COROLLARY LI.
Since, therefore, we know that the supreme law of providence is that all and only those should be destined for the crown and honored with it, or consigned to eternal punishments and punished with them, who will have completed the present mortality illustrious by adoption or deprived of it by their own crime, we also know that which must be judged to contribute not a little toward resolving and illuminating the controversies concerning election and reprobation. And in very truth, when we name election in words, we can understand in the soul three things, and those altogether distinct. For we can understand: 1) election to that state which is free from the necessity of perishing and imparts the faculty of obtaining salvation; then, 2) we can understand election to salvation itself and the immortal crown; and finally, 3) we can understand election to the sum of goods which coalesces from the faculty of salvation and the very attainment of salvation. In the first and second manner election is understood in some measure, or, as the Schools love to speak, inadequately; in the third and last manner it is understood fully, or, as the same Schools are accustomed to say, adequately.
Now if election is employed in the former and inadequate manner, it must be held as certain: a) that election of this kind differs in no way from the benefit of restoration and ordination to grace; b) that it must be ascribed to the antecedent will; and therefore, c) that election is universal, merciful, procured by no merits, and the principle and fountain of all merits.
But if election is accepted in the latter and likewise inadequate manner, everyone must confess: a) that it cannot be referred back to anything but the consequent will; b) that it is altogether hypothetical—
—and can suitably be called c) προορισμὸν καὶ πρόθεσιν κατὰ πρόγνωσιν, predestination and purpose according to foreknowledge1; and d) a purpose indeed, and that eternal and immutable, of imparting salvation and rendering the crown2; but e) a purpose according to foreknowledge, because God chooses no others to salvation and the crown except those whom he foresaw would contend lawfully; whence f) it can not unsuitably be expressed in the words of the Apostle3, οὓς προέγνω, καὶ προώρισε, “whom he foreknew, those same he also predestined.”
There remains the third and adequate manner of taking election. But if it is taken in this manner, according to the distinction among the goods which it comprehends4, a) it pertains partly to the antecedent will—
—partly to the consequent; b) it must be judged partly absolute and partly hypothetical; and c) it must be regarded partly as gratuitous and partly as rendered in return for merits.
Footnotes
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Rom. VIII.29; Eph. I.10. ↩
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Matt. XXII.14. ↩
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Rom. VIII.29; and I Pet. I.2. ↩
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Thomas writes skillfully on Rom. VIII, lect. VI: “But concerning the order of foreknowledge and predestination, some say that the foreknowledge of good and evil merits is the reason for predestination and reprobation, so that it may be understood, namely, that God predestines some because he foreknows that they will act well and believe in Christ; and according to this the text is read thus: ‘Whom he foreknew would become conformable to the image of his Son, those he predestined.’ And this indeed would be said reasonably if predestination regarded only eternal life, which is given to merits. But under predestination falls every salvific benefit which has been prepared for man from eternity; whence, to posit that some merit on our part is presupposed, the foreknowledge of which is the reason for predestination, is nothing other than to posit that grace is given from our merits.” Moreover, that the ancient theologians of the School were accustomed to discuss predestination considered fully and adequately has as a copious witness Charles du Plessis d’Argentré in the historical commentary On Predestination to Glory and on Reprobation, in which, after describing with the greatest care their testimonies from the year 1120 unto the year 1708, he finally infers in cap. X, § I: “The old scholastics treated chiefly of the cause of predestination considered altogether, both to grace and to glory, as is evident from their testimonies brought forward.” Tricassin agrees in Disputat. theologic. de praedestinat. hominum ad gloriam, P. I, sect. I, p. 3, saying: “The ancients took predestination insofar as it includes grace and glory, and therefore they did not will it to be from foreseen merits, because the grace which is included in it is not given, nor consequently predestined, on account of merits.” If at any time, however, they disputed separately concerning predestination to glory, they taught the very thing which we received from Thomas and which, before Thomas, Honorius of Autun expressed in the Dialogue on Predestination—
↩—which is read in T. IX of the Paris edition of the Bibliotheca Patrum, pp. 1142 ff., in these words: “Predestination is nothing other than the eternal preparation of God, according to the merits of each, either to glory or to punishment. But predestination is twofold: one of the good to glory, the other of the evil to punishment. Those who are foreseen as destined to persevere in good are predestined to glory; but those foreknown as destined to end life in evil are certainly foreordained to punishment.”