De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

How much authority the opinion of St. Augustine has concerning predestination, and grace; and whether it is permissible to depart from it.

I.

There have been some who, wishing to weaken St. Augustine’s authority concerning predestination and grace, have said that his teaching on this matter is that of one particular Doctor, from which one may therefore depart. They add that they greatly admire his teaching in all other matters, accept it, and gladly hear it; yet they claim that the doctrine he follows concerning the predestination and grace of Christ is not suited to resist the heretics of our time, nor consonant with the Greek Fathers who lived before Augustine. This objection was once advanced by the Semi-Pelagians against the teaching of that same holy Doctor, as St. Prosper reports in these words:¹ To him (namely Augustine), amid so many triumphs in battle, amid so many crowns of victory, shining for the illumination of the Church and the glory of Christ, by whom he himself was illumined, some of our own people (and this is all the more grievous because it is they themselves) oppose him with secret but not unknown whisperings. Whenever they find certain ears susceptible and receptive to their harm, they defame his writings in which the Pelagian error is attacked, saying that he utterly removes free choice and preaches fatal necessity under the name of grace. They add that he wants us to believe in two masses and two natures of the human race, so that impiety of the pagans and Manichaeans may be attributed to a man of such great piety.² And St. Hilary says: But I certainly must not keep silent, (he says), about this: they say that they admire your Holiness in all your actions and words, except for this.³ St. Fulgentius also noted the same thing in these words: You know that even in the past some Gauls objected to that most luminous work of St. Augustine, which he wrote On the Predestination of the Saints. They judged that Blessed Augustine, in asserting divine predestination, said that sinners were predestined not only to judgment but also to sin. Because he was overtaken by an early death before he could answer them, Prosper, a learned and holy man, rightly defended him in a faithful and ample discourse.⁴ In defense of that same holy Doctor, St. Prosper brought forth very many golden words in different places. I have decided to gather them together, so that everyone may see how great the authority of St. Augustine is in the doctrine of grace and predestination.

II. In the cited letter to Rufinus, he speaks of St. Augustine as follows: When the judgments of the Eastern bishops, the authority of the Apostolic See, and the vigilance of the African councils had detected the wiles by which the sons of darkness sought to transform themselves into the likeness of the sons of light, Blessed Augustine too—up to this time a most distinguished portion of the Lord’s priests—overthrew them copiously and beautifully in many disputations in his books. Among the many gifts of God with which the Spirit of truth filled him most abundantly, he also had, through God’s love, this power of knowledge and wisdom: to wage war with the invincible sword of the word not only against this heresy, still palpitating in its mutilated remnants, but against many heresies that had come before.⁵⁶ A little later he concludes: But you, my dearest and most venerable brother, if you truly desire to be instructed in these questions, as you ought to desire, devote yourself to learning the disputations of Blessed Augustine himself, so that in defining God’s grace you may attain the most refined and salutary understanding of the evangelical and apostolic teaching.⁷ Elsewhere he says: Some have thought to criticize the teaching that Bishop Augustine of blessed memory asserted in apostolic fashion and committed to writing for many years against the Pelagians, enemies of Christ’s grace and deceivers concerning free choice—either because they did not understand it or because they did not wish it to be understood. They offered those guided by their judgment what they called a shortcut to knowledge: they published brief chapter headings listing what they claimed to have found condemnable in the books of that man, so that by such a contrivance they might secure both the detestation of the man they attacked and turn the frightened reader’s attention away from what they had defamed.⁸ Therefore, lest anyone rashly accept this persuasion and think that the Catholic Doctor’s writings contain the meaning that his unjust accusers display, to each chapter they marked with a heading I answer with a brief and unqualified profession, departing in no respect from the course of the definitions contained in the disputations of that holy man. Thus even a reader of modest diligence may readily see how unjustly the memory of the Catholic preacher is assailed by reproaches, and into what sin those fall who, moved by another’s prompting, are quicker to blame a writer of celebrated name than to know him. Before his prose work Against the Ungrateful, he also composed certain verses in defense of Augustine and praise of his teaching. In them he shows that it is sound and that his opponents attack it irrationally.

III. Nor was Prosper alone: several Supreme Pontiffs also approved the teaching of that same Augustine and declared it Catholic.⁹ For Pope Celestine: Augustine, (he says), we have always held, a man of holy memory, in our communion because of his life and merits; no rumor of sinister suspicion has ever touched him. We remember that he was once a man of such great learning that even my predecessors counted him among the best teachers. All therefore rightly thought well of him in common, since everywhere he was beloved and honored by all. Hence we must resist such men as we see growing in wickedness. Religious souls must not suffer this; when they are afflicted, we too ought to be distressed, since they are our members. Yet the promised blessedness awaits those who are found to endure persecution for the sake of righteousness, and the following passage declares what the Lord promises them in the future. The cause is not that of those involved alone; the universal Church is assailed by any such novelty, let us understand that the very things displeasing to us displease you as well. We shall be able to prove this only if, once the wicked have been silenced, complaint about this matter ceases henceforth.¹⁰ Immediately afterward, restraining the insolence of those who barked against St. Augustine’s teaching, he adds: Because some who boast of the Catholic name linger in the condemned opinions of heretics, whether through wickedness or ignorance, they presume to oppose the most pious disputants. Although they do not hesitate to anathematize Pelagius and Caelestius, they nonetheless revile our teachers as though they had gone beyond what is necessary. They claim that they follow and approve only those things which the most sacred See of the blessed Apostle Peter decreed and taught against the enemies of God’s grace through the ministry of its bishops. It was necessary to investigate carefully what the rulers of the Roman Church judged concerning the heresy that arose in their times, and what they decreed should be thought concerning God’s grace against the most harmful defenders of free choice.¹¹

IV. What Celestine said in defense and commendation of St. Augustine’s teaching ought surely to have sufficed to prevent the Massilians, who had not yet attained perfect knowledge, from rising against the doctrine of a most excellent master and Doctor of the Church. Yet, because remnants of the Pelagian heresy in Gaul contended that although the Supreme Pontiff had commended St. Augustine’s teaching, he had not specifically approved the books On the Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance—in which, answering the letters of Prosper and Hilary addressed to him, Augustine confirmed his doctrine of gratuitous predestination with the clearest testimonies of sacred Scripture and attacked and defeated the Semi-Pelagian error—after Celestine’s time, while the faction of the Gauls had not yet quieted, St. Leo I wrote to Nicetas, Bishop of Aquileia. He again condemned the followers of the Pelagian heresy who attacked St. Augustine’s teaching, saying among other things: Your Charity must therefore take care and provide with great diligence that through such men scandals long extinguished are not revived and that no shoot of the same evil grows in your province from a doctrine once cut down; lest not only it grow from its roots, but also infect the offspring of Holy Church with the poison of its stench. Those who wish to be seen as corrected must clear themselves of every suspicion and prove by obeying us that they are ours. If any of them should refuse to comply with salutary precepts, whether cleric or layman, let him be expelled from the fellowship of the Church, lest a destroyer of his own soul plot against another’s salvation.¹² Leo therefore transcribed certain chapters from St. Augustine’s books on grace and free choice word for word, approved and defined them, and sent them to the Council of Orange, so that the bishops of that council might sign and receive them, as they did.¹³

V. Later, Pope Gelasius wrote several decretal letters in detestation of the Pelagian heresy and of those in Gaul who had attacked St. Augustine’s teaching.¹⁴ In particular, in Letter 3, addressed to Honorius, he says: The mournful, dreadful, and scarcely credible report has so overwhelmed us as to confuse, wound, and afflict our mind. For we have been told that in the regions of Dalmatia some have sown the tares of a renewed Pelagian plague, and that their blasphemy has so prevailed there that they deceive simple people by insinuating a deadly madness. This error is impious indeed, and all the more pernicious in its theft because it is more cunning in its deception through a color of plausibility. With the Lord’s help, the pure truth of the Catholic faith is at hand, the concordant judgment drawn from all the Fathers, to expose the subtle poison of deadly perversity¹⁵ and supply, from the remedy prepared from the Scriptures, medicine for the salvation of the human race. Let it therefore in no way trouble hearts not yet abounding in discernment of these matters, until both the hidden wound becomes apparent and the unique salvation shines forth; for with whatever art of deception the spirit of perdition arms itself, it is both exposed and slain by the holy sword of the ruling Spirit.

And a little later: Is it permissible for us to undo what the venerable Fathers condemned and to reopen the impious doctrines they cut down? Why, then, do we take such great care lest the ruin of any heresy once overthrown be brought back for examination? If we strive to restore matters that our ancestors knew, discussed, and refuted long ago, are we not (God forbid—and the Catholic Church will never endure this) setting an example for all the adversaries of truth to rise against us? Where is what is written, ‘You shall not move the boundaries your fathers set,’¹⁶ and, ‘Ask your fathers, and they will tell you; your elders, and they will explain it to you’?¹⁷¹⁸ Why, then, do we reach beyond what our ancestors defined? Or why should it not suffice us, if in our ignorance we wish to learn what the Orthodox Fathers and elders ordained about each matter—what must be avoided and what must be adapted to Catholic truth? Why are these things not approved by their decrees? Are we wiser than they, or can we stand with firm stability if we undermine what they established?¹⁹ Or perhaps you do not know that this heresy of which we speak was long ago struck down by the Apostolic See in continuous and unceasing judgments through Innocent of blessed memory, then Zosimus, Boniface, Celestine, Sixtus, and Leo;²⁰²¹ and that it was condemned not only by the laws of the Catholic Church but also by the ordinances of the Roman emperors, so that its followers were allowed no place to live anywhere in the world? All this is shown both by the Church’s records in the several regions, which attest to their perversion, and by public decrees. Behold how Catholic ears of all sorts hear this doctrine, entertain questions, handle its snares, and patiently admit its blasphemies! If only they would study the books and replies of our ancestors against them, they would see in every way that absolutely nothing raised by these men has not already been shattered by those Fathers in magnificent truth.

In another letter to the same Honorius, Gelasius urges him to be vigilant lest the Pelagian heresy, which Augustine crushed, sprout again.²² In Letter 5 to all the bishops throughout Picenum, refuting the three chief tenets of the Pelagian heresy, he says: What would such pontiffs do if (God forbid) some new and previously unknown plague broke out, or sacrilegious utterances of blasphemy were produced by men endowed with keener intellects and crafty notions, or cunning through some expertise in secular learning, when they neither recall nor reject the worn-out inventions of so ancient an error, refuted both by the earlier teachers of the Churches and in our own age, and do not spurn them when put forward by the unlearned and foolish?

Near the end of the same letter, commending St. Jerome, Augustine, and their teaching in particular, he adds: A still greater crime is growing: under the eyes and in the presence of the priests, a dying fly, destroying the sweet-smelling oil (as it is written),²³ would try to tear at Jerome and Augustine of blessed memory, those lights of the Church’s teachers. Finally, the same Gelasius, in the decree on apocryphal writings issued with seventy bishops, expressly approved the works of Blessed Augustine, Prosper, and Hilary,²⁴ and among the apocryphal books that are not to be received he condemned the works of Cassian, a priest of Gaul, and the works of Faustus, Bishop of Riez, which are known to have been written against St. Augustine’s teaching.²⁵ Finally, John II, in a letter to certain noble Roman senators, commending St. Augustine’s teaching, says: St. Augustine, whose teaching the Roman Church follows and preserves according to the statutes of my predecessors.²⁶

Thus, as certain grave authorities have noted, the Apostolic See issued its judgment not only once, but a second and third time, against the remnants of the Pelagians, in favor of the defenders of grace and predestination, which Augustine drew from sacred Scripture. His teaching should therefore now be called not the opinion of one particular Doctor, but the faith of the Catholic Church.

V. From all this one may infer how careful a theologian ought to be not to attempt to introduce anything new, but to follow, explain, and defend the ancient teaching received from the holy Fathers. Bishop Capreolus of Africa, in the name of the other African bishops, likewise admonishes us in these words in a letter to the most blessed Fathers of the Council of Ephesus, which that council received and approved: Therefore, venerable brothers, I wish to ask your Holiness again and again: with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, whom we do not doubt will be present in your hearts in everything you undertake, may you, armed with the strength of ancient authority, root out new doctrines—doctrines hitherto unfamiliar to Christian ears. Resist all new errors with holy constancy and courage, lest the authority of the Apostolic See and the united severity of the priests, under some pretext of dispute, appear to have allowed those doctrines long ago overcome by the Church, now sprouting again, to revive a doctrine long since proscribed.²⁷ If some new controversy should arise, it ought to be submitted in due time to examination, so that what is rightly said may be confirmed, or what deserves condemnation rejected.²⁸ Hence the Apostle also says: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.²⁹ He introduced nothing on his own authority, but handed on what he had received and preached what he had learned from the Lord. He urges Timothy to teach the same, saying: O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding profane novelties of words and the oppositions of falsely named knowledge, which some professing have fallen away from the faith. Vincent of Lérins observes here: He did not say, ‘Avoid antiquities’; he did not say, ‘Avoid old things.’ Rather, he plainly showed what must be followed in their place. For if novelty must be avoided, antiquity must be held; and if novelty is profane, old tradition is sacred.³⁰ The Apostle teaches us to avoid not only new doctrines but also novelties of words, so that we may all think and speak the same thing, with no schisms or disputes among us. For he says: I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing and that there be no schisms among you, but that you be perfected in the same mind and in the same judgment.³¹ He does not say only that you should think or believe the same thing, but that you all say the same thing, so that just as all the children of the Church agree in the same mind and Catholic judgment, they may also use the same words, as far as possible, to explain and defend it. For us, therefore, (as Tertullian says), it is permissible to introduce nothing on our own authority, nor to choose anything that someone else has introduced on his own authority. We have as our authors the Lord’s Apostles, who themselves chose to introduce nothing on their own authority, but faithfully handed on to the nations the teaching they had received from Christ.³² Therefore, even if an angel from heaven were to preach a different gospel, we would call him anathema.³³

HOW MUCH AUTHORITY the teaching of St. Thomas has, especially concerning predestination and grace.

VI. St. Augustine, the holy Father, compared the sacred teaching and unshaken truth and strength of the Catholic Church to an island, saying: Why is the Church an island? Because it is barked at by the waves of every temptation. But although an island can be battered by waves crashing all around it, it cannot be broken; rather, it breaks the waves that come against it more than it is broken by them. So too, the churches of God springing up throughout the whole world have endured persecutions from the unbelievers roaring on every side, and behold, the islands stand, and the sea is now calm.³⁴³⁵ What of Simon Magus? What of Arius, Sabellius, Pelagius and Caelestius, and the other heretics? Were they not the waves of a raging sea, spewing out their confusions, persecuting the truth, and raising their voices against the Catholic faith? The rivers have lifted up, O Lord (says the Prophet), the rivers have lifted up their voice, the rivers have lifted up their waves; from the voices of many waters. Wonderful are the swellings of the sea: Yet they could not prevail against the island of the Church, because the Lord is wonderful on high,³⁶ and because your testimonies have been made exceedingly credible, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.³⁷ Thus the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas conformed his teaching in every respect to that of the Catholic Church. Though many have attacked it, it has never been overcome; it has always remained the same and, like an island battered by rising waves, has grown stronger and brighter. It could never be broken by its attackers, nor will it be, but will remain firm to the end of the age. According to some reports, at the University of Paris many Parisian theologians rose up against the holy Doctor soon after his death. Envious of the authority of his teaching, they condemned many of his propositions as erroneous. As a result, the Bishop of Paris rashly issued a sentence of excommunication against the followers of those propositions. But these waves soon broke. For in the year of our Lord 1325, Stephen, then bishop there, together with all the Doctors of Theology, the Church, and the University—seventy-two in number—held a long consultation about St. Thomas’s propositions and examined them with great care. They judged every one of them to be Catholic and spoke these words in praise of the holy Doctor’s teaching: St. Thomas was a shining light of the universal Church, a radiant jewel among clerics, a fountain of Doctors, the brightest mirror of our University of Paris, and a distinguished, gleaming lamp by which all who walk the paths of true life and holy doctrine see the light. He shone like a splendid morning star, bright with the clarity of his life, the renown of his fame, and the brilliance of his knowledge. A little later those Doctors decree that St. Thomas, by God’s grace, thought, taught, or wrote nothing contrary to sound faith or good morals.³⁸

In a sermon in praise of St. Thomas that begins Behold, one greater than Solomon is here, Innocent VI commends his teaching in these words: Above all other teaching (except the Canonical Scriptures), this Doctor’s teaching has precision of words, a fitting manner of expression, and truth of conclusions. Thus no one who has held it is found to have strayed from the path of truth, while whoever has attacked it has always been suspected of departing from the truth. ³⁹

VII. John XXII, who enrolled Blessed Thomas in the catalogue of the saints, also spoke these words about him in the bull of his canonization: St. Thomas wrote the elementary arts, natural and moral philosophy, commentaries on both Testaments, and many other works for the praise of God and the exaltation of the faith, with clarity and learning,⁴⁰ not without a special infusion from God.⁴¹

In a certain sermon he preached on the firmness of this same holy Doctor’s teaching, taking as his theme the words of Psalm 4, Know that the Lord has made his holy one wonderful, he asserted that after the Apostles and the first holy Doctors, St. Thomas had illuminated the Church more than all others by his teaching.

As John Gerson reports, at the very canonization of the holy Doctor, that same John XXII said these or similar words in a full consistory of cardinals in praise of his teaching: Even if St. Thomas had shone with no miracles during his life or at his death, his teaching alone would have sufficed for him to be enrolled among the saints. For as many articles as he wrote, so many miracles did the Lord perform through him: each one is a miracle. ^{42 43}

Clement VI, in a certain bull issued at Avignon on February 5 in the second year of his pontificate, also commends the same teaching of St. Thomas, calling it unique and saying that the universal Church gathers the most abundant fruits of spiritual plenty from it and is refreshed and nourished by its fragrance.⁴⁴ This bull is also cited by Master Castillo.⁴⁵

VIII. Urban VI, in a bull to the Archbishop and Doctors of the University of Toulouse, issued at Montefiascone on August 30 in the sixth year of his pontificate, commends and approves all the works and writings of the Doctor. He also urges all the Doctors and Masters of that university to defend and teach his doctrine. For he says: Considering how greatly God endowed St. Thomas with knowledge, and how he illumined the Order of Preachers and the universal Church, we wish and by the tenor of these presents enjoin upon you that you follow the teaching of the said Blessed Thomas as true and Catholic, and strive with all your strength to extend it. ⁴⁶

Pius V, who designated St. Thomas the fifth Doctor of the Church, says in a certain bull issued in Rome on April 11, 1567:⁴⁷ St. Thomas illumined the universal Church by his teaching, destroyed innumerable heresies, and the heresies that arose after his death were overthrown by the teaching of this same holy Doctor.

Whose articles were transcribed more than once or twice in the sacred Council of Trent, and were drawn up and arranged as canons to be believed by all the faithful.

Finally, Clement VIII, in a special bull by which he granted St. Thomas to the city of Naples as its Patron and Protector, called him an interpreter of the divine will, and rightly so. For in his writings, with great depth and clarity, he explained more fully than all the other Doctors what pleases God and what displeases him.

The words of Isaiah certainly apply to him: The Lord has given me a learned tongue, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.⁴⁸ And, let our enemies be the judges, Theodore Beza, a Calvinist, affirmed that St. Thomas was the foremost of all scholastic theologians.⁴⁹ It is also reported that a certain heretic said: Let the writings of St. Thomas be removed, and I will not refuse to enter into a contest with all the other Doctors. A faithful witness, though one of his own school, is Ferrariensis. Wishing to explain the abundant fruit he drew every day from continually reading St. Thomas, he says: May I perish if I have ever read even a page he neglected that did not draw me into admiration of him. I have never met Thomas Aquinas without leaving more learned and more devoted to him.⁵⁰

IX.

But if men do not accept human testimony, behold the testimony of God, which is greater. For as the holy Doctor was praying in Naples, an image of the Crucified spoke to him: You have written well of me, Thomas. What reward, then, will you receive for your labor? The saint replied: Lord, none other than you. ⁵¹

In this work, therefore, I shall discuss, with as much brevity and clarity as I can, and with God’s help, above all those matters that concern the true understanding of the teaching of Saints Augustine and Thomas on the divine helps of grace and their efficacy. I shall do so in defense of those same saints, noting what agrees with the ancient doctrine and resolving the arguments of their adversaries. Together with Lord Cajetan I wish everyone to be convinced of this one point, and I solemnly entreat them: I intend in no way to oppose persons, but only opinions insofar as they disagree. ⁵²

The First Book Ends.