Theological Theses · §1946 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Pareus: the manner is past finding out; God governs the will as a master guides a pupil's hand

Pareus's view is not very different. He condemns the rashness of the scholastic teachers who raise and settle various questions about God's concurrence, 'in which', he says, 'they have dared with rash curiosity to investigate and define what cannot be adequately known or explained.' He judges safest the view of Cajetan, who found the agreement of free choice with divine providence inexplicable and beyond understanding in this life, because God's judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out.

In general he wants only this held as certain: that the human will is governed by God's nod and inclined wherever he wills. To reconcile this with our freedom, he says that what is governed from outside, without its own deliberation and choice, does not act freely. But when God governs by showing the intellect an object, and through it efficaciously moving and affecting the will to choose this or that of its own accord, the will still chooses freely, even though it is inclined by God's nod wherever he wills. 'In the same way,' he says, 'a beginner learning to form his letters writes freely, though his hand is guided by the schoolmaster.'

This is also the point of what he adds a little later and often repeats: that God by his concurrence does determine the human will, 'but not by a physical, brute, violent determination; rather by a spontaneous one, joined with its own judgment and choice' (Animadversions on Bellarmine's fourth book on free choice, chapter 14).

Latin

LIV. Nec multum absimilis est Paraei sententia. Damnat enim temeritatem Doctorum Scholasticorum varias quaestiones circa Dei concursum moventium & determinantium, Quis, inquit, temeraria curiositate investigare, & definire sunt ausi quod sciri & explicari satis non potest. Sententiam vero Cajetani, cui Concordia Liberi Arbitrii cum divina Providentia videtur inexplicabilis, & non intelligibilis in hac vita, judicat esse tutissimam, quia judicia Dei sunt inscrutabilia, & viae ejus impervestigabiles. In genere solum vult hoc pro certo haberi, hominis voluntatem Dei nutu regi, & quo vult inclinari. Ut vero illud cum nostra libertate conciliet, dicit illud non agere libere quod aliunde regitur sine deliberatione & electione propria. Quod vero Deus regit monstrans intellectui objectum, & eo efficaciter movens & afficiens Voluntatem, ad hoc vel illud sponte eligendum, id nihilominus libere eligere, etsi nutu Dei quo ipse vult inclinetur: Sicut, inquit, exempli causa, tyro litteras pingere discens libere scribit, licet manus ejus a Paedagogo regatur. Et huc etiam respicit quod addit paulo post, & saepe repetit, Deum concursu suo quidem determinare voluntatem humanam, sed non determinatione Physica, bruta, violenta, verum spontanea cum judicio proprio, & electione conjuncta. Animadversionibus in Bellarmini librum quartum de lib. Arbitr. cap. 14.

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