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]