Here the question naturally arises: How, in this hypothesis, can sufficient grace be called truly sufficient? The Thomists answer this question in different ways. Gazzaniga says that sufficient grace confers the power to perform a good deed, but that something more is required for the deed itself.[721] De Lemos ascribes the inefficacy of merely sufficient grace to a defect of the will.[722] [pg 237] If the will did not resist, God would promptly add efficacious grace.[723]
Critical Estimate of the Thomistic Theory.—The Thomistic system undoubtedly has its merits. It is logical in its deductions, exalts divine grace as the prime factor in the business of salvation, and magnificently works out the concept of God as causa prima and motor primus both in the natural and the supernatural order.
But Thomism also has its weak points.
A. The Thomistic conception of efficacious grace is open to two serious theological difficulties.
(1) To draw an intrinsic and substantial distinction between efficacious and merely sufficient grace destroys the true notion of sufficient grace.
(2) The Thomistic theory of efficacious grace is incompatible with the dogma of free-will.
Though in theory the Thomists defend the sufficiency of grace and the freedom of the will as valiantly as their opponents, they fail in their attempts at squaring these dogmas with the fundamental principles of their system.
a) Sufficient grace, as conceived by the Thomists, is not truly sufficient to enable a man to perform a salutary act, because ex vi notionis it confers merely the power to act, postulating for [pg 238] the act itself a substantially new grace (gratia efficax). A grace which requires to be entitatively supplemented by another, in order to enable a man to perform a salutary act, is clearly not sufficient for the performance of that act. “To be truly sufficient for something” and “to require to be complemented by something else” are mutually exclusive notions, and hence “sufficient grace” as conceived by Thomists is in reality insufficient.
Many subtle explanations have been devised to obviate this difficulty. Billuart and nearly all the later Thomists say that if any one who has received sufficient grace (in the Thomistic sense of the term) is denied the gratia efficax, it must be attributed to a sinful resistance of the will.[724] But this explanation is incompatible with the Thomistic teaching that together with the gratia sufficiens there co-exists in the soul of the sinner an irresistible and inevitable praemotio physica to the entity of sin, with which entity formal sin is inseparably bound up.[725] If this be true, how can the will of man be held responsible so long as God denies him the gratia ab intrinseco efficax?
Speaking in the abstract, the will may assume one of three distinct attitudes toward sufficient grace. It may consent, it may resist, or it may remain neutral. It cannot consent except with the aid of a predetermining [pg 239] gratia efficax, to merit which is beyond its power. If it withstands, it eo ipso renders itself unworthy of the gratia efficax. If it takes a neutral attitude, (which may in itself be a sinful act), and awaits efficacious grace, of what use is sufficient grace?