¹ Aquinas, Thomas, Summa theologiae (ST) I:1, 1 ad. 2. Translations of the Summa theologiae are mine and are taken from Summa theologiae, 5 vols. (Ottawa: impensis Studii generalis OP, 1941-1945)Google Scholar.

² See, for example, ST I-II:109, 6 and 114, 5.

³ The foundational studies of grace with important implications for understanding human agency, particularly in justification, include Bouillard's, Henri Conversion et grace chez S. Thomas d'Aquin. Etude historique (Paris: Aubier, 1944)Google Scholar, Lonergan's, Bernard J. F. Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Burns, J. Patout (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971)Google Scholar, and Wawrykow's, Joseph P. God's Grace and Human Action: ’Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995)Google Scholar. See also Wawrykow's introduction to Aquinas's mature teaching on grace in “Grace,” in Van Nieuwenhove, Rik and Wawrykow, Joseph P., eds., The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 192-221Google Scholar and my “Aquinas and the Grace of Auxilium,” Modern Theology 32 (2016), pp. 187-210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ In ST I-II:110.2 c Thomas codifies the working distinction between habitual grace and auxilium that he establishes in the early articles of 109; he writes: “Now it was said above that a person is aided by God's gratuitous will in two ways. In the first way [a person is helped] inasmuch as the soul is moved by God to know or will or act. And in this way the gratuitous effect in the person is not a quality but a certain movement of the soul, for ‘motion is the act of the mover in the moved (moventis in moto est motus),’ as is said in Physics III. In another way, a person is helped by God's gratuitous will inasmuch as a habitual grace is infused into the soul by God.” Wawrykow notes that, while Thomas sometimes elides the term auxilium with habitual grace, he consistently reserves a narrow sense of the term which means nothing other than God's application of persons to their acts, and in the case of acts which make one pleasing to God, one may speak of auxilium as a sanctifying grace. Wawrykow writes: “For auxilium in this [narrow] sense, see such texts as I-11 109, 1c, where he calls it divinum auxilium, I-II 109, 2c (divinum auxilium), I-II 109, 3c (auxilium Dei moventis, auxilium Dei), I-II 109, 4c (auxilium Dei moventis), I-II 109, 5 ad 3 (auxilium gratiae), and 109, 6c (auxilium gratuitum Dei interius animam moventis)” (God's Grace, p. 171, note 52).

⁵ Thomas likens a person lacking divine auxilium to a soldier who is capable of seeking victory but remains motionless without the command of the leader of the army (ST I-II:109,6 c).

⁶ Thomas writes: “I answer that the nature of a person may be considered in two ways, in one way, in its integrity just as it was in the first parent before sin, and in another way, as it is as it is corrupted in us after the sin of our first parent” (109, 2 c).

⁷ Thomas writes: “But in the state of natural integrity, as it pertains to the sufficiency of operative power, a person is able to wish and to do the good proportionate to [human] nature through his natural capacities such as the good of acquired virtue…” (ST I-II:109, 2 c).

⁸ Thomas writes: But in the state of corrupt nature a person also fails in that which he is able to do according to his nature” (ST I-II:109, 2 c).

⁹ In ST I-II.85, on the effects of sin, Thomas argues that sin “wounds” human nature by disordering the natural order of intellect, will, and lower appetites; in the corpus of article three he writes: “Now there are four powers of the soul that can be the subject of virtue, as said above, namely, reason, in which there is prudence, the will, in which there is justice, the irascible, in which there is fortitude, and the concupiscible, in which there is temperance.” Question 109 carries a sense of this disorder over even to the justified wayfarer whose irascible will remains partially unconformed to the movement of the intellect and will.

¹⁰ ST I-II:109, 2 c.

¹¹ Thomas writes: “Therefore in those effects in which our mind is moved and does not move, but in which God alone is moving, the operation is attributed to God, and accordingly this is called ‘operating grace.’ But in those effects in which our mind both moves and is moved, the operation is not attributed alone to God but also to the soul, and accordingly this is called ‘cooperating grace’”(ST I-II.111. 2 c). Lonergan observes that Thomas notably redefines earlier scholastic uses of this distinction which had become nearly synonymous with the categories of prevenient and subsequent grace; see Lonergan, pp. 35-36.

¹² For a full treatment of the way in which Thomas relates cooperative grace to divine rewards, see “Aquinas and the Grace of Auxilium,” pp. 196-200.

¹³ Thomas explains: “And thus habitual grace, inasmuch as it heals and justifies the soul, or makes it pleasing to God, is called operating grace; but inasmuch as it is the principle of meritorious works, which spring from the free will, it is called cooperating grace” (ST I-II:111, 2 c).

¹⁴ ST I-II:111, 2 c.

¹⁵ I am indebted to Joseph Wawrykow for this insight; see God's Grace, pp. 175-76.

¹⁶ ST I-II:113, proem.

¹⁷ Thomas writes: “Yet God's love, inasmuch [it is] on the part of the divine act, is eternal and immutable, but inasmuch as [it is] the effect which God's love imprints in us, it is sometimes interrupted insofar as we sometimes fall short of it and again need to be recuperated. But the effect of God's love in us, which is taken away by sin, is grace, by which a person is made worthy of eternal life, from which mortal sin excludes him. And for that reason the remission of sin cannot be understood except by the infusion of grace” (I-II:113, 2 c).

¹⁸ ST I-II:113, 6 c.

¹⁹ Thomas speaks to the sequential movement of operative graces in justification: “The reason for this is because in whatever movement the motion of the mover is naturally first; but the disposition of the matter, of the movement of the moved, is second; the end of the movement in which the motion of the mover terminates is last” (ST I-II:113, 8 c). Thomas associates the “movement of the mover” with the operative grace of auxilium – the motion of God which motivates the will of the recipient. The second step has to do with the disposition of the matter. In the process of justification, the disposition of the matter includes the infusion of faith which is perfected in charity. Habitual graces heal and possibly elevate the will which lacked the virtues of faith and charity by which to move itself towards the remission of sin.

²⁰ ST I-II:113, 3 c.

²¹ Here Thomas is, in part, mediating against the maxim “facienti quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam” – to one who does what is in oneself, God will not deny grace. Twelfth century theologians developed an explanation around this saw that attempted to handle the respective roles of God and human beings in the moment of conversion. Thomas here and elsewhere in the ST (especially ST I-II:112, 3) forecloses on the possibility that the free will generates, as primary actor, a first movement towards God which God, in turn, supplements with grace. See Wawrykow, God's Grace, pp. 84-85, n. 47-49. See Heiko Oberman's “Facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam: Robert Holcot, OP and the beginnings of Luther's theology,” Harvard Theological Review, 54 (1962), pp. 317-42 for a presentation of the facienti’s use in late medieval theology.

²² The commentary tradition has differed on whether the conversion of a sinner – inclusive of the will's movement toward God as object of love – is operative from its beginning to its term or whether it begins operatively and ends cooperatively. The differences typically center on the meaning of the duplex actus of the will in conversion. The discussion is parallel, though not perfectly, to Thomas's earlier discussions of the will's action in I-II:8-17 where he names three dimensions to the will's action: willing the end, the choice of means for attaining the end, and the execution of the end. The three dimensions include an initial, intermediate, and final act of the will with the initial seeming to fit an interior act and the final seeming to fit with an exterior act, though even the status of the final act is disputed by some. In the case of conversion, determining the status of the choice of means is especially significant insofar as it identifies the agent or agents in the act. For a more complete account of this debate, including an argument in favor of the operative character of willing the end and the choice of means, see “Aquinas and the Grace of Auxilium,” pp. 197-99. Wawrykow explores the asymmetrical relationship between I-II:8-17 and I-II:111.2, offering a reasonable resolution in God's Grace, pp. 174-76. Lonergan takes up the interpretive question in detail in Grace and Freedom, pp. 121-38, noting the difference between the duplex actus I-II:111.2 and the triplex actus of I-II:8-17 (pp. 132-33). For a discussion of the initium fidei see Hütter's, Reinhard. “St. Thomas on Grace and the Free Will in the Initium Fidei: The Surpassing Augustinian Synthesis,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007), pp. 521-54Google Scholar.

²³ ST I:23, 6c.

²⁴ In his The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas (Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 2005) Wawrykow writes: “God's causing is not at the expense of the genuine causing of human beings; in causing, God brings about the authentic, life-promoting causing of humans. That God is able to do so – that is, that God's causing is not at the expense of genuine human causing – is testimony to the divine transcendence. The successful causes that are contained in the world are often successful at the expense of those through whom they work. God is not to be reduced to such a cause; God, the transcendent cause of being, can cause in such a way that the human also is cause” (p. 66).

²⁵ ST I-II:114, 6 ad. 2.

²⁶ Thomas uses the term impetrare or its derivations with regularity in the corpus of his writings. It appears no less than fifty times in the Summa theologiae alone, and Thomas also uses it in the Scriptum, Summa contra Gentiles, and biblical commentaries. The term has a general and technical sense. More often, Thomas uses forms of impetrare as a synonym for “to obtain,” but sometimes he uses impetrare more technically to mean a petitionary form of prayer which may obtain God's favor, apart from justice and merit. This narrower meaning may be found throughout the treatise on prayer, ST II-II:83 as well as in I-II:114, 6 ad. 2 and ad. 3, 114, 9 ad. 1, II-II:78, 2 ad.2, and III:63, 1 ad.1. Other important examples include the Matthew commentary on the Lord's Prayer, (ch.6, l. 3 and ch. 7, l. 1) as well as his John commentary (ch. 9, l. 3 and ch. 16, l. 6) and the commentary on I Corinthians (ch. 13, l. 2).

²⁷ Thomas reinforces this position in his John Commentary where, in commenting on John 9:31, he writes: “Prayer has two things, namely, it can impetrate and it can merit; but sometimes it impetrates and does not merit, and other times it merits and does not impetrate. And so nothing prohibits the prayer of a sinner from impetrating what he petitions, although it does not merit. God thus hears sinners not through the mode of merit but insofar as they impetrate what they ask from the divine power which they acknowledge.” (Commentary on John, ch. 9, l.3, #1348). Translations are mine and taken from Sancti Aquinatis, Thomae, Super Evangelium Iohannis reportatio. Edited by Cai, R., (Turin: Marietti, 1972)Google Scholar.

²⁸ For a comprehensive treatment of the development of Thomas's understanding of prayer, see Tugwell's, Simon “Prayer, Humpty Dumpty, and Thomas Aquinas,” in Davies, Brian, ed., Language, Meaning and God (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987), pp. 24-50Google Scholar. Tugwell makes the persuasive argument that the Summa theologiae focuses the purpose of prayer on petition; he writes: “Thomas’ increasing clarity about prayer precisely as petition and about petition as an act of practical reason, allows him increasingly to deal with some of the problems which tended to befog discussions of prayer” (40). Brian Davies writes: “When it comes to Aquinas's treatment of prayer, I think that it can be best read as an attempt to demystify it. Many volumes have been devoted to prayer, and many of them seem to suggest that prayer is out of the ordinary, difficult and something with respect to which one needs to develop certain skills or techniques. In 2a2ae, 83, however, Aquinas thinks of ‘prayer’ (oratio) in fairly simple terms: as asking God for something that one wants” in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 260.

²⁹ ST II-II:83, 3 c. Thomas continues: “It is said that by praying a person hands over his mind to God, since he subjects it to God with reverence and, in a certain way, presents it to God…” (ad.3).

³⁰ Thomas identifies three principle effects of petitionary prayer: merit, impetration, and spiritual refreshment of the mind. Merit depends on and arises from proper charity which is possible only in a state of grace; impetration appeals to God's mercy and God may respond based on the petitioner's original intent; and finally, spiritual refreshment (spiritualis refectio mentis) which flows from fixing one's mind on God in worship. This third dimension of prayer connects petition to contemplative prayer. See ST II-II:83, 13 c.

³¹ ST II-II:83, 2 c; the reference to Gregory is Dial 1,8. Thomas adds: “As stated above, our prayer is not ordered for changing God's disposition, but that, by our petition, we may obtain what God has disposed [to give]” (ad.2). Thomas's position here integrates with his discussion of prayer in the execution of divine predestination: “So, as natural effects are provided by God in such a way that natural causes are directed to bring about those natural effects, without which those effects would not happen; so the salvation of a person is predestined by God in such a way, that whatever helps that person towards salvation falls under the order of predestination; whether it be one's own prayers or those of another; or other good works, and such like, without which one would not attain to salvation. Whence, the predestined must strive after good works and prayer; because through these means predestination is most certainly fulfilled” (ST I:23 8 c).

³² Speaking of prayer's role as a secondary cause, Tugwell writes: “This means that prayer, precisely as petition, can be seen as playing a fully authentic role in the working out of events in the world; it does make a difference to what happens” (p. 46).

³³ ST II-II:83, 16 sc.

³⁴ ST I-II:109, 2 c. Thomas includes a similar reference at 109, 5 c. In reference to this passage, Wawrykow writes: “Thomas adds here that the corruption of nature by sin has not been total, and so even in the state of sin a person without grace can do some particular acts by the power of his nature which accord with his natural end, such as “build houses, plant vines, and other things of things of this sort”; nevertheless, the sinner cannot do ‘totum bonum sibi connaturale, ita quod in nullo deficiat’” (God's Grace, p. 165, n.38). Thomas reinforces this position in I-II.85, on the effects of sin, where he argues that the good of the soul is wounded but not all together lost. Rudi te Velde provides a helpful treatment of the effects of sin on human nature in “Evil, Sin, and Death: Thomas Aquinas on Original Sin,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, pp. 143-166, especially pp. 159-63.

³⁵ ST I-II:109, 2 c.

³⁶ ST II-II:83, 16 c. Thomas includes this list of four conditions as part of a longer commentary tradition on the conditions for effective impetration; he discusses these conditions explicitly in the Scriptum (IV, d. 15, q. 4, a.7, q.3). In the Summa he references the list but uses these conditions to describe the proper form of petitionary prayer, specifically, that these conditions reflect a soul that has subjected itself to God in worship. The conditions are therefore less a prerequisite list of things “to do” and more a reflection of the natural disposition for prayer and worship. For a detailed discussion of the conditions for impetration, see Tugwell, pp. 41-43.

³⁷ ST II-II:83, 15 ad.1. Thomas's reference to Augustine's On the Gift of Perseverance is significant. Scholars have argued that Thomas encountered Augustine's anti-Massilian works sometime in the 1260s prior to his completion of the treatise on grace. See Wawrykow, God's Grace, 269-276, especially notes 16 and 18, his “Perseverance in 13^th-Century Theology: the Augustinian Contribution” Augustinian Studies 22 (1991): 125-40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Seckler's, Max Instinkt und Glaubenswille nach Thomas von Aquin (Mainz: MatthiasGrünewald, 1961) 90–98Google Scholar.

³⁸ Thomas consistently sets salutary human action into a larger sequence of divine causality and ordination so that, while human beings play decisive and consequential roles in their forward progress on the journey, they do so because their actions flow from God's providence, expressed in predestination and the provision of certain operative grace which capacitate and move the recipient to contingent and free action. See my The Wayfarer's End: Divine Rewards in the Theology of Bonaventure and Aquinas, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming); see also See Barnes's, Corey “Natural Final Causality and Providence in Aquinas,” New Blackfriars 95 (2014), pp. 349-61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ In fact, in II-II:83, 2, “Whether it is Conveniens to Pray,” Thomas writes: “It is said that it is not neecessary to pray to God in order to manifest our needs or desires but so that we ourselves may consider of the necessity of having recourse to divinum auxilium in these things” (ad.1). Later Thomas will add that “it is said that the one who prays in spirit and in truth approaches prayer through the movement (instinctu) of the Spirit, even if the mind thereafter wanders through weakness” (ST II-II:83, 13 ad.1).

⁴⁰ ST II-II:83, 15 ad. 3. Thomas's stress on faith as the beginning of prayer (oratio innititur principaliter fidei) follows the same stress in the order in the discussion of justification where the soul turns to God in faith. This beginning finds its completion in charity. See ST I-II:113, 4 ad.1 where Thomas speaks of fides formata or faith formed by love.

⁴¹ ST I:23, 8 ad.2.