Domingo Bañez

John Davenant, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and a British delegate to the Synod of Dordt, was a widely praised English Reformed theologian, but his exposition of the doctrine of predestination has been largely neglected. The present essay shows that, for Davenant, Thomas Aquinas remained among the “sounder scholastics,” whose views on predestination and free choice aligned closely with Reformed theology and helped to illustrate the traditionalism of Reformed theology in the face of Jesuit and Arminian theological innovation.

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Are all God’s activities identical to God?  If not, which are identical to God and which not?  Although it is seldom noticed, the texts of Aquinas (at least on the surface) suggest conflicting answers to these questions, giving rise to a diversity of opinion among interpreters of Aquinas.  In this paper, we draw attention to this conflict and offer what we believe to be the strongest textual and speculative support for and against each of the main answers to these questions.

El cultivo de la filosofía, particularmente el de la metafísica, constituye el fin último del hombre y cuyo acto tiene por objeto la contemplación de Dios ut auctor naturae. Ahora bien, la Revelación cristiana introduce dos factores determinantes que modificaron la condición pura de nuestra naturaleza: la elevación al orden sobrenatural y la intromisión del pecado original. De allí que, por un lado, el fin último del hombre consistirá en la visión sobrenatural de Dios ut auctor gratiae y, por otro, la necesidad de la gracia sanadora y elevadora para llegar a esa visión. No obstante, Santiago Ramírez siguiendo a Santo Tomás de Aquino, explicará que el hombre actual –es decir, caído por el pecado– es impotente incluso para alcanzar su fin connatural sin la ayuda de la gracia.

Against an interpretation of Saint Thomas Aquinas's thought that understands the divine motion of the created will only providing a generic impulse to it, in this article is defended that God moves specifically for every good choice. This motion doesn't prevent at all the contingency of creatures and neither freedom of choice. Is also shown how Báñez's thought is quite faithful to Saint Thomas in this and doesn’t intend anything else but simply to make it known and defend it from molinists misinterpretations. That’s why is shown that the divine motion of the will doesn't make God responsible for sin, especially since that would only be possible if divine causality were not the action of the eternal God, who is outside the created causality.

Introducción a "La actualidad del ser en la “Primera Escuela” de Salamanca. Con lecciones inéditas de Vitoria, Soto y Cano", Eunsa (“Colección de Pensamiento Medieval y Renacentista”), Pamplona, 2004, 515 págs. Sólo índice e introducción. El presente estudio determina la realidad histórica de la metafísica salmantina en cuanto a sus condicionantes, a sus autores y a las fuentes, para luego ceñirse a la investigación de los tres grandes maestros de la llamada 'Primera Escuela' de Salamanca: Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto y Melchor Cano. Constata un intento de renovación respecto de la escuela tomista tradicional; descubre el despuntar de concepciones metafísicas que pasarían con fuerza a la modernidad, como la ontología de los modos; y detecta el problema teológico de la unidad de Cristo como una de sus principales claves interpretativas.

“Physical premotions” are a concept associated with Baroque Catholic theological debates concerning grace and freedom. In this paper, I present an argument that the entities identified in this debate, physical premotions, are necessary for any classical theist’s account of divine causality. A “classical theist” is a theist who holds both that God is simple, that is, without inhering properties, and that humans and God are both free in the incompatibilist sense. In fact, not only does the acceptance of physical premotions not entail determinism, physical premotions are the only way for classical theists to preserve the aforementioned two commitments. Nevertheless, the theory of premotions (by itself) cannot help theologians resolve questions of how God causes human free acts without violating their freedom.

Aquinas held that there is a real distinction between being (esse) and essence (essentia) in creatures.  After proving this real distinction, Aquinas typically adds a phrase describing this relation between essence and existence as that of potency to act.  What does he mean by "potency" in this context? It surely isn't the typical use of the term as used in substance-accident or matter-form.  I contend that Aquinas is stretching the typical usage of potency and act, using the terms in a manner somewhat contrary to their usual usage.
Opponents of Thomism, attacked the real distinction  by exploiting the typical usage of the potency-act distinction.  As a result, development was needed in understanding the notion of potency and act as used within the real distinction. This paper traces that history.

written in 2012 for a doctoral course on grace, based in part on my Master’s thesis in Philosophy (2010-2011), which was based largely on stuff I wrote as a teenager (c. 2001-2003), thus not the most mature treatment of this incredibly complex topic, about which I’ve been writing a book for a few years now

A diferencia del orden natural, el hábito de los primeros principios sobrenaturales no es una especie átoma sino un género de hábitos intelectuales, en el que sobresale el don de intellectus. Para una adecuada comprensión del mismo, Santiago Ramírez rescata dos aspectos particulares del pensamiento de santo Tomás: uno filosófico, la distinción real que existe entre disposición y hábito en el predicamento qualitas; y otro teológico, la distinción real entre virtudes infusas y dones del Espíritu Santo.

En la interpretación y desarrollo por parte de la escuela tomista de las tesis de Tomás de Aquino sobre el conocimiento intelectual del individuo material, han predominado dos tradiciones: la que encuentra en Cayetano su máximo representante y la que tiene en Juan de Santo Tomás su principal exponente. Si bien ambas líneas interpretativas afirman que la intelección de lo particular material es indirecta, la primera afirma que tal conocimiento es impropio, confuso y discursivo, mientras que la segunda sostiene que es propio, distinto e inmediato. En la primera línea se puede colocar a Thomas de Sutton, Capreolo y Cayetano, mientras que en la segunda están el Ferrariense, Báñez y Juan de Santo Tomás. Se investiga también la continuación de estas tradiciones y sus modificaciones en el tomismo contemporáneo, exponiendo las posiciones de Jacques Maritain, Cornelio Fabro, Joseph Gredt, Joseph Maréchal y Francisco Canals Vidal.

This is a rough translation of part of Banez' commentary on question 1, article 10 of the second part of the second part of St. Thomas' Summa Theologiae.  It deals with the question of whether the pope loses his office by embracing heresy.  Enjoy!

Con el fin de difundir el vastísimo pero desconocido pensamiento de Santiago Ramírez, este trabajo procura reproducirlo fidedignamente en sus cuatro notas esenciales que son la ciencia divina - tanto filosófica como teológica - y la beatitud, la analogía y el orden; exponiendo el estrecho lazo que lo vinculó intemporalmente con Santo Tomás de Aquino y que ha sido demostrado por la profunda síntesis del cuerpo tomístico que penetra toda la obra ramireciana. Como el fin es la causa principal, todas estas notas se ordenan a la consideración del fin último del hombre, en el que descansa la razón formal de nuestra beatitud y por la que nos asemejamos a Dios y a los ángeles: de allí también que este libro constituya la investigación más desarrollada que se haya dedicado al admirable y colosal estudio del teólogo salamantino denominado "De Hominis Beatitudine".

The aim of this paper is to make a first approach to the late scholastic debate concerning the love of God towards possible creatures. I start with brief exposition of the historical background of the debate and the main positions of authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Duns Scotus, Cajetan, Bañez and Suárez. I deal in detail with the essentialist position of the Jesuit Gabriel Vásquez and his followers, who affirmed a necessary love of God towards possible creatures. I also present the arguments of the Thomist theologian Baltasar Navarrete against Vasquez’s position. Finally, I show how the different positions concerning the love of God towards possible creatures reveal diametrically opposed metaphysical positions about the formal constitutive element of being as such and its transcendental affections, anticipating some fundamental trends of modern rationalism.

En 1588, el jesuita Luis de Molina publicaría su famosa Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, en la cual intenta defender –contra el fatalismo protestante- la libre determinación de la voluntad con respecto a su fin último sobrenatural. Sin embargo, las explicaciones teológicas del P. Molina suponen graves errores metafísicos, particularmente con respecto al concurso general o simultáneo de  Dios sobre las causas segundas en las que Dios no obra in sino cum causa, donde la acción de la creatura determina al Creador a producir conjuntamente un efecto. A partir de la Apología de los Padres Dominicos que recoge la doctrina de Santo Tomás acerca de la premoción física, procederemos en la crítica de esta tesis molinista: sólo Dios es Acto Puro y por eso es causa del movimiento actualizador tanto de las potencias naturales como espirituales, pues todo efecto –sea contingente o necesario– depende de la voluntad divina que trasciende todo orden de necesidad y contingencia: de allí que sólo Dios puede mover eficazmente nuestro intelecto y voluntad, y no por eso nuestros actos dejan de ser  nuestros y personales.

On several occasions, Báñez considered Suárez the main supporter of the Molinist doctrine along with Molina himself. According to Báñez, the main mistake of Molinism is its misunderstanding of freedom. This led him to refine his personal Thomistic theory of freedom. Free will is radically in the intellect and formally in the will. Intellect is the root of freedom because the most important indifference is found in the object, whose connection with the end is understood as not necessary. The intellect aware of this indifference causes a formally free volition that is not incompatible with the effective divine motion.

En el contexto de la famosa e importante controversia filosófico-teológica "De auxiliis divinae gratiae", se demuestra, por parte del reconocido teólogo tomista Norberto del Prado, O.P., que no es en manera alguna posible un término medio entre el tomismo y el molinismo, y en definitiva, que no es posible el mismo molinismo.

With the publication in France in 1636 of De praedestinatione et reprobatione auxiliis divinae gratiae, Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) comes back to the themes of divine grace and predestination, which had already engaged him, especially in youth writings. Among the reasons for this choice, the need to maintain a high level of theological confrontation against representatives of Dominican orthodoxy, who had been the cause of his exile. Campanella carries on his personal battle, by criticizing one of the most daring and original theses of the Spanish Scholasticism, that’s Odium Dei, inserting it within the broader framework of his thought. From the pages of the work, the great originality of Stilese’s proposal on the topics dealt with emerges, which, however, will not prevent the Roman Inquisition from condemning the writing.

Nell’estate del 1594, il Consiglio dell’Inquisizione chiede a Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), di essere informato sulla diversità di opinioni tra domenicani e gesuiti sui temi della grazia, della predestinazione e del libero arbitrio. Il Gesuita affida la sua risposta a un memoriale. Quando il domenicano Domingo Báñez (1528-1604) viene in possesso del documento, si presenta davanti al Consiglio per denunciare Suárez. La polemica che ne segue vede confrontarsi due tra le più autorevoli figure in campo teologico e filosofico del Cinquecento, inaugurando ufficialmente lo scontro al centro della celebre Controversia de Auxiliis (1597-1606). Il lavoro di traduzione, elaborazione e approfondimento critico dei testi, prova a chiarire come, al contrario di quanto creduto in passato l’episodio sia, oltre che indicativo, importante, offrendo una diversa prospettiva di lettura dei temi e dei problemi della prima modernità.

Este capítulo de libro trata de la explicación que da Xavier Zubiri acerca del problema clásico de cómo conciliar el libre albedrío del hombre con la providencia y la presciencia atribuidas a Dios. De esta manera se trata de fijar su posición frente a las doctrinas de Luis de Molina y Domingo Báñez.

This study analyses the philosophical difficulty in interpreting the act of being comes from the multiplicity of meanings of the term “esse” (to be) according to the most significant authors of the Thomistic school. They are intended to present a coherent doctrine of the speculative point of view and most of them supported the thesis of ontological gradation in the formation of all real things but without the simultaneous presence of the plurality of substantial forms.

This article intends to examine the problematic question of the ontological status of “physical premotion,” that is, the divine motion of created free will. This idea was developed by the Dominican Báñez and was strongly criticised by the Jesuit Suárez. Suárez’s description of physical premotion shows that he gradually conditioned the debate in a way which compelled to see the premotion as an entity different from the creator and the free agent. Several texts of Suárez are also reviewed in discussion with a recent study of Matava. Finally, the article concludes that Báñez follows the main lines of the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas; consequently, he does not believe that the divine motion has any other effect in the world than that of the free action of the created agent.

RETRACTATIO: In this paper I attributed to Suárez the negation of divine motion, as if he reduced it to divine conservation. But Suárez did not sustain this doctrine.

The study of the reception of Aristotelian syllogistic in the sixteenth century and, in particular, the philosophy of Domingo Bañez, is very important to show how Aristotle’s philosophy was taken up within the cultural environment of the School of Salamanca. This paper, after a brief presentation of the historical trajectory bringing Aristotelian syllogistic to Bañez, shows how, in his "Institutiones minoris
dialecticae", he faces the problem of the Trinity, and how this is considered for its usefulness in the understanding of the divine mystery.

This work seeks to analyze a revisionist movement within Thomism in the 20th century over and against the traditional or classical Thomistic commentatorial treatment of physical premotion, grace, and the permission of sin, especially as these relate to the mysteries of predestination and reprobation.

The over-arching critique leveled by the revisionists against the classic treatment is that Bañezian scholasticism had disregarded the dissymmetry between the line of good (God's causation of salutary acts) and the line of evil (God's permission of defect and sin).

The teaching of St. Thomas is explored via intimate consideration of his texts. The thought of St. Thomas is then compared with the work of Domingo Bañez and the foremost 'Bañezian' of the 20th century, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.

The work then shifts to a consideration of the major players of the revisionist treatment, including Francisco Marín-Sola, Jacques Maritiain, and Bernard Lonergan. Jean-Herve Nicolas is also taken up as one who had held both accounts during his lifetime.

The work analyzes and critiques the revisionist theories according to the fundamental tenets of the classical account. Upon final analysis, it seeks to show that the classical account sufficiently distances God's causal role in regard to free salutary acts and His non-causal role in regard to free sinful acts. Moreover, the revisionist account presents significant metaphysical problems and challenges major tenets of classical theism, such as the divine omnipotence, simplicity, and the exhaustive nature of divine providence.

Finally, the implications of the traditional view are considered in light of the spiritual life. It is argued that the classical account is the only one which provides an adequate theological foundation for the Church's robust mystical and spiritual tradition.

Se discute la tesis de Etienne Gilson de acuerdo con la cual el hecho de que Cayetano afirme que no se puede demostrar en sentido estricto la inmortalidad del alma depende de su concepción de que el ser es el "acto último" del ente, a diferencia de Báñez, quien, por el contrario, contra Cayetano, marca que el ser es más bien el acto primero. Gilson formula su tesis en "Cajétan et l'humanisme théologique".  Báñez expone su tesis sobre el ser en su comentario a Summa theologiae I q. 4 a. 1, donde critica a los tomistas que no quieren oír que el ser es lo más perfecto de todo. Gilson estima que Báñez alude a Cayetano. La conclusión es que la tesis de Gilson no es correcta ni en cuanto a la inmortalidad del alma ni en cuanto a quiénes son los tomistas a los que Báñez alude.

This article exposes the concept of "second" Salamanca's School, i.e. the followers of Vitoria in a second generation that teach in Salamanca during the last years of the sixteenth century and the first years of the seventeenth. The author shows that there is an important continuity among the first and the second School and revisits the aspects which have been seen as negative for the School: the developing of metaphysics and the De Auxiliis controversy. The metaphysics as such cannot be considered as a negative aspect and the De Auxiliis controversy has also some positive aspects, although it supposed a fatal tendency which determined the end of the School.

In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholic theologians debated how to reconcile God’s predestination and grace with human free choice. The de auxiliis controversy had as its touchstones the works of the Dominican Domingo Báñez and the Jesuit Luis de Molina. Pope Paul V concluded the debates in Rome on these questions, the Congregatio de auxiliis (1597–1607), by prohibiting the accusation of heresy from either side in this quarrel. Dominicans, initially accused of Calvinism, and Jesuits, charged at first with semi-Pelagianism, generally claimed that their conclusions were at least consistent with Thomas Aquinas’ principles. But key notions in this controversy, such as physical predetermination, middle knowledge, and efficacious grace, are not found in Aquinas’ corpus, which encouraged theologians to account for the appearance of novelty. In the aftermath of these debates, Thomism was associated with these soteriological questions, and many Catholic theologians envisioned Thomas Aquinas as Augustine’s faithful disciple.

This article deals with the historical position of Domingo Báñez in the De Auxiliis Controversy. He was a protagonist of the beginning of the dispute and his name was used by the defenders of Luis de Molina to describe the traditional Thomist account on divine providence and free will; even today, many Thomists use the name of Báñez to designate their own position. This article tries to determine his personal opinion regarding the ontology of physical premotion without presupposing the later development of Bañecian doctrine. Most Thomists conceive it as a kind of entity inherent in the creature, but Báñez did not interpret it this way in his own account. According to him, God moves the created will so that the free human act is the first new entity in the creature, and it is produced by both God and created free will.

Tommaso Campanella, a differenza di Giordano Bruno, non smise mai di essere un domenicano. Relegato storiograficamente alle giovanili opere naturalistiche di ispirazione telesiana, confusa la sua irrequietezza intellettuale con il libertinismo, il presente lavoro cerca di accendere una luce sulla, quasi dimenticata, fitta rete di confronti, rimandi, scontri personali e virtuali che Campanella mise in piedi con i maggiori autori domenicani della Seconda Scolastica. Nel grande progetto di riforma del sapere e della Chiesa profetizzato dal frate di Stilo, una parte fondamentale rivestono il rinnovamento della metafisica e della teologia di Tommaso d’Aquino, aggiornate alla luce delle nuove scoperte geografiche e della scienza moderna.  Una trama che incrocia vicende biografiche e filosofiche, dove il duro contrasto con i superiori della Minerva si traduce in un confronto costante con i loro maestri Báñez e Álvarez, custodi dell’ortodossia tomista. Le discussioni sulla volontà, la libertà e la grazia, al centro dei dibattiti all’interno dell’Ordine domenicano del XVII secolo, vengono da Campanella ridefinite alla luce della controversia De Auxiliis (1597-1606) e delle tesi di Molina, e sviluppate nel quadro della sua metafisica naturale, sorprendentemente, attraverso il confronto con i testi di uno dei massimi commentatori dell’Aquinate, Tommaso de Vio “Gaetano”, punto di partenza di quel tomismo rinascimentale nel cui solco compiutamente si può collocare anche la riflessione campanelliana.

This book argues that Augustine assimilated the Stoic theory of perception and mental language (lekta/dicibilia), and that this epistemology underlies his accounts of motivation, affectivity, therapy for the passions, and moral progress.  (Since Augustine thought that moral progress is effected by grace, his use of Stoic epistemology extends to his descriptions of how grace influences motivation.)  Byers elucidates seminal passages which have long puzzled commentators, such as Confessions 8, City of God 9 and 14, Replies to Simplicianus 1, and confusing sections of the later ‘anti-Pelagian’ works.  Tracking the Stoic terminology, and using his sermons to supplement his treatises, Byers analyzes Augustine’s engagement with Cicero, Seneca, Ambrose, Jerome, Origen, and Philo of Alexandria, demonstrating that Augustine appropriated Stoicism with greater comparative sophistication than other religious writers.  She also shows how he moved beyond the Stoics in a number of ways by enriching Stoic cognitivism with Platonism, and she argues that he did so in such a way as to create a coherent synthesis.  This newly discovered Augustinian moral psychology has elements that contemporary philosophers and psychologists have identified as important.  Finally, Byers makes a substantive contribution to the scholarly debate concerning the chronological development of Augustine’s theory of grace, and provides a fresh evaluation of the early modern controversy about grace and free choice (Bañez vs. Molina), in which both sides claimed to be descended intellectually from Augustine.