Dominican thomism and the problem of evil

[Love4All]

I want to get to some of Aelred’s comments, but I have commitments to get to soon, so I will take those up later.

I want to say that I am very much enjoying the discussion here, and this particular topic — free will — is one that I have thought much about and have, I think, a good understanding of, that comes from God. Sorry for the dangling participle

The theological dispute between the Thomists and Molinists is old, and no definitive pronouncement was made by the Church on either side. So it is technically an open question. But this is not to say that there is no resolution of it. An open theological question is one that has a solution that has not yet been reached by the industry of thinkers. It is in no way intended, even by God’s Church, to remain forever an open question, as if God Himself didn’t know the truth of the matter.

In some ways, this situation parallels the question of free will in Heaven. In Heaven, there are no more theological disputes. There is only Knowledge of the Truth. Here on Earth, there are open theological questions, but only temporarily. Now if you can receive it, it is the same with our free will. We only have it here. Death closes the door on free will decisions. I realize that mine is the minority opinion on this, but I can and will defend it, because I know it to be correct. Wisdom has revealed it, and God does know the answer, just as God knows the answer to the Thomist/Molinist controversy. I promise that I will put Charity first and not make fallacious appeals to authority, whether real or imagined. Therefore do I say that my statement, “Wisdom has revealed it,” is not meant to be a conversation-stopper in any way. Wisdom is at least partly accessible in Understanding, and understanding can be explained.

Before I depart to keep my appointments, I want to add a pertinent idea to the mix here. It is on the question of free will and it goes directly to the Church’s decree on the dispute in history. The Thomists and the Molinists were solemnly commanded not to accuse each other of heresy. So each is a temporarily valid theological opinion. I say “temporary” in reference to the fact that God will reveal the solution in His perfect Timing. Maybe even in this thread! But who knows?

My suspicion is that the real solution lies somewhere in between, as most of these things pan out. But in any case, one thing is clear: the Catholic teaching is in fact in between two opposite heresies, and it is these two heresies that I think it will help us to name.

The debate between the Thomists and the Molinists was in regard to the roles of free will and divine grace. There are two heretical extremes, that the Catholic solution must avoid, and that the Church has already decreed that Thomism and Molinism both do avoid.

To attribute our salvation exclusively to God and not at all to ourselves, is the error known as Calvinism. On the other hand, to attribute our salvation exclusively to ourselves, and not at all to God, is the error known as Pelagianism.

Thomists are not Calvinists, and Molinists are not Pelagians.

The Catholic Doctrine is that whoever wishes to be saved must co-operate with grace. “Co-operation” implies two wills that operate together on one thing. In the case of salvation, it is the human will and the Divine Will, that co-operate.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

I’ve done some more reading and thinking and would like to clarify, and partially correct, what I said in resonse to Theophorus.

It seems to me that whose statements are correct on this subject, mine or Theophorus’s, depends on at what level of detail you look at the issue. I’ll give four perspectives, each more detailed than the previous one, in the third of which Theophorus’s perspective has traction.

1. Consider simply a salutary act and an opposing sin and the graces given to the person in each case. In both cases the person was given sufficient grace, while only in the case of the salutary act being performed was the person given efficacious grace. At this level of consideration we do have 100% rejection of sufficient grace when efficacious grace is not given.
2. Consider this same salutary act and the opposing sin and the graces given to the person in each case, but also the basic nature of each and the logical order (all or at least some happen simultaneously in time) in which these things occur. First, in both cases, God grants sufficient grace, which gives the soul the potential for obedience. Then comes the physical premotion that predetermines the person’s actual choices. If this premotion is to obey the commandment in question we call this efficacious grace. If the premotion is to the physical act of sin then we do not call it grace at all. Finally come the free acts themselves. Again we do have 100% rejection of sufficient grace when efficacious grace is not given, and also a sense in which efficacious grace, far from being dependent on cooperation with sufficient grace, seems to be what brings about cooperation with sufficient grace in the sense of making what was merely potential actual.
3. Consider all this, but add also the true source of the sin’s evil, disordered nature. This is the failure to “consider” (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s word in translation; I assume it means not intellectual meditation on the moral realities of the problem since without this there would not be culpability for the sin, but the actual choice to act in accordance with this duty) our duty to God.

As on every level of consideration the granting of sufficient grace comes first. Importantly, the next step is the consideration of or the failure to consider one’s duties to God. Next comes the premotion to the actual choice in question, either the salutary act or the sinful one. Again this is efficacious grace if it moves the person to the salutary act and not called grace at all if it moves the person to the act of sin. Finally, logically speaking, comes the free choices themselves.

Now in the case of the person who sins the initial resistance to sufficient grace (the thwarting of his potential to obey God) came with the failure to consider his duty to God, and this comes logically prior to the premotion to the physical act of sin. This point is necessary for us to maintain because the act to which the person is premoved is as a whole a moral evil, yet God is only the cause of the positive aspects of the act and in no way the cause of the moral disorder of it. So the truly evil, disordered component of the sin must come first, and any movement from God second and as a response to this.

It is from this perspective that efficacious grace is seen as the fruit of sufficient grace and in which deprivation from efficacious grace is seen as a punishment for a prior resistance to sufficient grace. From this perspective, this particular level of detail, we could say that sufficient grace is not guaranteed to be resisted in the absence of efficacious grace, since in fact the granting or non-granting of efficacious grace occurs logically subsequent to the resistance or non-resistance of sufficient grace.

1. The above three levels of consideration may be as far as Thomists commonly take it, but it seems to me there is still something missing. Surely the consideration of one’s duty to God is itself a positive good brought about by God in the soul by grace. We can (though anti-intellectuals may call it hair-splitting) distinguish this grace from that of the movement of the soul to commit the salutary act itself, but it is still a grace and is still efficacious in the person it is given to.

In the case of the person to whom this grace is given, the effect of a free choice to consider one’s duties to God follows. Next comes the premotion (efficacious grace) to choose the specific salutary act itself and then the actual free choice.

In the case of the person to whom this grace is not given the choice to consider one’s duties to God does not follow and so a moral defect comes about. Then, logically consequent to all of this, efficacious grace to choose the salutary act is denied and the soul is instead premoved in a different way. It’s worth repeating that we must remember here that the step that actually introduces moral disorder to the person’s act is an absence of something, not a presence of something. Everything that God actually brings about in the act is positive; the negative element is not caused by God at all but can only be referred back to the defectibility of the creature. Furthermore God does not commit any injustice in not granting the grace to consider one’s duties to Him, since God does not have a duty to preserve defectible creatures from defecting and since God has not actively done anything to cause the sin. He merely refrains from acting in a certain way despite his antecedent universal salvific will, permitting an evil to come about for the sake of a greater good that He will subsequently bring about.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Commenting on my post above, since otherwise there was not enough room, in my opinion once one gets to level 3 one must proceed to level 4 if one is to maintain key Thomist principles like that all good comes from God. Leaving the choice to consider one’s duties to God separated from divine causality would throw the whole Thomist theory into ruins and would seem to necessitate scientia media to maintain that God is omniscient, thereby inadvertently forcing us to suppose God is determined by creatures rather than the other way around in some respects. In other words it would transform Thomism into Molinism.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

What if the greater good is the possibility of free will? I don’t know that St. Thomas declared that it is possible for God to create a world where everyone had free will and where no one sinned. He may very well have, but I haven’t seen it.

That it would be possible for God to create a world where everyone had free will and there was no sin follows inescapably from the idea if intrinsically efficacious but non-necessitating grace.

I’m afraid I don’t have time right now to respond well to your response to me. I’ll try and get to it tomorrow or the next day, but in the meanwhile remember that St. Thomas Aquinas operated on the definition of time as a measurement of change. If something does not change at all then by this definition it would be outside of time, but this does not necessarily have the implications we would infer today. Or at least that’s the first thought I’ve had with regard to the Aquinas quote.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

It surprises me that you would argue that given St. Thomas’ position on the matter:

“IT follows from what has been said that those who obtain ultimate happiness from the divine vision, never fall away from it. Because whatever at one time is, and at another time is not, is measured by time, as stated in 4 Phys. xii. Now the vision in question that makes intellectual creatures happy, is not in time but in eternity.[1] Therefore no one can lose it having once become a partaker thereof.”

Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.62

These are all interesting questions, and I think you do have a point. The particular judgment and the general judgment certainly have a logical sequence, and there is a strong implication that there is some type of temporal sequence; at the very least from a human perspective inside the universe. The purgatory question doesn’t seem to have much bearing, because - well - it’s the purgatorial state and not the beatific state. That there is a temporal state called purgatory “prior” to the beatific vision doesn’t appear to have any implications for the temporal or a-temporal reality of heaven.

Again though, I find these arguments to be inapposite to the issue. The angels were created at the beginning of time, and I believe that to be a de fide declaration of the Church. There is nothing to my knowledge that indicates the angels are timeless, although they are immortal. To the extent the state of heaven equals the beatific vision, the actions of angels prior to the beatific vision don’t have bearing on whether heaven is temporal or a-temporal.

I agree with you. I do not perceive a contradiction between free will and heaven where a human soul irrevocably makes a choice (at whatever point that might be) to dwell with God.

I mentioned before that to an Aristotelian like St. Thomas Aquinas time is a measurement of change. What does not change is therefore outside of time, just as something without extension would be outside all measurement of length. In the narrow framework of the possibility of falling from grace after receiving the Beatific Vision, we can speak of being in eternity rather than in time since once one perceives eternal, perfect goodness one will never fall away and lose that vision. At first glance St. Thomas may seem to have gotten the issue backwards here, mistaking the effect for the cause and visa verse, but ultimately he is going back to the idea of God as changeless, which precludes the possibility of the Beatific Vision changing.

None of this means that no form of sequentiality is experienced by the man in other ways, such as first not having a body and then being reunited with his body.

My reason for mentioning purgatory and the angels prior to the beatific vision is because of how this question usually comes up today. With our modern scientific idea (or at least our popular interpretation of the scientific idea) of time as a sort of fourth dimension of the physical universe a great many Catholics today jump to the conclusion that any creature that does not have a physical body exists in an entirely atemporal state, experiencing existence not in a sequence of events but in an “eternal now,” and that we enter such a state when our soul is separated from our body. C.S. Lewis even went beyond this and suggested a priority of our supposedly eternal, unchanging soul in heaven or hell to our temporal life, our life on earth being a sort of acting out of an eternal choice made outside of time either for or against God.

It was against this concept that I mentioned the progressive nature of purgatory and the sequence of states experienced by the angels. While neither addresses the question of change in heaven directly it sets a precedent for sequentiality and possibly even time as we know it to be experienced by pure or disembodied spirits.