Theological Theses · §2528 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Equal aids: true of prevenient grace, not of cooperating grace

Thesis XC. When Molina says that if God gives two people equal aids, one may be converted by his own freedom and the other not, he warns that he means the aids of prevenient grace, taken as prevenient. If we speak of that same grace as cooperating, that is, as the grace through which God flows into the act a person freely elicits, it is no longer true that with equal aid one is converted and the other is not. It is impossible for someone not to be converted while God is nevertheless producing in him, together with his free choice, the act of conversion.

Yet prevenient and cooperating grace are in reality one and the same, and the cooperation of grace depends on the cooperation of our free choice, just as the concurrence and influence of any habit depends on the working of the power it resides in. So, speaking simply and absolutely, he thinks one must say that a person is converted and saved by his freedom with equal or even smaller aids, while another is neither converted nor saved. Speaking with the utmost strictness, though, one should not say that with equal aids of grace one is converted and the other not, since in the one converted there is an influence of grace not present in the other: the influence that depends on the consent of our free choice.

Latin

XC. Porro quum Doctor iste dicit, si duobus hominibus aequalia auxilia ex parte Dei dentur, fieri posse ut unus pro sua libertate convertatur, & alter non: monet id se intelligere de auxiliis gratiae praevenientis, qua praeveniens est. Nam si agatur de gratiae ejusdem auxiliis, quatenus est cooperans, id est, quatenus per eam Deus influit in actum quem homo libere elicit, non amplius verum est, aequali auxilio dato, unum converti, alterum non converti. Siquidem impossibile est aliquem non converti, & tamen Deum in eo efficere, cum libero ejus arbitrio, conversionis actum. Sed quoniam gratia praeveniens & cooperans reapse sunt unum & idem, & gratiae cooperatio a liberi nostri arbitrii cooperatione pendet, non secus ac concursus & influxus cujusvis habitus, ab operatione potentiae cui inest: simpliciter & absolute loquendo dicendum putat, unum cum aequalibus, aut etiam cum minoribus auxiliis pro sua libertate converti, ac salvari, quando alius neque convertitur neque salvatur. Licet si in summo rigore loquamur, dici non debeat cum aequalibus gratiae auxiliis unum converti, alterum non converti: quoniam in eo qui convertitur est influxus quidam gratiae, qui in alio non est; ille nimirum qui pendet a liberi nostri arbitrii consensu.

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