ABSTRACT
On Aquinas’s account of faith and grace, a human being is justified when God operates on him in such a way as to bring him to faith with its two-part act of will. In consequence of God’s operating grace, that person desires God’s goodness and hates his own sins; as I argued in Chapter 12 on faith, this is a second-order act of will for a will that wills what it ought to will. But how are we to understand the genesis of this second-order act of will? At this point, we are ready finally to turn to the vexed question of the relation of grace and free will. According to Aquinas, the second-order act of free will in justifying faith is produced in a person by the divine infusion of operating grace; the will does not cooperate with God in this act but is simply moved by him. Nonetheless, Aquinas holds, this act of will is still free.
