6 - Grace and Predestination
from Part III
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 August 2026
Summary
Chapters 6 to 10 deal with the subjective dimension of salvation, that is, how we appropriate the saving work of Christ through the bestowal of grace, the theological virtues and the sacraments. Through grace we become a lover of God. Grace illustrates the interpersonal, dynamic and transformational aspects of the subjective dimension of salvation. The present chapter addresses some of the key issues of Thomas’s theology, such as predestination, grace and free will. Drawing on the writings of the French Thomist Jacques Maritain, it offers an account of grace and predestination that pulls some of the main themes of the book together: God as the cause of all goodness; the dissymmetry between good and evil; Thomas’s teaching on inattentiveness as negation and the distinction between the antecedent and consequent divine will.
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- Providence, Evil and SalvationA Thomist Perspective, pp. 261 - 301Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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