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"The Early Aquinas on the Question of Universal Salvation, or How a Knight May Choose Not to Ride His Horse"

Harkins, Franklin T.

"The Early Aquinas on the Question of Universal Salvation, or How a Knight May Choose Not to Ride His Horse" Thumbnail


Authors

Franklin T. Harkins



Abstract

This article considers how the young Thomas Aquinas treats the question of universal salvation by examining his reading of 1 Timothy 2.4, God wills that all humans should be saved, in two of his early works, the Scriptum on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the sixth Disputed Question on Truth, both dated to the period 1252–1257. Drawing on John Damascene's distinction between God's antecedent and consequent will, Thomas here teaches that whereas God wills antecedently in a unimodal way that all humans should be saved, He wills consequently in a bimodal way based on foreknown merits. Though foreknown merits are not a cause of predestination itself, they are a cause of glory, one of predestination's temporal effects. On Thomas's account, then, reading 1 Tim 2.4 as a straightforward statement of what God has done eternally—namely, predestine or save every individual human—would undermine the freedom of the human will that is necessary in order to attain to beatitude.

Citation

Harkins, F. T. (2014). "The Early Aquinas on the Question of Universal Salvation, or How a Knight May Choose Not to Ride His Horse". New Blackfriars, 95(1056), 208-217. https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12064

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Feb 2, 2014
Publication Date Mar 1, 2014
Deposit Date Feb 17, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal New Blackfriars
Print ISSN 0028-4289
Electronic ISSN 1741-2005
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 95
Issue 1056
Pages 208-217
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12064
Keywords Aquinas, Universal salvation, Predestination, Providence, Divine will.

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Accepted Journal Article (258 Kb)
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Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Harkins, F. T. (2014), The Early Aquinas on the Question of Universal Salvation, or How a Knight May Choose Not to Ride His Horse. New Blackfriars, 95 (1056): 208–217, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12064. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.




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