Bannesianism

BANNESIANESIMO. – This is the theological Bañez (v.), generally characterized by rigorous adherence to the principles of Thomism and, in particular, by their most extreme interpretations in questions concerning divine foreknowledge, concurrence, and predestination. Historically, Bañez’s position and the rigid formulation of his thought were determined by the new ideas concerning human freedom in connection with concurrence, Grace, and the foreknowledge of God, which were proposed in Ludovico Molina’s Concordia (v.). These doctrines, whose emergence and formulation had certainly been influenced by the anti-Protestant struggle, aimed at a forceful vindication of free will and, to this end, excluded from the human will every prior and determining motion of God, defending in its place a divine concurrence immediately connected with the action of the creature and simultaneous with its activity. Beyond the revival of ideas that had already previously been condemned by the Inquisition of Valladolid, Bañez discerned in Molina’s doctrines an open renunciation of the thought of s. Thomas; he therefore did not hesitate to commit himself, in writings and controversies, to what in his view was nothing other than a vindication and more exact formulation of the traditional Thomistic doctrine. The essential lines of his thought, to which the term b. that arose later refers, may be identified 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. Hence every human act, including the free act, can be accomplished only as a consequence of a premotion by 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. Since nothing can in fact be withdrawn from the universal sphere of the First Cause, every determination of being and therefore of created activity, even when free, must necessarily be traced back to its dominion. Nevertheless, the action of the First Cause, which is the principal and universal cause, while moving and determining the human will toward individual acts, does not compromise its freedom. The concurrence of God in the supernatural order must be conceived in the same way. Grace, with regard to the meritorious act, its modalities and its effects, including the ultimate one, salvation, is absolutely prior and sovereign. Hence the concept of efficacious grace and of predestination independent of any foreknowledge 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, God’s foreknowledge through the eternal decisions of his predetermining will. This rigorous accentuation of God’s predominance, which makes the vindication of the freedom of the human act somewhat difficult, is still traced by some theologians today, at least implicitly, to the principles of Thomism, whereas others separate it from the direct responsibility of s. Thomas and regard it, in its ultimate determinations, as the exclusive teaching of Bañez and his disciples.