Abstract
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.