPS, p. 459. Fr. Most’s statement negates his own claim that non-resistance is not a “positive, salutary act.”

⁸⁰. ST, Pt I-II, Q 111, Art 2.

⁸¹. Ibid.

⁸². GPS, p. 139 (emphasis in original).

⁸³. See 1 Cor. 7:15; 8:4, 17; 11:4, 16. See also 1 Cor. 2:14; Gal. 4:14; Eph. 6:17; Phil. 4:18;Col. 4:10; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2:13; 2 Thess. 2:10; Heb. 11:31.

⁸⁴. Denz., 814.

⁸⁵. CG, 3.159.

⁸⁶. GPS, p. 198. Again, Fr. Most confuses potency with act. Man may have the power to impede or not to impede, but that does not mean that he actually does impede or does not impede.

⁸⁷. I Sent. d. 46, Q 1, Art 4.

⁸⁸. De veritate, 23.2 ad 4. Based on this statement, Fr. Most asks, “But if God freely wills to await our absence of resistance, who could prove that He would be incapable of doing this if He so wills?” (GPS, p. 206, emphasis in original). However, if God would will to wait for a condition in man in order to determine the efficacy of grace, He would be passive until the condition materialized. God cannot will what is contrary to His nature.

⁸⁹. ST, Pt I-II, Q 111, Art 2.

⁹⁰. De malo, 3.1 ad 9.

⁹¹. To advance his theory, Fr. Most also uses the human father analogy. He says, “[A] human father simply would not be permitted to omit loving and caring for his small children precisely and formally because of the absence of a positive condition which he would demand from his child.” This argument undermines Fr. Most’s theory as well. A father does not look for “non-resistance” in his child before willing him good. He wills the child good independently of anything in the child.

⁹². GPS, p. 162; cf. p. 163 (emphasis in original). Of course, efficacious grace is “frustrable” insofar as man has the power (potency) to resist it.

⁹³. CG, 3.161.

⁹⁴. ST, Pt I-II, Q 113, Art 10 (emphasis added).

⁹⁵. ST, Pt I-II, Q 112, Art 3. Fr. Most acknowledges the truth of St. Thomas’s statement, but responds by saying that it does “not prove that God is completely incapable of moving a man to consent in any other way” (GPS, p. 184). But the issue is not what God is capable of doing, but what Fr. Most is capable of proving.

⁹⁶. ST, Pt I-II, Q 112, Art 3 (emphasis added).

⁹⁷. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 1 and 2.

⁹⁸. From a Thomistic perspective, to maintain the T-U-L-I-P acronym, we would replace Calvinism’s “Total Depravity” with “Total Dependence” (man is totally dependent upon God but maintains a free will). We would also replace Calvinism’s “Irresistible Grace” with “Intrinsically Efficacious Grace” (grace is not irresistible but causes man’s will to choose freely by its intrinsic efficacy).

⁹⁹. Luther’s Works, p. 125.

¹⁰⁰. Luther’s Works, p. 126.

¹⁰¹. Assertio omnium articulorum (1520), written in response to Pope Leo X’s excommunication. Luther further explained his denial of man’s free will in his work De Servo Arbitrio (1525), which is often translated as “Bondage of the Will” or “On the Enslaved Will.”

¹⁰². Denz., 815.

¹⁰³. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 8.

¹⁰⁴. Canons of Dort, III and IV, Article 3.

¹⁰⁵. S.M. Houghton, A Faith to Confess: The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, Chapter 9, Sec. 3.

¹⁰⁶. The Potter’s Freedom, pp. 82-83 (emphasis in original; Chapter 3, “The Inabilities of Man”).

¹⁰⁷. Ibid., p. 111 (emphasis in original; Chapter 4, “The Will of Man”).

¹⁰⁸. Ibid., p. 118, footnote 20 (emphasis in original; Chapter 4).

¹⁰⁹. Ibid., p. 101 (Chapter 4).

¹¹⁰. Denz., 160a. This heresy was first proposed by a priest from Gaul named Lucidus. The Church recorded Lucidus’s retraction in the cited condemnation.

¹¹¹. Denz., 199.

¹¹². Denz., 186.

¹¹³. Denz., 317.

¹¹⁴. Denz., 325.

¹¹⁵. The early Church Fathers taught that man has free will. See, for example, Irenaeus (Against Heresies); Clement of Alexandria (The Rich Man); Gregory of Nyssa (The Great Catechism);John Chrysostom (Homilies on Genesis; On John; On Romans; On Ephesians; On Hebrews); Jerome (Against Jovian; Commentaries on Jonas); Augustine (Letters; Sermons; Questions to Simplican; Debate with Felix; Forgiveness of Sins; The Spirit and the Letter; Homilies on John; Homilies on the Epistle ofJohn; Grace and Original Sin; Against the Pelagians; Admonition and Grace); and John Damascene (The Source of Knowledge).

¹¹⁶. ST, Pt I, Q 83, Art 1.

¹¹⁷. The Potter’s Freedom, p. 87.

¹¹⁸. Recall that Calvinists claim St. Peter is writing only to the elect. Even if that were true, 2 Pet. 2:20 would demonstrate that the elect have the ability to fall back into sin and final impenitence, as Thomists maintain (although God prevents them from doing so through efficacious grace).

¹¹⁹. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 2.

¹²⁰. The other major difference between these two schools concerns when man is regenerated by God (more on this later).

¹²¹. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 1 and 2.

¹²². John 6:39-40, 44, 55; 11:24; 12:48.

¹²³. In Romans 6:11, St. Paul also says, “So do you also reckon, that you are dead (nekros) to sin, but alive unto God, in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is another example where St. Paul uses “dead” in a spiritual and metaphorical sense. The Romans weren’t literally unable to commit sin even though St. Paul says they were “dead to sin.” In the same vein, fallen man isn’t literally unable to know and respond to God even though he is “dead in sin.”

¹²⁴. See Rom. 14:9 (Christ’s resurrection from grace to glory) and Apoc. 20:5 (the elect’s resurrection from grace to glory).

¹²⁵. Many Calvinists also believe in what they call “common grace,” which restrains man from being more evil than he is (more on this later).

¹²⁶. Calvinists disagree on whether faith precedes or follows regeneration. Strict Calvinists believe that faith follows regeneration, while Arminians believe that faith precedes regeneration. In Catholic theology, the theological virtue of faith is given at the same time as regeneration—in baptism—when God infuses faith, hope, and charity into the soul (Rom. 5:1-5; CCC 1266;1991).

¹²⁷. The following Fathers interpreted being “born again” (John 3:5) as referring to water baptism: Justin Martyr (First Apology); Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus); Irenaeus (Fragment);Tertullian (On Baptism); Hippolytus (Discourse on the Holy Theophany); Clement (Recognitions of Clement); Pseudo-Clementines (Homily); Origen (Commentary on Romans); Cyprian (To Stephen);Lactantius (Divine Institutes); Hilary of Poitiers (Trinity); Athanasius (Discourse Against the Arians); Ephraim (Hymns for the Feast of the Epiphany); Basil (On the Spirit); John Chrysostom (On the Priesthood); Gregory of Nazianzen (Oration on Holy Baptism); Ambrose (Concerning Repentance; and On the Mysteries); Gregory of Nyssa (On the Baptism of Christ); Jerome (To Oceanus; Against the Pelagians); Augustine (To Boniface; On Forgiveness of Sin and Baptism; City of God; On the Soul and Its Origin); Fulgentius (On Faith); and John of Damascus (Orthodox Faith).

¹²⁸. The word “laver” or “bath” (Greek, loutron) is used only one other time in the New Testament, in Ephesians 5:26, where Christ cleanses the Church “by the laver of water in the word of life.” The word for “water” (hudor) is used in both John 3:5 and Ephesians 5:26, and the word for “Spirit” (pneuma) is used in both John 3:5 and Titus 3:5.

¹²⁹. In some cases, God may send man a prevenient grace that is sufficient only (in which case God willed to permit man to resist the grace through his own choice).

¹³⁰. ST, Pt I-II, Q 111, Art 3. This means that prevenient or actual graces are God’s interventions either “at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification” (CCC 2000).

¹³¹. God grants non-Catholics efficacious graces for the ultimate purpose of bringing them into the Catholic Church.

¹³². The verb “I will rise” (poreuomai) is in the future tense, middle voice.

¹³³. See Acts 9:3-8; 22:6-11; 26:12-18.

¹³⁴. Philip was ordained with apostolic authority in Acts 6:6 and therefore had the authority to interpret the scriptures for the eunuch.

¹³⁵. Those Calvinists who believe that Adam had free will before the Fall are called infralapsarians. Some Calvinists do not believe that Adam had free will but rather that God predestined Adam to sin. They are called supralapsarians.

¹³⁶. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 4. Ironically, the Church views Adam as more dependent upon God and His grace than the Reformed view does!

¹³⁷. See, for example, Gen. 1:28; 2:24; 4:1, 17, 25.

¹³⁸. Pelagius had other heretical ideas, such as his denial of original sin, that physical death was not from sin but a necessity of nature, and that Christ does not bring us new life but rather sets an example for us of a good life.

¹³⁹. Denz., 105.

¹⁴⁰. Denz., 177.

¹⁴¹. Denz., 179.

¹⁴². Denz., 180. See also CCC 406.

¹⁴³. Denz., 373. The council condemned the views of Peter Abelard (d. 1142) who believed that man’s free will acted independently of grace.

¹⁴⁴. Denz., 798.

¹⁴⁵. Denz., 811.

¹⁴⁶. Denz., 813.

¹⁴⁷. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 1 (emphasis added).

¹⁴⁸. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 2.

¹⁴⁹. Ibid.

¹⁵⁰. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 9.

¹⁵¹. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 6. See also CCC 2001.

¹⁵². ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 9.

¹⁵³. ST, Pt I-II, Q 109, Art 6. The Council of Trent uses St. Thomas’s analysis in chapter 5 of its decree on justification (On the Necessity of Preparation for Justification of Adults, and Whence it Proceeds), Denz., 797.

¹⁵⁴. Ibid. We provide an exegesis of the relevant passages in John 6 in the next chapter.

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