δ) It is at this decisive point in the controversy that the Molinists triumphantly bring in the declaration of the Council of Trent that “man ... while he receives that inspiration [_i.e._ efficacious grace], ... is also able to reject it.” And again: “If any one saith that man’s free-will, moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, does in no wise coöperate towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of justification; that it cannot refuse its consent if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema.”(734) To adjust their system to this important dogmatic decision, the older Thomists claimed that the Tridentine Council had in mind merely the _gratia sufficiens_, to which the will can refuse its consent. But this interpretation is untenable. The Council plainly refers to that grace with which the will coöperates by giving its consent (_cooperatur assentiendo_) and which it can render inefficacious by withdrawing its consent, in other words, with the grace which disposes and prepares a sinner for justification, and under the influence of which, according to Luther and Calvin, the will remains inanimate and merely passive. This can only be the _gratia efficax_. Other Thomist theologians, not daring to contradict the obvious sense of the Tridentine decree, assert that the Council intentionally chose the term _dissentire_ (_sensus divisus_) rather than _resistere_ (_sensus compositus_), in order to indicate that under the predetermining influence of grace it is possible for the will to refuse its consent (_posse dissentire_) but not to offer resistance (_posse resistere_).(735) This interpretation is no longer tenable since the Vatican Council has defined that “Faith, even when it does not work by charity, is in itself a gift of God, and the act of faith is a work appertaining to salvation, by which man yields voluntary obedience to God Himself, by assenting to and coöperating with His grace, which he is able to resist.”(736) If efficacious grace can be successfully resisted, it can not possess that “irresistible” influence which the Thomists ascribe to it.(737) ------------------------------------- B. The Thomistic system is open to two serious objections also from the philosophical point of view. One of these concerns the medium by which God foreknows the future free acts of His rational creatures; the other, His relation to sin. a) In regard to the first-mentioned point we do not, of course, underestimate the immense difficulties involved in the problem of God’s foreknowledge of the free acts of the future. -------------------------------------