B. The Thomistic system is open to two serious objections also from the philosophical point of view. One of these concerns the medium by which God foreknows the future free acts of His rational creatures; the other, His relation to sin.
a) In regard to the first-mentioned point we do not, of course, underestimate the immense difficulties involved in the problem of God's foreknowledge of the free acts of the future.
The Molinistic theory also has its difficulties, and they are so numerous and weighty that in our treatise on God[738] we made no attempt to demonstrate the scientia media by stringent arguments, but merely accepted it as a working hypothesis which supplies some sort of [pg 246] scientific basis for the dogmas of divine omnipotence and free-will in both the natural and the supernatural order.
b) A more serious objection than the one just adverted to is that the Thomistic hypothesis involves the blasphemous inference that God predetermines men to sin.
α) Under a rigorous application of the Thomistic principles God would have to be acknowledged as the cause of sin. As the predetermination of the will to justification can take no other form than the gratia per se efficax, so sin, considered as an act, necessarily postulates the predetermining influence of the motor primus.[739] Without this assumption it would be impossible in the Thomistic system to find in the absolute will of God an infallible medium by which He can foreknow future sins. Bañez says on this point: “God knows sin with an intuitive knowledge, because His will is the cause of the sinful act, as act, at the same time permitting free-will to concur in that act by failing to observe the law.”[740] Though the Thomists refuse to admit that God Himself is the immediate author of sin, the conclusion is inevitable from their premises. And this for two reasons. First, because the alleged praemotio ad malum is as irresistible as the praemotio ad bonum; and secondly, because the material element of sin must be inseparable from its formal [pg 247] element; otherwise God would foreknow sin merely materialiter as an act but not formaliter as a sin. The teaching of the Church on this point was clearly defined by the Council of Trent: “If any one saith that it is not in man's power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil God worketh as well as those that are good, not permissibly only, but properly and of Himself, in such wise that the treason of Judas is no less His own proper work than the vocation of Paul; let him be anathema.”[741]
If the rational creature were compelled to perform a sinful act, as act, resistance would be impossible. And if it were true that the malice of an act practically cannot be separated from its physical entity, then in the Thomistic hypothesis God would be the author not only of the entitas but likewise of the malitia peccati. The devil tempts us only by moral means, i.e. by suggestion; are we to assume that God tempts us physically by inducing sin as an act and simultaneously withholding the praemotio ad bonum, thus making sin an inevitable fatality? This consideration may be supplemented by another. So-called “sins of malice” are comparatively rare. Most sins are committed for the sake of some pleasure or imaginary advantage. It is for this reason that moral theology in forbidding sin forbids its physical entity. How gladly would not those who are addicted to impurity, for instance, separate the malice from the entity of their sinful acts, in order to be enabled to indulge their passion without offending God!
β) Against the logic of this argument some Thomist theologians defend themselves by a simile. The soul of a lame man, they say, enables him indeed to move his disabled [pg 248] limb; however, the cause of limping is not the soul but a crooked shinbone. Father Pesch wittily disposes of such reasoning as follows: “The will of Adam before the fall was not a crooked shinbone, but it was absolutely straight, and became crooked through physical premotion.”[742]
Another and more plausible contention of the Thomist school is that Molinism, too, is compelled to ascribe sin somehow to God. “It is impossible for a man to sin unless God lends His coöperation. Do not, therefore, the Molinists also make God the author of sin?” Those who argue in this wise overlook the fact that there is a very large distinction between the concursus simultaneus of the Molinists and the praemotio physica of the Thomists. The praemotio physica predetermines the sinful act without regard to the circumstance whether or not the will is able to offer resistance. The concursus simultaneus, on the other hand, begins as a mere concursus oblatus, which is in itself indifferent and awaits as it were the free consent of the will before it coöperates with the sinner as concursus collatus in the performance of the sinful act.[743] For this reason the distinction between actus and malitia has a well-defined place in the Molinistic system, whereas it is meaningless in that of the Thomists.[744]