Theological Theses · §2409 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Operating and cooperating grace, taken with the later Thomists

Thesis XX. The doctors of the Reformed school do not object to the scholastics' distinction of grace into operating and cooperating grace. But, with the more recent Thomists, they take operating grace to be the grace by which a person is first converted to God, and cooperating grace to be the grace by which someone already converted to God is moved to act well.

So Aretius, at the place cited above: Grace, he says, is sometimes operating and sometimes cooperating. The first is said to heal our will and change it for the better; the second strengthens the will once changed and brings it about that it acts rightly.

Latin

XX. Caeterum non improbant Scholae Reformatae Doctores quod Scholastici gratiam distinguunt in Operantem & cooperantem. Sed cum Thomistis recentioribus per gratiam Operantem intelligi volunt illam per quam aliquis primum ad Deum convertitur: per cooperantem vero illam per quam aliquis jam ad Deum conversus ad bene agendum movetur. Sic Aretius loco supra citato, Gratia, inquit, alias est operans, alias cooperans. Illa dicitur voluntatem nostram sanare & mutare in melius. Haec mutatam confirmat, & ut recte agat efficit.

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