Dist. 17, Part 1, Art. 1, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/17/q/bon-sent-IV-d17-p1-a1-q2
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### Question II. *Whether for justification a movement of free will is necessary.*

Secondly it is asked whether for justification a movement of free will is necessary. And that it is, seems [to be the case].

1. Augustine: "He who created you without you does not justify you without you": therefore for justification a movement of his [free will] is necessarily required.

2. Likewise, Bernard, *On Free Will*: "The work of salvation requires two things, that is, God who gives and free will receiving and consenting": therefore the work of free will necessarily concurs.

3. Likewise, by reason it seems [so]: because God, as far as he himself is concerned, is always ready to justify a man: therefore that a man is justified now and not earlier is not according to a variation on the part of God, but on

the part of the man; but an adult is justified without any variation as to sense: therefore it is necessary that there be a variation as to free will.

4. Likewise, God demands more from a man who is more capable, therefore more from an adult than from an infant, since he is more capable; but that which he demands cannot be less than a movement of free will: therefore for justification he demands it.

**On the contrary:** 1. Justification is through virtue; but "virtue is a good quality of the mind, which God works in us without us": therefore etc.

2. Likewise, in justification a man approaches God; but in John six: *No one comes to me unless the Father draws him*; but being drawn is a violent movement, and violence cannot be inflicted on free will: therefore there is no movement of free will there.

3. Likewise, God is a more powerful agent than any created agent; but a created agent, without any cooperation of the recipient, expels its opposite, as is evident in light, which expels darkness without any cooperation of the air: therefore etc.

Likewise, I ask what that movement is: for since every meritorious movement is from free will, it seems that it could be [a movement] of any virtue whatever.

> **Conclusion.** For justification in an adult there is required a movement of free will consenting to grace, which is the movement of faith.

**I respond:** It must be said that, just as justification belongs only to one willing it, so too God does not give it except to one willing, provided he be in such a state that he can consent and dissent. Therefore for the reception of justification in an adult there is required a movement of free will, according to which he consents to grace. And because the first movement by which he consents to grace is the movement of faith, therefore that movement is the movement of faith. Hence to the Romans five: *Justified by faith*; the Gloss: "That is, by the movement of free will, which is from faith." Therefore it is said, in Acts fifteen: *Purifying their hearts by faith*, because the movement of faith is required first for purification.

1. To that, then, which is objected, that God works virtue without us; it must be said that this is true without us as efficient [causes], yet not without us as disposing or consenting.

2. To that which is objected, that God draws; it must be said that there is a being-drawn through coercion, and thus he does not draw; and there is a being-drawn through inducement and uplifting, and thus he draws, because he induces and even uplifts a man to that to which by himself he cannot attain.

3. To that which is objected, that God is most powerful; it must be said that this is not on account of any impotence on the part of God, but on account of fittingness in acting. For God does not do whatever he can, but what is becoming and what is fitting; and it is fitting that he impress a form upon matter, as befits the form and the matter that receives it; and the form is justice, which belongs to freedom; and the matter likewise is the free will, free in acting and in receiving; and therefore it is not given without an act of it, with which it is born to act.

To that which is asked about that movement, what it is; it must be said that, as the Gloss expressly states, which was cited above on the Romans five, it is the movement of faith. For free will is a faculty of will and reason; and grace, when it comes, brings both powers into act, so that reason is in the act of believing, which is [the act] of faith, and the will is in the act of detesting, which is [the act] of contrition.