BANNESIANISM. - It is the theological school Bañez (v.), characterized generally by a rigorous adherence to the principles of Thomism and, in particular, by their extreme interpretations in matters concerning divine foreknowledge, concurrence, and predestination. Historically, Bañez’s stance and the rigid formulation of his thought were determined by the new ideas that, on the theme of human freedom in connection with concurrence, grace, and God’s foreknowledge, were proposed in the *Concordia* of Ludovicus Molina (v.). These doctrines, whose origin and formulation had certainly been influenced by the anti-Protestant struggle, aimed at a decisive vindication of free will and sought to attribute every mode of God’s prior and determining will exclusively to human activity, defending in its place a divine concurrence immediately connected with the action of the creature and simultaneous with its activity. Besides the revival of ideas already circulating in Spain and condemned by the Inquisition of Valladolid, Bañez saw in Molina’s doctrines an open renunciation of the thought of St. Thomas; wherefore he did not hesitate to engage, in writings and controversies, in what in his view was nothing other than a vindication and more precise formulation of traditional Thomistic doctrine.
The essential lines of his thought, to which the term Bannesianism refers (a term that arose later), can be outlined as follows: the action of God as first cause is not only necessary but ontologically prior to every activity of the creature, whether irrational or spiritual. Therefore, every human act, including the free act, cannot take place except as a consequence of a premotion from God, of a physical order, that is, in the line of efficient causality. This premotion is also predetermining with respect to the act of the creature. For nothing can be withdrawn from the universal sphere of the First Cause; hence every determination of being and, therefore, of created activity, even free activity, must necessarily be traced back to its dominion. The action, however, of the First Cause, which is the principal and universal cause, while moving and determining the human will to individual acts, does not compromise its freedom. In the same way, the concurrence of God in the supernatural order must be conceived. Grace, with respect to the meritorious act, its modalities, and its effects—including the ultimate effect, salvation—is absolutely prior and sovereign. Hence the concept of efficacious grace and of predestination independent of any prevision of merits or of correspondence on the part of man.
Consistently with these doctrines, Bañez defends, for all the actions of creatures, whether necessary or free, the foreknowledge of God through the eternal decrees of His predetermining will. This rigorous accentuation of the primacy of God, which makes the vindication of human freedom somewhat difficult, while it is by some theologians even today traced back, at least implicitly, to the principles of Thomism, is by others dissociated from the direct responsibility of St. Thomas and considered, in its ultimate determinations, the exclusive teaching of Bañez and his disciples.