Raoul,
Thomism is unsatisfactory from the point of view of our free will . . . .The sufficient grace of Thomism is actually often insufficient!
So yeah, if you are going to be a Thomist, you flirt with the idea that God intended for some to be damned.
Such are the facile objections.
I'm wondering, before we get into this deeper, do you know the Thomist response to these objections? I take it, in light of your criticism, that you find the responses insufficient. In what way do you find them so?
Before we do get into this more, I'll cite the Haydock commentary on Romans 8:29:
This foreknowledge of God, according to St. Augustine,[6] is not merely a foreseeing of what men will do by the assistance and graces of God's ordinary providence, much less a foreseeing of what they will do by their own natural strength, as the Pelagian heretics pretended: but is a foreknowledge including an act of the divine will, and of his love towards his elect servants; (as to know in the Scriptures, when applied to God, is many times the same as to approve and love) God therefore hath foreseen or predestinated, or decreed that these elect, by the help of his special graces, and by the co-operation of their free-will, should be conformable to the image of his Son, that so his Son, even as man, might be the first-born, the chief, and the head of all that shall be saved. (Witham) --- God hath preordained that all his elect shall be conformable to the image of his Son. We must not here offer to dive into the secrets of God's eternal election: only firmly believe that all our good, in time and eternity, flows originally from God's free goodness; and all our evil from man's free will. (Challoner)
In a nutshell, the predetermination and choice of God includes the choice that the elect act "freely." This can be understood philosophically and logically, without contradiction to either the principle of God's infallible and independent choice, not based on the merits of men, and the freedom of the ones chosen.
As to the sufficient grace being insufficient - no. The grace is sufficient; the response to it is insufficient. The power is capable of doing what it was intended for; thus, it is "sufficient." You're arguing that the failure in fact shows that the power is not sufficient potentially. If I roll a normal die a thousand times and a 1 never comes up, that does not show the die "insufficient" in the matter of rolling ones, or not truly have the power to come up 1. It just presents the circuŠ¼stance of the die not coming up 1. If this were to happen a million or a billion times, you still would not be able to prove the die was not sufficient to roll a 1, or that a claim that it "could" was not true. Man's failure in fact does not show the grace insufficient for its purpose, or to not truly have the potential. As I said, it's a facile objection that does not reveal a rational or logical contradiction, and thus is not an objection that stands the test of truth.
I give you the original Rheims commentary on God "intending some to be damned," Romans 9:14:
In all this mercy of God towards some, and justice towards othersome, both the pardoned work by their own free will, and thereby deserve their salvation: and the other no less by their own free will, without all necessity, work wickedness, and themselves and only of themselves procure their own damnation.
Lest you think this comes from a Molinist perspective, here's the commentary on the "[n]ot yet born" of verse 11:
"By the same example of these twins, it is evident also, that neither nations nor particular persons be elected eternally, or called temporally, or preferred to God's favor before others, by their own merits: because God, when he made the choice, and first loved Jacob, and refused Esau, respected them both as ill, and the one no less than the other guilty of damnation for original sin, which was alike in them both."
DR
Topic: The Principle of Predilection (Read 7571 times)