Thomists, name given to theologians of a Catholic school, who profess to follow the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas. [1]

While the Thomists are opposed to Scotists on many points, such as distinction in the attributes of God, the manner in which the sacraments operate, the immaculate conception, etc., nevertheless what particularly characterizes them, and distinguishes them from the other Molinist, Augustinian, Congruist, etc. theologians, is their system on grace, which we shall briefly describe.

The base of their system is that God is the first cause and prime mover with respect to all his creatures; as first cause, he must influence all their actions; because it is not fitting to his dignity to attend to the determination of the second cause or of his creation. As prime mover, he must impose movement on all susceptible faculties or potencies; from which they conclude:

1. That in whatever state is supposed of man, whether before, or after his fall, and for whatever action at all, the premotion of God is necessary. They call this premotion physical predetermination when it involves actions considered to be within the natural order, and they term it self- efficacious grace when it is a matter of works that are supernatural or which merit salvation.
2. That self-efficacious grace was necessary to the angels and to our first parents for supernatural works.
3. As to the efficacy of grace, that there is no difference between the efficacious grace of the innocent state of nature, and that of fallen nature or nature corrupted by sin.
4. That this efficacious grace, necessary for supernatural works, was denied to Adam and to the angels after they transgressed for the first time, but that it was only denied to them by their own fault.
5. As for the state of innocent nature and regarding supernatural and free works, whether of angels, or of men in this state, it must be admitted that God has decrees that are absolute, efficient, and antecedent to the free consent of the created will.
6. That the prior knowledge God had of these works was founded on his absolute, efficiacious, and antecedent decrees.
7. That predestination in this state was antecedent to his prevision of merits.
8. That negative reprobation, which they take to consist in exclusion from glory, was equally antecedent to the prevision of sins, and solely founded on the will of God; but that positive reprobation, which is to say destination to eternal punishment, followed from the prevision of penalties for those who were thus to be reproached.
9. That Adam having sinned, all his descendants over whom he had been established as prince and moral head, sinned through him; and that thus the human race became a mass of perdition that God could have abandoned without injustice, as he did with the fallen angels.
10. That God in his pure mercy indeed wished with a pre-existing will and by his good pleasure, to redeem the fall of the human race, and that in consequence he determined to send it Jesus Christ, who died for the salvation of all men, as a redeemer and to confer to them, or at least to prepare for them, fully sufficient aids to grace.
11. That by a special mercy and antecedent to the prevision of their merits, he efficaciously selected and predestined to glory a certain number of men in preference to all the rest, by a decree which the Thomists call a decree of intention .
12. That he certainly accords efficacious grace, the gift of perseverance, and temporal glory to those he has thus elected; but that He does not grant to all the rest any but the graces which are sufficient for performing the good and for perseverance in it.
13. That in the state of fallen nature, efficacious grace is doubly necessary to creation: 1. in terms of dependence, because it is created; 2. in terms of weakness or infirmity, for while sufficient grace heals the will and renders it healthy, nevertheless because of the weakness of the flesh and its struggles or its perpetual revolts against the spirit, the will suffers a very great difficulty in seeking to do the supernatural good. It has a real power to do it, immediate and complete, yet it will never do it without efficacious grace. More or less, so they say, like a convalescent has sufficient strength to undertake a voyage, which he will nevertheless fail to execute without some other assistance in addition to his own forces.
14. That the foreknowledge of the good works which man must accomplish with the aid of grace is founded on an efficacious, absolute and antecedent decree to grant such a grace; and that foreknowledge of future evil is equally founded on a decree of permission by which God resolved by a just judgment to grant no efficacious grace in circumstances where it would be necessary to avoid sin.
15. That God recognizes in his decrees those who will persevere in the good, [and] those on the contrary who will persevere in evil; and that consequently He grants some eternal glory, [and] condemns the others to the torments of hell by a decree which the Thomists call a decree of execution .
16. That predestination, or the decree of intention to bestow glory on the good, is absolutely and purely gratuitous.
17. That negative reprobation depends solely on the will of God, and that positive reprobation supposes the prevision of sins. Some thomists however, such as Lemos and Gonet, believe that original sin is the cause of negative reprobation.

This system is commonly accused of not being favorable to liberty; but the Thomists brush off this reproach by responding, 1. that God, in premoving his rational creatures, in no way impinges on the faculties that he otherwise grants them, and that he wills that in acting they should act freely. 2. That under the action of God reason always proposes an infinity of objects to the will from which it may choose, and that the will itself being a faculty that God alone can fill and satiate, always finds something which it can desire or choose, which suffices for liberty.

The Thomists are also reproached that their conception of sufficient grace is a grace in name only. To which they respond that in their system sufficient grace gives a very full power to do the good, in actu primo [in the first actuality], as they put it; a power so complete and real, that if man only wished to use it, he would do the good. That it is his fault if he does not do it; that in sufficient grace God offers him an efficient [grace], and that if God does not accord it to him it is because man imposes an obstacle by means of his resistance. This is the doctrine of St. Thomas himself: Quod aliquis non habeat gratiam, non est ex hoc quod Deus non velit eam dare, sed quia homo non vult eam accipere. In. II. dist. 28. quaest. i. art. 4.  [2] and elsewhere: Non immerito in culpam imputatur ei qui impedimentum praestat gratiae receptioni, Deus enim quantum in se est paratus est omnibus gratiam dare.... sed illi soli gratia privantur qui in se ipsis gratiae impedimentum praestant: sicut sole illuminante, in culpam imputatur ei qui oculos claudit, si ex hoc aliquod malum sequatur . lib. III, contr. Gent. cap. clix. [3]

Those who profess to confound the doctrine of the Thomistes with that of the Jansenists, deceive themselves as grossly as those who think that Molinism revives the errors of the Semi-Pelagians. See Efficacy, Grace, Molinism, Predestination, etc .

Notes

1. With sincere thanks to Dr. Michael George of the Religious Studies Department, St. Thomas University, for advice on theological terms.

2. “... That if anyone does not have grace, it is not that God would not give it, but rather because man does not wish to accept it...” [from Book 2, distinction 28, question 1, article 4 of Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis (ed. Parma, 1856) <http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/snp2023.html>, my translation; note that Aquinas is here actually citing St. Anselm].

3. “... Not undeservedly is responsibility for the fault imputed to him who offers an impediment to the reception of grace. In fact, as far as He is concerned, God is ready to give grace to all...but those alone are deprived of grace who offer an obstacle within themselves to grace; just as, while the sun is shining on the world, the man who keeps his eyes closed is held responsible for his fault, if as a result some evil follows...” [from Book 3, chapter 159 of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles , tr. Vernon Bourke (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), vol. 4, p. 261].