Molina, argued that grace is only effective after the human will consents to it.
People can therefore succeed in resisting grace, but God does not offer grace
to those who would successfully resist it. This means God has a special middle
knowledge or contrafactual knowledge of what would happen but doesn’t: He
knows who would resist grace if he offered it to them.
The Dominicans were loyal to the theology of Thomas Aquinas, who was
a Dominican, and whose theology on this point followed Augustine’s later
notion of operative grace and predestination. Grace that moves the will this
way is not irresistible (as Calvinists say) but is ef¿ cacious in itself, that is,
not dependent on the will to become effective. The Dominicans, like the
Calvinists, believed that it was ultimately up to God who was saved or not.
Grace that is ef¿ cacious in itself infallibly moves the will to act, but does
not take away or overcome its power to resist. Grace is effective in moving
the will before the will consents, so that it is grace which brings about
the consent. This act of grace moving the will before it consents is called
“physical premotion.” As a result, for the Dominicans the decisive factor in
who gets saved is not the human will but divine grace.
After nearly 10 years of debate and two popes, the decision was made not
to decide between the two sides. The upshot was that both sides represented
theological opinions that were legitimate for Catholics to hold. Both
sides were forbidden to call the other side heretical, and further debate
was forbidden. Ŷ
“Grace,” “Baius,” “Jansenism,” and “Congregatio de Auxiliis” in The New
Catholic Encyclopedia.
Council of Trent, Decree on Justi¿ cation, in Leith, Creeds of the Churches,
408–424; also in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2, 89–118.
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