Understanding free will in light of God's sovereignty

[Vico]

…

St. Thomas Aquinas used the parable to show that the master can give some more than others.

It is factual. God did not create mankind in a state of perfection but journeying. A person cannot share in the divinity without manifesting charity because sharing is to be like God. In order to allow for that sharing, God gave free will.

Catechism

302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created “in a state of journeying” ( in statu viae ) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call “divine providence” the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection …

1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. …

1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; [Cf. Council of Orange II (529): DS 397; Council of Trent
(1547):1567.]

 

[Richca]

And if God doesn’t desire salvation to all men, rejecting some from the very start while knowing what awaits them if he doesn’t wish them salvation, he cannot he said to be all-loving, because love implies that you desire the happiness of the person you love.

To claim that you love someone but you want them to be irreparably miserable is laughable at best, downright psychopathic at worst.

It is exactly the same. Calvin is just a worse advocate and doesn’t try to prevent the “god” he has in mind from looking like the criminal he actually is.

Because not even Hitler was that bad. He wanted to get rid of the Jews, he didn’t want them to suffer eternally.

Loopholes and tecnicalities. In one word: gibberish.

This: “why He chooses some for glory and reprobates others, has no reason, except the divine will” - Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 23, Article 5, reply to objection 3 is the actual core of the issue.

Here are some of my reflections. In Q. 23, art. 3, Thomas says ‘Reprobation differs in its causality from predestination’. In the body of this article, Thomas assigns both predestination and reprobation as parts of providence which, he says, in regards to reprobation includes God’s will to permit a person to fall into sin. God’s will of permission here is understood according to certain Thomists or Thomist interpreters to involve what they call negative reprobation which Fr Most defines quoting from Fr Garrigou-Lagrange I believe as ‘the will to permit a fault which will actually not be forgiven…’

My question is in what sense is God’s will of permission in relation to human sin a cause if a cause at all? According to St Thomas, God is not the efficient cause of sin because an efficient cause produces being but sin is the lack of being. God is the first cause that a human bad act or sin is an act or being at all as a being but the cause that this act is defective and lacks being and goodness is from the human’s free will.

What is the point I’m making? St Thomas surely doesn’t think God is a criminal. He is not the cause of sin either directly or indirectly as St Thomas says elsewhere and the CCC too. Secondly, how are we to understand what Thomas says in the reply to obj. 3, Q. 23? Should we isolate it from what he says elsewhere in the ST or other writings? If we eliminated this single reply from the entire ST, I’m not sure this idea of ‘negative reprobation’ would emerge from it and which is not an efficient cause on the part of God. In other words, from what I understand, God is not the efficient cause of reprobation. (cf. also the reply to obj. 3, art. 3, Q. 23 where Thomas talks about absolute impossibility and conditional impossibility. I don’t grasp exactly what he is saying here myself).

 

[Richca]

(continued)

But God’s will, as Thomas says, is the cause of things and he says in the body of the reply to obj. 3, Q. 23, as you point out ‘Yet why he chooses some for glory and reprobates others, has no reason, except the divine will’. Yet, the divine will is not the efficient cause of sin. Another point: Thomas says the will follows the intellect and so the divine will is founded on divine wisdom which he says in a number of places which can be considered as the ‘reason’ for the divine will. In this connection, probably what Augustine says about ‘He does not err in why he chooses or draws some and not others’ could be interpreted. Although Aquinas in the reply to obj. 3, reasons from God’s ‘simple will’ as it were and a seemingly arbitrary choice of which stone, for example, to place where in a wall as it were which isn’t very comforting to say the least.

I think one could make or draw arguments from Aquinas’ writings that would seem to be contradictory to what he says in Q. 23, reply to obj. 3. For example, he says in the beginning to the reply to obj. 3 ‘The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God’. Now God is absolute and essential Goodness as Thomas says. But consider the following as St Thomas teaches. God is the final cause and end of all things. The Divine Goodness is the end of all things. In the beginning of I-II of the ST, Thomas writes about the last end of human beings which end is God. God as the end of all creatures is built as it were into the very natures of all creatures. So, human beings in their very nature are directed to God as their last end for the object of the will is the universal good and the object of the intellect is the universal true which universals are none other than God. Virtue is in accord with human nature, vice and sin is against human nature. Man has a natural desire for the beatific vision even though he can’t attain it by his own natural powers but a natural desire, Aquinas says quoting Aristotle, is not in vain.

The point is this, from the get-go, from the beginning of every human’s existence, from the very fact of man’s existence, human beings are by nature directed to God as their last end. In this sense, how can this be reconciled with the idea of ‘negative reprobation’ from the start as it were? It doesn’t appear to make sense but rather contradictory. In this sense, maybe what Thomas says in Q. 23, reply to obj. 3, is what Fr Most is referring to when he says that Thomas was not as clear as he was wont to be due to the mystery involved and seemingly irreconcilable passages of scripture.

 

[Richca]

(continued)

Accordingly, I believe Fr. Most is on to something where he believes that there emerge from St Thomas’ teaching two lines of thought more or less concerning the subjects of predestination, grace, and related doctrines which seem to be irreconcilable and based on seemingly irreconcilable passages of Scripture. The great theologian he was and following strict theological method, St Thomas draws out the conclusions from both lines even if they can’t be reconciled according to what he considered scripture to mean. The conclusion he comes to in Q. 23, reply to obj. 3 is based on Romans 9 with Augustine’s interpretation. But, this scripture passage does not necessitate Augustine’s interpretation such as referring to individual salvation and election. The point is that Aquinas believes he is simply following the word of God in Holy Scripture as he always does in his writings, and as Fr. Most says, he was strongly influenced by Augustine’ interpretation of Romans 8-9. I believe both Augustine and Aquinas made an error here in their interpretation but they aren’t perfect I suppose. I do find it remarkable, however, that what Aquinas says in this lone Q. 23, reply to obj. 3, does not affect substantially, IMO, the orthodoxy as it were of his theology in substantially the rest of the entire Summa Theologica.

In conclusion, I’m not defending what Aquinas seemingly says at face value in the reply to obj. 3, Q.23. The Church does not officially teach this and I do not personally believe it. At face value, the teaching of a ‘negative reprobation’ and a seemingly arbitrary choice of who is saved or not by God is, IMO, a very ‘dark’ and incomprehensible doctrine which the Thomists or others who adhere to this doctrine readily admit as an ‘impenetrable mystery’. I believe this doctrine is irreconcilable with God’s universal salvific will and Jesus Christ as the universal Redeemer of mankind.

In the history of the Church, the saints, doctors, and theologians grappled with the mysteries of predestination, divine providence, grace, human free will and how to possibly reconcile all this if at all. Honestly, I don’t think we can perfectly reconcile it all in this life. Funny how if we simply admit that our eternal destiny and salvation is conditional in a certain sense, namely, due to our free will which we all believe we have, a lot of the mystery vanishes but perhaps not absolutely. I mean, I believe God antecedently and unconditionally desires the salvation of all but we need to cooperate with our free will with his grace which is the conditional part. It may be kind of scary to think that our salvation is in some manner contingent upon us but that is what hope and trust in God is all about I think. Also, as Fr. Most points out in his book, our free will power of resistance or non-resistance to God’s grace are ontological zeros which simply means we are ontologically entirely dependent on God from the get-go anyhow. It is just a matter of cooperating with God’s initiative and grace which goes before us, supports and sustains us, and brings us to its completion and eternal life in heaven.

 

[Robert1111]

St. Thomas Aquinas used the parable to show that the master can give some more than others.

Except that in the parable they all got what they needed, even though some got more than what they needed.

When it comes to predestination, though, Aquinas believed that God simply doesn’t give to all men what they need to achieve eternal happiness, this is why he said “ANYONE reprobated by God CANNOT acquire grace” - Summa Theologiae, First Part, Article 3, reply to objection 3

We ain’t talking about people predestined to have greater glory in Heaven here, nor are we talking about horrible sinners who come to repentance at the end (Rudolf Höss). We are talking about some people, the reprobates, simply passively omitted from a genuine salvific offer.

So I stand by my point when i said that Aquinas had misused that parable.

Because while God doesn’t owe salvation to everyone, he has to make salvation concretely achievable by everyone if we are required to consider him all-loving, just and merciful.

Saying that a merciful God creates some people and simply doesn’t wish them salvation before them having done anything is tantamount to talking about a chaste prostitute. Nonsense.

We would have a Janus bifrons kind of “god” who is both a merciful father to the elect and a spiteful goblin to the reprobate “for no reason except his divine will” (Thomas dixit).

It is factual. God did not create mankind in a state of perfection but journeying. A person cannot share in the divinity without manifesting charity because sharing is to be like God. In order to allow for that sharing, God gave free will.

All true, except that, per Aquinas and the classical thomists, no man can FACTUALLY (so let’s avoid all the “sufficient” Grace stuff here, because as i said that Grace only serves the purpose of making you accountable for your sins, according to the thomists) manifest charity if God hasn’t predestined him to do it. And no elect would ever have manifested charity if God hasn’t arbitrarily picked him up from the “massa dannata” of poor schlubs who have been created for no other reason than to allow their eternal ruin.

 

[Vico]

…

This: “why He chooses some for glory and reprobates others, has no reason, except the divine will” - Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 23, Article 5, reply to objection 3 is the actual core of the issue.

It is correct that we cannot save ourselves through the powers of human nature, therefore we are saved by teh grace of God, however that only addresses salvation. God’s will is that humans have free will to choose, therefore God does not damn them, rather they receive sufficient grace.

 

[Robert1111]

Here are some of my reflections. In Q. 23, art. 3, Thomas says ‘Reprobation differs in its causality from predestination’. In the body of this article, Thomas assigns both predestination and reprobation as parts of providence which, he says, in regards to reprobation includes God’s will to permit a person to fall into sin. God’s will of permission here is understood according to certain Thomists or Thomist interpreters to involve what they call negative reprobation which Fr Most defines quoting from Fr Garrigou-Lagrange I believe as ‘the will to permit a fault which will actually not be forgiven…’

My question is in what sense is God’s will of permission in relation to human sin a cause if a cause at all? According to St Thomas, God is not the efficient cause of sin because an efficient cause produces being but sin is the lack of being. God is the first cause that a human bad act or sin is an act or being at all as a being but the cause that this act is defective is from the human’s free will.

Of course.

Of course “the cause that this act is defective is from the human’s free will”.

But the thing is: we are created in the state of sin, we have original sin that taints our souls, so having that kind of defect is just normal for us.

We are responsible for our sins, but we are created with such many weaknesses that damnation is just our natural end if God doesn’t help us.

I never said that God per Aquinas is the direct cause of sin. I said that God, per Aquinas, creates man with some glaring defects (and we had no say in the matter, since we haven’t been able to choose to be born without original sin) and simply allows him to face the unavoidable fate he is fated to face without his help.

It’s like having a son who is attracted by fire and you know that he will burn himself unless you help him. If you simply watch him while he burns himself to death you are no better than the father who grabs his son’s hand and directly puts it on fire.

 

[Robert1111]

What is the point I’m making? St Thomas surely doesn’t think God is a criminal.

Of course Saint Thomas doesn’t believe that God is a criminal, otherwise he wouldn’t have been in good faith when taught what he taught. How was he able to teach what he taught without seeing that he was depicting a true monster, that, i don’t know. The human mind is a mistery.

He is not the cause of sin either directly or indirectly as St Thomas says elsewhere and the CCC too. Secondly, how are we to understand what Thomas says in the reply to obj. 3, Q. 23? Should we isolate it from what he says elsewhere in the ST or other writings? If we eliminated this single reply from the entire ST, I’m not sure this idea of ‘negative reprobation’ would emerge from it and which is not an efficient cause on the part of God

Remember that Aquinas also taught in the Summa that reprobation is the cause of eternal punishment. And reprobation is ante praevisa demerita, that is, before foreseen demerits.

Long story short:

1. Summa Theologiae, First Part, Article 3, reply to objection 1

“God loves all men and all creatures, inasmuch as He wishes them all some good; but He does not wish every good to them all. So far, therefore, as He does not wish this particular good—namely, eternal life- He is said to hate or reprobated them”.

1. Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 23, Article 5, reply to objection 3

“Why He chooses some for glory and reprobates others, has no reason, except the divine will”.

1. Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 23, Article 3, Reply to objection 2

“ Guilt proceeds from the free-will of the person who is reprobated and deserted by grace”

1. Summa Theologiae, First Part, Article 3, reply to objection 3

“ANYONE reprobated by God CANNOT acquire grace”.

1. Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 23, Article 3, Reply to objection 2

“Reprobation, however, is not the cause of what is in the present—namely, sin; but it is the cause of abandonment by God. IT IS THE CAUSE, however, of what is assigned in the future—namely, ETERNAL PUNISHMENT”.

It couldn’t be any clearer

1. God creates someone whose salvation he doesn’t desire (as we all know, salvation and eternal life are exactly the same).
2. He doesn’t desire the salvation of this person NOT because he foresaw that this person will be unrepentant until the end, but for the sole reason that he didn’t want to save him/her.

3 and 4. Since this person is reprobated he will not receive Grace (*i should make an addendum on this point).

1. Since this person doesn’t receive Grace he or she will commit mortal sin and die in that state, thus meriting eternal punishment in Hell.

 

[Robert1111]

It is correct that we cannot save ourselves through the powers of human nature, therefore we are saved by teh grace of God, however that only addresses salvation. God’s will is that humans have free will to choose, therefore God does not damn them, rather they receive sufficient grace.

I have already commented on sufficient Grace in my previous post.

 

[Robert1111]

It is correct that we cannot save ourselves through the powers of human nature, therefore we are saved by teh grace of God, however that only addresses salvation. God’s will is that humans have free will to choose, therefore God does not damn them, rather they receive sufficient grace.

I foresaw this kind of answer, that’s why i wrote, in my previous post

avoid all the “sufficient” Grace stuff here, because as i said that Grace only serves the purpose of making you accountable for your sins, according to the thomists

 

[Robert1111]

I wrote

*i should make an addendum on this point).

Here we go

*Since Banez was aware of the fact that, after the fall, if man is literally deserted by Grace he would have no responsibility for his sins, we have the thomistic “sufficient grace”, a Grace designed to make the reprobate accountable for his sins despite said Grace having no power to save him. Sufficient Grace is a mere potency, if you receive it you “””””can””””” do good, but before this bare potency can be reduced to action, another and different divine help must be received, namely efficacious Grace.

Really, Banez only drawn the most logical and unavoidable conclusions from the doctrine of unconditional predestination. Afterall, Aquinas doctrine on reprobation was molded by his knowledge and admiration of Saint Augustine’s work, who basically had the same ideas about the subject (and he was the only one among the fathers of his time), just less systematized and refined.

 

[Richca]

We are responsible for our actions whether we have grace or not. We don’t change to some subhuman species if we don’t have grace, we remain fully human with intellect and free will. Original sin did not completely obliterate free will such as Martin Luther thought. St Thomas did not teach such a thing and it would be considered heretical to do so. I believe the Church maybe around Augustine’s time through some council officially stated that original sin did not destroy human free will but it did wound it.

I think the concept of sufficient grace as it is understood by certain hard predestinarian Thomists and in contrast to efficacious grace was developed or invented by certain Thomistic interpreters maybe around the time of Domingo Banez due to what St Paul says that ‘God wills all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.’ Probably also from considering Christ as the universal redeemer of mankind.

 

[Robert1111]

We are responsible for our actions whether we have grace or not. We don’t change to some subhuman species if we don’t have grace, we remain fully human with intellect and free will.

Of course. But without Grace we are 100% guaranteed to merit eternal misery.

Original sin did not completely obliterate free will such as Martin Luther thought.

For sure.

St Thomas did not teach such a thing and it would be considered heretical to do so

I’ve never said he did. What he did teach, though, was that anyone reprobated by God cannot acquire the Grace needed to achieve salvation because God simply didn’t wish him that gift.

 

[Robert1111]

I think the concept of sufficient grace as it is understood by certain hard predestinarian Thomists was developed or invented by Thomistic interpreters maybe around the time of Domingo Banez due to what St Paul says that ‘God wills all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.’ Probably also from considering Christ as the universal redeemer of mankind.

The thomistic concept of sufficient Grace was just a logical deduction from what Saint Thomas taught in the Summa. Since without Grace man cannot avoid sin, not even potentially, what was needed was a Grace that kind of reconciled man’s true guilt with unconditional election, which is what Aquinas taught.

The thomistic “sufficient” Grace was just the natural consequence of the need to reconcile those two ideas, otherwise thomism would have been full-blown Calvinism.

To avoid the charge of heresy, a Grace that cannot possibly save you but still makes you fully accountable for you sins needed to be theorized. Because if you theorize a sufficient Grace that gives you the real power to act (not just a mere potency that needs God’s further intervention, i’m talking about true, real, genuine power to act) unconditional predestination flows into the Tiber.

That’s why i often use words such as “loopholes”, “technicalities” and even “gibberish”.

Because it’s all a very clever way to preach a monstrous God without facing the consequences of it, avoiding the charge of heresy in the process. It reminds me of one of those trials where some top-notch advocate allows his clients to get away Scott free with the most horrible crimes.

I freely admit that i admire Calvin’s honesty when at least he has the gall to say that god is out to get you. Because the thomistic “god” is out to get you too, with the disgusting aggravating circumstance that he tries to look like a nice guy in the process with the whole gibberish about free-will, him not directly desiring your damnation and stuff like that.

 

[Robert1111]

@ Richca

Now i’m replying to your other posts about Aquinas, because you wrote a lot of interesting stuff.

 

[Robert1111]

The great theologian he was and following strict theological method, St Thomas draws out the conclusions from both lines even if they can’t be reconciled according to what he considered scripture to mean. The conclusion he comes to in Q. 23, reply to obj. 3 is based on Romans 9 with Augustine’s interpretation.

Exactly. That’s why i fully believe in his good faith. Maybe it was painful for him to draw those conclusions, who knows. In fact, i criticize thomism, not Saint Thomas himself, because I’m sure that he was well meaning. I’ve never had any doubts about it.

I believe both Augustine and Aquinas made an error here in their interpretation but they aren’t perfect I suppose.

Exactly. No Saint is infallible.

But God’s will, as Thomas says, is the cause of things and he says in the body of the reply to obj. 3, Q. 23, as you point out ‘Yet why he chooses some for glory and reprobates others, has no reason, except the divine will’. Yet, the divine will is not the efficient cause of sin.

Of course it isn’t. In this case, the divine will is “only” the necessary and sufficient means by which you will be allowed to unavoidably use your free-will to merit everlasting misery, both spiritual and physical.

God doesn’t put your hands on fire, no, he doesn’t. He simply inject you with hormones that make you CRAVE for fire, he surrounds you with fire and when you want to place your entire person in this dangerous element that you so earnestly desire, he says “go Johnny, go, go”.

Awwwww, what a wondrous and loving father.

 

[Robert1111]

Another point: Thomas says the will follows the intellect and so the divine will is founded on divine wisdom which he says in a number of places which can be considered as the ‘reason’ for the divine will. In this connection, probably what Augustine says about ‘He does not err in why he chooses or draws some and not others’ could be interpreted. Although Aquinas in the reply to obj. 3, reasons from God’s ‘simple will’ as it were and a seemingly arbitrary choice of which stone, for example, to place where in a wall as it were which isn’t very comforting to say the least.

Exactly, this is exactly what Aquinas taught in the Summa. If you read the reply to objection 3, he states that it is good that the reprobate exist, so that God’s wrath and justice can be shown in their punishment.

He basically views the entire human race as a “massa dannata”, just like Augustine. This is why he says “He does not err in why he chooses or draws some and not others”. Not because those whom he chooses have done something to deserve it, but because everyone, by default, deserves eternal damnation, so that it cannot be unjust to create a human being for the sole purpose of leaving him to his own sinfulness.

 

[Robert1111]

I think one could make or draw arguments from Aquinas’ writings that would seem to be contradictory to what he says in Q. 23, reply to obj. 3. For example, he says in the beginning to the reply to obj. 3 ‘The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God’. Now God is absolute and essential Goodness as Thomas says. But consider the following as St Thomas teaches. God is the final cause and end of all things. The Divine Goodness is the end of all things. In the beginning of I-II of the ST, Thomas writes about the last end of human beings which end is God. God as the end of all creatures is built as it were into the very natures of all creatures. So, human beings in their very nature are directed to God as their last end for the object of the will is the universal good and the object of the intellect is the universal true which universals are none other than God. Virtue is in accord with human nature, vice and sin is against human nature. Man has a natural desire for the beatific vision even though he can’t attain it by his own natural powers but a natural desire, Aquinas says quoting Aristotle, is not in vain.

All true. But remember what he taught in the Summa: “God loves all men and all creatures, inasmuch as He wishes them all some good; but He does not wish every good to them all. So far, therefore, as He does not wish this particular good—namely, eternal life- He is said to hate or reprobated them” - 1 Summa Theologiae, First Part, Article 3, reply to objection 1

So, while Saint Thomas recognized that the last end of human beings is God, he also taught that God doesn’t wish every human being to reach his own end, this is why he reprobates some of them for no other reason except his divine will and this is also why, according to him: “ANYONE reprobated by God CANNOT acquire grace” - Summa Theologiae, First Part, Article 3, reply to objection 3

Because, according to him, God wishes the universal good much more than the good of any individual person, and the universal good requires the existence of some “vessels of wrath” in order to exercise God’s wrath and justice by punishing said vessels of wrath in Hell. This is why they never had a chance to begin with.

Because, while God may antecedently desire the salvation of all, his subsequent (namely actual, real, the will that actually comes to pass) will is to allow the perdition of many so that justice can shine through their punishment.

In other words, if God has deemed fit to sacrifice your own particular good by not wishing you to achieve your final end, you will not achieve it and there is nothing you can do about it.

 

[Robert1111]

I wrote

In other words, if God has deemed fit to sacrifice your own particular good by not wishing you to achieve your final end, you will not achieve it and there is nothing you can do about it.

And let me quote Aquinas on this subject

“it is necessary that God’s goodness, which in itself is one and undivided, should be manifested in many ways in His creation; because creatures in themselves cannot attain to the simplicity of God. Thus it is that for the completion of the universe there are required different grades of being; some of which hold a high and some a low place in the universe. That this multiformity of grades may be preserved in things, God allows some evils, lest many good things should never happen, as was said above (I:22:2). Let us then consider the whole of the human race, as we consider the whole universe. God wills to manifest His goodness in men; in respect to those whom He predestines, by means of His mercy, as sparing them; and in respect of others, whom he reprobates, by means of His justice, in punishing them. This is the reason why God elects some and rejects others. To this the Apostle refers, saying (Romans 9:22-23): “What if God, willing to show His wrath [that is, the vengeance of His justice], and to make His power known, endured [that is, permitted] with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction; that He might show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He hath prepared unto glory” and (2 Timothy 2:20): “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver; but also of wood and of earth; and some, indeed, unto honor, but some unto dishonor.” - Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 23, Article 5, Reply to obj.3.

The point is this, from the get-go, from the beginning of every human’s existence, from the very fact of man’s existence, human beings are by nature directed to God as their last end. In this sense, how can this be reconciled with the idea of ‘negative reprobation’ from the start as it were? It doesn’t appear to make sense but rather contradictory.

Saint Thomas said

“To providence, however, it belongs to permit certain defects in those things which are subject to providence” -Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 23, Article 3.

That’s why he doesn’t consider unfitting to decree that some human beings are simply not supposed to reach their final end.

 

[Richca]

The thomistic concept of sufficient Grace was just a logical deduction from what Saint Thomas taught in the Summa. Since without Grace man cannot avoid sin, not even potentially, what was needed was a Grace that kind of reconciled man’s true guilt with unconditional election, which is what Aquinas taught.

[quote/]

This is not what either St Thomas taught, the ‘Older Thomists’, or the Church. Not all the actions of a man without justifying grace are sins so St Thomas said that man without grace can avoid sin but not all sin. I don’t entirely agree with you on the sufficient grace thing. I think the Church has known since the apostles that we may not cooperate with God’s grace which in a sense could be termed a ‘sufficient grace’. Certain Thomists gave a new understanding to this kind of grace that is rejected which they termed ‘sufficient grace’ but they gave it a meaning according to their system that for all intents and purposes it really isn’t sufficient enough because in itself it is unable to produce the desired effect which is what the efficacious grace is for. There are scriptural and doctrinal reasons for the Thomist ‘sufficient grace’ concept too which I mentioned in my last post. So, the general notion of a ‘sufficient grace’ I think is just common sense, meaning a grace we may not respond too from God which we all probably can relate too. But it does not necessarily connote what the ‘Thomists’ give it to mean. I mean, we could say that we could have absolutely responded to it without the ‘efficacious grace’ distinction or notion.