Theological Theses · §2547 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

On how grace works: efficacious of itself, or by consent

Thesis CIX. On the way grace works, the recent Thomists, Alvarez among them, hold that the grace by which a person is converted is efficacious of itself. It is not made so by the consent of free choice; rather, as was explained earlier, it determines free choice to consent, powerfully and infallibly.

Molina and his followers maintain the opposite: the grace that converts a person is subject to free choice in such a way that its efficacy depends on free choice's consent. It lies in a person's free power to make it efficacious or inefficacious, and in fact each of these quite often happens.

Latin

CIX. Nam quod attinet ad modum operandi gratiae, Thomistae recentiores, ut Didacus Alvarez, volunt gratiam illam per quam homo convertitur, esse efficacem per se, neque talem reddi per liberi arbitrii consensum, sed illa potenter & infallibiliter liberum arbitrium ad consensum determinari; sicut ante fuit expositum. Contra vero Molina, & qui eum sequuntur, pertendunt gratiam quae hominem convertit, ita libero arbitrio subjici, ut efficacia ejus a consensu liberi arbitrii pendeat, & sit in libera hominis potestate illam vel efficacem, vel inefficacem reddere, quorum utrumque de facto saepius eveniat.

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