T
thome600
Guest
Can a Catholic hold to the position on Grace/Predestination articulated by Domingo Banez and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange? The view that God offers sufficient grace to all. Sufficient grace gives men the ability ( or potency) to come to God. However, to actualize this potency, men need efficacious grace. This efficacious grace is only offered to some. All have free will, and all have the ability to come to God(since all are given sufficient grace), but only some are given efficacious grace which actualizes it. This summarizes my position pretty well.
“The Thomistic explanation of how grace and free will are reconciled begins with the premise that God has eternally predetermined that some people should be saved, and to realize this aim confers effective (efficacious) graces on these elect. He therefore physically affects their free wills, and thus secures that they decide freely to cooperate with His grace. There is an inner power in efficacious grace which infallibly insures that the predestined freely consent to perform such salutary actions as will merit heaven. Consequently efficacious grace is essentially different from merely sufficient grace, which confers the power or ability to place salutary acts, but no more. Before this bare potency can be reduced to action, another and different divine help must be received, namely efficacious grace. Since God has eternally willed the free consent of His chosen ones to the efficacious graces He confers, He thus ineluctably brings about the salvation of those who are included in His loving decree. All the rest who do not come within the ambit of this election are permitted, through the abuse of their freedom, not to attain heaven. The divine motive for this negative reprobation is that God willed to manifest His goodness not only by means of His mercy, but also by means of His justice.”
Can one hold this view as a Catholic today? I ask because many Catholics I speak to ( including some priests) act as if the Banezian position has been condemned by the Church. However, many of my Traditiinal Thomist friends hold this view.
“The Thomistic explanation of how grace and free will are reconciled begins with the premise that God has eternally predetermined that some people should be saved, and to realize this aim confers effective (efficacious) graces on these elect. He therefore physically affects their free wills, and thus secures that they decide freely to cooperate with His grace. There is an inner power in efficacious grace which infallibly insures that the predestined freely consent to perform such salutary actions as will merit heaven. Consequently efficacious grace is essentially different from merely sufficient grace, which confers the power or ability to place salutary acts, but no more. Before this bare potency can be reduced to action, another and different divine help must be received, namely efficacious grace. Since God has eternally willed the free consent of His chosen ones to the efficacious graces He confers, He thus ineluctably brings about the salvation of those who are included in His loving decree. All the rest who do not come within the ambit of this election are permitted, through the abuse of their freedom, not to attain heaven. The divine motive for this negative reprobation is that God willed to manifest His goodness not only by means of His mercy, but also by means of His justice.”
Can one hold this view as a Catholic today? I ask because many Catholics I speak to ( including some priests) act as if the Banezian position has been condemned by the Church. However, many of my Traditiinal Thomist friends hold this view.