Domingo Báñez

Domingo Báñez (29 February 1528, Valladolid – 22 October 1604, Medina del Campo)

Controversy over free will Báñez in his prime was director and confessor of St. Teresa.

The great controversy, with whose beginnings his name is prominently associated, goes back to a public disputation held early in 1582. Francisco Zumel, of the Order of Mercy, was moderator. Prudencio de Montemayor, a Jesuit, argued that Christ did not die freely, and consequently suffered death without merit, if the Father had given him a command to die. Báñez asked what the consequences would have been if the Father had given command not only as to the substance of the act of death, but also as to its circumstances. Prudentius responded that in that case there remained neither liberty nor merit. Luis de León, an Augustinian, sided with Prudentius and presently the discussion was taken up by the masters in attendance and carried to the kindred subjects of predestination and justification. Other formal disputations ensued, and strong feeling was manifested. Juan de Santa e Cruz, a Hieronymite, felt constrained to refer the matter to the Spanish Inquisition (5 February), and to his deposition he appended sixteen propositions covering the doctrines in controversy. Leon declared that he had only defended the theses for the sake of argument. His chief thought was to prevent them from being qualified as heretical. Notwithstanding these and further admissions, he was forbidden to teach, publicly or privately, the sixteen propositions as reviewed and proscribed.

This pronouncement practically ended whatever personal participation Báñez had in the famous controversy. and Antoine de Gaudier are probably the foremost modern writers who designate the Thomists as Bannesians. But against them appears a formidable list of Jesuits of repute who were either Thomists themselves or authorities for other opinions. Suárez, for instance, credits Medina with the first intimations of physical premotion and elsewhere admits that Aquinas himself once taught it. Toletus and Pererius considered as Thomistic the Catechism of the Council of Trent, which was the work (1566) of three Dominican theologians. Victor Frins gives it as his opinion that whilst Medina and Pedro de Soto (1551) taught physical predetermination, the originator of the theory was Francisco de Vitoria (d. 1546). The Dominicans Ferrariensis (1576), Cajetan (1507), and John Capreolus (d. 1436) are also accredited Thomists in the estimation of such authorities as the Jesuits Martin Becanus and Azorius, and the theologians of Coimbra. Molina cites the doctrine of a "certain disciple of St. Thomas"—supposedly Báñez—as differing only in words from the teaching of Duns Scotus, instead of agreeing with that of Aquinas. These striking divergences of opinion of which only a few have been cited would seem to indicate that the attempt to father the Thomistic system on Báñez has failed. The words "physical premotion" were meant to exclude, first a merely moral impulse and, secondly, a concurrence of the divine causality and free will, without the latter's subordination to the first cause. That such terms, far from doing violence to the teachings of their great leader, are their true expression, has been an unvaried tenet of the Thomistic school. One of the presiding officers of the Congregatio de Auxiliis, Cardinal Madruzzi, speaking of Báñez in this connection, said: "His teaching seems to be deduced from the principles of St. Thomas and to flow wholly from St. Thomas's doctrine, although he differs somewhat in his mode of speaking."