Dominican thomism and the problem of evil

[Theophorus]

Thank you for the book recommendation I will check it out! I still firmly maintain that you are mistaken about Fr Legrange. He did not teach that the “majority” of people who attain final perseverance do so by sufficient grace. He held that its “possible” for someone to do so by this grace but absolutely no one does. 100% of everyone who gets to heaven does so by God efficacious grace. He held that its also possible for those people to resist that grace but 100% of them never do. In other words… Its a distinction from Calvinism without a real difference. Or a meaningless distinction basically.

Actually, I think his work “Reality” may be a better start, we are using terms indiscrimenently here and meaning very different things when we do and I apologise for that.

To simplify, in the works of Garrigou-Lagrange(esp. reality here) reflecting St. Thomas, actual (what I called ordinary) grace, is either sufficient or efficacious. Now according to Garrigou-Lagrange “All men receive concurrence of grace which makes them able to fulfill the divine precepts, because God never commands the impossible”

Here the best analogy is act and potency, sufficent grace is the potential to act well and achieve salvation, we can actively choose to resist this grace freely offered to everyone, and in doing so we reject God’s love as I outlined before. Efficacious Grace in Garrigou-Lagrange is analogus to Act, that by which a man actually observes God’s commands. If man resists the grace which makes him able to do good(sufficent grace), he merits deprival of that grace which gives him the actual doing of good(effecaious grace). By His own judgment, says St. Thomas, God does not give the light of grace to those in whom he finds an obstacle(rejection of sufficent grace)He will not override our free will. As for efficacious grace, if it is given to one, it is given by mercy, if it is refused to another, it is refused by justice(God respects our decision to reject him in rejecting sufficent grace).

Garrigou-Lagrange tells us that efficacious grace is offered to us in sufficient grace(this is what I ment by cooperstion with ordinary sufficent grace as being the normal route to Salvation in Catholicism, if you refuse it then efficacious Grace will not follow.), as fruit is offered in the blossom, as act is offered in the power. But by resistance to sufficient grace we merit deprival of efficacious grace. Resistance falls on sufficient grace as hail falls on a tree in blossom, destroying its promise of fruit. for resistance to sufficient grace, man’s own defective will is sufficient cause. And since that resistance precedes the privation of efficacious grace, it is true to say that man is deprived of efficacious grace because he resists sufficient grace, whereas it is not true to say that he sins because he is deprived of efficacious grace."

Extraordinary graces are those poured out on the Saint who first cooperate with sufficent grace and so freely dispose themselves to abundant outpourings of Grace to be an example to others in the natural order as I outlined before.

To sum up in Reality Garrigou-Lagrange says "Against Predestinarianism, to reappear later in Protestantism and Jansenism, the saint(Thomas) insists that God cannot command the impossible, and that God’s sufficient grace makes universal salvation genuinely possible. But, if man resists, he merits deprivation of efficacious grace. Lastly, man can merit everything to which the meritorious act is by God’s ordination proportioned, but he cannot merit the very principle of merit.

I hope this helps to show why thomism and calvanism are genuinely distinct in their understanding of God’s will, His Love and Human free will, and why the free will argument works in thomism. Man’s capacity to freely reject grace and sin also allow him to freely accept grace and attain beatitude which is in keeping with his capacities as a rational animal.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Thank you all very much! I have had an incredibly difficult time finding anyone educated on Thomism to help me out and it seems like Catholic answers comes through again. Let me clarify my question so that we can get to the heart of my question.

1. How would a Thomast respond to the atheistic objection to the existence of God named “the problem of evil”. Everyone so far has been hung up on the axiomatic defense (evil entails God) but the problem with this is that the argument can also be ran as “the problem of pain and suffering”. It runs something like this

1.God is all good and all powerful
2.an all powerful all good God would not create a world where there is an abundance of pain and suffering.
3. Pain and suffering are abundant in our world
4. Therefore our world is not the creation of an all good all powerful being.

There are variations but you get the point.

Free will defense

It seems to me that the Thomist (unlike the molinist) is unable to employ the most frequently used defense of said argument which is the free will defense perfected by Plantiga and William Lane Craig. The response usually goes like this

1. Out of all possible worlds with free will this is the one with the least amount of pain and suffering and the optimal amount of individuals who will come.to know God.

2.God will bring about some greater good from all of our pain and suffering

1. Namely, the salvation of Gods elect

Here the molinist can say that God created this world and allowed pain and suffering because He foreknew that said suffering would bring people to salvation. The thomist does not have said option since according to Thomism God unconditionally elects people through his efficacious grace while “passing over” others. The result of this is identical to that of John Calvins doctrine of double predestination without officially saying that God intentionally reprobates sinners. Instead He “passes them over” in favor of those whom according to legrange He loves more. Technically God gives these reprobate “sufficient grace” but the grace is not sufficient in any real way since it provides salvation for.absolutely no one. This puts the Thomist and the Calvinist in a pickle. It would appear the God could absolutely save every single person if He so chose.without the aid of pain and suffering at all. He need not have created a world filled with so much pain and suffering.because He could just override peoples “freewill” at any point with His efficacious grace. This takes us back now to the atheist argument

A good God that was all powerful would not have created a world with an abundance of pain and suffering

Peter Kreeft is an excellent source of understanding Aquinas’ take on evil.

Here is a good link:
peterkreeft.com/topics/evil.htm

 

[Love4All]

The will is truly free to choose among partial goods, not drawn inexorably to any of them. To use a more Molinist definition of freedom, even when everything is in place for the will to choose a particular partial good it is still free to choose it or not to choose it. But as a human faculty the will is still something created and therefore constitutes a secondary cause of the choice that is made rather than being the First Cause.

Also, and significantly, the will is free to choose between a partial good and the Supreme Good. Nothing in Saint Thomas contradicts this.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Also, and significantly, the will is free to choose between a partial good and the Supreme Good. Nothing in Saint Thomas contradicts this.

Actually this is wrong, or at least it could be interpreted as being wrong. Our will is directed towards goodness in general rather than towards any particular finite good. For this reason while our will always chooses something which the intellect has perceived or misperceived to be something good, it is not drawn inexorably to that good as long as there is some admixture of not-good in it.

Now God is pure, infinite Goodness, but in this life our intellects cannot directly perceive Him as such because even if we know about His infinite goodness in an abstract way it remains highly mysterious to us. His goodness being entirely outside our experience, we can do nothing but imagine creaturely analogies of His attributes and use these as a sort of mental placeholder for God. But in the Beatific Vision we will perceive God as He actually is, which is pure unadulterated goodness. In this case the implications of our general attraction to goodness will be different. While the freedom of our wills will not be taken away, it would be impossible for us in our general seeking of goodness to reject total Goodness in favor of something which is partially good and partially not-good. This is the reason why in my post I took care to speak of the will choosing among partial goods.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

I do see what you are getting at, I think its a misunderstanding of the role of grace and the (free) will in Thomism. Salvation on the Thomistic model can, and most often does, come through cooperation with ordinary grace which is offered to everyone without fail. Cooperation with ordinary grace is the normal route of Salvation in Catholicism, and it is man’s free response to God’s ordinary outpouring of grace that ultimately leads him to the beatific vision. Anyone who chooses to cooperate with the grace offered to everyone can be saved.

As St. Thomas says "

Pain and suffering occur when we freely choose a (perceived) good which is not fitting to our nature and which does not orientate us to God. The free will which allows cooperation with grace allows evil, but only because greater good will come from freely chosen good than could ever come fro enforced good or freely chosen evil(disordered/mistaken good)

Am I mistaken, or would not salvation always come about in this way? God offers sufficient grace to everyone, and then the will (which like all things is moved by God, and which in this case freely chooses its own course) either accepts this grace or does not. If by the grace of God we accept this grace and persevere in it until death we will be saved, and if we do not we will be damned through our own fault. Correct?

 

[Love4All]

Thank you all very much! I have had an incredibly difficult time finding anyone educated on Thomism to help me out and it seems like Catholic answers comes through again. Let me clarify my question so that we can get to the heart of my question.

1. How would a Thomast respond to the atheistic objection to the existence of God named “the problem of evil”. Everyone so far has been hung up on the axiomatic defense (evil entails God) but the problem with this is that the argument can also be ran as “the problem of pain and suffering”. It runs something like this

1.God is all good and all powerful
2.an all powerful all good God would not create a world where there is an abundance of pain and suffering.

Unsupported. This is a human judgment. Why would this necessarily be the case?

1. Pain and suffering are abundant in our world
2. Therefore our world is not the creation of an all good all powerful being.

There are variations but you get the point.

Free will defense

It seems to me that the Thomist (unlike the molinist) is unable to employ the most frequently used defense of said argument which is the free will defense perfected by Plantiga and William Lane Craig. The response usually goes like this

You are being overly generous to Craig and Plantinga. Neither of them impresses me very much. Jus’ sayin’.

1. Out of all possible worlds with free will this is the one with the least amount of pain and suffering and the optimal amount of individuals who will come.to know God.

Carries the unsupported, human-centered assumption in 2 above.

2.God will bring about some greater good from all of our pain and suffering

1. Namely, the salvation of Gods elect

Here the molinist can say that God created this world and allowed pain and suffering because He foreknew that said suffering would bring people to salvation. The thomist does not have said option since according to Thomism God unconditionally elects people through his efficacious grace while “passing over” others.

That is absolutely, 100% false and heretical. Saint Thomas would never assert such a thing. That is Calvin, pure and simple, and Calvin’s “God” is a monster.

The result of this is identical to that of John Calvins doctrine of double predestination without officially saying that God intentionally reprobates sinners. Instead He “passes them over” in favor of those whom according to legrange He loves more.

You are deriving this from Calvin, and not from Saint Thomas. Or else cite where.

Technically God gives these reprobate “sufficient grace” but the grace is not sufficient in any real way since it provides salvation for.absolutely no one. This puts the Thomist and the Calvinist in a pickle. It would appear the God could absolutely save every single person if He so chose.without the aid of pain and suffering at all. He need not have created a world filled with so much pain and suffering.because He could just override peoples “freewill” at any point with His efficacious grace.

This betrays in you an extreme paucity of understanding the reality of grace.

How do you define grace?

This takes us back now to the atheist argument

A good God that was all powerful would not have created a world with an abundance of pain and suffering

This world, with its abundant pain and suffering, was created by the good God. Unless someone comes up with a plausible alternative, this is the reality that we find.

 

[Love4All]

Theophorus,

Can a man be saved and freely choose God through ordinary grace or soley through the extraordinary efficacious grace? It was my impression that salvation was given only through the latter. This maintains “free will” in a kind of dictionary sense but not practically if no one can choose God through ordinary grace. Do you see what I’m getting at or am I just hopelessly misunderstanding? Why would there need to be pain and suffering if all who cone to God do so but extraordinary grace?

Ordinary grace is efficacious when accepted and “merely sufficient” when rejected. Extraordinary graces are given for specific purposes; we need not concern ourselves with those.

God is Love, and Love saves all who seek Love. Those seeking other gods of course cannot be saved, even if they name those gods after Christian concepts.

 

[Love4All]

Thank you for the book recommendation I will check it out! I still firmly maintain that you are mistaken about Fr Legrange. He did not teach that the “majority” of people who attain final perseverance do so by sufficient grace. He held that its “possible” for someone to do so by this grace but absolutely no one does. 100% of everyone who gets to heaven does so by God efficacious grace. He held that its also possible for those people to resist that grace but 100% of them never do. In other words… Its a distinction from Calvinism without a real difference. Or a meaningless distinction basically.

Your error, or Calvin’s, is in posting two different kinds of grace. There are not. There is only grace, efficacious or merely sufficient depending on whether it is accepted or rejected. It is really that simple.

 

[Boywonder23k]

Theo- those are excellent illustrations and I appreciate your help. One lingering thing though… You said that according to Garrigou Legrange that efficacious grace was offered through the sufficient… My understanding was that 100% of everyone who receives sufficient grave does in fact reject it unless they are give efficacious grace.If that is true, then everyone rejects the offer of sufficient grace and God chooses arbitrarily who will be saved and who won’t… Again… A distinction without a difference

 

[Theophorus]

Theo- those are excellent illustrations and I appreciate your help. One lingering thing though… You said that according to Garrigou Legrange that efficacious grace was offered through the sufficient… My understanding was that 100% of everyone who receives sufficient grave does in fact reject it unless they are give efficacious grace.If that is true, then everyone rejects the offer of sufficient grace and God chooses arbitrarily who will be saved and who won’t… Again… A distinction without a difference

That is not found in Thomism or Garrigou-Lagrange, everyone is offered sufficent grace, the human will can freely accept or reject it. If they freely reject it then they also reject efficacious grace (as one who does not have the potency cannot have the act.), the gift of efficacious grace is dependent on free cooperation with sufficent grace. Man is only deprived of efficacious grace because he himself freely resists sufficient grace. Some reject sufficent grace but not all do, at least not on the catholic model, the 100% rejection of sufficent grace without efficacious grace is Calvinism not Thomism. The will in man is always free to choose what he percieves to be his good. God does not choose arbitrarily who will be saved. He freely offers salvation to all, but not all accept it.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Your error, or Calvin’s, is in posting two different kinds of grace. There are not. There is only grace, efficacious or merely sufficient depending on whether it is accepted or rejected. It is really that simple.

According to Molinism, perhaps, but certainly not Thomism. [Merely] Sufficient Grace makes salvation (or, on a finer scale, perhaps some lesser thing ultimately ordered towards salvation) possible while [Intrinsically] Efficacious Grace is nothing other than God’s omnipotent movement of the will to do something meritorious (and ultimately to accept salvation).

 

[Aelred_Minor]

That is not found in Thomism or Garrigou-Lagrange, everyone is offered sufficent grace, the human will can freely accept or reject it. If they freely reject it then they also reject efficacious grace (as one who does not have the potency cannot have the act.), the gift of efficacious grace is dependent on free cooperation with sufficent grace. Man is only deprived of efficacious grace because he himself freely resists sufficient grace. Some reject sufficent grace but not all do, at least not on the catholic model, the 100% rejection of sufficent grace without efficacious grace is Calvinism not Thomism. The will in man is always free to choose what he percieves to be his good. God does not choose arbitrarily who will be saved. He freely offers salvation to all, but not all accept it.

I was with you until the first part I put in bold. While sufficient grace does indeed make salvation really possible, by definition free cooperation with it never occurs without efficacious grace, for this efficacious grace is nothing other than the physical premotion of the soul in accepting/cooperating with grace. As a consequence the second part I put in bold would also be an error. While sufficient grace considered in itself really makes salvation possible (and this really is opposed to Calvinism) if a person is not given efficacious grace then logically we know the person will resist sufficient grace and therefore will not be saved. This is not due to any lack of freedom in the will, any irresistible compulsion to sin, but is merely a logical conclusion we must draw from the definition of efficacious grace and the statement that it was not given.

Finally, while I would not choose the word “arbitrary” to describe election, God does freely choose the elect and really brings about their salvation while not electing and not bringing about the salvation of the others. While God does antecedently will the salvation of all (and this again is different from Calvinism) he does not will the salvation of all efficaciously, as a consequence of His consideration of other things. Why God elects this person and not that other person has no reason apart from the Divine Will.

 

[Boywonder23k]

Theo,

I think minor is spot on here. You seem to be well read and no doubt know much more about thomism than myself but i think that you have criss crossed theologies. Classical Dominican Thomism is far more in line with unconditional election than what you are talking about. Grace that depends upon you accepting it is not efficacious. Grace that has to be accepted by you before the efficacious grace is poured out is not gratuitous. If nearly everyone who goes to heaven does so because they have somehow cooperated with sufficient grace through their own merit then how do you make any sense out of the word elect? This is not classical thomism but something else in general

 

[Boywonder23k]

father Garrgou Legrange was a banezian in regards to predestination. Perhaps it would be helpful for you to lookup what that means and what banez taught.

The Mystery of Predestination- According to Scripture, the Church, and St. Thomas Aquinas by John Salza explains banezian and Garrigou Legrange thought quite well from what I have heard.

 

[Love4All]

Actually this is wrong, or at least it could be interpreted as being wrong. Our will is directed towards goodness in general rather than towards any particular finite good. For this reason while our will always chooses something which the intellect has perceived or misperceived to be something good, it is not drawn inexorably to that good as long as there is some admixture of not-good in it.

Now God is pure, infinite Goodness, but in this life our intellects cannot directly perceive Him as such because even if we know about His infinite goodness in an abstract way it remains highly mysterious to us. His goodness being entirely outside our experience, we can do nothing but imagine creaturely analogies of His attributes and use these as a sort of mental placeholder for God. But in the Beatific Vision we will perceive God as He actually is, which is pure unadulterated goodness. In this case the implications of our general attraction to goodness will be different. While the freedom of our wills will not be taken away, it would be impossible for us in our general seeking of goodness to reject total Goodness in favor of something which is partially good and partially not-good. This is the reason why in my post I took care to speak of the will choosing among partial goods.

Sorry, that is inconsistent with the known facts of revelation. Lucifer fell, from Heaven. He had the immediate intuition of the Supreme Good. He envied it, and fell away from it. So, it is not the case that direct intuition of the Supreme Good automatically guarantees perseverance in grace.

The simplicity of Heaven is that there is no more free will in Heaven, there is only Love, in perfect freedom. Those in Heaven no longer have free will, because they have already exercised their free will with finality and chosen God.

Also, it is not the case that we cannot know God while still in Church Militant. In fact, that is the purpose of life — to know, love, and serve God in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next. Love is the Supreme Good, and we can know Love in this world, and our free will is continually presented with decisions between Love, the Supreme Good, and lesser, sinful goods. Whenever we accept grace, that is our choosing of the Supreme Good in preference to lesser goods, and whenever we sin, that is our choosing of lesser goods in preference to the Supreme Good. God’s Mercy is such that He forgives us, provided we repent.

Temptation arises when the devil, the flesh, or the world, present a lesser good as preferable to the Supreme Good, which is often enough. It is easy for these three sources of temptation to so present lesser goods. For example, to live would have been the choice of the lesser good for Our Lord, than to die on the Cross. He chose the greater good, but it did not appear the greater good to His human Nature. Which explains the Agony in the Garden.

 

[Love4All]

According to Molinism, perhaps, but certainly not Thomism. [Merely] Sufficient Grace makes salvation (or, on a finer scale, perhaps some lesser thing ultimately ordered towards salvation) possible while [Intrinsically] Efficacious Grace is nothing other than God’s omnipotent movement of the will to do something meritorious (and ultimately to accept salvation).

Seems like splitting hairs to me. There really are two kinds of grace, namely Actual Grace and Sanctifying Grace. Actual graces are, as the name implies, impulses to action. Sanctifying Grace is God’s friendship, given and increased through the Sacraments. Actual grace impels the soul to seek Sanctifying Grace, along with every other good work, but without seeking Sanctifying Grace, all other “good works” are useless.

So suppose a soul receives a grace to seek the Sacrament of Confession, which he knows will bestow Sanctifying Grace. The actual grace comes in the form of a thought, “I remember that I have committed a serious sin. I should go to Confession.” That grace impels, but does not compel, the soul to actually go to Confession. If he does, the grace has been efficacious, i.e. it has had its effect. If he refuses, the grace was merely sufficient. Two souls receive identical graces; one goes to Confession, the other does not. In one, the grace was efficacious, in the other, it was merely sufficient. There is no difference in the nature of the grace, but there is a difference in the response of the free will of the individual.

 

[Love4All]

I was with you until the first part I put in bold. While sufficient grace does indeed make salvation really possible, by definition free cooperation with it never occurs without efficacious grace, for this efficacious grace is nothing other than the physical premotion of the soul in accepting/cooperating with grace. As a consequence the second part I put in bold would also be an error. While sufficient grace considered in itself really makes salvation possible (and this really is opposed to Calvinism) if a person is not given efficacious grace then logically we know the person will resist sufficient grace and therefore will not be saved. This is not due to any lack of freedom in the will, any irresistible compulsion to sin, but is merely a logical conclusion we must draw from the definition of efficacious grace and the statement that it was not given.

Finally, while I would not choose the word “arbitrary” to describe election, God does freely choose the elect and really brings about their salvation while not electing and not bringing about the salvation of the others. While God does antecedently will the salvation of all (and this again is different from Calvinism) he does not will the salvation of all efficaciously, as a consequence of His consideration of other things. Why God elects this person and not that other person has no reason apart from the Divine Will.

And the Divine Will is none other than Love.

So it is Love, that is the deciding factor. Some want it, some don’t.

 

[Love4All]

Theo,

I think minor is spot on here. You seem to be well read and no doubt know much more about thomism than myself but i think that you have criss crossed theologies. Classical Dominican Thomism is far more in line with unconditional election than what you are talking about. Grace that depends upon you accepting it is not efficacious. Grace that has to be accepted by you before the efficacious grace is poured out is not gratuitous. If nearly everyone who goes to heaven does so because they have somehow cooperated with sufficient grace through their own merit then how do you make any sense out of the word elect? This is not classical thomism but something else in general

No rejected grace is efficacious. The efficacy of grace consists in the free will accepting it. No one is “unconditionally elected.” Co-operation with grace is a requirement for salvation. Not even the Mother of God could have been saved in any other way than her co-operation with grace. In her special case, her co-operation was always 100%.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Sorry, that is inconsistent with the known facts of revelation. Lucifer fell, from Heaven. He had the immediate intuition of the Supreme Good. He envied it, and fell away from it. So, it is not the case that direct intuition of the Supreme Good automatically guarantees perseverance in grace.

The simplicity of Heaven is that there is no more free will in Heaven, there is only Love, in perfect freedom. Those in Heaven no longer have free will, because they have already exercised their free will with finality and chosen God.

Also, it is not the case that we cannot know God while still in Church Militant. In fact, that is the purpose of life — to know, love, and serve God in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next. Love is the Supreme Good, and we can know Love in this world, and our free will is continually presented with decisions between Love, the Supreme Good, and lesser, sinful goods. Whenever we accept grace, that is our choosing of the Supreme Good in preference to lesser goods, and whenever we sin, that is our choosing of lesser goods in preference to the Supreme Good. God’s Mercy is such that He forgives us, provided we repent.

Temptation arises when the devil, the flesh, or the world, present a lesser good as preferable to the Supreme Good, which is often enough. It is easy for these three sources of temptation to so present lesser goods. For example, to live would have been the choice of the lesser good for Our Lord, than to die on the Cross. He chose the greater good, but it did not appear the greater good to His human Nature. Which explains the Agony in the Garden.

Actually the angels were not given the Beatific Vision immediately upon their creation, otherwise they could never have chosen to fall. Basically they seem to have been given some sort of test. Those who chose to remain faithful to God were granted the beatific vision while those who chose to rebel did not.

As I said in my past post our free will is not taken away by the Beatific Vision. The fact that we can be entirely confident we would not fall away after being given that Vision is, again, the difference in implications for our will’s attraction to universal goodness when confronted with infinite rather than finite goodness. Until we receive this Beatific Vision we can come to an awareness of God’s existence through faith and/or reason, but we absolutely can not perceive that absolute Being as He Is. It is this knowledge about God without a true intellectual “sight” of Him as He is that is the reason sin is possible for ourselves and for the demons.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Seems like splitting hairs to me. There really are two kinds of grace, namely Actual Grace and Sanctifying Grace. Actual graces are, as the name implies, impulses to action. Sanctifying Grace is God’s friendship, given and increased through the Sacraments. Actual grace impels the soul to seek Sanctifying Grace, along with every other good work, but without seeking Sanctifying Grace, all other “good works” are useless.

So suppose a soul receives a grace to seek the Sacrament of Confession, which he knows will bestow Sanctifying Grace. The actual grace comes in the form of a thought, “I remember that I have committed a serious sin. I should go to Confession.” That grace impels, but does not compel, the soul to actually go to Confession. If he does, the grace has been efficacious, i.e. it has had its effect. If he refuses, the grace was merely sufficient. Two souls receive identical graces; one goes to Confession, the other does not. In one, the grace was efficacious, in the other, it was merely sufficient. There is no difference in the nature of the grace, but there is a difference in the response of the free will of the individual.

All this is true on one level (at least, I won’t nitpick individual sentences). But consider: both the person who choses to go to confession and the one who chose not to had the same potential (due to sufficient grace) to choose either way. One chose the right thing, the other failed to do so. What caused the choice to go to confession to be actualized? Surely not the sufficient grace which the other man also received, for it did not have this effect in the other man.

Was not the choice to go to confession a good thing, indeed a better thing than the mere potential to make the good choice? Did the person generate that goodness out of nothing, spontaneously drawing the greater from the less, the good from not-good, being from non-being? No, just as only God can create something out of nothing, so only God can be the first mover of any created thing. The soul, even in the free operation of its will, must be moved by God as all created things are moved by God. It is at this level of consideration that efficacious grace works, according to Thomism.

I admit that the terminology may be confusing. Perhaps some misunderstandings would have been avoided if the Thomists had refrained from calling this movement of the will a kind of grace. But the basic concept is a solid one. Indeed it is an unavoidable one if you wish to avoid absurd ideas like goodness that does not have its source in God or God being determined by creatures.