Why is Thomism so Fixated on Predestination?
[The following text was originally delivered on September 6, 2025 as a lecture at the conference: “On Predestination” (Thomistic Institute & the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C.)]
In the year 1659, the Toulouse Dominican Jean Baptiste Gonet, O.P., published the first volume and edition of his famous Clypeus theologiae thomisticae contra novos ejus impugnatores [The Shield of Thomistic Theology Against its New Assailants]. Noting that his was “a fertile age of genius,” Gonet deigns to break the deliberate silence and the “peaceful repose” of the seventeenth-century Thomist school “amid so many tumults stirred up in the republic of letters” (in re litteraria). He is compelled to offer a fresh presentation of Thomistic theology because he considers his to be a time saturated with perilous opinions, “some contrived to the ruin of the Church… others fashioned to the destruction of souls.”1
The poetic and passionate “Amico Lectori” preface to Gonet’s Clypeus reveals an author who is not merely an intellectual fixated upon concepts and ideas, but a religious and a priest consecrated to the truth for the salvation of souls. He is intent to cover the whole of the sacra doctrina, with punctilious fidelity to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, in a way that is pleasant to read and useful for the critical needs of his time.2
Unsurprisingly, then, predestination enjoys prominent placement and extensive treatment in Gonet’s Clypeus. He is not naïve about what this doctrine demands of the theologian. At the beginning of his tractatus on predestination he writes the following words of caution to those whom he addresses as “dear readers” (amice Lector):
We enter a vast sea—famous for the shipwrecks of many—when we undertake to explain the hidden mystery of predestination. Its immensity swallowed up the minds of many, and with sacred dread it shakes even the loftiest pillars of heaven (which Saint Gregory interprets as the angels or the holy doctors of the Church). For, “however much anyone may advance in virtue, however much he may grow in knowledge, it is not enough to penetrate the way in which our Creator rules us by the governance of his judgments.”3
Undaunted, Gonet then proceeds to sail into this “vast sea” of predestination—relying upon the cartography of his Thomistic predecessors—and expounds at great length and with fine intricacy the nuances of this doctrine secundum scholam Thomisticam.4
Not all of Gonet’s literary contemporaries, however, appreciated how the Thomistic school habitually navigated through predestination’s waters. During the same time that Gonet was laboring on his Clypeus theologiae, Blaise Pascal was growing more and more disgusted with what he considered to be the disingenuous half-life of the De auxiliis controversy (between Dominicans and Jesuits) at a tense moment in the seventeenth-century Jansenist condemnations in France.5
In the first letter, dated January 1656, of his satirical and caustic book, Provincial Letters, Pascal—writing under the nom de plume, Louis de Montalte—records an imagined conversation with a Dominican theologian. Pascal is intent on getting to the bottom of the predestination controversies. Specifically, he wants to learn from a legitimate “neo-Thomist” about how the Thomistic school reconciles the dynamics of grace and human freedom—in a way really distinct from Jesuit Molinism and Port-Royal Jansenism.
Unfortunately, Pascal is not impressed with the Dominican’s answers to his questions. After conversing with the Thomist about the predestinational differences between the Dominicans and the Jesuits, he says, “To tell the truth, Reverend Father, I am very much afraid that all this is pure quibbling, and whatever comes of your meetings, I venture to predict that, even if the censure is passed, peace will not be established.”6 This statement embodies Pascal’s frustrations with the terminology and distinctions that characterize the Thomistic school. A Pascal scholar summarizes the essence of his angst thus: “The Thomists, especially the Dominicans, who were committed as an order to St Thomas, turn out to be in agreement with [the Jansenist theologian] Arnauld on everything except the use of terms, and to agree with the Molinists, especially the Jesuits, their recent enemies, on nothing but the use of terms.”7 Ultimately, Pascal concludes that “these are debates between theologians, not about theology. We who are not doctors are not concerned with their quarrels.”8 The real impetus motivating Thomism, he judges, is one more closely aligned with ecclesial politics than it is with the truth.
The Centrality of Predestination within Thomism
Arguably, Pascal would have benefitted from a careful reading of Gonet’s Clypeus theologiae. His Provincial Letters remains a delightful book—delightful and not completely without penetrating insights that amuse as well as challenge its readers. His letters reflect his rightly acknowledged philosophical and literary genius. Nonetheless, Pascal does not seem fully to appreciate how, for Thomists, the doctrine of predestination is not reducible to the distinction between sufficient and efficacious grace.9 Without doubt, ecclesial directives, political concerns, and historical events have indeed shaped how Thomists have framed and articulated their predestination doctrine throughout the past several centuries.10 It would be gravely inaccurate, however, to reduce the contours of Thomist predestination to such per accidens causes and concerns. The doctrine of predestination lies as the very heart of the nuanced—yet very real—unity of Thomism’s philosophical and theological tradition.11
This bold claim may sound exaggerated. I propose, however, that historical contingencies and political motivations would be incapable of adequately accounting for the hundreds of pages devoted by members of the Thomist tradition to the doctrine of predestination—before, during, and after the De auxiliis and Jansenist controversies. Other distinctively Thomistic positions that are equally associated with heated historical controversies have not received the same degree of perennial interest and attention within the school.12 Even when Thomists disagree about nuances and aspects of predestination, they all agree that it is important. This agreement seemingly arises on even an instinctual level. It is not uncommon to meet disciples of St. Thomas who found themselves first drawn to his school precisely because of his predestination doctrine.
Instead of an historical or political explanation, I propose that speculative and theoretical reasons alone can account for predestination’s central importance for Thomism. Predestination as something like a cohesive doctrine—an axis in which Thomism’s distinctive philosophical and theological convictions converge. Few other doctrines enjoy such direct contact with and relevance for as many other doctrines of the Christian faith.13
The centrality of predestination within Thomism is both derivative and causative. It is derivative insofar as it emerges—in its robust and formalized expression—from philosophical principles and other, already formulated, theological conclusions. It is not possible to arrive at the full intelligibility of Thomistic predestination in something akin to a doctrinal quarantine. Causatively, the shape of Thomistic predestination directly affects positions on other doctrines characteristic of dogmatic and moral theology. Predestination is linked to virtually everything else in the Thomistic expression of sacred theology. Again, not all Thomists nuance predestination in exactly the same way, but all major Thomists agree about the fundamental principles, the ultimate conclusions, and the almost universal importance of this doctrine for the Christian faith as a whole.
Why is this the case? The answer: for Thomism, ours is a contingent and therefore a predestinated universe.14
A Universe Contingent and Predestinated
Thomism is not fixated on predestination because of controversy, but rather because of universality.
In order to specify what type of universality serves as the speculative musculature underlying Thomistic thought on predestination, it is fitting to center our inquiry into predestination around the one in whom predestination resides. St. Thomas Aquinas is unequivocal about the one in whom predestination is found: Predestination is something within God, not within the creature. In his commentary on the Summa Theologiae, Thomas de Vio Cardinal Cajetan summarizes Aquinas’s argument: “Eternal life, which consists in the divine vision, is an end surpassing the proportion and capacity of created nature. Therefore, a rational creature, capable of it, is led into it as though transmitted by God. Thus, the rationale of this transmission pre-exists in God. Therefore, in God there is predestination.”15 Specifically, Thomas and the Thomists locate predestination within divine knowledge. Cajetan highlights the cognitional nature of predestination within God as distinct from the Scotistic classification of predestination within the Divine Will.16 He explains the Thomist position:
For greater clarity, recall that the divine intellect—speaking in our human way—first devised the order of those to be chosen and sent to eternal life, and set this order before His will for acceptance. Then His will freely chose that order to be executed. And thus, in the third place, the order which previously—namely, in itself—had the character of something devised, now has the character of something established.17
Moreover, because predestination bespeaks a specific type of order, namely an order to beatific glory, predestination falls under divine providence. St. Thomas explains: “All things are subject to [God’s] providence…. Now it belongs to providence to direct things towards their end.”18 The Thomistic school generally clarifies that predestination is an objective part of divine providence, not a subjective part.19 The reason for this conclusion is that providence and predestination share equally and fully the ratio of divine order(ing). “The providence of God is one, most simple, and [only] virtually distinct; and therefore predestination is not a subjective part of it, nor is it to be compared to it as an inferior essential to a superior, whether univocally or analogically.”20
Predestination is in our Provident God. Thus, predestination originates from God and is executed in the creature as “calling and magnification” (vocatio et magnificatio) through grace.21 Hence, human persons, although they are not the subject of predestination, are certainly the recipient of its effects. The rational creature specifically is the recipient of the providential ordering to God as supernatural end.
We can pause here to appreciate the terms comprised by divine predestination. There is, of course, in first and primal place, God. He is the one in whom the plan of predestination resides and to whom the effects of predestination terminate. The effects of predestination, however, take place within the metaphysical plane of the rational creature. Such creatures are seen to be contingent even within the very and formal ratio of predestination. It is important to recognize that the absolute necessity of predestination does not follow, essentially, from moral defect. In other words, predestination is fundamentally requisite because of the contingency of human nature—even before and in distinction from contracted or committed evil. Were human persons never to have sinned, predestination would still have been necessary.
The necessity of predestination vis-à-vis the creature is necessary such that even in the absence of sin, beatific union with God would lie outside of the native capacities and operational reach of contingent being.22 This is a point that necessarily follows from the distinctions and emphases characteristic of the Thomist tradition. God is an end beyond the native reach of human creatures—not only because of moral privations, but because of the natural limits of rational contingency.23
Of course, at this point, we can begin to anticipate the Thomistic emphasis upon human nature considered precisely and exclusively as such. Although the Thomists never believed that human persons were actually created in puris naturalibus, the ontological baseline that is pure human nature never recedes even when undergoing the dynamics of grace and fallenness. Analogous to the philosophical principle of prime matter—which is real but not actual and underlies all instances of composite change or motion—so too the contingent nature of human nature necessarily underlies all types of moral and graced change or motion.24
In the actual economy of salvation, however, predestination to glory is effected within human creatures who do suffer original sin and its lamentable effects. But even this salvific dynamic presupposes and accentuates a prior, immanent, and fundamentally underlying state of affairs. Both salvation from a morally compromised condition and the very fact of being in a morally compromised position presuppose, necessarily, contingency. The very fact that human creatures are fallen and can be redeemed while remaining what they are—contingent beings of a rational nature—points to contingency itself as foundational for the ratio of predestination. The reality of sin is, therefore, a specifying quality of the fundamental and underlying essence of contingency. Admittedly, sin is not unimportant in the ratio of predestination, but it is not the fundamental reason for predestination. Sin itself is only actual because of the underlying contingency that can bear the state of original sin, as well as graced transformation or deification, as well as glorification in heaven. Contingency is the sine qua non principle of each and all of these.
The terms around which the dynamics of predestination proceed thus possess several real distinctions. First, the distinction between the predestinator and the predestinated—as we have already seen in Aquinas’s discussion of the “subject” of predestination.25 Next, and to speak perhaps paradoxically, is the prior distinction between the creator and the creature, or between He Who Is Pure Act (esse ipsum per se subsistens) and contingent being. It is within this context—namely the context of the real distinction between the creator and the creature, between the predestinator and the predestinated—that the underlying speculative infrastructure of all of reality begins to come into clearer view. The divine plan of predestination is a plan of salvific order—truly communicable to contingent rational beings. This communicable order is receivable by and within human creatures who can be changed. Salvation, of course, is a consummative state in which rational animals are activated by the immediate vision of God as supernatural object. The very fact that this “theologal” activation (see CCC no. 2607)—this saving change—can occur, however, points to the fundamental distinction between the Creator and the created in general, and between the Heavenly Father and the rational creature redeemed by grace in particular.
Predestination would be impossible without these terms and distinctions. Were there no distinction between the Creator and the created, then predestination would not only be unnecessary but impossible. As St. Thomas points out in the Summa theologiae’s examination of the predestination of Christ, only contingency is predestined, not divinity. “We must attribute predestination to the Person of Christ: not, indeed, in Himself or as subsisting in the Divine Nature, but as subsisting in the human nature.”26
The underlying metaphysical context required for and presupposed by predestination thus is that of the real relation of the contingent to the absolute. It is significant to observe that Aquinas’s presentation of the direction of providence in ST I, q. 22, explicitly invokes the universal causality of God concluded to in ST I, q. 2, a. 3 (the Five Ways).27 One is not surprised, then, by the frequency with which Thomists invoke themes associated with the Five Ways in their discourses on predestination. As we know, the first way is the way via motion that concludes to the Unmoved First Mover. The existence of the First Mover is the only thing that can account for the motion and change that evidently characterizes the universe. Any motion or change can only but be the result of a first mover and universal cause. And the First Mover is, per se, essentially distinct from contingent beings.
Within this real distinction—a distinction that maintains a real difference between contingent being and the First Mover who is also the Uncaused First Cause—the positive qualities of contingent being, at their deepest level, come into view. Thus, the real distinction between the Creator and the creature is not a negative judgment exclusively. In other words, the Creator-creature distinction establishes much more than the fact that the created is not the Creator. Indeed, the mechanics of the Quinque viae show that the ontological content of contingent being—precisely as contingent—is established by (and depends thoroughly upon) the really distinct Creator. Hence, the philosopher can conclude that no part of creation is immune to or separate from the intimate reach of the first causality of the Unmoved Mover—and that this dependence establishes and preserves the rationes of contingent being within the universe.
Nonetheless, the specifications and limitations of contingency are not relevant only to the priorities of the philosopher. Under the light of faith, the theologian is able to recognize contingency’s limits—as well as its graced possibilities. Consequently, the dynamics of salvation in no wise escape, or lie outside of, what is the case within the negative and positive implications of the creator-creature distinction. Therefore, no supernatural effect within the economy of salvation is untouched by, and uninformed by, what the Five Ways make explicit. How could it be otherwise? Were there to be any principle of natural reality that resided outside of God’s universal, primal causality, contingent reality—precisely as contingent—would be impossible. This extends to all aspects of contingent reality—even to human freedom. Thus, even the dynamics of free choice presuppose and depend upon the order of reality that the First Way traces.
Of course, the creature’s real distinction from and dependence upon God as First Cause, the consequent and universal scope of divine providence, as well as the specific object of predestination, do not solve all of the mysteries of the Christian life. Rather, they serve as the foundation for our contemplation of these mysteries.
The First Way traces the contours of the real distinction from the creature to the Creator via a posteriori discursion.28 Predestination is the formal principle of human salvation. This salvific order from the Creator, who is now seen not only to be Creator but also Redeemer, is the first starting point of predestination. This explains why natural human reason cannot conclude to predestination, because the term of predestination is a supernatural end that exceeds the limits of natural human discovery (much less natural human attainment). God alone is the supernatural end of the human creature. Therefore, any act specified by a supernatural end, having a supernatural objectivity, must exclusively proceed from the one who is himself the Divine End. No other origin and causality of the salvific movement could suffice for this work.
A posteriori conclusion to him who is per se in the Five Ways and the divinely revealed fact of salvation serve as two sides of the same coin. And although these sides of the coin retain a certain distinction and integration, one cannot compromise the integrity of one side without thereby also, necessarily, compromising the other. A posteriori discursion of this sort “works” because it traces the inescapable contours of contingency and arrives at a necessary conclusion: universal causality. The contingency that characterizes, necessarily, predestination and the work of salvation fall within this necessary and inescapable universal causality. All of created reality— everything from the lowest subatomic particle to the highest angel—participate in our “Five Ways Universe.” The universal order that the Five Ways trace fall within the order of Divine Providence.29 And necessarily and consequently, all aspects of Christian salvation only occurs within this Five Ways Universe—including predestination.
Implications of the Predestinated Universe
If the philosopher experiences an appropriate intimidation before Pure Act, this awe is understandably intensified and augmented before the reality of Christian salvation. If it amazes natural reason that there is a being whose first and primal causality extends to contingent beings in all their respective dimensions, how much more is human reason, under the light of faith, stupefied before the prospect of beatific glory.
The beatific vision, as divine revelation (in its written form) tells us, is beyond what any eye has seen, any ear heard, or any mind conceived (2 Cor 2:9)—except for the divine mind.
All of this explains why, in the Secunda pars, Thomas and his disciples are most attuned to the dynamics of contingent beings created ad imaginem Dei. Herein we see the natural and supernatural dynamics of creatures as ordered to the supernatural end. The journey towards the supernatural end requires and presupposes both creaturely and divine specification. The distinction and integration of the acquired and infused moral virtues, grace, the theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the Beatitudes, are all framed around the human capacity to perform acts of supernatural objectivity. They render the journey of salvation intelligible within the creature-Creator distinction. Likewise, with the Christological and sacramental considerations of the Tertia pars.
Sacramental causality for the Thomists is inherently linked still to the dynamics of God’s being and universal causality because the sacraments are separated instruments of our redeeming Lord, instituted and utilized by the conjoined instrumentality of the predestined humanity of Christ. Predestination permeates the efficacious nature of the sacraments. More specifically, as is well known by students of the Thomist tradition, sacramental causality is heralded as an example of physically perfective causality.
This reference to “physical” in the classification of sacramental causality is, of course, not without deliberation and intentionality.30 This nomenclature and this type of causality are inherently related to the intimacy of the causality that the First and Universal Cause exercises even within the deepest recesses of our humanity: namely, our intellect and will. Physical premotion is a necessary corollary of God’s being and causality as well as the creature’s real dependence upon God for its (the creature’s) being and operations.31 Ours is a universe of motion, yes, but also of premotion.32
Ultimately, however, the reason why the Thomist School emphasizes the dynamics of predestination is human salvation. If predestination is true, and predestination is the formal principle of our salvation, then all graced human activity—ordered towards salvation—participate in and benefit from an awareness of how predestination works.
Such dynamics are most acutely recognized in this life within the discrete moments of conversion. We recall, of course, that predestination, as Garrigou-Lagrange has rightly emphasized, is predestination to glory.33 Nonetheless, within the predestinated order to glory, there falls, of course, the divine plan with regard to recipients of divine grace, which is the essential and inescapable principle in this life ordered to glorified life in the next. How, when, and where one receives grace is the context of predestination’s practical implications. We recall that the saints have emphasized in their writings the importance of the doctrine of predestination.34
For the Thomists, predestination is not an ethereal doctrine. All practical elements that contribute to human salvation here and now fall within this doctrine’s order. Everything from the minister and the recipient of the sacraments, to the dynamics of prayer, to struggles with grave sin—even of a habitual nature—to miracles and gratuitous graces, are only intelligible within the mechanics of salvation that predestination establishes within our contingent universe.
For the Thomists, essentially different alternative configurations of predestination ultimately imply some mutability within He who is pure act and esse ipsum per se subsistens. And any such mutability necessarily and inherently implies and requires some degree of imperfection. And any imperfection within He who is esse ipsum per se subsistens necessarily implies a certain impotence. And any impotence implied within the divine being would have deleterious effects both for the constitution of natural reality and the redemption of rational creatures.
Here, of course, we are not engaging in an extended and adequate appreciation of Molinism or Congruism. The fundamental concern of the Thomist tradition with these theories, these alternative proposals, is that they all inadvertently, perhaps, but truly, result in an error that renders human salvation improbable at best, if not impossible.
Conversely, Pelagian, Jansenistic, and Protestant errors about predestination render the human creature either immune to God’s first and primal causality, or such causality unnecessary for human redemption. Thomism and our Five Ways Universe can countenance neither of these consequences. Both errors result in grave distortions of God and creature. Because salvation is nothing else than the rational creature’s union with the one true God, the stakes are high—and, thus, the discourse concerning these errors often vehement.
# # #
In conclusion, is it true that Thomists are preoccupied with predestination? Absolutely. And the reason they’re preoccupied with predestination is that nothing less than God, creation, the angels, the human person, Christology, the sacraments, virtue, prayer, human salvation—in other words, the entire universe and the whole of the Christian faith. For the Thomist, predestination is relevant to all of these essential doctrines of the Christian religion. The stakes are high, yes. But the payout is greater—nothing less than our salvation.
Why is Thomism so fixated on predestination? Because all of reality is contingently fixed in being, and God graciously calls created rational beings to be beatifically fixated on him.
“Amico Lectori,” in Clypeus theologiae thomisticae contra novos ejus impugnatores (Paris: Ludovicum Vivès, 1875), vol. I, ix–xi at ix.↩︎
“Moreover, I have tried to mingle the useful with the pleasant, with certain digressions and excursions beyond the strict limits and boundaries of scholastic theology. For as craftsmen, who with all the strain of their eyes are bent intently upon their work, from time to time turn aside their gaze and cast it upon gems—an emerald, for instance, or other precious stones—to refresh their sight by their varied colors: so I thought it good to lighten the toil and burden that ever accompany scholastic study, if from time to time I refreshed the mind with the ornaments of the Fathers and of classical writers, as though with gems and flowers. And indeed this was the one thing our School seemed to lack: that, along with clarity and distinction, difficulties should be explained with such adornments that in the very study itself some delight might be found. Few of our writers have attained this, on account of the sheer solidity and greatness of the doctrine, which does not so easily bend or soften” (“Amico Lectori”).↩︎
“Præfatio,” Clypeus theologiae thomisticae, vol. II, 257.↩︎
“That I might leave nothing unsaid which could enrich this theological undertaking of mine, I have consulted other theologians of our school whose works have already seen the light and are in the hands of all; I have also at times cast my eyes upon the writings of our lecturers of the Toulouse province, dictated in the schools and taken down by their students, among which I found many treatises that, if they were published, few theologians could surpass.” (“Amico Lectori”). Gonet notes in this prologue that he devoted special attention to the writings of Lemos on grace associated with the De auxiliis controversy—even though they have not been published due to the post-Congregatio directive from the Holy See: “I have also read what I could of the most learned Father Lemos, who in the Congregation de Auxiliis disputed most happily for our school, and who wrote fully and copiously on grace. These writings have not been published, only because of the observance of the Dominicans and disciples of St. Thomas toward the Holy See, which prohibited the publication of treatises on divine grace.”↩︎
The coincidence of the dates is striking. Gonet lived (roughly) from 1616–1681. Pascal lived from 1623–1662. The first edition (the first of many editions) of Gonet’s Clypeus was published in the years of 1659–1669. Pascal’s eighteen (dated) Provincial Letters run from January 23, 1656–March 24, 1657. There is also an undated fragment of a nineteenth letter.↩︎
Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books, 1967), 39. “I went to the Dominicans and asked for those whom I knew to be neo-Thomists. I asked them what is meant by proximate power” (ibid., 37). Emphasis original. The context is the distinction between the Thomist and Molinist understanding of sufficient and efficacious grace.↩︎
A. J. Krailsheimer, “Introduction,” in Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books, 1967), 17.↩︎
Provincial Letters, 60.↩︎
Pascal effectively ridicules the Thomist category of “sufficient grace” because it seemingly compromises to Molinistic convictions while attempting to avoid Jansenistic appearance. “Making the most of ‘a proximate power’ which means nothing, ‘a sufficient grace’ that does not suffice and so on, Pascal makes the whole debate appear both frivolous and squalid; frivolous because the basic truths of religion are not meant for such exhibitions of mere verbal juggling, squalid because the Thomists, guardians of orthodoxy, have thrown in their lot with the Molinists, and compromised all their principles out of personal spite against Arnauld” (Krailsheimer, “Introduction,” 17).↩︎
For more on the controversies that have shaped the Thomistic presentation of predestination, see Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, Entre saint Augustin et saint Thomas – Les jansénistes et le refuge thomiste (1653–1663) : à propos des 1re, 2e et 18e Provinciales (Classiques Garnier, 2017); Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, Morales du carême : Essai sur les doctrines du jeûne et de l’abstinence dans le catholicisme latin (xviie- xixe siècle) (Beauchesne, 2018); Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, La Puissance et la Gloire – L’orthodoxie thomise au péril du jansénisme (1663–1724) : le zénith français de la querelle de la grâce (Classiques Garnier, 2017); Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, Thomisme et théologie moderne : L’école de saint Thomas à l’épreuve de la querelle de la grâce (xviie- xviiie siècles) (Artègge Lethielleux, 2018); Philippe-Marie Margelidon, De la grâce à la gloire: Quinze leçons sur la grâce (Artègge Lethielleux, 2021); Fabio Schmitz, O.S.V., Dieu et le péché: Contribution thomiste au débat contemporain (Pierre Téqui, 2021); Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, “Catholic Theology and Doctrinal Novelty in the Quarrel over Grace: Theological Schools, Innovations, and Pluralism during the Molinism Controversy,” in Innovation in Early Modern Catholicism, ed. Ulrich L. Lehner (Routledge, 2022), 28–47; Philippe-Marie Margelidon, De la prédestination à la réprobation: Un débat inachevé entre Jacques Maritain et Jean-Hervé Nicolas (Pierre Téqui, 2022).↩︎
For more on the unity of the Thomism, see Gallus M. Manser, O.P., The Essence of Thomism, trans. Michael J. Miller (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2025). Also, of relevant note are the following directives found in the early-twentieth century Dominican Constitutions. “I. The solid doctrine of St. Thomas, which our Order proposes and commands the Brethren to follow, is not only that which is expressed without doubt in the works of the Angelic Doctor, but even that which is taught by his school, so called because it exposes the mind of the same Doctor. II. Moreover, we call the school of St. Thomas those concordant and more common teachings [sententias] of our Thomists, which, in common judgment are held to have been asserted by our most holy Teacher [Praeceptore], or have been deduced from his principles, especially concerning the matter of grace and free choice or physical premotion [de gratia et libero arbitrio seu physica praemotione]” (Constitutiones Fratrum S. Ordinis Praedicatorum [Rome, 1954], no. 668, page 244). (“§ I. – Solida S. Thomae doctrina, quam Ordo noster proponit et a Fratribus iubet sequendam, est non solum illa, quae absque dubio in operibus Angelici Doctoris exprimitur, sed etiam quae docetur ab eiusdem schola, sic dicta eo quod mentem eiusdem Doctoris patefacit. § II. – Scholam vero D. Thomae dicimus concordes et cummuniores nostrorum thomistarum sententias, quae, communi iudicio, tenentur assertae a sanctissimo Praeceptore vel ex eius principiis deductae, praecipue circa materiam de gratia et libero arbitrio seu physica praemotione.”) (Constitutiones Fratrum S. Ordinis Praedicatorum [Rome, 1954], no. 668 p. 244).↩︎
For example, the motive of the Incarnation, the unicity of substantial form, sacramental causality, et al.↩︎
For key references to the doctrine of predestination in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, see CCC nos. 600, 2012, and 2782.↩︎
I say “predestinated universe” rather than “predestined universe” to signal that I am referring to the universe as the recipient of predestination rather than the object of predestination (i.e., glory).↩︎
Cajetan on ST I, q. 23, a. 1, no. II.↩︎
See Scotus, 40th Distinction of I Sentences. Cajetan explains: “For they [the Scotists] think that predestination properly means election, and consequently signifies an act of the divine will. But here [in the ST I, q. 23, a. 1] it is expressly said that it implies an act of intellect, just as providence does, since it is a part of prudence” (Cajetan on ST I, q. 23, a. 1, no. IV).↩︎
Cajetan on ST I, q. 23, a. 1, no. IV.↩︎
ST I, q. 23, a. 1.↩︎
“But divine providence extends to all things to be provided for, according to the order they have to the end—namely, the manifestation of God’s attributes. Predestination, however, concerns only those means which efficaciously lead to glory, and it is directed to them under the notion of a means ordered to that most universal end. Hence, as parts are contained under a whole, predestination is an objective part of divine providence” (Gonet, Clypeus theologiae thomisticae, vol. II, 277). “Prædestinationem esse partem objectivant providentiæ divine. Probatur breviter : Ideo tractatus de coelo verbi gratia, et pars objectiva Philosophiae naturalis, quia cum ejus objectum sit ens mobile in sua latitudine, tractatus de coelos agit de quodam mobili in particulari, sub ente mobili ut sic contento particulariter : sed divina providentia ad omnia providenda se extendit, secundum ordinem quem dicunt ad finem, ostensionem scilicet attributorum Dei ; praedestinatio vero solum erga media efficaciter ad gloriam conducentia versatur, quae sub ratione medii ordinabilis ad finem illum universalissimum, ut partes continentur : ergo est pars objectiva divinae Providentiæ.”↩︎
Gonet, Clypeus theologiae thomisticae, vol. II, 276. “Providential Dei esse unica, simplicissima, et virtualiter distinctam, subindeque praedestinationem non esse partem sujectivam illius, nec ad illam comparari ut inferius essentiale ad superius univocum vel analogum.”↩︎
“Whence it is clear that predestination is a kind of type of the ordering of some persons towards eternal salvation, existing in the divine mind. The execution, however, of this order is in a passive way in the predestined, but actively in God. The execution of predestination is the calling and magnification” (ST I, q. 23, a. 2). Nonetheless, Aquinas is clear: “Grace does not come into the definition of predestination, as something belonging to its essence, but inasmuch as predestination implies a relation to grace, as of cause to effect, and of act to its object. Whence it does not follow that predestination is anything temporal” (ST I, q. 23, a. 2, ad 4).↩︎
“The end towards which created things are directed by God is twofold; one which exceeds all proportion and faculty of created nature; and this end is life eternal, that consists in seeing God which is above the nature of every creature, as shown above [ST I, q. 12, a. 4]. The other end, however, is proportionate to created nature, to which end created being can attain according to the power of its nature” (ST I, q. 23, a. 1).↩︎
For a summary of these themes, see the writings of Lawrence Feingold and Steven A. Long, et al.↩︎
For concise expositions of the Thomist tradition’s articulation of potency and act in relation to (prime) matter and form, see chapters 4 and 5 of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, trans. Rev. Patrick Cummins, O.S.B. (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1950). For a more extensive consideration of the potency and act, see Steven A. Long, Analogia Entis: On the Analogy of Being, Metaphysics, and the Act of Faith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011).↩︎
Of course, God is purely objective, because subjectivity necessarily implies potency (wholly absent from God). Thus, “subject” here is used in a logical not in an ontological sense.↩︎
ST III, q. 24, a. 1.↩︎
“The proofs most commonly developed are those employed by Aquinas in his Summa theologiae, where they are known as the quinque viae or “five ways” (6:563b). In these ways a different nominal definition is employed for each, respectively: (1) God is a First Unmoved Mover, (2) God is an Uncaused First Cause, (3) God is a First Necessary Being, (4) God is a Most Perfect Being, and (5) God is the Governor of the Universe” (William A. Wallace, O.P., Elements of Philosophy, 128).↩︎
See ST I, q. 2, a. 2.↩︎
“For since every agent acts for an end, the ordering of effects towards that end extends as far as the causality of the first agent extends. Whence it happens that in the effects of an agent something takes place which has no reference towards the end, because the effect comes from a cause other than, and outside the intention of the agent. But the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles; not only of things incorruptible, but also of things corruptible” (ST I, q. 22, a. 2).↩︎
On the distinction between “moral” and “physical” causality, Garrigou-Lagrange explains: Physical premotion’s “intrinsic and infallible efficacy of grace is to be understood, according to the teaching of the Thomists, not as a moral motion that influences the will by way of objective attraction (for only God seen face to face could infallibly attract our will), but it is to be understood as a motion that applies our will to posit its act vitally and freely, and for this reason in opposition to moral motion, it is called physical premotion” (Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Predestination, trans. Dom Bede Rose, O.S.B. [St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1939], 172; emphasis original). See also Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “As a matter of fact, the Thomists all teach that even God’s external action (ad extra) is formally immanent and virtually transitive. When they speak of the divine motion, as in the case of operating and co-operating grace, if they call it physical, it is not as opposed to metaphysics but to morality or objectivity. If they say it is premotion, that is not because they admit a priority of time, but only of nature. Finally, we cannot admit that the divine action which moves secondary causes to act is properly creation and not motion; for creation is the production of the whole being of a thing from nothingness. If God were to create our acts instead of moving us to produce them, He alone would act, and then Occasionalism would be true. St. Thomas, who always speaks in a formal manner, distinguishes between creation and motion, and he does not even admit that sanctifying grace is produced in our soul by creation, but that it is deduced from the obediential potentiality of the soul” (God, His Existence and His Nature: A Thomistic Solution ot Certain Antinomies, trans. Dom Bede Rose, O.S.B. [St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1936], 153 fn. 85; emphasis original).↩︎
“Yet the causal influence designated by physical premotion can also be subjected to a philosophical analysis in terms of the creature's dependence on God.” “It is called ‘pre-’ motion, or a previous motion, to indicate its causal priority with regard to the actual operation of the created agent. It is called ‘physical’ with a view of the human will, to emphasize that the will faculty is interiorly affected by it” (T. C. O’Brien, "Premotion, Physical," in New Catholic Encyclopedia [New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967], vol. XI, 741).↩︎
“The communication of motion by God, called by some a premotion (11:741b) or a predetermination (11:722b) and by others a concursus or concurrence (4:125a), is not the bestowal of a reality distinct from the transient power by which the created agent participates in the production of esse. It is simply another facet of the dependence of creatural causality on God’s causality” (Wallace, Elements of Philosophy, 143).↩︎
“Predestination, by reason of its object, is to be considered as a part of providence. Note well that predestination so defined is predestination to glory; the formal wording of the text is: ‘towards the end, i.e., life eternal.’ Moreover, predestination merely to grace is not predestination in the true sense, since it is not the contrary of reprobation” (Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 86).↩︎
“Predestinate soul, here a secret the Most High has taught me, which I have not been able to find in any book, old or new. I confide it to you, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost…” (St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of Mary, no. 1). See also the prominence of predestination in his True Devotion to Mary.↩︎
