Chapter II. The Properties Of Actual Grace
Actual grace has three essential properties: (1) necessity, (2) gratuity, and (3) universality. The most important of these is necessity.
Section 1. The Necessity Of Actual Grace
In treating of the necessity of actual grace we must avoid two extremes. The first is that mere nature is absolutely incapable of doing any thing good. This error was held by the early Protestants and the followers of Baius and Jansenius. The second is that nature is able to perform supernatural acts by its own power. This was taught by the Pelagians and Semipelagians.
Between these two extremes Catholic theology keeps the golden mean. It defends the capacity of human nature against Protestants and Jansenists, and upholds its incapacity and impotence against Pelagians and Semipelagians. Thus our present Section naturally falls into three Articles.
Article 1. The Capacity Of Mere Nature Without Grace
The capacity of nature in its own domain may be considered with regard either to the intellect or to the will.
Thesis I: Man is capable by the natural power of his intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God from a consideration of the physical universe.
This proposition embodies an article of faith defined by the Vatican Council: “If any one shall say that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be certainly known by the natural light of human reason through created things, let him be anathema.”[116]
For a formal demonstration of this truth we must refer the reader to our treatise on God: His Knowability, Essence, and Attributes, pp. 17 sqq. The argument there given may be supplemented by the following considerations:
1. The Vatican Council vindicates the native power of the human intellect when it says: “The Catholic Church, with one consent, has ever held and does hold, that there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct both in principle and in object: in principle, because our knowledge in the one is by natural reason, and in the other by divine faith; in object, because, besides those things to which natural reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries hidden in God, which, unless divinely revealed, cannot be known.”[117] This teaching, which the [pg 052] Church had repeatedly emphasized on previous occasions against the scepticism of Nicholas de Ultricuria,[118] the rationalistic philosophy of Pomponazzi, the “log-stick-and-stone” theory[119] of Martin Luther, the exaggerations of the Jansenists, and the vagaries of the Traditionalists,[120] is based on Revelation as well as on sound reason. Holy Scripture clearly teaches that we can gain a certain knowledge of God from a consideration of the created universe.[121] Reason tells us that a creature endowed with intelligence must be capable of acquiring natural knowledge, and that supernatural faith is based on certain praeambula, which are nothing else than philosophical and historical truths.[122] “The existence of God and other like truths,” says St. Thomas, “are not articles of faith, but preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection something that can be perfected.”[123] Luther denounced reason as the most dangerous thing on earth, because “all its discussions and conclusions are as certainly false and erroneous as there is a God in Heaven.”[124] The [pg 053] Church teaches, in accordance with sound philosophy and experience, that the original powers of human nature, especially free-will, though greatly weakened, have not been destroyed by original sin.[125] The Scholastics, it is true, reckoned ignorance among the four “wounds of nature” inflicted by original sin.[126] But this teaching must be regarded in the light in which the Church condemned Quesnel's proposition that “All natural knowledge of God, even that found in pagan philosophers, can come from nowhere else than God, and without grace produces nothing but presumption, vanity, and opposition against God Himself, instead of adoration, gratitude, and love.”[127] The Traditionalist contention that the intrinsic weakness of the human intellect can be cured only by a primitive revelation handed down through the instrumentality of speech and instruction, or by a special interior illumination, involves the false assumption that there can be a cognitive faculty incapable of knowledge,—which would ultimately lead to a denial of the essential distinction between nature and the supernatural, because it represents exterior revelation or interior grace as something positively due to fallen nature.[128] Following the lead of St. Thomas,[129] Catholic apologists, while maintaining the necessity of a [pg 054] supernatural revelation even with regard to the truths of natural religion and ethics, base their argument not on the alleged physical incapacity of reason to ascertain these truths, but on the moral impossibility (i.e. insuperable difficulty) of finding them unaided. “It is to be ascribed to this divine Revelation,” says the Vatican Council, “that such truths among things divine as are not of themselves beyond human reason, can, even in the present state of mankind, be known by every one with facility and firm assurance, and without admixture of error.”[130] In conformity with the teaching of Revelation and Tradition, the Church has always sharply distinguished between πίστις and γνῶσις,—faith and knowledge, revelation and philosophy,—assigning to reason the double rôle of an indispensable forerunner and a docile handmaid of faith. Far from antagonizing reason, as charged by her enemies, the Church has on the contrary always valiantly championed its rights against Scepticism, Positivism, Criticism, Traditionalism, Rationalism, Pantheism, and Modernism.[131]
2. As regards those purely natural truths that constitute the domain of science and art, Catholic divines are practically unanimous[132] in holding that, though man possesses the physical ability of knowing every single one of these truths, even the most highly gifted cannot master them all. Cardinal Mezzofanti had acquired a knowledge of many languages,[133] and undoubtedly was capable [pg 055] of learning many more; yet without a special grace he could not have learned all the languages spoken on earth, though their number is by no means infinite. The science of mathematics, which embraces but a limited field of knowledge, comprises an indefinite number of propositions and problems which even the greatest genius can not master. Add to these impediments the shortness of human life, the limitations of the intellect, the multitude and intricacy of scientific methods, the inaccessibility of many objects which are in themselves knowable, (e.g. the interior of the earth, the stellar universe)—and you have a host of limitations which make it physically impossible for the mind of man to encompass the realm of natural truths.[134]
Thesis II: Fallen man, whether pagan or sinner, is able to perform some naturally good works without the aid of grace.
This thesis may be technically qualified as propositio certa.
Proof. A man performing moral acts may be either in a state of unbelief, or of mortal sin, or of sanctifying grace. The question here at issue is chiefly whether all the works of pagans, that is all acts done without grace of any kind, are morally bad, or whether any purely natural works may be good despite the absence of grace. Baius and Jansenius [pg 056] affirmed this; nay more, they asserted that no man can perform good works unless he is in the state of grace and inspired by a perfect love of God (caritas). If this were true, all the works of pagans and of such Christians as have lost the faith, would be so many sins. But it is not true. The genuine teaching of the Church may be gathered from her official condemnation of the twenty-fifth, the twenty-sixth, and the thirty-seventh propositions of Baius. These propositions run as follows: “Without the aid of God's grace free-will hath power only to sin;”[135] “To admit that there is such a thing as a natural good, i.e. one which originates solely in the powers of nature, is to share the error of Pelagius;”[136] “All the actions of unbelievers are sins and the virtues of philosophers vices.”[137] To these we may add the proposition condemned by Pope Alexander VIII, that “The unbeliever necessarily sins in whatever he does.”[138]
1. Sacred Scripture and the Fathers, St. Augustine included, admit the possibility of performing naturally good, though unmeritorious, [pg 057] works (opera steriliter bona) in the state of unbelief; and their teaching is in perfect conformity with right reason.
a) Our Divine Lord Himself says:[139] “If you love them that love you, what reward[140] shall you have? Do not even the publicans this? And if you salute[141] your brethren only, what do you more? Do not also the heathens[142] this?” The meaning plainly is: To salute one's neighbor is an act of charity, a naturally good deed, common even among the heathens, and one which, not being done from a supernatural motive, deserves no supernatural reward. But this does not by any means imply that to salute one's neighbor is sinful.
St. Paul[143] says: “For when the gentiles,[144] who have not the law,[145] do by nature[146] those things that are of the law; these having not the law are a law to themselves: who shew the work of the law written in their hearts.” By “gentiles” the Apostle evidently means genuine heathens, not converts from paganism to Christianity, and hence the meaning of the passage is that the heathens who know the natural law embodied in the Decalogue only as a postulate of reason, are by nature[147] able to “do those things that are of the law,”[148] i.e. observe at least some of its precepts. That St. Paul did not think the gentiles capable of observing the whole law without the aid of grace appears from his denunciation of their folly, a little further up in the same Epistle: “Because that, [pg 058] when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened, etc.,”[149] and also from the hypothetic form of Rom. II, 14 in the original Greek text: “Ὅταν γὰρ ἔθνη ... τὰ τοῦ νόμου ποιῶσιν—Si quando gentes, ... quae legis sunt, faciunt.”[150]
In Rom. XIV, 23: “For all that is not faith is sin,”[151] a text often quoted against our thesis, “faith” does not mean the theological habit of faith, but “conscience,”[152] as the context clearly shows.[153]
b) The teaching of the Fathers is in substantial harmony with Sacred Scripture.
α) Thus St. Jerome, speaking of the reward which Yahweh gave to Nabuchodonosor for his services against Tyre,[154] says: “The fact that Nabuchodonosor was rewarded for a good work shows that even the gentiles in the judgment of God are not passed over without a reward when they have performed a good deed.”[155] In his commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians the same holy Doctor observes: “Many who are without the faith and have not the Gospel of Christ, yet perform prudent and holy actions, [pg 059] e.g. by obeying their parents, succoring the needy, not oppressing their neighbors, not taking away the possessions of others.”[156]
β) The teaching of St. Augustine offers some difficulties. There can be no doubt that this Father freely admitted that pagans and infidels can perform naturally good works without faith and grace. Thus he says there is no man so wicked that some good cannot be found in him.[157] He extols the moderation of Polemo[158] and the purity of Alypius, who were both pagans.[159] He admires the civic virtues of the ancient Romans,[160] etc. Holding such views, how could Augustine write: “Neither doth free-will avail for anything except sin, if the way of truth is hidden.”[161] And what did his disciple Prosper mean when he said: “The whole life of unbelievers is a sin, and nothing is good without the highest good. For wherever there is no recognition of the supreme and immutable truth, there can [pg 060] be no genuine virtue, even if the moral standard be of the highest.”[162]
To understand these and similar passages rightly and to explain at the same time how it was possible for Baius and Jansenius to bolster their heretical systems with quotations from the writings of St. Augustine and his disciples, it is necessary to observe that the quondam rhetorician and Platonic idealist of Hippo delights in applying to the genus the designation which belongs to its highest species, and vice versa.[163] Thus, in speaking of liberty, he often means the perfect liberty enjoyed by our first parents in Paradise;[164] in using the term “children of God” he designates those who persevere in righteousness;[165] and in employing the phrase “a good work” he means one supernaturally meritorious. Or, vice versa, he designates the slightest good impulse of the will as “caritas,” as it were by anticipation, and brands every unmeritorious work (opus informe s. sterile) as false virtue (falsa virtus), nay sin (peccatum). To interpret St. Augustine correctly, therefore, allowance must be made for his peculiar idealism and a careful distinction drawn [pg 061] between the real and the metaphorical sense of the terms which he employs. Baius neglected this precaution and furthermore paid no attention to the controversial attitude of the holy Doctor. Augustine's peculiar task was not to maintain the possibility of naturally good works without faith and grace, but to defend against Pelagius and Julian the impossibility of performing supernaturally good and meritorious works without the aid of grace. It is this essential difference in their respective points of view that explains how St. Augustine and Baius were able to employ identical or similar terms to express radically different ideas.[166]
c) It can easily be demonstrated on theological grounds that fallen man is able, of his own initiative, i.e. without the aid of grace, to perform morally good works, and that Baius erred in asserting that this is impossible without theological faith.
α) With regard to the first-mentioned point it will be well, for the sake of clearness, to adopt Palmieri's distinction between physical and moral capacity.[167] Man sins whenever he transgresses the law or yields to temptation. [pg 062] This would be impossible if he were physically unable to keep the whole law and resist temptation. Hence he must be physically able to do that which he is obliged to do under pain of sin, though in this or that individual instance the difficulties may be insuperable without the aid of grace. To put it somewhat differently: Baius and Jansenius hold that fallen man can perform no morally good works because of physical or moral impotence on the part of the will. This assumption is false. Man is physically able to perform good works because they are enjoined by the moral law of nature under pain of sin; he is morally able because, in spite of numerous evil tendencies, not a few gentiles and unbelievers have led upright lives and thereby proved that man can perform good works without the aid of grace.[168] This is also the teaching of St. Thomas.[169]
β) It is an expressly defined dogma that the process of justification starts with theological faith (fides), preceded by the so-called grace of vocation, which prepares and effects conversion. To say, as Baius did, that all good works performed in a state of unbelief are so many sins, is tantamount to asserting that the preliminary acts leading up to faith, and which the unbeliever performs by the aid of prevenient grace, are sinful; in other words, that God requires the unbeliever to prepare himself for justification by committing sin. This is as absurd as it is heretical.[170]
The whole argument of this section applies a fortiori to [pg 063] the theory that no act can be morally good unless prompted by both theological charity and theological faith.[171]
2. We must now define the limitations of fallen nature unaided by grace. Though the graces dispensed by Providence even for naturally good deeds are in the present economy de facto nearly all supernatural, nothing prevents us from conceiving a different economy, consisting of purely natural helps, such as would have been necessary in the state of pure nature.[172]
As regards the limitations of man's moral power in the natural order, we may say, in a general way, that the will is able to keep the easier precepts of the moral law of nature without the assistance of grace (either supernatural or natural). However, as it is impossible in many instances to determine just where the easier precepts end and the more difficult ones begin, a broad field is left open for theological speculation.
a) Theologians are practically unanimous in holding that man cannot observe the natural law in its entirety for any considerable length of time without the aid of grace.
Suarez is so sure of this that he does not hesitate to denounce the contrary teaching,—which is (perhaps unjustly) ascribed to Durandus, Scotus, and Gabriel Biel—as [pg 064] “rash and verging on error.”[173] In matter of fact the Church has formally defined that, because of concupiscence, no one, not even the justified man, much less the sinner, is able, without divine assistance (grace), to keep for any considerable length of time the whole Decalogue, which embodies the essentials of the moral law. “Nevertheless,” says the Council of Trent, “let those who think themselves to stand take heed lest they fall, and with fear and trembling work out their salvation, ... for ... they ought to fear for the combat which yet remains with the flesh, with the world, with the devil, wherein they cannot be victorious unless they be with God's grace obedient to the Apostle, who says: ‘We are debtors, etc.’ ”[174]
St. Paul, who lived, so to speak, in an atmosphere of grace, yet found reason to exclaim: “I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man, but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members,”[175] and: “Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”[176] Surely it would be vain to expect the proud ideal of the Stoics or Pelagius' presumptuous claim of impeccability ever to be realized on earth except by a special privilege of grace, such as that bestowed upon the Blessed Virgin Mary.[177]
The Fathers follow St. Paul in describing the power of concupiscence, even after justification.[178]
b) A pertinent question, closely allied to the proposition just treated, is this: Can the human will, without the aid of grace, overcome all the grievous temptations to mortal sin by which it is besieged?
It is the common teaching of theologians that, without the aid of grace, man in the fallen state succumbs with moral (not physical) necessity to grievous temptations against the moral law, i.e. to mortal sin. This conclusion flows from the impossibility, which we have demonstrated above, of observing the whole law of nature for life or for any considerable length of time without the help of grace. If man were able to resist all violent temptations, he would be able to keep the whole law.
The theological teaching which we are here expounding may be formulated in two different ways: (1) No man can overcome all grievous temptations against the moral law without the aid of grace; (2) there is no man living who is not now and then assailed by temptations to which he would inevitably succumb did not God lend him His assistance.
In its first and rather indefinite form the proposition is attacked by Ripalda,[179] Molina,[180] and many later Scholastics. These writers argue as follows: It is impossible to deduce from Revelation or experience a definite rule by which man could determine the conditions on which the grievousness of a temptation depends. To [pg 066] say that a temptation is grievous when it cannot be resisted without the aid of grace, would be begging the question. Besides, the possibility always remains that there be men who, though in theory unable to withstand all grievous temptations without the aid of grace, de facto never meet with such temptations, but only with the lighter kind which can be overcome without supernatural help.
The second and more specific formulation of our proposition is supported by Sacred Scripture, which explicitly declares that all men are subject to temptations which they could not resist if God did not uphold them.[181]
If the just are obliged to watch and pray constantly, lest they fall,[182] this must be true in an even higher degree of sinners and unbelievers. St. Augustine writes against the Pelagians: “Faithful men say in their prayer: ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ But if they have the capacity [of avoiding evil], why do they pray [for it]? Or, what is the evil which they pray to be delivered from, but, above all else, the body of this death?... the carnal lusts, whence a man is liberated only by the grace of the Saviour.... He may be permitted to pray that he may be healed. Why does he presume so strongly on the capability of his nature? It is wounded, hurt, harassed, destroyed; what it stands in need of is a true confession [of its weakness], not a false defense [of its capacity].”[183]
c) Another question, on which Catholic divines disagree, is this: Can fallen man, unaided by grace, elicit an act of perfect natural charity (amor Dei naturalis perfectus)?
Scotus answers this question affirmatively,[184] and his opinion is shared by Cajetan,[185] Bañez,[186] Dominicus Soto,[187] and Molina.[188] Other equally eminent theologians, notably Suarez[189] and Bellarmine,[190] take the negative side.
In order to obtain a clear understanding of the question at issue we shall have to attend to several distinctions.
First and above all we must not lose sight of the important distinction between the natural and the supernatural love of God. Supernatural charity, in all its stages, necessarily supposes supernatural aid. The question therefore can refer only to the amor Dei naturalis.[191] That this natural charity is no mere figment appears from the ecclesiastical condemnation of two propositions of Baius.[192]
Another, even more important distinction is that between perfect and imperfect charity. Imperfect charity is the love of God as our highest good (amor Dei ut summum bonum nobis); perfect charity is the love of God for His own sake above all things (amor Dei propter se et super omnia). The holy Fathers and a number of councils[193] declare that it is impossible to love God perfectly without the aid of grace. The context and such stereotyped explanatory phrases as “sicut oportet” or “sicut expedit ad salutem,”[194] show that these Patristic and conciliary utterances apply to the supernatural love of God. Hence the question narrows itself down to this: Can fallen man without the aid of grace love God for His own sake and above all things by a purely natural love? In answering this question Pesch,[195] Tepe,[196] and other theologians distinguish between affective and effective love. They hold that whereas the amor affectivus in all its stages is possible without the aid of grace, not so the amor effectivus, since that would involve the observance of the whole natural law. This compromise theory can be demonstrated as highly probable from Scripture and Tradition. St. Paul says[197] that the gentiles knew God and should have glorified Him. This evidently supposes that it was possible for them to glorify God, and consequently to love Him affectively, as easily and with the same means by which they knew Him. [pg 069] Else how could the Apostle say of those gentiles who, “when they knew God, glorified him not as God,” that they “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator”?[198] This interpretation of Rom. I, 21 sqq. is explicitly confirmed by St. Ambrose when he says: “For they were able to apprehend this by the law of nature, inasmuch as the fabric of the cosmos testifies that God, its author, is alone to be loved, as Moses hath set it down in his writings; but they were made impious by not glorifying God, and unrighteousness became evident in them when, knowing, they changed the truth into a lie and refused to confess the one God.”[199]
3. It follows, by way of corollary, that Vasquez's opinion,[200] that there can be no good work without supernatural aid in the shape of a cogitatio congrua, is untenable, as is also the assertion of Ripalda[201] that in the present economy purely natural good actions are so invariably connected with the prevenient grace of Christ that they practically never exist as such.
a) Vasquez, whose position in the matter is opposed by most other theologians, contends[202] that no man can perform a good work or resist any temptation against the natural law (Decalogue) without the help of supernatural [pg 070] grace derived from the merits of Christ. To avoid the heretical extreme of Baianism, however, he makes a twofold limitation. He assumes with the Scotists that there is such a thing as a morally indifferent act of the will,[203] and defines the grace which he holds to be necessary for the performance of every morally good deed, as cogitatio congrua. This “congruous thought,” he says, is in itself, i.e. ontologically, natural, and can be regarded as supernatural only quoad modum et finem. The subtle argument by which Vasquez tries to establish this thesis is based principally on St. Augustine and may be summarized as follows: Whenever the Fathers and councils insist on the necessity of grace for the performance of good works, they mean all good works, natural as well as supernatural. The only alternative they know is virtue or vice, good or evil. Consequently the grace of Christ, in some form or other, is a necessary requisite of all morally good deeds.
As we have already intimated, we regard this opinion of the learned Spanish divine as erroneous.[204] Three solid reasons militate against it. The first is that, to guard against Baianism, Vasquez is compelled to assume the existence of morally indifferent acts of the will, which is untenable, as “St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and theologians generally teach that there is no such thing in the concrete as a morally indifferent act of the free will, and consequently, if the will is able, without grace, to perform acts that are not evil, it is also able [pg 071] to perform good acts.”[205] Second, Vasquez's theory counterfeits the notion of Christian grace. “Good thoughts” come so natural to man, and are so closely bound up with the grace of creation, that even Pelagius found no difficulty in admitting this sort of “grace.”[206] Surely fallen nature is not so utterly corrupt that a good child is unable to honor and love his parents without the aid of “grace” (in the sense of cogitatio congrua ex meritis Christi). The third reason which constrains us to reject Vasquez's theory, is that it leaves no room for natural morality (naturaliter honestum) to fill the void between those acts that are naturally bad (moraliter inhonesta, i.e. peccata) and such as are supernaturally good (supernaturaliter bona, i.e. salutaria). The existence of such naturally good acts would seem to be a highly probable inference from the condemnation, by Pius VI, of a certain proposition taught by the pseudo-Council of Pistoia.[207]
b) Martinez de Ripalda (+1648) tried to improve Vasquez's theory by restoring the Christian concept of grace and adding that Providence invariably precedes all naturally good works, including those performed by heathens and sinners, with the entitatively supernatural grace of illumination and confirmation.[208] In this hypothesis [pg 072] the necessity of grace is not theological but purely historic.[209]
Despite the wealth of arguments by which Ripalda attempted to prove his theory,[210] it has not been generally accepted. While some, e.g. Platel[211] and Pesch,[212] regard it with a degree of sympathy, others, notably De Lugo[213] and Tepe,[214] are strongly opposed to it. Palmieri thinks it may be accepted in a restricted sense, i.e. when limited to the faithful.[215]
Ripalda's hypothesis of the universality of grace is truly sublime and would have to be accepted if God's salvific will could be demonstrated by revelation or some historic law to suffer no exceptions. But Ripalda has not been able to prove this from Revelation.[216] Then, too, his theory entails two extremely objectionable conclusions: (1) a denial, not indeed of the possibility (Quesnel), but of the existence of purely natural good works, and (2) the possibility of justification without theological faith. Neither of these difficulties probably occurred to Vasquez [pg 073] or Ripalda,[217] because at the time when they wrote Pius VI had not yet condemned the teaching of the pseudo-Council of Pistoia,[218] nor had Innocent XI censured the proposition that “Faith in a broad sense, as derived from the testimony of creatures or some other similar motive, is sufficient for justification.”[219] If the love of God, even perfect love, (such as we have shown to be possible in the natural order), were of itself necessarily supernatural, as Ripalda contends, it would be possible for a pagan to receive the grace of justification without theological faith, which he does not possess, as is evident from the Vatican teaching that it is “requisite for divine faith that revealed truth be believed because of the authority of God who reveals it.”[220]
Thesis III: Not all actions performed by man in the state of mortal sin are sinful on account of his not being in the state of grace.
This is de fide.
Proof. Though this thesis is, strictly speaking, included in Thesis II, it must be demonstrated separately on its own merits, because it embodies [pg 074] a formally defined dogma which has been denied by the Protestant Reformers and by the followers of Baius and Jansenius. Martin Luther taught,—and his teaching was adopted in a modified form by the Calvinists,—that human nature is entirely depraved by original sin, and consequently man necessarily sins in whatever he does,[221] even in the process of justification. Against this heresy the Tridentine Council defined: “If any one shall say that all the works done before justification ... are indeed sins, ... let him be anathema.”[222]
The Protestant notion of grace was reduced to a theological system by Baius[223] and Jansenius,[224] whose numerous errors may all be traced to their denial of the supernatural order.
The Jansenist teaching was pushed to an extreme by Paschasius Quesnel, 101 of whose propositions were formally condemned by Pope Clement XI in his famous Constitution “Unigenitus.”[225] The Jansenistic teachings of the Council of Pistoia were censured by Pius VI, A. D. 1794, in his Bull “Auctorem fidei.” The quintessence of this heretical system is embodied in the proposition [pg 075] that whatever a man does in the state of mortal sin is necessarily sinful for the reason that he is not in the state of grace (status caritatis). Baius[226] and Quesnel[227] gave this teaching an Augustinian turn by saying that there is no intermediate state between the love of God and concupiscence, and that all the works of a sinner must consequently and of necessity be sinful. This heretical teaching is sharply condemned in the Bull “Auctorem fidei.”[228] Quesnel pushed it to its last revolting conclusion when he said: “The prayer of the wicked is a new sin, and that God permits it is but an additional judgment upon them.”[229]
The teaching of Baius and Quesnel is repugnant to Revelation and to the doctrine of the Fathers.
a) The Bible again and again exhorts sinners to repent, to pray for forgiveness, to give alms, etc. Cfr. Ecclus. XXI, 1: “My son, thou hast sinned? Do so no more: but for thy former sins also pray that they may be forgiven thee.” Ezech. XVIII, 30: “Be converted, and do penance for all your iniquities: and iniquity shall not [pg 076] be your ruin.” Dan. IV, 24: “Redeem thou thy sins with alms, and thy iniquities with works of mercy to the poor: perhaps he will forgive thy offences.” Zach. I, 3: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Turn ye to me, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will turn to you.” If all the works thus enjoined were but so many sins, we should be forced to conclude, on the authority of Sacred Scripture, that God commands the sinner to commit new iniquities and that the process of justification with its so-called dispositions consists in a series of sinful acts. Such an assumption would be manifestly absurd and blasphemous.
Quesnel endeavored to support his heretical conceit by Matth. VII, 17 sq.: “Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit; a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit.” But as our Lord in this passage speaks of prophets, the fruits he has in mind must obviously be doctrines not works.[230] And what if they were works? Are not doctrines and morals ultimately related, and may we not infer from the lives they lead (according to their doctrines) whether prophets are true or false? By their fruits (i.e. works) you shall know them (i.e. the soundness or unsoundness of the teaching upon which their works are based).
b) In appealing to the testimony of the Fathers the Jansenists were notoriously guilty of misinterpretation.
α) Origen plainly teaches that prayer before justification is a good work. “Though you are sinners,” he says, “pray to God; God hears the sinners.”[231] The seemingly contradictory text John IX, 31: “Now we know that God doth not hear sinners,”[232] is thus explained by St. Augustine: “He speaks as one not yet anointed; for God also hears the sinners. If He did not hear sinners, the publican would have cast his eyes to the ground in vain and vainly struck his breast saying: O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”[233] Moreover, since there is question here of extraordinary works and signs only (viz. miracles), the text is wholly irrelevant in regard to works of personal righteousness. St. Prosper teaches: “Human nature, created by God, even after its prevarication, retains its substance, form, life, senses, and reason, and the other goods of body and soul, which are not lacking even to those who are bad and vicious. But there is no possibility of seizing the true good by such things as may adorn this mortal life, but cannot give [merit] eternal life.”[234]
β) Baius and Quesnel succeeded in veiling their heresy by a phraseology of Augustinian color but with implications foreign to the mind of the Doctor of Grace. Augustine emphasized the opposition between “charity” and “concupiscence” so strongly that the intermediary domain of naturally good works was almost lost to view. Thus he says in his Enchiridion: “Carnal lust reigns where there is not the love of God.”[235] And in his treatise on the Grace of Christ: “Here there is no love, no good work is reckoned as done, nor is there in fact any good work, rightly so called; because whatever is not of faith is sin, and faith worketh by love.”[236] And again in his treatise on Grace and Free Will: “The commandments of love or charity are so great and such, that whatever action a man may think he does well, is by no means well done if done without charity.”[237] We have purposely chosen passages in which the “Doctor of Grace” obviously treats of charity as theological love, not in the broad sense of dilectio.[238] At first blush these passages seem to agree with the teaching of Baius, who says: “Every love on the part of a rational creature is either sinful cupidity, by which the world is loved, and which is forbidden by St. John, or that praiseworthy charity which is infused into the heart by the Holy Spirit, and by which we love God;”—[239] and with the forty-fifth [pg 079] proposition of Quesnel: “As the love of God no longer reigns in the hearts of sinners, it is necessary that carnal lust should reign in them and vitiate all their actions.”[240] Yet the sense of these propositions is anything but Augustinian. Augustine upholds free-will in spite of grace and concupiscence, whereas the Jansenists assert that the carnalis cupiditas and the caritas dominans produce their effects by the very power of nature, i.e. necessarily and of themselves.[241]
Besides this capital difference there are many minor discrepancies between the teaching of St. Augustine and that of Baius and Quesnel. Augustine, it is true, in his struggle with Pelagianism,[242] strongly emphasized the opposition existing between grace and sin, between love of God and love of the world; but he never dreamed of asserting that every act performed in the state of mortal sin is sinful for the reason that it is not performed in the state of grace. Scholasticism has long since applied the necessary corrective to his exaggerations. It is perfectly orthodox to say that there is an irreconcilable opposition between the state of mortal sin and the state of grace. “No one can serve two masters.”[243] This is not, however, by any means equivalent to saying, as the Jansenists do, that the sinner, not being in the state of grace, of necessity sins in whatever he does. Augustine expressly admits that, no matter how deeply God may allow a man to fall, and no matter how strongly concupiscence may dominate his will, he is yet able to pray for grace, which is in itself a distinctly salutary [pg 080] act. “If a sin is such,” he says in his Retractationes, “that it is itself a punishment for sin, what can the will under the domination of cupidity do, except, if it be pious, to pray for help?”[244] Compare this sentence with the fortieth proposition of Baius: “The sinner in all his actions serves the lust which rules him,”[245] and you will perceive the third essential difference that separates the teaching of St. Augustine from that of the Jansenists. The former, even when he speaks, not of the two opposing habits, but of their respective acts, does not, like Jansenism, represent the universality of sin without theological charity as a physical and fundamental necessity, but merely as a historical phenomenon which admits of exceptions. Thus he writes in his treatise On the Spirit and the Letter: “If they who by nature do the things contained in the law, must not be regarded as yet in the number of those whom Christ's grace justifies, but rather as among those whose actions (although they are those of ungodly men who do not truly and rightly worship the true God) we not only cannot blame, but actually praise, and with good reason, and rightly too, since they have been done, so far as we read or know or hear, according to the rule of righteousness; though were we to discuss the question with what motive they are done, they would hardly be found to be such as to deserve the praise and defense which are due to righteous conduct.”[246]
In conclusion we will quote a famous passage from St. Augustine which reads like a protest against the distortions of Baius and Jansenius. “Love,” he says, “is either divine or human; human love is either licit or illicit.... I speak first of licit human love, which is free from censure; then, of illicit human love, which is damnable; and in the third place, of divine love, which leads us to Heaven.... You, therefore, have that love which is licit; it is human, but, as I have said, licit, so much so that, if it were lacking, [the want of] it would be censured. You are permitted with human love to love your spouse, your children, your friends and fellow-citizens. But, as you see, the ungodly, too, have this love, e.g. pagans, Jews, heretics. Who among them does not love his wife, his children, his brethren, his neighbors, his relations and friends? This, therefore, is human love. If any one would be so unfeeling as to lose even human love, not loving his own children, ... we should no longer regard him as a human being.”[247] Tepe pertinently observes[248] that St. Augustine in this passage asserts not only the possibility but the actual existence of naturally good though unmeritorious works (opera steriliter [pg 082] bona), and that the theory of Ripalda[249] is untenable for this reason, if for no other, that the quoted passage is cited in Pius VI's Bull “Auctorem fidei.”[250]
Article 2. The Necessity Of Actual Grace For All Salutary Acts
Salutary acts (actus salutares) are those directed to the attainment of sanctifying grace and the supernatural end of man.
According to this double purpose, salutary acts may be divided into two classes: (1) those that prepare for justification (actus simpliciter salutares), and (2) those which, following justification, gain merits for Heaven (actus meritorii).
In consequence of the supernatural character of the acts which they comprise, both these categories are diametrically opposed to that class of acts which are good only in a natural way,[251] and hence must be carefully distinguished from the latter. The Fathers did not, of course, employ the technical terms of modern theology; they had their own peculiar phrases for designating what we call salutary acts, e.g. agere sicut oportet vel expedit, agere ad salutem, agere ad iustificationem, agere ad vitam aeternam, etc.[252]
1. Pelagianism.—Pelagianism started as a reaction against Manichaeism, but fell into the [pg 083] opposite extreme of exaggerating the capacity of human nature at the expense of grace. It denied original sin[253] and grace.
As the necessity of grace for all salutary acts is a fundamental dogma of the Christian religion, the Church proceeded with unusual severity against Pelagian naturalism and condemned its vagaries through the mouth of many councils.
a) Pelagius was a British lay monk, who came to Rome about the year 400 to propagate his erroneous views.[254] He found a willing pupil in Celestius, who after distinguishing himself as a lawyer, had been ordained to the priesthood at Ephesus, about 411.
The Pelagian heresy gained another powerful champion in the person of Bishop Julian of Eclanum in Apulia. Its strongest opponent was St. Augustine. Under his powerful blows the Pelagians repeatedly changed their tactics, without however giving up their cardinal error in regard to grace. Their teaching on this point may be summarized as follows: The human will is able by its natural powers to keep all the commandments of God, to resist temptation, and to gain eternal life; in fact it can attain to a state of holiness and impeccability[255] in which the petition “Forgive us our trespasses” no longer has any meaning except perhaps as an expression of humility.[256] In so far, however, as free-will is itself a gift of [pg 084] the Creator, man can perform no good works without grace. At a later period of his career Pelagius admitted the existence of merely external supernatural graces, such as revelation and the example of Christ and the saints,—which led St. Augustine to remark: “This is the hidden and despicable poison of your heresy that you represent the grace of Christ as His example, not His gift, alleging that man is justified by imitating Him, not by the ministration of the Holy Spirit.”[257] But even this external grace, according to Pelagius, does not confer the strength necessary to perform good works; it merely makes it easier to keep the commandments. Pelagius did not deny that justification and adoptive sonship, considered in their ideal relation to the “kingdom of Heaven,” as distinguished from “eternal life,”[258] are not identical in adults with the grace of creation, but he denied their gratuity by asserting that the free will is able to merit all these graces by its own power.[259]
Whatever may have been the variations of Pelagianism, it is patent from the writings of St. Augustine that its defenders one and all rejected the necessity and existence of the immediate grace of the will.[260] Their attitude towards the illuminating grace of the intellect is in dispute. Some theologians[261] think the Pelagians admitted, others[262] that they denied its existence. No matter what [pg 085] they may have held on this point, there can be no doubt that the followers of Pelagius conceived the object of grace to be nothing more than to facilitate the work of salvation.
b) Within the short span of twenty years (A. D. 411 to 431) no less than twenty-four councils occupied themselves with this new heresy.
At first the wily heretic succeeded in deceiving the prelates assembled at Lydda (Diospolis), A. D. 415; but the bishops of Northern Africa, among them St. Augustine, roundly condemned his teaching at two councils held with the sanction of Pope Innocent I at Carthage and Mileve in 416. Shortly afterwards, deceived by the terms of the creeds and explanations which they circulated, Pope Zosimus (417-418) declared both Pelagius and Celestius to be innocent. Despite this intervention, however, two hundred African bishops, at a plenary council held at Carthage, A. D. 418, reiterated the canons of Mileve and submitted them for approval to the Holy See. These proceedings induced Zosimus to adopt stronger measures. In his Epistula Tractoria (418) he formally condemned Pelagianism and persuaded the Emperor to send Julian of Eclanum and seventeen other recalcitrant bishops into exile. The canons of Carthage and Mileve were subsequently received by the universal Church as binding definitions of the faith. The most important of them in regard to grace is this: “If anyone shall say that the grace of justification is given to us for the purpose of enabling us to do more easily by the aid of grace what we are commanded to do by free-will, as if we were able, also, though less easily, to observe the commandments of [pg 086] God without the help of grace, let him be anathema.”[263] The Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (A. D. 431), with the approval of Pope Celestine I, renewed the condemnation of Celestius, but it was not until nearly a century later that Pelagianism received its death-blow. In 529 the Second Council of Orange defined: “If any one assert that he is able, by the power of nature, and without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost, who grants to all men the disposition believingly to accept the truth, rightly (ut expedit) to think or choose anything good pertaining to eternal salvation, or to assent to salutary, i.e. evangelical preaching, such a one is deceived by a heretical spirit.”[264] This decision was reiterated by the Council of Trent: “If any one saith that the grace of God through Jesus Christ is given only for this, that man may be able more easily to live justly and to merit eternal life, as if by free-will without grace he were able to do both, though hardly indeed and with difficulty, let him be anathema.”[265]
2. Pelagianism Refuted.—Sacred Scripture and the Fathers plainly teach that man is unable to perform any salutary act by his own power.
a) Among the many Biblical texts that can be quoted in support of this statement, our Lord's beautiful parable of the vine and its branches is especially striking. Cfr. John XV, 4 sq.: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.”[266]
α) The context shows that Jesus is not speaking here of purely natural works of the kind for which the concursus generalis of God suffices, but that He has in mind salutary acts in the strictly supernatural sense; and the truth He wishes to inculcate is that fallen nature cannot perform such acts except through Him and with His assistance. This supernatural influence is not, however, to be understood exclusively of sanctifying or habitual grace, because our Divine Saviour refers to the fruits of justification and to salutary works. “Of these he does not say: ‘Without me you can do but little,’ but: ‘Without me you can do nothing.’ Be it therefore little or much, it cannot be done without Him, without whom nothing can be done.”[267] If this was true of the Apostles, who were in the state of sanctifying grace,[268] it must be [pg 088] true a fortiori of sinners. Consequently, supernatural grace is absolutely necessary for the performance of any and all acts profitable for salvation.
β) Nowhere is this fundamental truth so clearly and insistently brought out as in the epistles of St. Paul, who is preëminently “the Doctor of Grace” among the Apostles.
There are, according to him, three categories of supernatural acts: salutary thoughts, holy resolves, and good works.
St. Paul teaches that all right thinking is from God. 2 Cor. III, 5: “Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.”[269]
He also declares that all good resolves come from above. Rom. IX, 15 sq.: “For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy; and I will shew mercy to whom I will shew mercy. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”[270]
He furthermore asserts that all good works come from God. Phil. II, 13: “For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.”[271] 1 Cor. XII, 3: “No man can say: Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost.”[272] Pronouncing the [pg 089] holy name of Jesus is obviously regarded as a salutary act, because mere physical utterance does not require the assistance of the Holy Ghost.[273] But the act as a salutary act is physically impossible without divine assistance, because it is essentially supernatural and consequently exceeds the powers of nature.[274]
b) The argument from Tradition is based almost entirely on the authority of St. Augustine, in whom, as Liebermann observes, God wrought a miracle of grace that he might become its powerful defender. There is no need of quoting specific texts because this whole treatise is interlarded with Augustinian dicta concerning the necessity of grace.
α) An important point is to prove that the early Fathers held the Augustinian, i.e. Catholic view. It stands to reason that if these Fathers had taught a different doctrine, the Church would not have so vehemently rejected Pelagianism as an heretical innovation. Augustine himself insists on the novelty of the Pelagian teaching. “Such is the Pelagian heresy,” he says, “which is not an ancient one, but has only lately come into existence.”[275] And this view is confirmed by Pope Celestine I, who declares in his letter to the Bishops of Gaul (A. D. 431): “This being the state of the question, novelty should cease to attack antiquity.”[276]
In fact the teaching of the Apostolic Fathers, although [pg 090] less explicit, agrees entirely with that of Augustine. Thus St. Irenaeus says: “As the dry earth, if it receives no moisture, does not bring forth fruit, so we, being dry wood, could never bear fruit for life without supernatural rain freely given.... The blessing of salvation comes to us from God, not from ourselves.”[277]
The necessity of grace is indirectly inculcated by the Church when she petitions God to grant salutary graces to all men—a most ancient and venerable practice, which Pope St. Celestine explains as follows: “The law of prayer should determine the law of belief. For when the priests of holy nations administer the office entrusted to them, asking God for mercy, they plead the cause of the human race, and together with the whole Church ask and pray that the unbelievers may receive the faith, that the idolaters may be freed from the errors of their impiety, that the veil be lifted from the heart of the Jews, and they be enabled to perceive the light of truth, that the heretics may return to their senses by a true perception of the Catholic faith, that the schismatics may receive the spirit of reborn charity, that the sinners be granted the remedy of penance, and that the door of heavenly mercy be opened to the catechumens who are led to the sacraments of regeneration.”[278] In matters of salvation [pg 091] prayer and grace are correlative terms; the practice of the one implies the necessity and gratuity of the other.[279]
β) That the Fathers not only conceived grace to be necessary for the cure of weakness induced by sin (gratia sanans) in a merely moral sense, but thought it to be metaphysically necessary for the communication of physical strength (gratia elevans), is evidenced by such oft-recurring similes as these: Grace is as necessary for salvation as the eye is to see, or as wings are to fly, or as rain is for the growth of plants.
It will suffice to quote a passage from the writings of St. Chrysostom. “The eyes,” he says, “are beautiful and useful for seeing, but if they would attempt to see without light, all their beauty and visual power would avail them nothing. Thus, too, the soul is but an obstacle in its own way if it endeavors to see without the Holy Ghost.”[280]
This view is strengthened by the further teaching of the Fathers that supernatural grace was as indispensable to the angels in their state of probation (in which they were free from concupiscence) and to our first parents in Paradise (gifted as they were with the donum integritatis), as it is to fallen man; the only difference being that in the case of the latter, grace has the additional object of curing the infirmities and overcoming the difficulties arising from concupiscence. In regard to the angels St. Augustine says; “And who made this will but He who created them with a good will, that is to say with a chaste love by which they should cleave to Him, in one [pg 092] and the same act creating their nature and endowing it with grace?... We must therefore acknowledge, with the praise due to the Creator, that not only of holy men, but also of the holy angels, it can be said that ‘the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given unto them.’ ”[281]
Equally convincing is the argument that Adam in Paradise was unable to perform any salutary acts without divine grace. “Just as it is in man's power to die whenever he will,” says St. Augustine, “... but the mere will cannot preserve life in the absence of food and the other means of life; so man in Paradise was able of his mere will, simply by abandoning righteousness, to destroy himself; but to have led a life of righteousness would have been too much for his will, unless it had been sustained by the power of Him who made him.”[282]
This is also the teaching of the Second Council of Orange (A. D. 529): “Even if human nature remained in the state of integrity, in which it was constituted, it would in no wise save itself without the help of its Creator. If it was unable, without the grace of God, to keep what it had received, how should it be able without the grace of God to regain what it has lost?”[283]
c) The theological argument for the metaphysical necessity of grace is based on the essentially supernatural character of all salutary acts.
α) St. Thomas formulates it as follows: “Eternal life is an end transcending the proportion of human nature, ... and therefore man, by nature, can perform no meritorious works proportioned to eternal life, but requires for this purpose a higher power,—the power of grace. Consequently, man cannot merit eternal life without grace. He is, however, able to perform acts productive of some good connatural to man, such as tilling the soil, drinking, eating, acts of friendship, etc.”[284] For the reason here indicated it is as impossible for man to perform salutary acts without grace as it would be to work miracles without that divine assistance which transcends the powers of nature.[285]
β) Catholic theologians are unanimous in admitting that all salutary acts are and must needs be supernatural; but they differ in their conception of this supernatural quality (supernaturalitas). The problem underlying this difference of opinion may be stated thus: A thing may [pg 094] be supernatural either entitatively, quoad substantiam, or merely as to the manner of its existence, quoad modum. The supernaturale quoad substantiam is divided into the strictly supernatural and the merely preternatural.[286] The question is: To what category of the supernatural belong the salutary acts which man performs by the aid of grace? Undoubtedly there are actual graces which are entitatively natural, e.g. the purely mediate grace of illumination,[287] the natural graces conferred in the pure state of nature, the actual graces of the sensitive sphere,[288] and the so-called cogitatio congrua of Vasquez.[289] The problem therefore narrows itself down to the immediate graces of intellect and will. Before the Tridentine Council theologians contented themselves with acknowledging the divinely revealed fact that these graces are supernatural; it was only after the Council that they began to speculate on the precise character of this supernaturalitas.
Some, following the teaching of the Scotist school, ascribed the supernatural character of salutary acts to their free acceptation on the part of God, holding them to be purely natural in their essence and raised to the supernatural sphere merely per denominationem extrinsecam.[290] This view is untenable. For if nature, as such, possessed the intrinsic power to perform salutary acts, irrespective of their acceptation by God, the Fathers and councils would err in teaching that this power is derived from the immediate graces of illumination and strengthening.[291]
Others hold that the salutary acts which grace enables man to perform, are supernatural only quoad modum; because while it is the Holy Ghost Himself who incites the natural faculties to salutary thoughts and good resolves, He does not eo ipso raise these thoughts and resolves to the supernatural plane. This theory, besides being open to the same objection which we have urged against the first, involves another difficulty. If all salutary acts were supernatural only quoad modum, sanctifying grace, which is as certainly supernatural in its essence as the beatific vision of God,[292] would cease to have an adequate purpose; for the intrinsic reason for its existence is precisely that it raises the nature of the justified into a permanent supernatural state of being.
A third school of theologians tries to solve the difficulty by adding to the natural operation of the intellect and the will some accidental supernatural modus. There are several such modi, which, though inhering in nature and really distinct therefrom, depend solely on the Holy Ghost, and consequently transcend the natural powers of man, e.g. the duration or intensity of a salutary act. This theory at first blush appears more plausible than the other two, but it cannot be squared with the teaching of Tradition. In the first place, the duration or intensity of a salutary act cannot affect its essence or nature. Then again, every such accidental supernatural modus is produced either by grace alone, or by grace working conjointly with free-will. In the former hypothesis it would be useless, because it would not render the free salutary act, as such, supernatural; in the latter case it could do no [pg 096] more than aid the will to do what is morally impossible, whereas every salutary act is in matter of fact a physical impossibility, that is, impossible to unaided nature.[293]
There remains a fourth explanation, which ascribes to every salutary act an ontological, substantial, intrinsic supernaturalitas, whereby it is elevated to a higher and essentially different plane of being and operation. This theory is convincingly set forth by Suarez in his treatise on the Necessity of Grace.[294]
It may be asked: If the salutary acts which we perform are supernatural in substance, why are we not conscious of the fact? The answer is not far to seek. Philosophical analysis shows that the intrinsic nature of our psychic operations is no more a subject of immediate consciousness than the substance of the soul itself. Consequently, sanctifying grace cannot reveal its presence through our inner consciousness. Having no intuitive knowledge of our own Ego, we are compelled to specify the different acts of the soul by means of their respective objects and their various tendencies (cognition, volition). To our consciousness the supernatural love of God does not present itself as essentially different from the natural.[295]
Article 3. The Necessity Of Actual Grace For The States Of Unbelief, Mortal Sin, And Justification
Every adult man, viewed in his relation to actual grace, is in one of three distinct states:
(1) The state of unbelief (status infidelitatis), which may be either negative, as in the case of heathens, or positive, as in the case of apostates and formal heretics;
(2) The state of mortal sin (status peccati mortalis), when the sinner has already received, or not yet lost, the grace of faith, which is the beginning of justification;
(3) The state of justification itself (status iustitiae sive gratiae sanctificantis), in which much remains yet to be done to attain eternal happiness.
The question we have now to consider is: Does man need actual grace in every one of these three states, and if so, to what extent?
1. Semipelagianism.—Semipelagianism is an attempt to effect a compromise between Pelagianism and Augustinism by attributing to mere nature a somewhat greater importance in matters of salvation than St. Augustine was willing to admit.
a) After Augustine had for more than twenty years vigorously combatted and finally defeated Pelagianism, some pious monks of Marseilles, under the leadership of John Cassian, Abbot of St. Victor,[296] tried to find middle ground between his teaching and that of the Pelagians. Cassian's treatise Collationes Patrum,[297] and the reports sent to St. Augustine by his disciples Prosper and Hilary, enable us to form a pretty fair idea of the Semipelagian system. Its principal tenets were the following:
α) There is a distinction between the “beginning of faith” (initium fidei, affectus credulitatis) and “increase in faith” (augmentum fidei). The former depends entirely on the will, while the latter, like faith itself, requires the grace of Christ.
β) Nature can merit grace by its own efforts, though this natural merit (meritum naturae) is founded on equity only (meritum de congruo), and does not confer a right in strict justice, as Pelagius contended.
γ) Free-will, after justification, can of its own power secure the gift of final perseverance (donum perseverantiae); which consequently is not a special grace, but a purely natural achievement.
δ) The bestowal or denial of baptismal grace in the case of infants, who can have no previous merita de congruo, depends on their hypothetical future merits or demerits as foreseen by God from all eternity.[298]
b) Informed of these errors by his disciples, St. Augustine energetically set to work, and in spite of his advanced age wrote two books against the Semipelagians, entitled respectively, De Praedestinatione Sanctorum and De Dono Perseverantiae. The new teaching was not yet, however, regarded as formally heretical, and Augustine treated his opponents with great consideration, in fact he humbly acknowledged that he himself [pg 099] had professed similar errors before his consecration (A. D. 394).[299]
After Augustine's death, Prosper and Hilary went to Rome and interested Pope Celestine in their cause. In a dogmatic letter addressed to the Bishops of Gaul, the Pontiff formally approved the teaching of St. Augustine on grace and original sin, but left open such other “more profound and difficult incidental questions” as predestination and the manner in which grace operates in the soul.[300] But as this papal letter (called “Indiculus”) was an instruction rather than an ex-cathedra definition, the controversy continued until, nearly a century later (A. D. 529), the Second Council of Orange, convoked by St. Caesarius of Arles, formally condemned the Semipelagian heresy. This council, or at least its first eight canons,[301] received the solemn approbation of Pope Boniface II (A. D. 530) and thus became vested with ecumenical authority.[302]
2. The Teaching of the Church.—The Catholic Church teaches the absolute necessity of actual grace for all stages on the way to salvation. [pg 100] We shall demonstrate this in five separate theses.
Thesis I: Prevenient grace is absolutely necessary, not only for faith, but for the very beginning of faith.
This is de fide.
Proof. The Second Council of Orange defined against the Semipelagians: “If any one say that increase in faith, as well as the beginning of faith, and the very impulse by which we are led to believe in Him who justifies the sinner, and by which we obtain the regeneration of holy Baptism, is in us not as a gift of grace, that is to say, through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, but by nature, ... is an adversary of the dogmatic teaching of the Apostles....”[303]
a) This is thoroughly Scriptural doctrine, as St. Augustine[304] and Prosper[305] proved. St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians had opened the eyes of Augustine, as he himself admits. 1 Cor. IV, 7: “For who distinguisheth[306] thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” The Apostle [pg 101] means to say: In matters pertaining to salvation no man has any advantage over his fellow men, because all receive of the grace of God without any merits of their own. This statement would be false if any man were able to perform even the smallest salutary act without the aid of grace.
With a special view to faith the same Apostle teaches: “For by grace you are saved through faith,[307] and that not of yourselves,[308] for it is the gift of God;[309] not of works,[310] that no man may glory.”[311] This, too, would be false if faith could be traced to a purely natural instinct or to some meritum de congruo in the Semipelagian sense.[312] Our Lord Himself, in his famous discourse on the Holy Eucharist, unmistakably describes faith and man's preparation for it as an effect of prevenient grace. “No man can come to me, except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him.”[313] The metaphorical expression “come to me,” according to the context, means “believe in me;” whereas the Father's “drawing” plainly refers to the operation of prevenient grace. Cfr. John VI, 65 sq.: “But there are some of you that believe not.... Therefore did I say to you, that no man can come to me, unless it be given him by the Father.” John VI, 29: “This is the work of God,[314] that you believe in him whom he hath sent.” According to our Saviour's own averment, therefore, preaching is of no avail unless grace gives the first impulse leading to faith.
b) As regards the argument from Tradition, it will suffice to show that the Fathers who wrote before Augustine, ascribed the beginning of faith to prevenient grace.
α) In the light of the Augustinian dictum that “prayer is the surest proof of grace,”[315] it is safe to assume that St. Justin Martyr voiced our dogma when he put into the mouth of a venerable old man the words: “But thou pray above all that the gates of light may be opened unto thee; for no man is able to understand the words of the prophets [as praeambula fidei] unless God and His Christ have revealed their meaning.”[316] Augustine himself appeals to SS. Cyprian, Ambrose, and Gregory of Nazianzus, and then continues: “Such doctors, and so great as these, saying that there is nothing of which we may boast as of our own, which God has not given us; and that our very heart and our thoughts are not in our own power, ... attribute these things to the grace of God, acknowledge them as God's gifts, testify that they come to us from Him and are not from ourselves.”[317]
β) Like the Pelagians in their teaching on original sin,[318] the Semipelagians in their teaching on grace relied mainly on the authority of St. John Chrysostom, from whose writings they loved to quote such perplexing passages as this: “We must first select the good, [pg 103] and then God adds what is of His; He does not forestall our will because He does not wish to destroy our liberty. But once we have made our choice, He gives us much help. For while it rests with us to choose and to will antecedently, it lies with him to perfect and bring to an issue.”[319]
To understand St. Chrysostom's attitude, and that of the Oriental Fathers generally, we must remember that the Eastern Church considered it one of its chief duties to safeguard the dogma of free-will against the Manichaeans, who regarded man as an abject slave of Fate. In such an environment it was of supreme importance to champion the freedom of the will[320] and to insist on the maxim: “Help yourself and God will help you.” If the necessity of prevenient grace was not sufficiently emphasized, the circumstances of the time explain, and to some extent excuse, the mistake. St. Augustine himself remarks in his treatise on the Predestination of the Saints: “What need is there for us to look into the writings of those who, before this heresy sprang up, had no necessity of dwelling on a question so difficult of solution as this, which beyond a doubt they would do if they were compelled to answer such [errors as these]? Whence it came about that they touched upon what they thought of God's grace briefly and cursorily in some passages of their writings.”[321] Palmieri remarks[322] that it would be easy to cite a number of similar passages from the writings of the early Latin Fathers before Pelagius, [pg 104] who certainly cannot be suspected of Semipelagian leanings.[323]
The orthodoxy of St. Chrysostom can be positively established by a twofold argument. (1) Pope Celestine the First recommended him as a reliable defender of the Catholic faith against Nestorianism and Pelagianism.[324] (2) Chrysostom rejected Semipelagianism as it were in advance when he taught: “Not even faith is of ourselves; for if He [God] had not come, if He had not called, how should we have been able to believe?”[325] and again when he says in his explanation of the Pauline phrase ἀρχηγὸς τῆς πίστεως:[326] “He Himself hath implanted the faith in us, He Himself hath given the beginning.”[327] These utterances are diametrically opposed to the heretical teaching of the Semipelagians.[328]
c) The theological argument for our thesis is effectively formulated by Oswald[329] as follows: “It is faith which first leads man from the sphere of nature into a higher domain,—faith is the beginning of salutary action. That this beginning must come wholly from God, and that it cannot come from man, goes without saying. By beginning we mean the very first beginning. Whether we call this first beginning itself faith, or speak, as the Semipelagians did, of certain preambles [pg 105] of faith,—aspirations, impulses, desires leading to faith (praeambula fidei: conatus, desideria, credulitatis affectus), makes no difference. Wherever the supernatural domain of salutary action begins—and it is divided off from the natural by a very sharp line—there it is God who begins and not man, there it is grace which precedes,—gratia praeveniens, as it has come to be known by a famous term.”
Indeed, if man were able by his own power to merit for himself the first beginnings of grace, then faith itself, and justification which is based on faith, and the beatific vision, would not be strictly graces.
As for the precise moment when prevenient grace begins its work in the soul, the common opinion is that the very first judgment which a man forms as to the credibility of divine revelation (iudicium credibilitatis) is determined by the immediate grace of the intellect,[330] and that the subsequent affectus credulitatis springs from the strengthening grace of the will. St. Augustine, commenting on 2 Cor. III, 5, demonstrates this as follows:
“Let them give attention to this, and well weigh these words, who think that the beginning of faith is of ourselves, and the increase of faith is of God. For who cannot see that thinking is prior to believing? For no one believes anything unless he has first thought that it is to be believed.... Therefore, in what pertains to religion and piety [of which the Apostle was speaking], if we are not capable of thinking anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, we are certainly not [pg 106] capable of believing anything as of ourselves, since we cannot do this without thinking, but our sufficiency, by which we begin to believe, is of God.”[331]
Thesis II: The sinner, even after he has received the faith, stands in absolute need of prevenient and co-operating grace for every single salutary act required in the process of justification.
This proposition also embodies an article of faith.
Proof. The Semipelagians ascribed the dispositions necessary for justification to the natural efforts of the will, thereby denying the necessity of prevenient grace. This teaching was condemned as heretical by the Second Council of Orange (A. D. 529),[332] and again by the Council of Trent, which defined: “If any one saith that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and without His help, man can believe, hope, love, or be penitent as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be bestowed upon him; let him be anathema.”[333]
a) The Scriptural texts which we have quoted against Pelagianism[334] also apply to the Semipelagian heresy.
Our Lord's dictum: “Without me you can do nothing,”[335] proves the necessity of prevenient and co-operating grace, not only at the beginning of every salutary act, but also for its continuation and completion. St. Augustine clearly perceived this. “That he might furnish a reply to the future Pelagius,” he observes, “our Lord does not say: Without me you can with difficulty do anything; but He says: Without me you can do nothing.... He does not say: Without me you can perfect nothing, but do nothing. For if He had said perfect, they might say that God's aid is necessary, not for beginning good, which is of ourselves, but for perfecting it.... For when the Lord says, Without me you can do nothing, in this one word He comprehends both the beginning and the end.”[336]
St. Paul expressly ascribes the salvation of man to grace when he says: “... with fear and trembling work out your salvation; for it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish.”[337]
The Tridentine Council, as we have seen, designates the four salutary acts of faith, hope, love, and penitence as a preparation for justification. Now St. Paul teaches: [pg 108] “The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope and in the power of the Holy Ghost;”[338] and St. John: “Charity is of God.”[339]
b) The argument from Tradition is chiefly based on St. Augustine, who in his two treatises against the Semipelagians, and likewise in his earlier writings, inculcates the necessity of grace for all stages on the way to salvation.
Thus he writes in his Enchiridion: “Surely, if no Christian will dare to say this: It is not of God that showeth mercy, but of man that willeth, lest he should openly contradict the Apostle, it follows that the true interpretation of the saying (Rom. IX, 16): ‘It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy,’ is that the whole work belongs to God, who both prepares the good will that is to be helped, and assists it when it is prepared. For the good will of man precedes many of God's gifts, but not all; and it must itself be included among those which it does not precede. We read in Holy Scripture, both ‘God's mercy shall prevent me’ (Ps. LVIII, 11), and ‘Thy mercy will follow me’ (Ps. XXII, 6). It precedes the unwilling to make him willing; it follows the willing to render his will effectual. Why are we taught to pray for our enemies, who are plainly unwilling to lead a holy life, unless it be that God may work willingness in them? And why [pg 109] are we admonished to ask that we may receive, unless it be that He who has created in us the wish, may Himself satisfy the same? We pray, then, for our enemies, that the mercy of God may precede them, as it has preceded us; we pray for ourselves, that His mercy may follow us.”[340]
That grace accompanies us uninterruptedly on the way to Heaven is also the teaching of St. Jerome: “To will and to run is my own act; but without the constant aid of God, even my own act will not be mine; for the Apostle says (Phil. II, 13): ‘It is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish.’... It is not sufficient for me that He gave it once, unless He gives it always.”[341]
St. Ephraem Syrus prays in the name of the Oriental Church: “I possess nothing, and if I possess anything, Thou [O God] hast given it to me.... I ask only for [pg 110] grace and acknowledge that I shall be saved through Thee.”[342]
The Second Council of Orange summarizes the teaching of Tradition on the subject under consideration.[343]
c) The theological argument for our thesis is based on the character of the adoptive sonship resulting from the process of justification.[344] This sonship (filiatio adoptiva) is essentially supernatural, and hence can be attained only by strictly supernatural acts, which unaided nature is both morally and physically incapable of performing.[345]
Thesis III: Even in the state of sanctifying grace man is not able to perform salutary acts, unless aided by actual graces.
This is likewise de fide.
Proof. The faculties of the just man are permanently kept in the supernatural sphere by sanctifying grace and by the habits of faith, hope, and charity. Hence the just man in the performance of salutary acts does not require the same measure of prevenient grace as the unregenerate sinner, [pg 111] who lacks all, or at least some, of the habits mentioned.
The question here at issue, therefore, can only be: Is actual grace (as gratia excitans s. vocans, not elevans) absolutely necessary to enable a man in the state of sanctifying grace to perform salutary acts? The answer is—Yes, and this teaching is so firmly grounded on Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and so emphatically sanctioned by the Church, that we do not hesitate to follow Perrone in qualifying it as de fide.[346] The councils in their teaching on the necessity of grace, assert that necessity alike for the justified and the unjustified. That of Trent expressly declares: “Whereas Jesus Christ Himself continually infuses His virtue into the justified,—as the head into the members, and the vine into the branches,—and this virtue always precedes and accompanies and follows their good works, which without it could not in any wise be pleasing and meritorious before God, we must believe that nothing further is wanting to the justified....”[347]
a) Our thesis can be easily proved from Holy Scripture. We have already shown that the Bible and Tradition make no distinction between the different stages on the way to salvation, or between different salutary acts, but indiscriminately [pg 112] postulate for all the illuminating grace of the intellect and the strengthening grace of the will. It follows that to perform salutary acts the justified no less than the unjustified need actual grace. Our Saviour's pithy saying: “Without me you can do nothing,”[348] was not addressed to unbelievers or sinners, but to His Apostles, who were in the state of sanctifying grace.[349]
This interpretation is fully borne out by Tradition. St. Augustine, after laying it down as a general principle that “We can of ourselves do nothing to effect good works of piety without God either working that we may will, or co-operating when we will,”[350] says of justified man in particular: “The Heavenly Physician cures our maladies, not only that they may cease to exist, but in order that we may ever afterwards be able to walk aright,—a task to which we should be unequal, even after our healing, were it not for His continued help.... For just as the eye of the body, even when completely sound, is unable to see, unless aided by the brightness of light, so also man, even when fully justified, is unable to lead a holy life, unless he be divinely assisted by the eternal light of righteousness.”[351]
This agrees with the practice of the Church in exhorting [pg 113] all men without exception, saints as well as sinners, to pray: “Precede, we beseech Thee, O Lord, our actions by Thy holy inspiration, and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance, that every prayer and work of ours may begin always from Thee, and through Thee be happily ended.”[352]
b) Some theologians have been led by certain speculative difficulties to deny the necessity of actual grace in the state of justification.
Man in the state of justification, they argue, is endowed with sanctifying grace, the supernatural habits of faith, hope, and charity, and the infused moral virtues, and consequently possesses all those qualifications which are necessary to enable him to perform salutary acts with the supernatural concurrence of God. Why should the will, thus supernaturally equipped, require the aid of additional actual graces to enable it to perform strictly supernatural, and therefore salutary, actions?[353]
We reply: The necessity of actual grace in the state of justification is so clearly taught by divine Revelation that no theological theory is tenable which denies it. Besides, the objection we have briefly summarized disregards some very essential considerations, e.g. that there remains in man, even after justification, concupiscence, which is accompanied by a certain weakness [pg 114] that requires at least the gratia sanans sive medicinalis to heal it.[354] Furthermore, a quiescent habitus cannot set itself in motion, but must be determined from without; that is to say, in our case, it must be moved by the gratia excitans to elicit supernatural thoughts and to will supernatural acts. Just as a seed cannot sprout without the aid of appropriate stimuli, so sanctifying grace is incapable of bearing fruit unless stimulated by the sunshine and moisture of actual graces. Man may perform purely natural acts even though he be in the supernatural state of grace; hence if any particular act of his is to be truly supernatural and conducive to eternal salvation, God must lend His special aid.[355]
Thesis IV: Except by a special privilege of divine grace, man, even though he be in the state of sanctifying grace, is unable to avoid venial sin throughout life.
This is likewise de fide.
Proof. The Pelagians held that man is able to avoid sin, nay to attain to absolute impeccability,[356] without supernatural assistance. Against this error the Second Council of Mileve (A. D. 416) defined: “It likewise hath pleased [the holy Synod] that whoever holds that the words of the Our Father: ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ when pronounced by saintly men, are pronounced in token of humility, but not truthfully, should be anathema.”[357] Still more to the [pg 115] point is the following declaration of the Council of Trent: “If any one saith that a man once justified ... is able, during his whole life, to avoid all sins, even those that are venial, except by a special grace from God, as the Church holds in regard of the Blessed Virgin; let him be anathema.”[358]
To obtain a better understanding of this Tridentine definition it will be well to ponder the following considerations:
The Council declares that it is impossible for man, even in the state of sanctifying grace, to avoid all sins during his whole life, except by virtue of a special privilege such as that enjoyed by the Blessed Virgin Mary.[359] A venial sin is one which, because of the unimportance of the precept involved, or in consequence of incomplete consent, does not destroy the state of grace. Such a sin may be either deliberate or semi-deliberate. A semi-deliberate venial sin is one committed in haste or surprise. It is chiefly sins of this kind that the Tridentine Council had in view. For no one would seriously assert that with the aid of divine grace a saint could not avoid at least all deliberate venial sins for a considerable length of time. The phrase “in tota vita” indicates a period of some length, though its limits are rather difficult to determine. Were a man to die immediately after justification, the Tridentine canon would [pg 116] per accidens not apply to him. As the Council says in another place that “men, how holy and just soever, at times fall into at least light and daily sins, which are also called venial,”[360] it is safe practically to limit the period of possible freedom from venial sin to one day. Theoretically, of course, it may be extended much farther. The phrase “omnia peccata” must be interpreted collectively, not distributively, for a sin that could not be avoided would cease to be a sin. For the same reason the term “non posse” must be understood of (moral, not physical) disability; in other words, the difficulty of avoiding sin with the aid of ordinary graces for any considerable length of time, is insuperable even for the just. This moral impossibility of avoiding sin can be removed only by a special privilege, such as that enjoyed by the Blessed Virgin Mary. It may incidentally be asked whether this privilege was also granted to other saints, notably St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist. Suarez lays it down as a theological conclusion that no human being has ever been or ever will be able entirely to avoid venial sin except by a special privilege, which must in each case be proved. Palmieri maintains that the moral impossibility of leading an absolutely sinless life without the special assistance of grace is taught by indirection in the canons of Mileve (416) and Carthage (418), which declare that no such life has ever been led by mortal man without that assistance.[361]
a) The Scriptural argument for our thesis was fully developed by the councils just mentioned. [pg 117] The careful student will note, however, that those texts only are strictly conclusive which positively and exclusively refer to venial sins. Thus when St. James says: “In many things we all offend,”[362] he cannot mean that all Christians now and then necessarily commit mortal sin. For St. John expressly declares that “Whosoever abideth in him [Christ], sinneth not.”[363]
It follows that not even the just can wholly avoid venial sin. Hence the most devout and pious Christian may truthfully repeat the petition of the Lord's Prayer which says: “Forgive us our trespasses,[364] as we forgive those who trespass against us.”[365] Profoundly conscious of the sinfulness of the entire human race, the author of the Book of Proverbs exclaims: “Who can say, My heart is clean, I am pure from sin?”[366]
Other Scripture texts commonly cited in confirmation of our thesis lack cogency, because they either deal exclusively with mortal sin or do not refer to sin at all. Thus Prov. XXIV, 16: “A just man shall fall seven times and shall rise again,” is meant of temporal adversities.[367] Eccles. VII, 21: “There is no just man [pg 118] upon earth, that doth good and sinneth not,”[368] can scarcely be understood of venial sin, because the sacred writer continues: “For thy conscience knoweth that thou also hast often spoken evil of others.”[369] 1 John I, 8: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,”[370] would be a splendid argument for our thesis, could it be shown that the Apostle had in mind only the venial sins committed in the state of justification. This is, however, unlikely, as the term peccatum throughout St. John's first Epistle[371] is obviously employed in the sense of mortal sin.[372]
b) Tradition is again most effectively voiced by St. Augustine, who writes: “There are three points, as you know, which the Catholic Church [pg 119] chiefly maintains against them [the Pelagians]. One is, that the grace of God is not given according to our merits.... The second, that no one lives in this corruptible body in righteousness of any degree without sins of any kind. The third, that man is born obnoxious to the first man's sin....”[373] To Pelagius' objection: “If all men sin, then the just must die in their sins,” the holy Doctor replies: “With all his acuteness he [Pelagius] overlooks the circumstance that even righteous persons pray with good reason: ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’... Even if we cannot live without sin, we may yet die without sin, whilst the sin committed in ignorance or infirmity is blotted out in merciful forgiveness.”[374] In another chapter of the same treatise he says: “If ... we could assemble all the afore-mentioned holy men and women, and ask them whether they lived without sin, ... would they not all exclaim with one voice: ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’?”[375]
c) We come to the theological argument. The moral impossibility of avoiding venial sin for any considerable length of time results partly from the infirmity of human nature (infirmitas naturae), partly from God's pre-established plan of salvation (ordo divinae providentiae).
α) The infirmity of human nature flows from four separate and distinct sources: (1) concupiscence (fomes peccati); (2) imperfection of the ethical judgment (imperfectio iudicii); (3) inconstancy of the will (inconstantia voluntatis); and (4) the weariness caused by continued resistance to temptation. In view of these agencies and their combined attack upon the will, theologians speak of a necessitas antecedens peccandi;—not as if the will were predestined to succumb to any one temptation in particular, but in the sense that it is morally unable to resist the whole series (suppositione disiunctâ). The will simply grows weaker and weaker, and in course of time fails to resist sin with sufficient energy.
Let us exemplify. The proofsheets of a book are scrutinized by several trained readers, yet in spite of the greatest care and many ingenious devices for the elimination of error, a perfect book, i.e. one entirely free from mistakes, is a practical impossibility. How much harder must it be for man to avoid moral lapses throughout his whole life, considering that he cannot choose his own time for meeting temptations, but must [pg 121] keep his mind and will under constant control and be prepared to resist the enemy at any moment.[376]
St. Thomas Aquinas says: “Man cannot avoid all venial sin, because his sensual appetite is depraved. True, reason is able to suppress the individual stirrings of this appetite. In fact, it is on this account that they are voluntary and partake of the nature of sin. But reason is not able to suppress them all [collectively], because, while it tries to resist one, there perhaps arises another, and, furthermore, reason is not always in a condition to exercise the vigilance necessary to avoid such impulses.”[377]
It follows that the necessitas peccandi antecedens does not destroy the liberty of the will or the moral imputability of those venial sins which a man actually commits; for it is merely a necessitas indeterminata, which refers not to certain particular instances, but to the one or other indeterminately. It follows further that God does not command the impossible when He insists that we should avoid venial sin, for He does not in each single case command something which is physically or morally impossible,[378] but merely demands a perfection which in itself is not entirely unattainable hic et nunc with the assistance of ordinary grace.[379]
β) The second theological reason for the impossibility of avoiding venial sin for any considerable time is based [pg 122] on the eternal scheme of salvation decreed by Divine Providence. This scheme of salvation must not, of course, be conceived as a divine precept to commit venial sins. It is merely a wise toleration of sin and a just refusal, on the part of the Almighty, to restore the human race to that entirely unmerited state of freedom from concupiscence with which it was endowed in Paradise, and which alone could guarantee the moral possibility of unspotted innocence. Both factors in their last analysis are based upon the will of God to exercise those whom He has justified in humility and to safeguard us against pride, which is the deadliest enemy of our salvation.[380] In making this wise decree God, of course, infallibly foresaw that no man (with the sole exception of those to whom He might grant a special privilege) would de facto be able to pass through life without committing venial sins. This infallible foreknowledge is based not alone on the scientia media, but also on the infirmity of human nature.
Hence Suarez was entirely justified in rejecting the singular opinion of de Vega,[381] that the Tridentine definition does not exclude the possibility of exceptions.[382]
Nevertheless the faithful are wisely warned against both indifference and despondency. “Let no one say that he is without sin, but let us not for this reason love sin. Let us detest sin, brethren. Though we are not without sins, let us hate them; especially let us [pg 123] avoid grievous sins, and venial sins, too, as much as we can.”[383]
Thesis V: No man can persevere in righteousness without special help from God.
This proposition is also de fide.
Proof. The Semipelagians asserted that man is able by his own power to persevere in righteousness to the end.[384] Against this teaching the Second Council of Orange defined: “Even those who are reborn and holy must implore the help of God, in order that they may be enabled to attain the good end, or to persevere in the good work.”[385] This definition was repeated in substance by the Council of Trent: “If any one saith that the justified either is able without the special help of God to persevere in the justice received, or that, with that help, he is not able; let him be anathema.”[386]
Perfect perseverance is the preservation of baptismal innocence, or, in a less strict sense, of the state of grace, until death. Imperfect perseverance is a temporary [pg 124] continuance in grace, e.g. for a month or a year, until the next mortal sin. Imperfect perseverance, according to the Tridentine Council, requires no special divine assistance (speciale auxilium).[387]
Final perseverance is either passive or active, according as the justified dies in the state of grace irrespective of his will (as baptized children and insane adults),[388] or actively coöperates with grace whenever the state of grace is imperilled by grievous temptation. The Council of Trent has especially this latter case in view when it speaks of the necessity of a speciale auxilium, because the special help extended by God presupposes coöperation with grace, and man cannot strictly speaking coöperate in a happy death. The Council purposely speaks of an auxilium, not a privilegium, because a privilege is by its very nature granted to but few, while the special help of grace extends to all the elect. This auxilium is designated as speciale, because final perseverance is not conferred with sanctifying grace, nor is it a result of the mere power of perseverance (posse perseverare). The state of sanctifying grace simply confers a claim to ordinary graces, while the power of perseverance of itself by no means insures actual perseverance (actu perseverare). The power of perseverance is assured by those merely sufficient graces which are constantly at the command of the righteous. Actual perseverance, on the other hand, implies a series of efficacious graces. God is under no obligation to bestow more than sufficient grace on any man; consequently, final perseverance is a special grace, or, more correctly, a continuous series of efficacious graces. [pg 125] The Council of Trent is therefore justified in speaking of it as “a great gift.”[389]
a) Sacred Scripture represents final perseverance as the fruit of prayer and as a special gift not included in the bare notion of justification.
α) Our Divine Saviour Himself says in His prayer for His disciples, John XVII, 11: “Holy Father, keep them in thy name whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we also are.”[390] St. Paul teaches in his Epistle to the Colossians: “Epaphras saluteth you ... who is always solicitous for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and full in all the will of God.”[391] Hence the necessity of constantly watching and praying: “Watch ye and pray that ye enter not into temptation.”[392]
β) That perseverance is not included in the bare notion of justification appears from such passages as these: Phil. I, 6: “Being confident of this very thing, that he who hath begun a good work in you, will perfect it unto the day of Christ Jesus.”[393] 1 Pet. I, 5: “Who, by the power of God, are kept by faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.”[394]
b) The threads of Tradition run together in the hands of St. Augustine, who has written a special treatise On the Gift of Perseverance.[395]
His main argument is based on the necessity of prayer. “Why,” he asks, “is that perseverance asked for from God, if it is not given by God? Is it a mocking petition inasmuch as that is asked of Him which it is known He does not give, but, although He gives it not, is in man's power?... Or is not that perseverance, perchance, asked for from Him? He who says this, is not to be rebuked by my arguments, but must be overwhelmed with the prayers of the saints. Is there indeed one among them who do not ask for themselves from God that they may persevere in Him, when in that very prayer which is called the Lord's—because the Lord taught it—whenever it is prayed by the saints, scarcely anything else is understood to be prayed for but perseverance?”[396] He then proceeds to show, in accordance with St. Cyprian's little treatise On the Lord's Prayer, that the seven petitions of the “Our Father” are all prayers for perseverance, and concludes as follows: “Truly in this matter let not the Church look for laborious disputations, but consider her own daily prayers. She prays that the unbelieving [pg 127] may believe; therefore God converts to the faith. She prays that believers may persevere; therefore God gives perseverance to the end.”[397] And again: “For who is there that would groan with a sincere desire to receive what he prays for from the Lord, if he thought that he received it from himself and not from the Lord?”[398]
c) From this teaching flows a corollary of great practical importance, to wit: The grace of final perseverance cannot be merited by good works, but it can be obtained by pious and unremitting prayer.
“This gift of God,” says St. Augustine, speaking of final perseverance, “may be obtained suppliantly [by prayer], but when it has been given, it cannot be lost contumaciously.”[399] And again: “Since it is manifest that God has prepared some things to be given even to those who do not pray for them, such as the beginning of faith, and other things not to be given except to those who pray for them, such as perseverance unto the end, certainly he who thinks that he has this latter from himself, does not pray to obtain it.”[400]
Between merit (meritum) and prayer (oratio, preces) there is this great difference, that merit appeals to God's justice, prayer to His mercy. If man were able to merit final perseverance by good works (meritum de condigno), God would be in justice bound to give him this precious grace. But this is plainly incompatible with the Catholic conception of final perseverance.
It may be asked: Is God determined by the meritum de congruo inherent in all good works to grant the gift of final perseverance as a reward to the righteous? Theologians are at variance on this point. Ripalda[401] thinks that this is the case at least with the more conspicuous good works performed in the state of grace. Suarez modifies this improbable contention somewhat by saying that prayer alone can infallibly guarantee final perseverance.[402] Our prayers are infallibly heard if we address the Father through Jesus Christ, because Christ has promised: “If you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you.”[403] To insure its being infallibly heard, prayer for perseverance must be made in the state of grace and unremittingly. True, Christ did not make sanctifying grace a necessary condition of efficacious prayer. But, as Suarez points out, prayer cannot be infallibly efficacious unless it proceeds from one who is in the state of grace, because the moral conditions that render it efficacious are found only in that state.[404] As to [pg 129] the second point, if we say that prayer for perseverance must be unremitting, we mean, in the words of the same eminent theologian, that it must continue throughout life and must be made with becoming trustfulness and zeal, especially when there is a duty to be fulfilled or a temptation to be overcome.[405]
Readings:—Suarez, De Gratia, 1. I-II.—*Tricassin, O. Cap., De Necessaria ad Salutem Gratia.—Byonius, De Gratiae Auxiliis, in Becanus, Theologia Scholastica, Rouen, 1658.—Scheeben Natur und Gnade, Mainz 1861.—Idem, Dogmatik, Vol. III, § 292-298, Freiburg 1882.—*Palmieri, De Gratia Divina Actuali, thes. 19-29, Gulpen 1885.—Oswald, Lehre von der Heiligung, § 9-11, 3rd ed., Paderborn 1885.—Tepe, Institutiones Theologicae, Vol. III, pp. 8-51, Paris 1896.—*Heinrich-Gutberlet, Dogmatische Theologie, Vol. VIII, § 396-416, Mainz 1897.—Chr. Pesch, Praelectiones Dogmaticae, Vol. V, 3rd ed., pp. 32 sqq., Freiburg 1908.—Schiffini, De Gratia Divina, disp. 2, Freiburg 1901.
On St. Augustine and his teaching cfr. *J. Ernst, Werke und Tugenden der Ungläubigen nach Augustinus, Freiburg 1871.—F. Wörter, Die Geistesentwicklung des hl. Augustinus bis zu seiner Taufe, Paderborn 1898.—Wolfsgruber, Augustinus, Paderborn 1898.—Boucat, Theologia Patrum Dogmatico-Scholastico-Positiva, disp. 3, Paris 1718.—*Zaccaria, Dissert. de Adiutorio sine quo non, in the Thesaurus Theol., Vol. V, Venice 1762.—O. Rottmanner, O. S. B., Geistesfrüchte aus der Klosterzelle, München 1908.—B. J. Otten, S. J., A Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. I, St. Louis 1917, pp. 306 sqq., 374 sq.
On the heresy of Pelagianism cfr. *F. Wörter, Der Pelagianismus nach seinem Ursprung und seiner Lehre, Freiburg 1874.—F. Klasen, Die innere Entwicklung des Pelagianismus, Freiburg 1882.—Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, Vol. II, 2nd ed., § 60 sqq., Freiburg 1895.—H. Zimmer, Pelagius in Irland, Berlin 1901.—Warfield, Two Studies in the History of Doctrine, New York 1897.—Tixeront, Histoire des Dogmes, Vol. II, 2nd ed., Paris 1909 (English tr., St. Louis 1914).—Pohle in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XI, pp. 604-608.—B. J. Otten, S. J., A Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. I, pp. 357 sqq.
On Semi-Pelagianism cfr. Suarez, De Gratia, Prolegom., V, 5 sqq.—Livinus Meyer, De Pelag. et Semipelag. Erroribus.—Wiggers, Geschichte des Semipelagianismus, Hamburg 1835.—A. Hoch, Lehre des Johannes Cassianus von Natur und Gnade, Freiburg 1895.—*A. Koch, Der hl. Faustus, Bischof von Riez, Stuttgart 1895.—Fr. Wörter, Zur Dogmengeschichte des Semipelagianismus, Münster 1900.—Sublet, Le Semipélagianisme, Namur 1897.—Tixeront, Histoire des Dogmes, Vol. II, 2nd ed., Paris 1909 (English tr., St. Louis 1914).—Pohle in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIII, pp. 703-706.—B. J. Otten, S. J., A Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. I, pp. 379 sqq.
On Jansenism cfr. *Steph. Dechamps, De Haeresi Ianseniana, Paris 1645.—Ripalda, De Ente Supernaturali, Vol. III: “Contra Baium et Baianos,” Cologne 1648.—Duchesne, Histoire du Baianisme, Douai 1731.—*Linsenmann, Michael Bajus und die Grundlegung des Jansenismus, Tübingen 1867.—A. Schill, Die Konstitution Unigenitus, ihre Veranlassung und ihre Folgen, Freiburg 1876.—Ingold, Rome et France: La Seconde Phase du Jansénisme, Paris 1901.—P. Minges, O. F. M., Die Gnadenlehre des Duns Scotus auf ihren angeblichen Pelagianismus und Semipelagianismus geprüft, Münster 1906.—Lafiteau, Histoire de la Constitution Unigenitus, 2 vols., Liège 1738.—Van den Peereboom, Cornelius Jansenius, Septième Évêque d'Ypres, Bruges 1882.—J. Forget in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, pp. 285-294.—B. J. Otten, S. J., A Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. II, pp. 507 sqq.
Section 2. The Gratuity Of Actual Grace
All grace ex vi termini is a free gift.[406] This applies particularly to Christian grace, which is so absolutely gratuitous that its gratuity, together with its necessity, may be called the groundwork of the Catholic religion.
1. State of the Question.—To show what is meant by “gratuity” (gratuitas) we must first explain the technical term “merit.”
a) “Merit” (meritum=that which is earned) is that property of a good work which entitles the performer to receive a reward from him to whose advantage the work redounds.
α) An analysis of this definition shows that (1) merit is found only in such works as are positively good; (2) merit and reward are correlative terms which postulate each other; (3) merit supposes two distinct persons, one who deserves and another who awards; (4) the relation between merit and reward is based on justice, not on benevolence or mercy. The last-mentioned determination is by far the most important of the four.[407]
β) Ethics and theology clearly distinguish two kinds of merit: (1) condign merit,[408] which is merit in the strict sense (meritum adaequatum sive de condigno), and (2) congruous merit (meritum inadaequatum sive de congruo), so called because of the congruity, or fitness, that the claim should be recognized. Condign merit presupposes some proportion between the work done and the reward given in compensation for it (aequalitas s. condignitas dati et accepti). It is measured by commutative justice and thus confers a real claim to a reward. For example, a conscientious workman has a strict claim to his wage. Owing to the lack of intrinsic proportion between service and reward, congruous merit can claim a remuneration only on grounds of fairness.
A distinction between these two kinds of merit was already made by the Fathers, though not in the terms of present-day theology. It was known to the older Scholastics and emphasized anew by Luther's famous adversary Johann Eck.[409]
No relation of strict justice is conceivable between the Creator and His creatures. On the part of God there can only be question of a gratuitous promise to reward certain good works,—which promise He is bound to keep because He is veracious and faithful.[410]
b) Two other terms must also be clearly defined in order to arrive at a true conception of the gratuity of Christian grace. They are prayer for grace,[411] and a capacity or disposition to receive it.[412] To pray means to incite God's liberality or mercy by humble supplication.
α) Despite the contrary teaching of Vasquez[413] and a few other theologians, congruous merit and prayer are really distinct because one can exist without the other. As the angels in Heaven are able to pray for us without earning a meritum de congruo, so conversely, all salutary works are meritorious even without prayer. Moreover, humble supplication does not involve any positive service entitled to a reward.
There is another important and obvious distinction, viz.: between purely natural prayer (preces naturae) and supernatural prayer inspired by grace (oratio supernaturalis).
β) Capacity or disposition, especially when it [pg 134] takes the form of preparation, may be either positive or negative. Positive capacity is defined as “that real mode by which a subject, in itself indifferent, becomes apt to receive a new form.” Such a capacity or disposition always entails a claim to its respective form.
Positive capacity or disposition differs from both prayer or quasi-merit (meritum de congruo). Quasi-merit is entitled to a reward on the ground of fairness, whereas the capacitas s. dispositio positiva is at most the fulfilment of an expectation based upon purely teleological considerations. Again, a reward can be bestowed upon some subject other than the one by whom the service was rendered, whereas the introduction of a new form necessarily supposes a subject disposed for or prepared to receive it. Thus only he who is hungry is disposed for the reception of food and entitled to have his craving satisfied.
Negative capacity consists in the absence or removal of obstacles that impede the reception of a new form, as when green wood is dried to become fit for burning.
c) There arises the important question whether or not divine grace is an object of merit, and if so, to what extent it can be merited by prayer and preparation.
It is of faith that the just man, by the performance of supernaturally good deeds, can merit de condigno an increase in the state of grace and eternal glory, and that [pg 135] the sinner is able to earn justification de congruo. On the other hand, it is also an article of faith that divine grace is strictly gratuitous.[414] The two dogmas seem incompatible, but they are not, as will become evident if we consider that the good works of the just and the salutary works of the sinner are entirely rooted in divine grace and consequently the merits which they contain are strictly merits of grace in no wise due to nature.[415] When we speak of the absolute gratuity of grace, therefore, we mean the very first or initial grace (gratia prima vocans), by which the work of salvation is begun. Of this initial grace the Church explicitly teaches that it is absolutely incapable of being merited; whence it follows that all subsequent graces, up to and including justification, are also gratuitous,[416] i.e. unmerited by nature in strict justice, in so far as they are based on the gratia prima.
2. The Gratuity of Grace Proved From Revelation.—Keeping the above explanation well in mind we now proceed to demonstrate the gratuity of divine grace in five systematic theses.
Thesis I: Mere nature cannot, in strict justice (de condigno), merit initial grace (gratia prima), nor, consequently, any of the series of subsequent graces in the order of justification.
This proposition embodies an article of faith.
Proof. It was one of the fundamental errors of Pelagius that grace can be merited by purely natural acts.[417] When, at the instance of the bishops assembled at Diospolis (A. D. 415), he retracted his proposition that “the grace of God is given according to our merits,”[418] he employed the term gratia Dei dishonestly for the grace of creation. The Second Council of Orange (A. D. 529) formally defined that grace cannot be merited, but is purely and strictly gratuitous.[419] And the Council of Trent declared: “In adults the beginning of justification is to be derived from the prevenient grace of God through Jesus Christ, that is to say, from His vocation, whereby, without any merits existing on their parts, they are called....”[420] The non-existence of merits prior to the bestowal of the prima gratia vocans, so positively asserted in this definition, plainly excludes any and all natural merit de condigno.
a) St. Paul demonstrates in his Epistle to the Romans that justification does not result from obedience to the law, but is a grace freely bestowed by God.
The Apostle regards the merciful dispensations of Providence in favor of the Chosen People, and of the entire sinful race of men in general, as so many sheer graces. Rom. IX, 16: “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.”[421] The gratuity of grace is asserted in terms that almost sound extravagant two verses further down in the same Epistle: “Therefore he hath mercy on whom he will; and whom he will, he hardeneth.”[422] The same truth is emphasized in Rom. XI, 6: “And if by grace, it is not now by works: otherwise grace is no more grace.”[423] Lest any one should pride himself on having obtained faith, which is the root of justification, by his own merits, St. Paul declares in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man may glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them.”[424] These and many similar passages[425] make it plain that grace cannot be merited without supernatural aid.
b) The leading champion of the dogma of the gratuity of grace among the Fathers is St. Augustine, who never tires of repeating that “Grace does not find merits, but causes them,”[426] and substantiates this fundamental principle thus: “Grace has preceded thy merit; not grace by merit, but merit by grace. For if grace is by merit, thou hast bought, not received gratis.”[427]
c) The theological argument is based (1) on the disproportion between nature and grace and (2) on the absolute necessity of grace for the performance of salutary works.
There is no proportion between the natural and the supernatural, and it would be a contradiction to say that mere nature can span the chasm separating the two orders. To assume the existence of a strict meritum naturae for it, would be to deny the gratuity as well as the supernatural character of grace. To deny these would be to deny grace itself and with it the whole supernatural order that forms the groundwork of Christianity. We know, on the other hand,[428] that grace is absolutely indispensable for the performance of salutary acts. Hence, to deny the gratuity of grace would be to credit nature with the ability to perform salutary acts by its own power, or at least to merit grace by the performance of naturally good deeds. In the first hypothesis grace would no longer be necessary for salvation; in the second, [pg 139] it would be proportionate to natural goodness, and therefore no grace at all. Consequently, the gratuity of grace cannot be consistently denied without at the same time denying its necessity.[429]
Thesis II: There is no naturally good work by which unaided nature could acquire even so much as an equitable claim to supernatural grace.
This proposition may be technically qualified as fidei proxima saltem.
Proof. The Semipelagians held that, though nature cannot merit grace in strict justice, it can merit it at least congruously, i.e. as a matter of fitness or equity.[430] This contention was rejected by the Second Council of Orange (A. D. 529), which defined that “God works many good things in man that man does not work, but man works no good deeds that God does not give him the strength to do.”[431] And again: “[God] Himself inspires us with faith and charity without any preceding [natural] merits [on our part].”[432] The phrase “without any preceding merits” (nullis praecedentibus meritis) excludes both the meritum de condigno and the meritum de congruo.
a) The Scriptural argument given above for thesis I also covers this thesis.
The Semipelagians quoted Matth. XXV, 15 in support of their teaching: “To one he gave five talents, and to another two, and to another one, to every one according to his proper ability.”[433] But this text is too vague to serve as an argument in such an important matter. Not a few exegetes treat it as a kind of rhetorical figure. Others, following the example of the Fathers, take “talents” to mean purely natural gifts, or gratiae gratis datae, while by “ability” (virtus) they understand the already existing grace of faith or a certain definite measure of initial grace.[434] But even if virtus meant natural faculty or talent, it cannot be identical with “merit.” Considering the common teaching of theologians that the angels were endowed with grace according to the measure of their natural perfection,[435] we may well suppose that man receives grace likewise according to his natural constitution (gratia sequitur naturam)—a predisposition or aptitude which God ordained in His infinite wisdom to be the instrument through which His graces should operate either for personal sanctification or the good of others.
b) St. Augustine and his disciples, in defending the orthodox faith against the Semipelagians, strongly insisted on the gratuity of the grace of faith, and above all of the initial gratia praeveniens.
α) St. Augustine comments on 1 Cor. IV, 7 as follows: “Nothing is so opposed to this feeling as for any one to glory concerning his own merits in such a way as if he himself had made them for himself, and not the grace of God,—a grace, however, which makes the good to differ from the wicked, and is not common to the good and the wicked.”[436] And in another place he says: “For it would not in any sense be the grace of God, were it not in every sense gratuitous.”[437]
β) Certain of the Greek Fathers have been suspected of Semipelagian leanings because they appear to assign the chief rôle in the business of salvation to nature.[438] A careful study of their writings, however, shows that these authors had in mind co-operating, not prevenient grace. The general teaching of the Orientals on the gratuity of grace is sufficiently indicated by the demand made at the Council of Lydda (A. D. 415), that Pelagius be compelled to retract the proposition: “Gratiam Dei secundum merita nostra dari.” The Fathers who have been accused of Semipelagian sympathies merely wished to emphasize free-will and to incite the morally indifferent to co-operate heartily with divine grace.
St. Chrysostom, in particular, expressly asserts the absolute gratuity of grace when he says of faith: “That which is a merit of faith, may not be ascribed [pg 142] to us, for it is a free gift of God,”[439] and directly contradicts Cassian and the Massilians when he declares: “Thou hast it not of thyself, thou hast received it from God. Hence thou hast received whatever thou hast, not only this or that, but all thou hast. For it is not thine own merit, but the grace of God. Although thou allegest the faith, thou hast received it by vocation.”[440]
c) The theological argument for our thesis may be succinctly stated thus: The grace of God is the cause of our merits, and hence cannot be itself merited. Being the cause, it cannot be an effect.[441]
Thesis III: Nature cannot merit supernatural grace even by natural prayer.
This thesis, like the preceding one, may be technically qualified as fidei proxima saltem.
Proof. Let us first clearly establish the state of the question. Our thesis refers to that particular kind of prayer (preces naturae) which by its intrinsic value, so to speak, obliges Almighty God to grant what the petitioner asks for, as is undoubtedly the case with supernatural prayer, according [pg 143] to our Saviour's own promise: “Ask and ye shall receive.”[442] The inefficacy of natural prayer asserted in our thesis, is not, as in the case of merit,[443] due to any intrinsic impossibility, but to a positive divine decree to grant supernatural prayer.
The Second Council of Orange defined against the Semipelagians: “If any one says that the grace of God can be obtained by human [i.e. natural] prayer, and that it is not grace itself which causes us to invoke God, he contradicts the prophet Isaias and the Apostle who say: I was found by them that did not seek me; I appeared openly to them that asked not after me.”[444]
a) Sacred Scripture teaches that, unless we are inspired by the Holy Ghost, we cannot pray efficaciously. It follows that to be efficacious, prayer must be an effect of prevenient grace. We should not even know for what or how to pray, if the Holy Ghost did not inspire us. Cfr. Rom. VIII, 26: “For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit himself asketh for us [inspires us to ask] with unspeakable groanings.”[445] 1 Cor. XII, 3: “No [pg 144] man can say: Lord God, but by the Holy Ghost.”[446] Supernatural union with Christ is an indispensable condition of all efficacious prayer. John XV, 7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you.”[447]
b) This is also the teaching of the Fathers. “Who would truly groan, desiring to receive what he prays for from the Lord,” says St. Augustine,[448] “if he thought that he received it from himself, and not from God? ... We understand that this is also itself the gift of God, that with a true heart and spiritually we cry to God. Let them, therefore, observe how they are mistaken who think that our seeking, asking, knocking is of ourselves, and is not given to us; and say that this is the case because grace is preceded by our merits; that it follows them when we ask and receive, and seek and find, and it is opened to us when we knock.”[449]
c) From the theological point of view the inefficacy of purely natural prayer in matters pertaining [pg 145] to salvation can be demonstrated thus: Revelation tells us that the work of salvation requires for its beginning an initial supernatural grace. Now prayer, that is to say, efficacious prayer, is in itself a salutary act. Consequently, there can be no efficacious prayer without prevenient grace, and purely natural prayer is inefficacious for salvation.
Ripalda holds that, in an economy different from the present, natural prayer would have a claim to be heard. This opinion can be defended without prejudice to the dogma of the gratuity of grace. No doubt God might condescend to hear such petitions if He would, though, of course, He is not bound to do so by any intrinsic power inherent in natural prayer. Unlike merit, prayer appeals to the mercy of God, not to His justice. Ripalda's theory, however, rests upon an unprovable assumption, namely, that man in the state of pure nature would be able to know of the existence, or at least the possibility, of a supernatural order and to strive for the beatific vision as his final end.[450]
Thesis IV: Man cannot move God to the bestowal of supernatural grace by any positive disposition or preparation on his part.
This thesis may be qualified as propositio certa.
Proof. Positive preparation or disposition for grace (capacitas sive praeparatio positiva) is practically on a level with natural prayer. The positive [pg 146] disposition for a natural good sometimes includes a certain demand to satisfaction, as e.g. thirst demands to be quenched. This is still more the case when the disposition has been acquired by a positive preparation for the good in question. Thus a student, by conscientiously preparing himself for examination, acquires a claim to be admitted to it sooner or later. Can this also be said of grace? Does there exist in man a positive disposition for grace in the sense that the withholding of it would grievously injure and disappoint the soul? Can man, without supernatural aid, positively dispose himself for the reception of supernatural grace, confident that God will reward his efforts by bestowing it on him? Both these questions must be answered in the negative.
a) If there were something in the natural make-up of man which would move the Almighty to give him grace, the bestowal of grace would no longer be a free act of God. But to assert the consequent would be Semipelagian, hence the antecedent must be false.
b) This truth can easily be deduced from the teaching of the Fathers in the Semipelagian controversy. They declare, in perfect conformity with St. Paul, that grace is bestowed gratuitously because God can give or withhold it as He pleases. St. Augustine says[451] that the grace of Baptism is granted freely, that is, without regard to any positive disposition on the part of the baptized [pg 147] infant. It should be remembered, moreover, that nature never existed in its pure form, and is now tainted by original sin.[452] Surely a nature tainted by sin cannot possibly possess the power of meriting divine grace.
c) The contention of the so-called Augustinians, that pure nature needs actual grace to save itself, and consequently has a claim to such grace at least ex decentia Creatoris and ex lege iustissimae providentiae, perilously resembles Baius' condemned proposition that the state of pure nature is impossible.[453]
Thesis V: Man may prepare himself negatively for the reception of supernatural grace by not putting any obstacles in its way.
This proposition is held by a majority of Catholic theologians (sententia communior).
Proof. The solution of this question is intimately connected with the famous Scholastic axiom: “Facienti quod est in se Deus non denegat gratiam,” that is, to the man who does what he can, God does not refuse grace. This axiom is susceptible of three different interpretations.
a) It may mean: Facienti quod est in se cum auxilio gratiae Deus confert ulteriorem gratiam, i.e., to him who does what he can with the help of supernatural grace, God grants further and more powerful graces up to justification. This is merely another way of stating the indisputable [pg 148] truth that, by faithfully coöperating with the grace of God, man is able to merit additional graces, and it holds true even of infidels and sinners. The first freely performed salutary act establishes a meritum de congruo towards other acts disposing a man for justification. And since the first as well as all subsequent salutary acts, in this hypothesis, are pure graces, this interpretation of our axiom is entirely compatible with the dogma of the gratuity of grace.[454]
b) Facienti quod est in se ex viribus naturalibus Deus non denegat gratiam (to him who does what he can with his natural moral strength, God does not refuse grace.) This does not mean that, in consequence of the efforts of the natural will, God may not withhold from anyone the first grace of vocation. In this sense the axiom would be Semipelagian, and has been rejected by a majority of the Schoolmen. It is said of Molina that he tried to render it acceptable by the hypothesis that God bound Himself by a contract with Christ to give His grace to all men who would make good use of their natural faculties. But how could the existence of this imaginary contract be proved? In matter of fact Molina taught, with a large number of other divines,[455] that God in the bestowal of His graces freely [pg 149] bound Himself to a definite rule, which coincides with His universal will to save all mankind. In the application of this law He pays no regard to any positive disposition or preparation, but merely to the presence or absence of obstacles which would prove impediments to grace. In other words, God, generally speaking, is more inclined to offer His grace to one who puts no obstacles in its way than to one who wallows in sin and neglects to do his share.[456]
c) Facienti quod est in se ex viribus naturae negative se disponendo [i.e. obicem non ponendo] Deus non denegat gratiam (to the man who does what he can with his natural moral strength, disposing himself negatively [i.e., by not placing any obstacle] God does not deny grace. In this form the axiom is identical with our thesis. The question arises: Can it be made to square with the dogma of the absolute gratuity of grace? Vasquez,[457] Glossner,[458] and some others answer [pg 150] this question in the negative, whereas the great majority of Catholic theologians hold with Suarez[459] and Lessius,[460] that there is no contradiction between the two. Though Lessius did not succeed in proving his famous contention that the axiom Facienti quod est in se Deus non denegat gratiam, was for three full centuries understood in this sense by the schools,[461] there is no doubt that many authorities can be cited in favor of his interpretation.[462]
The theological argument for our thesis may be formulated thus: The gratuity of grace does not imply that the recipient must have no sort of disposition. It merely means that man is positively unworthy of divine favor. Otherwise the Church could not teach, as she does, that the grace bestowed on the angels and on our first parents in Paradise was absolutely gratuitous, nor could she hold that the Hypostatic Union of the two natures in Christ, which is the pattern and exemplar of all true grace,[463] was a pure grace in respect of the humanity of our Lord. The dogma of the gratuity of grace is in no danger whatever so long as the relation between negative disposition and supernatural grace is conceived as actual (facienti=qui facit), not causal [pg 151] (facienti=quia facit). The motive for the distribution of grace is to be sought not in the dignity of human nature, but in God's will to save all men. We must, however, guard against the erroneous notion that grace is bestowed according to a fixed law or an infallible norm regulating the amount of grace in accordance with the condition of the recipient. Sometimes great sinners are miraculously converted, while others of fairly good antecedents perish. Yet, again, who could say that to the omniscient and all-wise God the great sinner did not appear better fitted to receive grace than the “decent” but self-sufficient pharisee?
Readings:—Hurter, Compendium Theologiae Dogmaticae, Vol. III, thes. 187.—Oswald, Lehre von der Heiligung, § 8, Paderborn 1885.—*Palmieri, De Gratia Divina Actuali, c. 3, Gulpen 1885.—Heinrich-Gutberlet, Dogmatische Theologie, Vol. VIII, § 417-420, Mainz 1897.—Chr. Pesch, Praelectiones Dogmaticae, Vol. V, 3rd ed., pp. 105 sqq., Freiburg 1908.—Schiffini, De Gratia Divina, pp. 468 sqq., Freiburg 1901.
Section 3. The Universality Of Actual Grace
The gratuity of grace does not conflict with its universality. Though God distributes His graces freely, He grants them to all men without exception, because He wills all to be saved.
This divine “will to save” (voluntas Dei salvifica) may be regarded in relation either to the wayfaring state or to the status termini. Regarded from the first-mentioned point of view it is a merciful will (voluntas misericordiae) and is generally called first or antecedent will (voluntas prima s. antecedens) or God's salvific will (voluntas Dei salvifica) in the strict sense of the word. Considered in relation to the status termini, it is a just will, as God rewards or punishes each creature according to its deserts. This second or consequent will (voluntas secunda s. consequens) is called “predestination” in so far as it rewards the just, and “reprobation” in so far as it punishes the wicked.
God's “will to save” may therefore be defined as an earnest and sincere desire to justify all men and make them supernaturally happy. As voluntas antecedens it is conditional, depending on the free co-operation of man; as voluntas consequens, on the other hand, it is absolute, because God owes it to His justice to reward or punish every man according to his deserts.[464]
Hence we shall treat in four distinct articles, (1) Of the universality of God's will to save; (2) Of the divine voluntas salvifica as the will to give sufficient graces to all adult human beings without exception; (3) Of predestination, and (4) Of reprobation.
Article 1. The Universality Of God's Will To Save
Although God's will to save all men is practically identical with His will to redeem all,[465] a formal distinction must be drawn between the two, (a) because there is a difference in the Scriptural proofs by which either is supported, and (b) because the latter involves the fate of the fallen angels, while the former suggests a question peculiar to itself, viz. the fate of unbaptized children.
Thesis I: God sincerely wills the salvation, not only of the predestined, but of all the faithful without exception.
This proposition embodies an article of faith.
Proof. Its chief opponents are the Calvinists and the Jansenists, who heretically maintain that God wills to save none but the predestined. Against Calvin the Tridentine Council defined: “If any one saith that the grace of justification [pg 154] is attained only by those who are predestined unto life, but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.”[466]
The teaching of Jansenius that Christ died exclusively for the predestined,[467] was censured as “heretical” by Pope Innocent X. Hence it is of faith that Christ died for others besides the predestined. Who are these “others”? As the Church obliges all her children to pray: “[Christ] descended from heaven for us men and for our salvation,”[468] it is certain that at least all the faithful are included in the saving will of God. We say, “at least all the faithful,” because in matter of fact the divine voluntas salvifica extends to all the descendants of Adam, as we shall show further on.[469]
a) Holy Scripture positively declares in a number of passages that God wills the salvation of all believers, whether predestined or not. Jesus Himself says in regard to the Jews: Matth. XXIII, 37: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that [pg 155] are sent unto thee, how often would I (volui) have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not (noluisti).” Two facts are stated in this text: (1) Our Lord's earnest desire to save the Jewish people, anciently through the instrumentality of the prophets, and now in His own person; (2) the refusal of the Jews to be saved. Of those who believe in Christ under the New Covenant we read in the Gospel of St. John (III, 16): “God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him[470] may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” However, since many who believe in Christ do actually perish,[471] the divine voluntas salvifica, in principle, extends not only to the predestined, but to all the faithful, i.e. to all who have received the sacrament of Baptism.
b) The teaching of the Fathers can be gathered from the quotations given under Thesis II, infra.
c) The theological argument may be briefly summarized as follows: God's will to save is co-extensive with the grace of adoptive sonship (filiatio adoptiva), which is imparted either by Baptism or by perfect charity. Now, some who were once in the state of grace are eternally lost. Consequently, God also wills the salvation [pg 156] of those among the faithful who do not actually attain to salvation and who are, therefore, not predestined.
Thesis II: God wills to save every human being.
This proposition is fidei proxima saltem.
Proof. The existence of original sin is no reason why God should exclude some men from the benefits of the atonement, as was alleged by the Calvinistic “Infralapsarians.” Our thesis is so solidly grounded on Scripture and Tradition that some theologians unhesitatingly call it an article of faith.
a) We shall confine the Scriptural demonstration to two classical passages, Wisd. XI, 24 sq. and 1 Tim. II, 1 sqq.
α) The Book of Wisdom, after extolling God's omnipotence, says of His mercy: “But thou hast mercy upon all, because thou canst do all things, and overlookest the sins of men for the sake of repentance. For thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which thou hast made.... Thou sparest all, because they are thine, O Lord, who lovest souls.”[472]
In this text the mercy of God is described as universal. Misereris omnium, parcis omnibus. This universality is based (1) on His omnipotence (quia omnia potes), which is unlimited. His mercy, being equally boundless, [pg 157] must therefore include all men without exception. The universality of God's mercy is based (2) on His universal over-lordship and dominion (quoniam tua sunt; diligis omnia quae fecisti). As there is no creature that does not belong to God, so there is no man whom He does not love and to whom He does not show mercy. The universality of God's mercy in the passage quoted is based (3) on His love for souls (qui amas animas). Wherever there is an immortal soul (be it in child or adult, Christian, pagan or Jew), God is at work to save it. Consequently the divine voluntas salvifica is universal, not only in a moral, but in the physical sense of the term, that is, it embraces all the descendants of Adam.
β) 1 Tim. II, 2 sqq.: “I desire therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men.... For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all.”[473]
The Apostle commands us to pray “for all men,” because this practice is “good and acceptable in the sight of God.” Why is it good and acceptable? Because God “will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” In other words, God's will to save is universal.
The question arises: Is the universality of the divine [pg 158] voluntas salvifica, as inculcated by St. Paul, merely moral, or is it physical, admitting of no exceptions? The answer may be found in the threefold reason given by the Apostle: the oneness of God, the mediatorship of Christ, and the universality of the Redemption. (1) “For there is [but] one God.”[474] As truly, therefore, as God is the God of all men without exception, is each and every man included in the divine voluntas salvifica. (2) “There is [but] ... one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” The human nature which Christ assumed in the Incarnation is common to all men. Hence, whoever is a man, has Jesus Christ for his mediator.[475] (3) Christ “gave himself a redemption [i.e. died] for all.” That is to say, God's will to save is co-extensive with His will to redeem. The latter is universal,[476] consequently also the former.[477]
b) The Fathers and early ecclesiastical writers were wont to base their teaching in this matter on the above-quoted texts, and clearly intimated that they regarded the truth therein set forth as divinely revealed. Passaglia[478] has worked out the Patristic argument in detail, quoting no less than two hundred authorities.
α) We must limit ourselves to a few specimen citations. St. Ambrose declares that God wills to save all men. “He willed all to be His own whom He [pg 159] established and created. O man, do not flee and hide thyself! He wants even those who flee, and does not will that those in hiding should perish.”[479] St. Gregory of Nazianzus holds God's voluntas salvifica to be co-extensive in scope with original sin and the atonement. “The law, the prophets, and the sufferings of Christ,” he says, “by which we were redeemed, are common property and admit of no exception: but as all [men] are participators in the same Adam, deceived by the serpent and subject to death in consequence of sin, so by the heavenly Adam all are restored to salvation and by the wood of ignominy recalled to the wood of life, from which we had fallen.”[480] St. Prosper concludes that, since all men are in duty bound to pray for their fellowmen, God must needs be willing to save all without exception. “We must sincerely believe,” he says, “that God wills all men to be saved, since the Apostle solicitously prescribes supplication to be made for all.”[481] The question why so many perish, Prosper answers as follows: “[God] wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth, ... so that those who are saved, are saved because He wills them to be saved, while those who perish, perish because they deserve to perish.”[482] In his Responsiones ad Capitula Obiectionum Vincentianarum the same writer energetically defends St. Augustine against the accusation that his teaching on [pg 160] predestination is incompatible with the orthodox doctrine of the universality of God's saving will.[483]
β) St. Augustine aroused suspicion in the camp of the Semipelagians by his general teaching on predestination and more particularly by his interpretation of 1 Tim. II, 4. The great Bishop of Hippo interprets this Pauline text in no less than four different ways. In his treatise De Spiritu et Litera he describes the divine voluntas salvifica as strictly universal in the physical sense.[484] In his Enchiridion he restricts it to the predestined.[485] In his Contra Iulianum he says: “No one is saved unless God so wills.”[486] In his work De Correptione et Gratia: “God wills all men to be saved, because He makes us to will this, just as He sent the spirit of His Son [into our hearts], crying: Abba, Father, that is, making us to cry, Abba, Father.”[487] How did St. Augustine come to interpret this simple text in so many different ways? Some think he chose this method to overwhelm the Pelagians and Semipelagians with Scriptural proofs. But this polemical motive can hardly have induced him to becloud an obvious text and invent interpretations which never occurred to any other ecclesiastical writer before or after his time. The conundrum can only be solved by the assumption that Augustine believed in a plurality of literal senses in the Bible and held that over and above (or notwithstanding) the sensus obvius [pg 161] every exegete is free to read as much truth into any given passage as possible, and that such interpretation lay within the scope of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost quite as much as the sensus obvius. In his Confessions[488] he actually argues in favor of a pluralitas sensuum. He was keen enough to perceive, however, that if a Scriptural text is interpreted in different ways, the several constructions put upon it must not be contradictory. As he was undoubtedly aware of the distinction between voluntas antecedens and consequens,[489] his different interpretations of 1 Tim. II, 4 can be reconciled by assuming that he conceived God's voluntas salvifica as antecedens in so far as it is universal, and as consequens in so far as it is particular. St. Thomas solves the difficulty in a similar manner: “The words of the Apostle, ‘God will have all men to be saved, etc.,’ can be understood in three ways: First, by a restricted application, in which case they would mean, as Augustine says, ‘God wills all men to be saved that are saved, not because there is no man whom he does not wish to be saved, but because there is no man saved whose salvation He does not will.’ Secondly, they can be understood as applying to every class of individuals, not of every individual of each class; in which case they mean that ‘God wills some men of every class and condition to be saved, males and females, Jews and Gentiles, great and small, but not all of every condition.’ Thirdly, according to the Damascene, they are understood of the antecedent will of God, not of the consequent will. The distinction must not be taken as applying to the divine will itself, in which there is nothing antecedent or consequent; but to the [pg 162] things willed. To understand which we must consider that everything, so far as it is good, is willed by God. A thing taken in its strict sense, and considered absolutely, may be good or evil, and yet when some additional circumstance is taken into account, by a consequent consideration may be changed into its contrary. Thus, that men should live is good; and that men should be killed is evil, absolutely considered. If in a particular case it happens that a man is a murderer or dangerous to society, to kill him becomes good, to let him live an evil. Hence it may be said of a just judge that antecedently he wills all men to live, but consequently he wills the murderer to be hanged. In the same way God antecedently wills all men to be saved, but consequently wills some to be damned, as His justice exacts. Nor do we will simply what we will antecedently, but rather we will it in a qualified manner; for the will is directed to things as they are in themselves, and in themselves they exist under particular qualifications. Hence we will a thing simply in as much as we will it when all particular circumstances are considered; and this is what is meant by willing consequently. Thus it may be said that a just judge wills simply the hanging of a murderer, but in a qualified manner he would will him to live, inasmuch as he is a man. Such a qualified will may be called a willingness rather than an absolute will. Thus it is clear that whatever God simply wills takes place; although what He wills antecedently may not take place.”[490]
Thesis III: The lot of unbaptized infants, though difficult to reconcile with the universality of God's saving will, furnishes no argument against it.
Proof. The most difficult problem concerning the divine voluntas salvifica—a real crux theologorum—is the fate of unbaptized children. The Church has never uttered a dogmatic definition on this head, and theologians hold widely divergent opinions.
Bellarmine teaches that infants who die without being baptized, are excluded from the divine voluntas salvifica, because, while the non-reception of Baptism is the proximate reason of their damnation, its ultimate reason must be the will of God.
a) This rather incautious assertion needs to be carefully restricted. It is an article of faith that God has instituted the sacrament of Baptism as the ordinary means of salvation for all men. On the other hand, it is certain that He expects parents, priests, and relatives, as his representatives, to provide conscientiously for its proper and timely administration. Sinful negligence on the part of these responsible agents cannot, therefore, be charged to Divine Providence, but must be laid at the door of those human agents who fail to do their duty. In exceptional cases infants can be saved even by means of the so-called Baptism of blood (baptismus sanguinis), i.e. death for [pg 164] Christ's sake. On the whole it may be said that God has, in principle, provided for the salvation of little children by the institution of infant Baptism.
b) But there are many cases in which either invincible ignorance or the order of nature precludes the administration of Baptism. The well-meant opinion of some theologians[491] that the responsibility in all such cases lies not with God, but with men, lacks probability. Does God, then, really will the damnation of these innocents? Some modern writers hold that the physical order of nature is responsible for the misfortune of so many innocent infants; but this hypothesis contributes nothing towards clearing up the awful mystery.[492] For God is the author of the natural as well as of the supernatural order. To say that He is obliged to remove existing obstacles by means of a miracle would disparage His ordinary providence.[493] Klee's assumption that dying children become conscious long enough to enable them to receive the Baptism of desire (baptismus flaminis), is scarcely compatible with the definition of the Council of Florence that “the souls of those who die in actual mortal sin, or only in original sin, forthwith descend to hell.”[494] A still more unsatisfactory supposition is that [pg 165] the prayer of Christian parents acts like a baptism of desire and saves their children from hell. This theory, espoused by Cardinal Cajetan, was rejected by the Fathers of Trent,[495] and Pope Pius V ordered it to be expunged from the Roman edition of Cajetan's works.[496]
A way out of the difficulty is suggested by Gutberlet and others, who, holding with St. Thomas that infants that die without Baptism will enjoy a kind of natural beatitude, think it possible that God, in view of their sufferings, may mercifully cleanse them from original sin and thereby place them in a state of innocence.[497] This theory is based on the assumption that the ultimate fate of unbaptized children is deprivation of the beatific vision of God and therefore a state of real damnation (poena damni, infernum), and that the remission of original sin has for its object merely to enable these unfortunate infants to enjoy a perfect natural beatitude, which they could not otherwise attain. It is reasonable to argue that, as these infants are deprived of celestial happiness through no guilt of their own, the Creator can hardly deny them some sort of natural beatitude, to which their very nature seems to entitle them. “Hell” for them probably consists in being deprived of the beatific vision of God, which is a supernatural grace and as such lies outside the sphere of those prerogatives to which human nature has a claim by the fact of creation. This theory would seem to establish at least some manner of salvation for the infants in question, and consequently, to vindicate the divine voluntas salvifica in the same measure. Needless to say, it can claim no more than probability, [pg 166] and we find ourselves constrained to admit, at the conclusion of our survey, that there is no sure and perfect solution of the difficulty, and theologians therefore do well to confess their ignorance.[498]
c) The difficulty of which we have spoken does not, of course, in any way impair the certainty of the dogma. The Scriptural passages cited above[499] clearly prove that God wills to save all men without exception. In basing the universality of God's mercy on His omnipotence, His universal dominion, and His love of souls, the Book of Wisdom[500] evidently implies that the unbaptized infants participate in that mercy in all three of these respects. How indeed could Divine Omnipotence exert itself more effectively than by conferring grace on those who are inevitably and without any fault of their own deprived of Baptism? Who would deny that little children, as creatures, are subject to God's universal dominion in precisely the same manner as adults? Again, if God loves the souls of men, must He not also love the souls of infants?
1 Tim. II, 4[501] applies primarily to adults, because strictly speaking only adults can “come to the knowledge of the truth.” But St. Paul employs certain middle terms which undoubtedly [pg 167] comprise children as well. Thus, if all men have but “one God,” this God must be the God of infants no less than of adults, and His mercy and goodness must include them also. And if Jesus Christ as God-man is the “one mediator of God and men,” He must also have assumed the human nature of children, in order to redeem them from original sin. Again, if Christ “gave himself a redemption for all,” it is impossible to assume that millions of infants should be directly excluded from the benefits of the atonement.[502]
Article 2. God's Will To Give Sufficient Grace To All Adult Human Beings In Particular
In relation to adults, God manifests His saving will by the bestowal of sufficient grace upon all.[503] The bestowal of sufficient grace being evidently an effluence of the universal voluntas salvifica, the granting of such grace to all who have attained the use of reason furnishes another proof for the universality of grace.
God gives all men sufficient graces. But He is not obliged to give to each efficacious graces, because all that is required to enable man to reach his supernatural destiny is coöperation with sufficient grace, especially with the gratia prima vocans, which is the beginning of all salutary operation.
To prove that God gives sufficient grace to all adult [pg 168] human beings without exception, we must show that He gives sufficient grace (1) to the just, (2) to the sinner, and (3) to the heathen. This we shall do in three distinct theses.
Thesis I: God gives to all just men sufficient grace to keep His commandments.
This is de fide.
Proof. The Tridentine Council teaches: “If any one saith that the commandments of God are, even for one that is justified and constituted in grace, impossible to keep; let him be anathema.”[504]
A contrary proposition in the writings of Jansenius[505] was censured by Pope Innocent the Tenth as “foolhardy, impious, blasphemous, and heretical.”
The Church does not assert that God gives to the just sufficient grace at all times. She merely declares that sufficient grace is at their disposal whenever they are called upon to obey the law (urgente praecepto). Nor need God always bestow a gratia proxime sufficiens; in many instances the grace of prayer (gratia remote sufficiens) fully serves the purpose.[506]
This dogma is clearly contained in Holy Scripture. We shall quote the most important texts.
a) 1 John V, 3 sq.: “For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not heavy. For whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the world.”[507] According to this text the “charity of God” manifests itself in “keeping his commandments” and “overcoming the world.” This is declared to be an easy task. Our Lord Himself says: “My yoke is sweet and my burden light.”[508] Hence it must be possible to keep His commandments, and therefore God does not withhold the absolutely necessary graces from the just.
St. Paul consoles the Corinthians by telling them that God will not suffer them to be tempted beyond their strength, but will help them to a happy issue, provided they faithfully coöperate with His grace. 1 Cor. X, 13: “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it.”[509] As it is impossible even for the just to overcome grievous temptations without supernatural aid,[510] and as God Himself tells us that we are able to overcome them, it is a necessary inference that He [pg 170] bestows sufficient grace. The context hardly leaves a doubt that St. Paul has in mind the just, for a few lines further up he says: “Therefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall.”[511] But there is no exegetical objection to applying the text to all the faithful without exception.[512]
b) This dogma is clearly set forth in the writings of the Fathers. Some of them, it is true, when combating the Pelagians and Semipelagians, defended the proposition that “grace is not given to all men,”[513] but they meant efficacious grace.
α) A typical representative of this group of ecclesiastical writers is the anonymous author of the work De Vocatione Omnium Gentium,[514] whom Pope Gelasius praised as “probatus Ecclesiae magister.” This fifth-century writer, who was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, discusses the question whether and in what sense all men are called, and why some are not saved. He begins by drawing a distinction between God's general and His special providence.[515] “It so pleased God,” he says, “to give His efficacious grace to many, and to withhold His sufficient grace from none, in order that it might appear from both [actions] that what is conferred upon a portion is not denied to the entire race.”[516]
β) The Jansenists appealed in favor of their teaching to such Patristic passages as the following: “After the withdrawal of the divine assistance he [St. Peter] was unable to stand;”[517] and: “He had undertaken more than he was able to do.”[518] But the two Fathers from whose writings these passages are taken (SS. Chrysostom and Augustine) speak, as the context evinces, of the withdrawal of efficacious and proximately sufficient grace in punishment of Peter's presumption. Had St. Peter followed our Lord's advice[519] and prayed instead of relying on his own strength, he would not have fallen. That this was the mind of St. Augustine clearly appears from the following sentence in his work De Unitate Ecclesiae: “Who shall doubt that Judas, had he willed, would not have betrayed Christ, and that Peter, had he willed, would not have thrice denied his Master?”[520]
c) The theological argument for our thesis may be formulated as follows: Since the state of grace confers a claim to supernatural happiness, it must also confer a claim to those graces which are necessary to attain it.
To assert that God denies the just sufficient grace to observe His commandments, to avoid mortal sin, and to persevere in the state of grace, would be to gainsay [pg 172] His solemn promise to His adopted children: “This is the will of my Father that sent me: that every one who seeth the Son and believeth in him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up in the last day.”[521] Consequently, God owes it to His own fidelity to bestow sufficient graces upon the just.
Again, according to the plain teaching of Revelation, the just are obliged, under pain of sin, to observe the commandments of God and the precepts of His Church.[522] But this is impossible without the aid of grace. Consequently, God grants at least sufficient grace to his servants, for ad impossibile nemo tenetur.[523]
Thesis II: In regard to Christians guilty of mortal sin we must hold: (1) that ordinary sinners always receive sufficient grace to avoid mortal sin and do penance; (2) that God never entirely withdraws His grace even from the obdurate.
The first part of this thesis embodies a theological conclusion; the second states the common teaching of Catholic theologians.
1. Proof of the First Part. The distinction here drawn between “ordinary” and “obdurate” sinners has its basis in revelation and is clearly demanded by the different degrees of certainty attaching to the two parts of our thesis.
An “ordinary” sinner is a Christian who has lost sanctifying grace by a grievous sin. An “obdurate” sinner [pg 173] is one who, by repeatedly and maliciously transgressing the laws of God, has dulled his intellect and hardened his will against salutary inspirations. A man may be an habitual sinner (consuetudinarius) and a backslider, without being obdurate, or, which comes to the same, impenitent. Weakness is not malice, though sinful habits often beget impenitence, which is one of the sins against the Holy Ghost and the most formidable obstacle in the way of conversion.
With regard to ordinary sinners, our thesis asserts that they always receive sufficient grace to avoid mortal sin and do penance.
a) Experience teaches that a man falls deeper and deeper if he does not hasten to do penance after committing a mortal sin. But this is not the fault of Almighty God, who never withholds His grace; it is wholly the fault of the sinner who fails to coöperate with the proffered supernatural assistance.
α) A sufficient Scriptural argument for this part of our thesis is contained in the texts cited in support of Thesis I. If it is true that God suffers no one to be tempted beyond his strength,[524] this must surely apply to Christians who have had the misfortune of committing mortal sin. St. John says that the commandments of God “are not heavy” and that faith is “the victory which overcometh the world.”[525] Faith in Christ remains in the Christian, even though he be guilty [pg 174] of mortal sin, and consequently if he wills, he is able, by the aid of sufficient grace, to overcome the “world,” i.e. the temptations arising from concupiscence,[526] and thus to cease committing mortal sins.
β) As for the teaching of Tradition, St. Augustine lays down two theological principles which apply to saint and sinner alike.
“God does not enjoin impossibilities,” he says, “but in His injunctions counsels you both to do what you can for yourself, and to ask His aid in what you cannot do.”[527] It follows that the sinner always receives at least the grace of prayer, which Augustine therefore calls gratia initialis sive parva, and of which he says that its right use ensures the gratia magna.
The second principle is this: “Cum lege coniuncta est gratia, quâ lex observari possit.” That is, every divine law, by special ordinance, carries with it the grace by which it may be observed. In other words, the laws of God can always be obeyed because the lawgiver never fails to grant sufficient grace to keep them.[528]
b) That the sinner always receives sufficient grace to be converted, follows from the Scriptural injunction of conversion. If conversion to God is a duty, and to comply with this duty is impossible without the aid of grace,[529] the divine [pg 175] command obviously implies the bestowal of sufficient grace.
That conversion is a duty follows from such Scriptural texts as these: “As I live, saith the Lord God, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways!”[530] “The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some imagine, but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.”[531]
This teaching is faithfully echoed by Tradition.
2. Proof of the Second Part. Obduracy is a serious obstacle to conversion because the obdurate sinner has confirmed his will in malice[532] and by systematic resistance diminished the influence of grace. The question here is whether or not God in such cases eventually withdraws His grace altogether.
Some rigorists hold that He does so, with the purpose of sparing the sinner greater tortures in hell.[533] Though this assertion cannot be said to contravene the dogma of the universality of God's salvific will, (its defenders do not deny that He faithfully does His share to save these unfortunate reprobates), we prefer to adopt the sententia [pg 176] communis, that God grants even the most obdurate sinner—at least now and then, e.g. during a mission or on the occasion of some terrible catastrophe—sufficient grace to be converted. The theological reasons for this opinion, which we hold to be the true one, coincide in their last analysis with those set forth in the first part of our thesis.
a) Sacred Scripture, in speaking of the duty of repentance, makes no distinction between ordinary and obdurate sinners. On the contrary, the Book of Wisdom points to one of the most wicked and impenitent of nations, the Canaanites, as a shining object of divine mercy and patience.[534] According to St. Paul, God calls especially upon hardened and impenitent sinners to do penance. Rom. II, 4 sq.: “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and patience, and long suffering? Knowest thou not that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance? But according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest up to thyself wrath, against the day of wrath, and revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works.”[535]
There are some Scriptural passages which seem to imply that God withdraws His grace from those who are [pg 177] obdurate, nay, that He Himself hardens their hearts in punishment of sin. Thus the Lord says of Pharao: “I shall harden his heart,”[536] and Moses tells us: “The Lord hardened Pharao's heart, and he harkened not unto them.”[537] But it would be wrong to assume that this denotes a positive action on the part of God. Pharao, as we are told further on, “hardened his own heart” (ingravavit cor suum).[538] The fault in all cases lies with the sinner, who obstinately resists the call of grace. God's co-operation in the matter is merely indirect. The greater and stronger graces which He grants to ordinary sinners, He withholds from the obdurate in punishment of their malice. This is, however, by no means tantamount to a withdrawal of sufficient grace.[539]
b) The Fathers speak of God's way of dealing with obdurate sinners in a manner which clearly shows their belief that He never entirely withdraws His mercy. They insist that the light of grace is never extinguished in the present life. “God gave them over to a reprobate mind,” says St. Augustine, “for such is the blindness of the mind. Whosoever is given over thereunto, is shut out from the interior light of God: but not wholly as yet, whilst he is in this life. For there is ‘outer darkness,’ which is understood to belong rather to the day of judgment; that he should rather be wholly without [pg 178] God, whosoever, whilst there is time, refuses correction.”[540]
It follows that no sinner, how desperate soever his case may appear, need be despaired of. As long as there is life there is hope.[541] The Fathers consistently teach that the reason why reprobates are lost is not lack of grace but their own malice. Thus St. Chrysostom comments on Isaias' prophecy regarding the impenitence of the Jews: “The reason they did not believe was not that Isaias had predicted their unbelief, but his prediction was based on the fact that they would not believe. They were unable to believe, i.e. they had not the will to believe.”[542]
c) The theological argument for our thesis is well stated by St. Thomas. He distinguishes between obstinatio perfecta and obstinatio imperfecta and says: Perfect obstinacy exists only in hell. Imperfect obstinacy is that of a sinner who has his will so firmly set on evil that he is incapable of any but the faintest impulses towards virtue, though even these are sufficient to prepare the way for grace.[543] “If any one falls into sin after [pg 179] having received Baptism,” says the Fourth Lateran Council, “he can always be restored by sincere penance.”[544] As the power of the keys comprises all sins, even those against the Holy Ghost, so divine grace is held out to all sinners. The Montanistic doctrine of the unforgivableness of the “three capital sins” (apostasy, murder, and adultery) was already condemned as heretical during the life-time of Tertullian. The sinner can obtain forgiveness only by receiving the sacrament of Penance or making an act of perfect contrition.[545] Justly, therefore, does the Church regard despair of God's mercy as an additional grievous sin. If the rigorists were right in asserting that God in the end absolutely abandons the sinner, there could be no hope of forgiveness, and despair would be justified.
Thesis III: The heathens, too, receive sufficient graces for salvation.
This proposition may be qualified as certa.
Proof. The “heathens” are those whom the Gospel has not yet reached. They are called infideles negativi in contradistinction to the infideles positivi, i.e. apostates and formal heretics who have fallen away from the faith. We assert that God gives to the heathens sufficient grace to know the truth and be saved. Pope Alexander VIII, [pg 180] on December 7, 1690, condemned Arnauld's Jansenistic proposition that “pagans, Jews, heretics, and others of the same kind experience no influence whatever from Christ, and it may therefore be rightly inferred that there is in them a nude and helpless will, lacking sufficient grace.”[546] A proposition of similar import, set up by Quesnel, was censured by Clement XI.[547] Though not formally defined, it is a certain truth—deducible from the infallible teaching of the Church—that God does not permit any one to perish for want of grace.
a) The Biblical argument for our thesis is based on the dogma that God wills all men to be saved. 1 Tim. II, 4: “[God] will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth [i.e. the true faith].” In speaking of the “day of wrath,” St. Paul emphasizes the fact that the Almighty Judge “will render to every man according to his works,”—eternal life to the good, wrath and damnation to the wicked.[548] And he continues: “But glory, and honor, and peace to every one that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek; for there is no respect of persons [pg 181] with God.”[549] “Greek” is here evidently synonymous with gentile or heathen. It follows that the heathens are able to perform supernatural salutary acts with the aid of grace, and that they will receive the reward of eternal beatitude if they lead a good life.
In another passage (1 Tim. IV, 10) the Apostle calls Christ “the Saviour of all men, especially of the faithful.”[550] Consequently, Christ is the Saviour also of unbelievers and heathens.[551]
b) St. Paul's teaching is faithfully echoed by the Fathers. Thus St. Clement of Rome,[552] in commenting on the penitential sermons of Noë and the prophet Jonas, says: “We may roam through all the ages of history and learn that the Lord in all generations[553] gave opportunity for penance to all who wished to be converted, ... even though they were strangers to him.”[554]
St. Chrysostom says in explanation of John I, 9: “If He enlightens every man that comes into this world, how is it that so many are without light? For not all know Christ. Most assuredly He illumines, so far as He is concerned.... For grace is poured out over all. It flees or despises no one, be he Jew, Greek, barbarian or Scythian, freedman or slave, man or woman, old or [pg 182] young. It is the same for all, easily attainable by all, it calls upon all with equal regard. As for those who neglect to make use of this gift, they should ascribe their blindness to themselves.”[555]
Similar expressions can be culled from the anonymous work De Vocatione Omnium Gentium[556] and from the writings of SS. Prosper and Fulgentius, and especially from those of Orosius, who says that grace is given to all men, including the heathen, without exception and at all times.[557]
c) Catholic theologians have devoted considerable thought to the question how God provides for the salvation of the heathen.
To the uncivilized tribes may be applied what has been said regarding the fate of unbaptized infants. The real problem is: How does the merciful Creator provide for those who are sufficiently intelligent to be able to speculate on God, the soul, the future destiny of man, etc.? Holy Scripture teaches: “Without faith it is impossible to please God, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and is a rewarder to them that seek him.”[558] Faith here means, not any kind of religious belief, but that theological faith which the Tridentine Council calls “the beginning, the foundation, and the root of all justification.”[559] Mere intellectual assent to the existence of God, immortality, and retribution would not be sufficient for salvation, even if elevated to the supernatural sphere and transfigured by grace. This is [pg 183] evident from the condemnation, by Pope Innocent XI, of the proposition that “Faith in a wide sense, based on the testimony of the created universe, or some other similar motive, is sufficient unto justification.”[560] The only sort of faith that results in justification, according to the Vatican Council, is “a supernatural virtue, whereby, inspired and assisted by the grace of God, we believe that the things which He has revealed are true; not because of the intrinsic truth of the things, viewed by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself, who reveals them, and who can neither be deceived nor deceive.”[561] Of special importance is the following declaration by the same Council: “Since without faith it is impossible to please God and to attain to the fellowship of His children, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification....”[562]
The Catechism demands of every one who desires to be saved that he have a supernatural belief in six distinct truths: the existence of God, retribution in the next world, the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, the immortality of the soul, and the necessity of grace. The first two are certainly necessary for salvation, both fide explicitâ and necessitate medii. With regard to the other four there is a difference of opinion among theologians. We base our argumentation on the stricter, though not absolutely certain view, that all six articles must be believed necessitate medii. On this basis God's method of [pg 184] providing sufficient graces for the heathen may be explained in one of two ways, according as a fides explicita is demanded from them with regard to all the above-mentioned dogmas, or a fides implicita is deemed sufficient in regard to all but the first two. By fides explicita we understand the express and fully developed faith of devout Christians; by fides implicita, an undeveloped belief of desire or, in other words, general readiness to believe whatever God has revealed.
α) The defenders of the fides explicita theory are compelled to assume that God must somehow reveal to each individual heathen who lives according to the dictates of his conscience, the six truths necessary for salvation. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”[563]
But how can the gentiles believe in a revelation that has never been preached to them? Here is an undeniable difficulty. Some theologians say: God enlightens them interiorly about the truths necessary for salvation; or He miraculously sends them an apostle, as He sent St. Peter to Cornelius;[564] or He instructs them through the agency of an angel.[565] None of these hypotheses can be accepted as satisfactory. “Interior illumination” of the kind postulated would practically amount to private revelation. That God should grant a special private revelation to every conscientious pagan is highly improbable. Again, an angel can no more be the ordinary means of conversion than the miraculous apparition of a missionary. Nevertheless, these three hypotheses admirably illustrate the firm belief of the Church in the universality [pg 185] of God's saving will, inasmuch as they express the conviction of her theologians that He would work a miracle rather than deny His grace to the poor benighted heathen.[566] The difficulties to which we have adverted constitute a strong argument in favor of another theological theory which regards explicit belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation merely as a necessitas praecepti, from which one may be dispensed.
β) The fides implicita theory is far more plausible, for it postulates no miracles, implicit faith (or fides in voto) being independent of the external preaching of the Gospel, just as the baptism of desire (baptismus in voto) is independent of the use of water.
Cardinal Gotti regards the first-mentioned of the two theories as safer (tutior), but admits that the other is highly probable, because it has the support of St. Thomas.[567] However, a great difficulty remains. Though it may suffice to hold the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and a fortiori those of the immortality of the soul and the necessity of grace, with an implicit faith, it is [pg 186] the consentient teaching of Revelation, the Church, and Catholic divines that the two principal truths of religion, viz.: the existence of God and retribution, must be held fide explicitâ and necessitate medii, because a man cannot be converted to God unless He knows Him. But how is he to acquire a knowledge of God? Does this not also necessitate a miracle (e.g. the sending of an angel or of a missionary, which we have rejected as improbable)? There can be but one answer to this question. Unaided reason may convince a thoughtful pagan of the existence of God and of divine retribution, and as these two fundamental truths have no doubt penetrated to the farthest corners of the earth also as remnants of primitive revelation, their promulgation may be said to be contained in the traditional instruction which the heathen receive from their forebears. This external factor of Divine Revelation, assisted by interior grace, may engender a supernatural act of faith, which implicitly includes belief in Christ, Baptism, etc., and through which the heathen are eventually cleansed from sin and attain to justification.[568]
Some theologians hold that those to whom the Gospel has never been preached, may be saved by a quasi-faith based on purely natural motives.[569]
For the rest, no one will presume to dictate to Almighty God how and by what means He shall communicate His grace to the heathen. It is enough, and very consoling, too, to know that all men receive sufficient [pg 187] grace to save their souls, and no one is eternally damned except through his own fault.[570]
Readings:—*Didacus Ruiz, De Voluntate Dei, disp. 19 sqq.—Petavius, De Deo, X, 4 sqq.; De Incarnatione, XIII, 1 sqq.—Fontana, Bulla “Unigenitus” Dogmatice Propugnata, prop. 12, c. 5, Rome 1717.—Passaglia, De Partitione Voluntatis Divinae in Primam et Secundam, Rome 1851.—*Franzelin, De Deo Uno, thes. 49-51, Rome 1883.—*Palmieri, De Gratia Divina Actuali, thes. 59-62, Gulpen 1885.—A. Fischer, De Salute Infidelium, Essen 1886.—*J. Bucceroni, De Auxilio Sufficiente Infidelibus Dato, Rome 1890.—Fr. Schmid, Die ausserordentlichen Heilswege für die gefallene Menschheit, Brixen 1899.—Chr. Pesch, Praelectiones Dogmaticae, Vol. II, 3rd ed., pp. 144 sqq., Freiburg 1906.—L. Capéran, Le Problème du Salut des Infidèles, Paris 1912.—A. Wagner, Doctrina de Gratia Sufficiente, Graz 1911.—J. Bainvel, S. J., Is There Salvation Outside the Catholic Church? (tr. J. L. Weidenhan), St. Louis 1917.
Article 3. The Predestination Of The Elect
1. What is Meant by Predestination.—We have shown that God antecedently wills to save all men,[571] and that He gives to all sufficient grace to work out their eternal salvation.
On the other hand, Sacred Scripture assures us that some are lost through their own fault. Cfr. Matth. XXV, 41: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire.”
It follows that God's will to save, considered as voluntas consequens, remains ineffective with regard to a portion of the human race, and consequently, [pg 188] in this respect, is no longer universal but particular.
Being omniscient, God has foreseen this from all eternity and disposed His decrees accordingly. It is in this sense that Catholic theology teaches the existence of a twofold predestination: one to Heaven, for those who die in the state of grace, another to hell, for those who depart this life in mortal sin.
Present-day usage reserves the term predestination for the election of the blessed.
a) Rightly does the Council of Trent call predestination a “hidden mystery.”[572] For in the last analysis it rests solely with God, who are to be admitted to Heaven and who condemned to hell. But why does God give to some merely sufficient grace, with which they neglect to coöperate, while on others He showers efficacious graces that infallibly lead to eternal salvation? In this unequal distribution of efficacious grace lies the sublime mystery of predestination, as St. Augustine well knew, for he says in his treatise On the Gift of Perseverance: “Therefore, of two infants equally bound by original sin, why the one is taken and the other left; and of two wicked men already mature in years, why one should be so called that he follows Him that calleth, while the other is either not called at all, or is not called in such a manner,—are unsearchable judgments of God.”[573]
b) What is meant by “predestination of the elect”? In view of the many errors that have arisen with regard to this important dogma, it is necessary to start with clearly defined terms.
Predestination may mean one of three different things. A man may be simply predestined to receive certain graces (praedestinatio ad gratiam tantum); or he may be predestined to enjoy eternal happiness without regard to any merits of his own (praedestinatio ad gloriam tantum); or, again, he may be predestined to both grace and glory, glory as the end, grace as a means to that end—vocation, justification, and final perseverance. When the concepts of grace and glory are considered separately, and each is made the object of a special predestination, we have what is called incomplete or inadequate predestination (praedestinatio incompleta sive inadaequata). It is this incomplete predestination that St. Paul[574] and St. Augustine[575] have in mind when they apply the term to the vocation of men to grace, faith, and justification. Theologians speak of praedestinatio ad gloriam tantum, that is, ante praevisa merita, as a true predestination, but disagree as to its existence.[576]
The dogma of predestination, which mainly concerns us here, has for its sole object predestination in the complete or adequate sense of the term, which is explained by St. Augustine as follows: “Predestination is nothing else than the foreknowledge and the preparation of [pg 190] those gifts of God whereby they who are delivered are most certainly delivered [i.e. saved].”[577] St. Thomas expresses himself more succinctly: “Predestination is the preparation of grace in the present, and of glory in the future.”[578]
2. The Dogma.—Complete predestination involves: (a) the first grace of vocation (gratia prima praeveniens), especially faith as the beginning, foundation, and root of justification; (b) a number of additional actual graces for the successful accomplishment of the process; (c) justification itself as the beginning of the state of grace; (d) the grace of final perseverance; (e) eternal happiness in Heaven.
The question arises; Do men really seek and find their eternal salvation with infallible certainty by passing through these successive stages—not merely in the foreknowledge of God (praescientia futurorum), but by virtue of an eternal decree (decretum praedestinationis)?
The Pelagians asserted that man works out his eternal salvation of his own free will, and that consequently God merely foreknows but does not fore-ordain who shall be saved. The Semipelagians held that the beginning of faith (initium fidei) and final perseverance (donum perseverantiae) [pg 191] are not pure graces but may be obtained by natural means, without special aid from above. Against these heretics the Catholic Church has always taught the eternal predestination of the elect as an article of faith.[579]
a) St. Paul says explicitly: “We know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints. For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son; that he might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. And whom he predestinated, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified.”[580] Here we have all the elements of complete predestination: God's eternal foreknowledge (praescivit, προέγνω), an eternal decree of the divine will (praedestinavit, προώρισε), and the various stages of justification, beginning with vocation (vocavit, ἐκάλησε) up to justification proper (iustificavit, ἐδικαίωσε), and eternal beatitude (glorificavit, ἐδόξασεν).[581]
b) The Fathers of the fifth century undoubtedly taught the predestination of the elect as an article of faith. Thus St. Augustine says: [pg 192] “There never was a time when the Church of Christ did not hold this faith in predestination, which is now defended with fresh solicitude against the new heretics.”[582] His faithful disciple St. Prosper writes: “No Catholic denies predestination by God.”[583] And again: “It would be as impious to deny predestination as to oppose grace itself.”[584]
c) Several important theological corollaries follow from the dogma of predestination.
α) The first is the immutability of the divine decree of predestination. This immutability is based on God's infallible foreknowledge that certain individuals will die in the state of grace, and on His unchangeable will to reward them with eternal happiness.
St. Augustine says: “If any one of these [the predestined] perishes, God is mistaken; but none of them perish because God is not mistaken.”[585]
God's unerring foreknowledge is symbolized by the “Book of Life.”[586] Christ Himself said to His Apostles: [pg 193] “Rejoice in this, that your names are written in heaven.”[587] The “Book of Life” admits neither addition nor erasure. This does not, however, mean that a man is unable to change God's hypothetical decree of predestination with regard to himself into an absolute one. He can do this by prayer, good works, and faithful co-operation with grace.[588] Whatever promotes our salvation is included in the infallible foreknowledge of God, and consequently also in the scope of predestination. In this sense, but in no other, can we accept the somewhat paradoxical maxim: “If you are not predestined, conduct yourself so that you may be predestined.” Sacred Scripture occasionally refers to another “Book of Life,” which contains the names of all the faithful, irrespective of their predestination. This “book,” of course, is capable of alterations. Cfr. Apoc. III, 5: “I will not blot out his name out of the book of life.”[589] Finally, there is the “Book of Reprobation,” which records the wicked deeds of men and by which the unrepentant sinners will be judged. This is the “liber scriptus” of the “Dies Irae”:
“Liber scriptus proferetur.
In quo totum continetur.”[590]
β) If the divine decree of predestination is immutable, the number of the elect must be definitively fixed. “The number [of those who are predestined to the kingdom of God] is so certain,” [pg 194] says St. Augustine, “that no one can either be added to or taken from them.”[591] We must distinguish between the absolute and the relative number of the predestined.
God, being omniscient, knows not only the abstract number of the elect, but every individual predestined to Heaven. To us the number of the elect is wrapped in impenetrable mystery. St. Thomas justly observes: “Some say that as many men will be saved as angels fell; some, so many as there were angels left; others, in fine, so many as the number of angels who fell, added to that of all the angels created by God. It is, however, better to say that ‘God alone knows the number for whom is reserved eternal happiness,’ as the prayer for the living and the dead expresses it.”[592] Whether God will round out the number of the elect by suddenly precipitating the end of the world or by a sort of “natural selection,” is an open question. To assume the latter could hardly be reconciled with the dogma of the universality of His saving will. St. Augustine seems to favor the former.[593]
As regards the relative number of the elect, some writers (e.g. Massillon) represent it as so infinitesimally [pg 195] small that it would almost drive a saint to despair,—“as if the Church had been established for the express purpose of populating hell.”[594] Even St. Thomas held that relatively few are saved.[595] But the arguments adduced in support of this contention are by no means convincing.[596] Recently, the Jesuit Father Castelein[597] impugned the rigorist theory with weighty arguments. He was sharply attacked by the Redemptorist Godts,[598] who marshalled a great number of authorities in favor of the sterner view. The controversy cannot be decided either on Scriptural or traditional grounds. In our pessimistic age it is more grateful and consoling to assume that the majority of Christians, especially Catholics, will be saved.[599] If we add to this number not a few Jews, Mohammedans, and heathens, it is probably safe to estimate the number of the elect as at least equal to that of the reprobates. Were it smaller, “it could be said to the shame and offense of the divine majesty and mercy, that the [future] kingdom of Satan is larger than the kingdom of Christ.”[600]
3. The Motive of Predestination.—The efficient cause of predestination is God; its instrumental [pg 196] cause, grace; its final cause, the divine glory; its primary meritorious cause, the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. On these points all theologians are agreed. Not so as to the motive that induced God to predestine certain individuals to the exclusion of others. The question narrows itself down to this: What influence, if any, do the merits of a man exert on the eternal decree of predestination?—and may be formulated in three different ways.
a) What influence do the merits of a man exert on his predestination to the initial grace of vocation? Recalling the dogma of the absolute gratuity of grace, our answer must be: None. For whatever merits one may have acquired before he receives the initial grace of vocation, must be purely natural, and consequently worthless in the eyes of God for supernatural predestination. “To assume,” says St. Thomas, “that there is on our part some merit, the foreknowledge of which [on the part of God] would be the cause [motive] of our predestination, would be to assume that grace is given to us [as a reward] of our [natural] merits.”[601]
b) What influence do the merits of a man exert on his predestination to grace and glory? [pg 197] Catholic theologians are unanimous in holding that, since grace is absolutely gratuitous and inseparably connected with glory as its effect, the union of both can no more be based upon natural merit than the initial grace of vocation itself, which transmits the quality of gratuitousness to each and every one of the graces that follow in its wake, up to and including justification and eternal beatitude. Those among the Fathers who defended the gratuity of predestination against the Pelagians and Semipelagians, really aimed at safeguarding the gratuity of initial grace, in order not to be constrained to say with Pelagius that “the grace of God is given as a reward of merit.”[602] “What compelled me in this work of mine [De Dono Perseverantiae] to defend more abundantly and clearly those passages of Scripture in which predestination is commended,” says St. Augustine, “if not the Pelagian assertion that God's grace is given according to our [natural] merits?”[603] Obviously these Fathers did not have in view the praedestinatio ad gloriam tantum, as the champions of the praedestinatio ante praevisa merita mistakenly assert, but what they meant was that complete predestination [pg 198] which comprises grace and glory as one whole. Similarly, the early Schoolmen, when they speak of the “gratuity of predestination,” usually mean complete predestination.[604] D'Argentré's researches show how necessary it is to draw sharp distinctions and carefully to establish the real state of the question before claiming the common teaching of the Scholastics in favor of any particular theory of predestination.
c) What influence do the supernatural merits of a man exert on his predestination to glory as such? Here the controversy begins. Predestination may be considered either as the cause of supernatural merit or as its effect. If it is considered as the cause, the problem takes this shape: Did God, by an absolute decree, and without any regard to their future supernatural merits, eternally predestine certain men to the glory of heaven, and only subsequently decide to give them the efficacious graces necessary to reach that end, particularly final perseverance? If, on the other hand, predestination be considered as an effect of supernatural merit, the question will be: Did God predestine certain men to the glory of Heaven by a merely hypothetical decree, making His will [pg 199] to save them dependent on His infallible foreknowledge of their supernatural merits? The lack of decisive Scriptural and Patristic texts on this subject has led to a division of Catholic opinion, some theologians favoring absolute predestination ante praevisa merita, others hypothetical predestination post praevisa merita. Without concealing our conviction that absolute predestination is untenable, we shall set forth both theories impartially and examine the arguments on which they rely.
4. Orthodox Predestinationism, or the Theory of Predestination ante Praevisa Merita.—Some theologians conceive the divine scheme of salvation in this wise: (a) In ordine intentionis, God, by an absolute decree, first predestines certain men to eternal salvation, and then, in consequence of this decree, decides to give them all the graces necessary to be saved; (b) in time, however, or in ordine executionis, He observes the reverse order, that is to say, He first bestows the pre-appointed graces and subsequently the glory of heaven as a reward of supernatural merit acquired by the aid of those graces.
This theory reverses the relation of grace and glory. While it correctly[605] represents glory as the fruit and reward of supernatural merit in the order of execution, it wrongly represents it in the order of intention as [pg 200] the cause of supernatural merit, whereas it is merely an effect. This opinion is championed by most Thomists,[606] some Augustinians,[607] and a few Molinists.[608] Their arguments may be sketched as follows:
a) In innumerable passages of Sacred Scripture predestination to eternal happiness is represented as a work of pure mercy, nay, even as an arbitrary act of God. Take, e.g., Matth. XXIV, 22 sqq.: “And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened.... For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect.”[609] Here, it is claimed, the elect are represented as so thoroughly confirmed in faith and in good works as to be proof against error.
This conclusion is unwarranted. The phrase “those days” manifestly refers either to the destruction of Jerusalem or to the end of the world. If it refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, the “elect,” according to Biblical usage,[610] are the faithful Christian inhabitants of the Holy City, for whose sake God promises to shorten the terrible siege. If it referred to the end of the world, electi would indeed stand for praedestinati, but the context would not [pg 201] forbid us to interpret their predestination hypothetically, as merely indicating the immutability of the divine decree, which is not denied by the opponents of the theory.
Another text quoted in favor of absolute predestination ante praevisa merita, is Acts XIII, 48: “As many as were ordained (praeordinati, τεταγμένοι) to life everlasting, believed.” Here, we are told, predestination to eternal life is given as the motive why many believed. But the text really says nothing at all about predestination. Τεταγμένοι is not synonymous with προτεταγμένοι or προωρισμένοι. The more probable explanation is the following: As many believed as were disposed to receive the faith. It is wellnigh impossible to assume that all who received the faith at that time were predestined, while those that refused to be converted were without exception reprobates. But even if praeordinati were synonymous with praedestinati, the text would merely say that certain predestined souls embraced the faith, without affording any clue as to the relation between conversion and predestination.
The ninth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans is the main reliance of the advocates of absolute predestinationism, though the passage is unfit to serve as a locus classicus because of its obscurity. Let us examine a few of the verses most frequently quoted. Rom. IX, 13: “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated,” is alleged to prove the absolute predestination of Jacob and the negative reprobation of Esau. But many theologians hold that Esau was saved, and, besides, the Apostle is not dealing with predestination to glory, but with Jacob's vocation to be the progenitor of the Messias. Esau, who was not an Israelite but an Idumaean, was simply passed over in this choice (odio habere [pg 202] minus diligere; cfr. Matth. X, 37). If the passage is interpreted typically, it should be done in harmony with the context, that is to say, as referring to the gratuity of grace, not to predestination.
The same may be said of Rom. IX, 16 and 18: “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.... He hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.”[611]
The strongest text alleged by the advocates of absolute predestination is Rom. IX, 20 sq.: “O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” Here the Apostle really seems to have thought of predestination. But the simile must not be pressed, lest we arrive at the Calvinistic blasphemy that God positively predestined some men to heaven and others to hell. The tertium comparationis is not the act of the Divine Artificer, but the willingness of man to yield his will to God like clay in the hands of a potter.
Nor is it admissible to read into the Apostle's thought even a negative reprobation of certain men. For the primary intention of the Epistle to the Romans is to insist on the gratuity of man's vocation to Christianity and to reject the presumption that the Mosaic law and their bodily descent from Abraham gave the Jews preference over the heathens. The Epistle to the Romans has no bearing whatever on the speculative question whether or not the free vocation of grace is a necessary result of eternal predestination to glory.[612]
b) Among the Fathers the only one to whom the advocates of absolute predestinationism can appeal with some show of justice is St. Augustine, who, with the possible exception of Prosper and Fulgentius, was the most rigorous among early ecclesiastical writers,—so rigorous, in fact, that Oswald does not hesitate to call him “the head and front of all rigorists in the Church.”[613]
However, this is saying too much. Augustine's genuine teaching is still in dispute among our ablest theologians. Some[614] deny that he broke with the almost unanimous teaching of his predecessors, while others think that in the treatises De Dono Perseverantiae and De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, and in several of his letters, the Saint frankly taught absolute predestinationism. The latter group of writers is split into two classes. A number of Thomists and Cardinal Bellarmine not only assert that Augustine taught absolute predestination, but boldly adopt his supposed teaching. Petavius, Maldonatus, Cercià, Oswald, and others censure this view. Franzelin[615] undoubtedly strikes the right note when he says: “If there were a manifest discrepancy between Augustine's [pg 204] teaching and that of the other Fathers, I should not hesitate to follow Pighius, Catharinus, Osorius, Camerarius, Maldonatus,[616] Toletus,[617] and Petavius[618] in reverently departing from his doctrine, because in that case we should be dealing merely with a private opinion.”[619] Under these circumstances the Patristic argument for the theory of absolute predestination evidently lacks convincingness.[620]
c) It was probably because they felt its weakness that some of the later champions of the theory attempted to prove absolute predestination ante praevisa merita by philosophical arguments. Gonet reasons as follows: “He who proceeds in an orderly way, wills the end before he wills the means necessary to attain it. But God proceeds in an orderly way. Therefore he wills the end before the means. Now, glory is an end, and merits are means to attain that end. Consequently, God wills glory before He wills merits, and a man's preëlection to glory cannot be based on foreknowledge of his merits.”[621] This argument, [pg 205] if it proved anything, would prove the logical impossibility of conditional predestination. But it overshoots the mark and consequently proves nothing at all. Qui nimium probat, nihil probat.
Gonet moreover assumes what he sets out to prove, namely, that God voluntate antecedente decreed the glory of certain men to the exclusion of others. This petitio principii vitiates the entire polysyllogism. God's will to save is universal. He wills the eternal happiness of all men antecedenter, and the reprobation of some only consequenter; hence eternal predestination is not absolute, but hypothetical, that is, it depends on merit. That the divine scheme of grace can take a different course in ordine intentionis from that in ordine executionis is a mere fiction. If eternal salvation in the order of temporal execution is given only as a reward of merit, it must be a reward of merit also in the order of intention. In both cases predestination depends upon a future condition.
Perhaps the worst feature of the theory of absolute predestination is the fact that it involves the absolute reprobation of those not predestined to glory. “If it could be validly argued,” says Gutberlet, “that, since the end must be willed before the means, salvation must be decreed before the means to its attainment (i.e. merits), the argument would be applicable also to the damned. If God voluntate antecedente wills to lead only a few to salvation, and if this intention must precede every other, then He must likewise voluntate antecedente have in view the end of the reprobates, which is His own glorification through the manifestation of His justice and mercy. [pg 206] Hence He must also decree the means necessary to obtain this end, i.e. He must cause these unfortunate creatures to sin, in order that they may reach the end for which He has predestined them; in other words, He must pre-ordain them to sin and eternal damnation,”[622] which is what Calvin teaches. The advocates of the theory naturally shrink from adopting such a blasphemous conclusion, and fall back upon the theory of negative reprobation, which, however, amounts practically to the same thing.[623]
5. The Theory of Hypothetical Predestination post Praevisa Merita.—Predestination, like God's will to save all men, is based on a hypothetical decree. Those only are predestined to eternal happiness who shall merit it as a reward. It is solely by reason of His infallible foreknowledge of these merits that God's hypothetical decree of predestination becomes absolute. Or, as Becanus puts it, “God first prepared the gifts of grace, and then elected to eternal life those whose good use of the gifts He foresaw.”[624]
This view, which strongly appeals to us for the reason that it sets aside the cruel theory of “negative reprobation,” was defended by such earlier Scholastics as Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus, and by many eminent later writers, e.g. Toletus, Lessius, Frassen, Stapleton, [pg 207] Tournely, and is held to-day by nearly all theologians outside the Thomist school. What gave it special authority in modern times was the recommendation of St. Francis de Sales, who, in a letter to Lessius (Aug. 26, 1618) described the theory of conditional predestination post praevisa merita as “more in harmony with the mercy and grace of God, truer and more attractive.”[625] This view has a solid basis both in Scripture and Tradition.
a) Holy Scripture clearly teaches the universality of God's saving will. Now if God voluntate antecedente wills the eternal salvation of all men without exception,[626] He cannot possibly intend that only some shall be saved.
It is further to be noted that the Bible makes not only the temporal realization but likewise the eternal promise of glory dependent on the performance of good works. St. Paul, whose Epistle to the Romans is cited as a locus classicus by the advocates of the theory,[627] wrote towards the end of his life to Timothy: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord the just judge will render to me in that day.”[628] In writing these lines the Apostle no doubt had in mind the sentence of the Universal [pg 208] Judge: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,”[629]—which may with far greater reason be termed a “classical” text than the obscure ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. To prepare for men the kingdom of heaven from the foundation (i.e. beginning) of the world, is to predestine them to eternal happiness. Now, God has “prepared” the kingdom of heaven for men in view of their foreseen merits, that is to say, conditionally. The causal conjunction enim in the sentence following the one just quoted (Matth. XXVI, 25): “Esurivi enim et dedistis mihi manducare, etc.,” refers to the entire preceding sentence, not only to the possidete in time, but also to the paratum in eternity. Consequently, the eternal decree of predestination itself, like its temporal execution, depends on good works or merit. This interpretation of Matth. XXV, 34-36 is confirmed by the sentence pronounced upon the reprobates, Matth. XXV, 41 sqq.: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat, etc.” The “everlasting fire” is manifestly decreed from all eternity in the same sense in which it is inflicted in time, namely, propter et post praevisa merita. Billuart's contention[630] that hell has been prepared solely for “the devil and his angels” is untenable, because in several other Scriptural passages[631] the reprobates are expressly classed among the followers of Satan. If we add to this that our Divine Lord, in foretelling the last judgment, had naturally to formulate his prediction so as [pg 209] not only to show its absolute justice but likewise to intimate that, had they so willed, the damned might have had their place on the right hand of the Great Judge, we must admit that the theory of predestination post praevisa merita has a solid foundation in Scripture.[632]
b) The Greek Fathers unanimously favor hypothetical predestination, which fact has caused the theory to be commonly referred to as “sententia Graecorum.”[633]
Thus St. Chrysostom interprets the judgment of the Son of Man as follows: “Possess ye the kingdom [of heaven] as your own by heredity, as a paternal heritage, as a gift long due to you; for it was prepared and arranged for you before you came into existence, because I knew beforehand that you would be what you are.”[634] Theodoret says: “He did not simply predestine [men], but He predestined them because He foreknew [their merits].”[635]
The Latin Fathers before St. Augustine all without exception taught hypothetical predestination. St. Hilary says: “Many are called, but few are chosen.... Hence election is not a matter of indiscriminate choice, but a selection based on merit.”[636] And St. Ambrose: [pg 210] “Therefore the Apostle says: ‘Whom he foreknew he also predestined’ (Rom. VIII, 29); for He did not predestine before He foreknew, but He predestined a reward to those whose merits He foresaw.”[637]
The question cannot, as Bellarmine contends,[638] be decided on the sole authority of St. Augustine, because he is claimed by both parties to the controversy.[639]
On account of the existing differences of opinion it is impossible to establish the theory of hypothetical predestination on the basis of Scholastic teaching.[640] The opinion of St. Thomas is in dispute;[641] likewise that of St. Bonaventure. Scotus in his controversy with Henry of Ghent shows a disposition to favor absolute predestination, but leaves the question open. “Let every one,” he says,[642] “choose whichever opinion suits him best, without prejudice to the divine liberty, which must be safeguarded against injustice, and to the other truths that are to be held in respect of God.”[643]
6. A Compromise Theory.—For the sake of completeness we will add a few words on a theory which takes middle ground between the two just [pg 211] reviewed, holding that, while the common run of humanity is predestined hypothetically, a few exceptionally favored Saints enjoy the privilege of absolute predestination.
Among the champions of this “eclectic” theory may be mentioned: Ockam,[644] Gabriel Biel,[645] Ysambert,[646] and Ambrosius Catharinus.[647] The Saints regarded by these writers as absolutely predestined to eternal glory are: the Blessed Virgin Mary, the prophets and Apostles, St. Joseph, St. Aloysius, and a few others, as well as all infants dying in the grace of Baptism. Billuart,[648] Dominicus Soto, and certain other divines attack this theory on the ground that it makes the salvation of the great majority of the elect a matter of chance and thereby imperils the dogmatic teaching of the Church. This objection is unfounded. For though the “eclectic” theory has little or no support either in Revelation or in reason, it sufficiently safeguards the dogma of predestination by admitting that voluntate consequente none but the predestined can attain to eternal beatitude.
Only with regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary are we inclined to make an exception. It is probable that she was predestined to eternal glory ante praevisa merita, because, in the words of Lessius, the privileges she enjoyed “exceed all measure and must not be extended to any other human being.”[649]
Article 4. The Reprobation Of The Damned
The reprobation of the damned is sometimes called praedestinatio ad gehennam, though, as we have remarked, the term “predestination” should properly be restricted to the blessed.
There can be no absolute and positive predestination to eternal punishment, and the pains of hell can be threatened only in view of mortal sin. Hence reprobation may be defined, in the words of Peter Lombard, as “God's foreknowledge of the wickedness of some creatures and the preparation of their damnation.”[650]
A distinction must, however, be made (at least in theory), between positive and negative reprobation. To teach positive reprobation would be heretical. Negative reprobation, on the other hand, is defended by all those Catholic theologians who advocate the theory of absolute predestination ante praevisa merita.[651]
1. Heretical Predestinarianism or the Theory of the Positive Reprobation of the Damned.—Heretical Predestinarianism was taught by Lucidus, Gottschalk, Wiclif, Hus, the younger Jansenius, and especially by Calvin. The latter asserted that the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate are the effects of an unconditional divine decree.[652]
According to this abominable heresy, the sin of Adam and the spiritual ruin which it entailed upon his descendants are attributable solely to the will of God. God produces in the reprobate a “semblance of faith,” only to make them all the more deserving of damnation. In the beginning of the seventeenth century Arminius and a few other theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church, repelled by Calvin's decretum horribile, ascribed the positive reprobation of the damned to original sin (lapsus). These writers, called Infralapsarians or Postlapsarians, were opposed by the strict school of Calvinist divines under the leadership of Gomarus. The great Calvinist Synod of Dordrecht (1618-1619) condemned the principles of Arminius, and subsequently his adherents were driven from Holland.
The Catholic Church condemned Predestinarianism as early as 529 at the Second Council of Orange, which among other things declared: “We not only refuse to believe that some men are by divine power predestined to evil, but if there be any who hold such a wicked thing, we condemn them with utter detestation.”[653]
The Tridentine Council defined against Calvin: “If any one saith that the grace of justification is attained to only by those who are predestined unto life, but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being by [pg 214] divine power predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.”[654]
Calvinism, both supra- and infra-lapsarian, is easily refuted from Revelation and Tradition.
a) It runs counter to all those texts of the Bible which assert the universality of God's saving will,[655] the bestowal of sufficient grace on all sinners,[656] and the divine attribute of holiness.[657]
Calvin endeavored to prove his blasphemous doctrine chiefly from the ninth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.[658] His disciple Beza relied mainly on 1 Pet. II, 7 sq.: “But to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set,”[659] i.e., according to Beza, predestined not to believe.[660] But this interpretation is obviously wrong. For we know from Is. VIII, 14[661] and Matth. XXI, 44,[662] that those who fall on this stone [pg 215] are ground to powder as a punishment for the sin of unbelief.[663]
b) The Fathers, especially those of the East, are unanimous in upholding the orthodox teaching of the Church. The only one whom adherents of Predestinarianism have dared to claim is St. Augustine.
Yet the “Doctor of Grace” expressly teaches: “God is good, God is just. He can deliver some without merits because He is good; but He cannot damn any one without demerits, because He is just.”[664] St. Prosper re-echoes this teaching when he says of the reprobates: “Of their own will they went out; of their own will they fell; and because their fall was foreknown, they were not predestined. They would, however, be predestined if they were to return and persevere in holiness; hence God's predestination is for many the cause of perseverance, for none the cause of falling away.”[665] St. Fulgentius expresses himself in similar language.[666]
2. The Theory of “Negative Reprobation.”—Negative reprobation is defined by its defenders as an eternal decree by which God excludes [pg 216] from Heaven those not absolutely predestined, in other words, determines not to save them.
a) Gonet explains the difference between negative and positive reprobation in Scholastic terminology as follows: “... quod haec [i.e. positiva] habet non solum terminum a quo, nempe exclusionem a gloria, sed etiam terminum ad quem, scil. poenam sive damni sive sensus; illa vero [i.e. negativa] solum habet terminum a quo, nempe exclusionem a gloria ut beneficio indebito, non vero terminum ad quem, quia ex vi exclusionis ut sic praecise et ut habet rationem purae negationis, non intelligitur reprobus esse damnandus aut ulli poenae sive damni sive sensus deputandus.”[667]
The general principle laid down in this quotation is variously developed by Thomist theologians.
The rigorists (Alvarez, John a S. Thoma, Estius, Sylvius) assign as the motive of reprobation the sovereign will of God. God, they say, without taking into account possible sins and demerits, determined a priori to exclude from Heaven those who are not predestined. De Lemos, Gotti, Gonet, Gazzaniga, and others condemn this view as incompatible with the teaching of St. Thomas, and, appealing to St. Augustine's doctrine of the massa damnata, find the ultimate reason for the exclusion of the reprobates from heaven in original sin, in which God, without being unjust, could leave as many as He saw fit. Goudin, Graveson, Billuart, and others assume that the reprobates are not directly excluded from eternal glory but merely from “effective election” thereunto, God simply having decreed ante praevisa merita to leave them to their weakness.[668]
While the Thomists found no difficulty in harmonizing this view with their theory of physical premotion, the few Molinists who espoused it were hard put in trying to square it with the scientia media.[669] On the whole these Molinists endorse the third and mildest of the above-quoted opinions, which differs only theoretically from the rigoristic view described in the first place. Practically it makes no difference whether God directly excludes a man from heaven or refuses to give him the graces necessary to attain it.
Surveying all three of the theories under consideration we cannot but regard the first and third as heartless and cruel, because they attribute eternal reprobation to a positive decree that takes effect independently of sin; the second, (which ascribes reprobation to original sin), is open to the serious dogmatic objection that it contradicts the teaching of St. Paul and the Tridentine declaration that “there is no condemnation (nihil damnationis) in those who are truly buried together with Christ by baptism into death.”[670]
b) Negative reprobation is rightly regarded as the logical counterpart of absolute predestination.[671] If Almighty God, by an absolute decree, without regard to any possible merits, merely to reveal His divine attributes and to “embellish the universe,” had determined that only those could enter the “Heavenly Jerusalem” who were antecedently predestined thereto, it would inevitably follow that the unfortunate remainder of humanity [pg 218] by the very same decree were “passed over,” “omitted,” “overlooked,” “not elected,” or, as Gonet honestly admits, “excluded from Heaven,” which is the same thing as being negatively condemned to hell.
The logical distinction between positive and negative reprobation, therefore, consists mainly in this, that the former signifies absolute damnation to hell, the latter (equally absolute) non-election to Heaven. To protect the Catholic champions of negative reprobation against unjust aspersions, however, it is necessary to point out certain fundamental differences between their theory and the heresy of Calvin.
Calvin and the Jansenists openly deny the universality both of God's saving will and of the atonement; they refuse to admit the actual bestowal of sufficient grace upon those fore-ordained to eternal damnation; and claim that the human will loses its freedom under the predominance of efficacious grace or concupiscence. The Catholic defenders of negative reprobation indignantly reject the charge that their position logically leads to any such heretical implications.
c) The theory of negative reprobation can be sufficiently refuted by showing that it is incompatible with the universality of God's will to save all men. For if God willed absolutely and antecedently to “exclude some men from Heaven,” as Gonet asserts, or “not to elect them to eternal glory,” as Suarez contends, then it would be His absolute will that they perish.
α) For one thus negatively reprobated it is metaphysically impossible to attain eternal salvation. To hold otherwise would be tantamount to assuming that an essentially absolute decree of God can be frustrated. This consideration led certain Thomists[672] to describe the divine voluntas salvifica as rather an ineffectual velleitas.[673] But this conflicts with the obvious teaching of Revelation.[674] Suarez labors in vain to reconcile the sincerity of God's salvific will with the theory of negative reprobation. The two are absolutely irreconcilable. How could God sincerely will the salvation of all men if it were true, as Suarez says, that “it is not in man's power to work out his eternal salvation in case he falls under non-election, non-predestination, or, which amounts to the same thing, negative reprobation”?[675]
β) The cruel absurdity of the theory of negative reprobation becomes fully apparent when we consider the attitude it ascribes to God. Gonet writes: “Foreseeing that the whole human race would be depraved by original sin, God, in view of the merits of Christ who was to come, elected some men to glory and, in punishment of original sin and to show His justice towards them and His greater mercy towards the elect, permitted others to miss the attainment of beatitude, in other words, He positively willed that they should not attain it.... In virtue of this efficacious intention He devised appropriate means for the attainment of His purpose, and seeing that some would miss beatitude by simply being left [pg 220] in the state of original sin, and others by being permitted to fall into actual sins and to persevere therein, He formally decreed this permission, and finally ... by a command of His intellect ordained these means towards the attainment of the aforesaid end.”[676] Translated into plain every-day language this can only mean that God tries with all His might to prevent the reprobate from attaining eternal salvation and sees to it that they die in the state of sin. Suarez is perfectly right in characterizing Gonet's teaching as “incompatible with sound doctrine.”[677] But his own teaching is equally unsound and cruel. For he, too, is compelled to assert: “Predestination to glory is the motive for which efficacious or infallible means towards attaining that end are bestowed. Hence to refuse to predestine a man for glory is to deny him the means which are recognized as fit and certain to attain that end.”[678]
Holy Scripture fortunately speaks a different language. It describes God as a loving Father, who “wills not that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.”[679]
γ) Practically it makes no difference whether a man is positively condemned to eternal damnation, as Calvin and the Jansenists assert, or negatively excluded from Heaven, as held by the orthodox theologians whom we have just quoted. The alleged distinction between positive and negative reprobation is “a distinction without a difference.” For an adult to be excluded from Heaven simply means that he is damned. There is no such thing as a middle state or a purely natural beatitude. Lessius justly says that to one reprobated by God it would be all the same whether his reprobation was positive or negative, because in either case he would be inevitably lost.[680]
Readings:—*Ruiz, De Praedestinatione et Reprobatione, Lyons 1628.—Ramirez, De Praedestinatione et Reprobatione, 2 vols., Alcalá 1702.—*Lessius, De Perfectionibus Moribusque Divinis, XIV, 2.—*Idem, De Praedestinatione et Reprobatione (Opusc., Vol. II, Paris 1878).—Tournely, De Deo, qu. 22 sqq.—Schrader, Commentarii, I-II, De Praedestinatione, Vienna 1865.—J. P. Baltzer, Des hl. Augustinus Lehre über Prädestination und Reprobation, Vienna 1871.—Mannens, De Voluntate Dei Salvifica et Praedestinatione, Louvain 1883.—O. Rottmanner, O. S. B., Der Augustinismus, München 1892.—O. Pfülf, S. J., “Zur Prädestinationslehre des hl. Augustinus,” in the Innsbruck Zeitschrift für kath. Theologie, 1893, pp. 483 sqq.—B. J. Otten, S. J., A Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. I, St. Louis 1917, pp. 281, 378, 382 sqq.