Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

On the distinctions of the saving will according to the doctrine of St Augustine.

« For the true sense of St Augustine concerning the will of God in the business of our salvation, which is always unconquered and which no one can resist, it helps not a little, to be rightly understood, to notice certain other distinctions of the divine will connected with the foregoing: into the absolute will, which is efficacious in act, and into the will which is directed to its term under a condition depending also upon created liberty; the will considered on the side of the lawgiver, and the will of the judge considered as a whole; and finally the will considered according to all the helps which are in the treasuries of omnipotence, and the will according to the helps which God actually confers. »

The conditional will and the will of the lawgiver can indeed be compared with the antecedent will; and the opposite members, namely the absolute will and the will of the judge, can in some measure be traced back to the consequent will. Yet not every antecedent will of God is conditional; it can also be absolute. Again, the will of the lawgiver, or the will that commands, is considered under a quite different aspect from the antecedent will. In the last division, the will considered according to the helps to be actually conferred corresponds to the consequent will; but the other member, namely the will considered according to the omnipotence of God, agrees fully neither with the antecedent nor with the consequent will. Hence the distinctions proposed in this thesis are not altogether the same as that earlier distinction of the antecedent and the consequent will. They agree better, however, with the manner of considering which is familiar to Augustine, and they help not a little to understand his teaching. It is not without cause, therefore, that we add these other distinctions to that earlier one.

I. The absolute will, considered universally, may be such antecedently, that it wills absolutely, independently of conditions, that a term should exist; or the absolute will may be consequently, which absolutely wills the existence of the term when the condition has been verified. Hence the consequent saving will is always also absolutely efficacious and conferring salvation itself, as is clear of itself. But the antecedent saving will indeed brings about many things which are of themselves ordered to salvation; yet it does not will this without a condition depending also on the free cooperation of men, as far as those are concerned who are capable of cooperation, the question of the saving will as regards infants being set aside meanwhile. Thus, then, the conditional and the absolute saving will is reduced to the antecedent and the consequent will, the mutual agreement of which two distinctions St Bonaventure declares very well. « The antecedent will is called by the Masters the conditional will, or the will by which God wills, so far as it is in himself. The second, namely the consequent, is called absolute. The difference between this will and that is not according to a diversity of affection or of manner of willing which is in God; but according to the manner of connoting and of understanding. For insofar as God is said to will the salvation of all, so far as it is in himself and antecedently, there is connoted in all an ordering to salvation, both on the part of the nature given and on the part of the grace offered; for God gave them a nature by which they could know him, and, known, seek him, and, sought, find him, and, found, cleave to him, and by this obtain salvation. Likewise he offered grace, when he sent and offered his Son, whose price suffices for the salvation of all. He also gave and showed laws and commandments of salvation. He himself is also present to all who seek him, and near to all who call upon him. To will, therefore, to save a man antecedently is to be ordered to make him saved, and not to fail him who wills to arrive. Hence to will to save antecedently does not connote salvation (actually conferred), but ordainability to salvation. But to will to save consequently or absolutely is to give salvation to him whom he foreknows will arrive at salvation through his help and grace, and it connotes the outcome of salvation » St Bonaventure, 1. dist. 46. a. 1. q. 1.

Thus the antecedent conditional saving will passes, from the foresight of a condition to be fulfilled, into the consequent absolute will which is effective of salvation; but from the foresight of the contrary hypothesis there follows the consequent absolute will of reprobation. You have these reasons of the absolute and conditional will expressed in St Augustine, Enchirid. c. 108. 104. « He who, without any ambiguity, if in heaven and on earth, as truth sings, has done whatever he willed (by absolute will), certainly did not will (did not will by absolute will) whatever he did not do. Wherefore God would have wished the first man also to be kept in that salvation in which he was made (conditional will), ... if he had foreknown that he would have a perpetual will to remain without sin, as he was made. But because he foreknew that he would sin, he prepared his will rather for this (absolute and consequent), so that he himself might do good even from one who does evil, and so the evil will of man would not be emptied, but nevertheless the good of the Almighty would be fulfilled. »

II. Augustine also distinguishes the divine will in another way: into the preceptive will, which is not always fulfilled by men; and into the same will, as it is at once preceptive and a law sanctioning with rewards and punishments, which is always unconquered, and which no power and no created will can hinder. Considered in the first way, the will of God is that we freely do or omit something, and for carrying it out He indeed gives the necessary help and grace, yet in such a way that we can resist it in the exercise of our freedom. « If He is almighty, why do you pray that His will be done? What then means: Thy will be done? Let it be done in me, that I may not resist Thy will…… for the will of God will be done in you, even if it is not done by you…… whether it be well or ill with you, it will be done in you; but let it also be done by you » Aug. serm. 56. (al. 48. de divers.) n. 7. In the other way the will is considered as absolute, for rendering reward or punishment according to merits, which is not to be done freely by man, but carried out by the Almighty, and therefore always unconquered. Augustine declares his mind excellently concerning both distinctions in the book de spirit. et litt. c. 33. n. 58. « God indeed wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; yet not so as to take away from them free will (the preceptive and offering will, grace which can nevertheless be resisted), by which, using it either well or ill, they are most justly judged (the will of sanction). When this happens, unbelievers indeed act against the will of God (the preceptive will not fulfilled); yet they do not on that account overcome it (considered in its entirety), but rather defraud themselves of a great and supreme good and entangle themselves in penal evils, about to experience in punishments the power of Him whose mercy in gifts (the antecedent and preceptive will of salvation) they have spurned¹. So the will of God is always unconquered; but it would be conquered, if it did not find what to do with the spurners, or if they could in any way escape what He has himself decreed concerning such persons (by the consequent will, executing the sanction). For he who says, for instance: I will that all these servants of mine work in the vineyard, and after the labour, resting, feast; so that whoever of them has refused this should always grind in the mill; it seems indeed that whoever has spurned it acts against the will of his lord (the preceptive will); but he will then overcome that will (considered as the sanction of the law), if, spurning the mill, he also escapes, which can in no way happen under the power of God. » Cf. Enchirid. c. 100. St Anselm drew his doctrine from Augustine in « Cur Deus homo » c. 15. « Although man, or the evil angel, is unwilling to be subject to the divine ordinance, he cannot yet flee from it. For if he wishes to flee from under the commanding will, he runs under the punishing will. And if you ask, by which way does he pass? Only under the permitting will. And this very thing which he perversely wills or does, supreme wisdom turns (by the consequent will) into the order and beauty of the aforesaid universe. » Cf. S. Th. 1. q. 19. a. 6.

III. The Pelagians taught that salvation is to be obtained by man from his own natural powers and human merits. Whence they thought that the reason many are not saved is solely that men, who ought to be willing, namely by a will bare and by the powers of nature, themselves are unwilling. God, as far as human liberty being kept safe he could confer on man the means of attaining salvation, has conferred them on all equally: since he gave to all nature and in it a full possibility of salvation, and moreover, in superabundance, he offered to all equally the external grace of law and teaching and of the example in Christ. Hence the saving will of God is referred equally to all; insofar as he wills the salvation of all, if they make good use of the powers of good nature. It is for men by the powers of nature to save themselves, not for God to save men; nor can God, without injury to human liberty, by the operation of his grace convert men's wills and make the unwilling willing. A similar error concerning the saving will of God followed from the principles of those Semipelagians, who thought that a good human will must necessarily precede, so that grace may be added. Vide S. Fulgent. de Incarn. et gratia ad Petrum diac. n. 56.

In direct opposition to these errors, Augustine in his disputations against the Pelagians and Semipelagians defended the Catholic doctrine; whence also his manner of considering and of speaking cannot rightly be understood unless the character of the contrary errors is most carefully kept before the eyes in interpreting Augustine. As far as the present matter is concerned, the Pelagian doctrine gave Augustine occasion to consider the sanctifying will of God in the whole range of graces and helps which are subject to his omnipotence. Before this omnipotence God never lacks a manner by which a hard heart is softened; a manner by which it is urged, so that it is persuaded to man; a manner by which he calls in such a way that man does not reject the one calling. « For who would be so impiously foolish as to say that God cannot turn the evil wills of men, whichever he wills, whenever he wills, wherever he wills, to good? » S. Aug. Enchirid. c. 98. But indeed, if the will of God is regarded in relation to the individual graces which he actually confers: he confers grace on all by a sincere antecedent will, so that man does not reject the one calling; yet he does not always and not to all confer those graces by which he foreknows they will consent; he does not always call in such a way « as he knows to fit them so that they do not reject the one calling. » Considering the will of God in relation to the whole range of possible graces, Augustine teaches that the effect of God's mercy cannot be frustrated by man. « The effect of God's mercy cannot be in man's power, so that he would be merciful in vain if man were unwilling; for if he wished to have mercy on them also, he could call them in a way suited to them, so that they both were moved and understood and followed…. Here someone will say: why then was Esau not so called that he would be willing to obey?… Who would dare to say that God lacked a way of calling by which he would apply the mind of Esau also to the same faith, and join his will to that in which Jacob was justified?… For who would say that the manner by which he might be persuaded to believe was lacking even to the Almighty? » Ad Simpl. l. 1. q. 2. n. 13. 14. On the other hand, when the individual graces which God actually confers are regarded, the tenth Quesnellian proposition was condemned: « grace is the operation of the hand of the Almighty, which nothing can impede or retard. »

Furthermore, while Augustine keeps before his eyes that omnipotence of God, to which all graces lie ready in a certain infinite variety, at times he calls that single will, by which God confers grace under the foreknowledge of a future consent, and by which the consent is in fact obtained, the will of showing mercy and the will of saving; and conversely, when, under the foresight that man will by his own fault resist the grace to be conferred, yet another grace to which consent would be joined is not given, by a just but hidden judgement, God is said by Augustine not to will to show mercy and not to will to save; namely, not to will by absolute and effective will, and not to will according to the whole extent of his omnipotence. The holy Doctor considers, in Enchirid. c. 95, from the words of Christ, Matth. XI. 21, that it is certain that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have done penance, if the grace which the cities of Galilee had received in vain had been conceded to them, and yet this grace was not given to them. Of the effective will, and of the omnipotent will which God did not have toward the Tyrians, what Augustine adds must be understood: « nor indeed did God unjustly not will them to be saved, when they could have been saved, if he had willed (al. they willed). Then (in the other life) it will be seen in the clearest light of wisdom what the faith of the pious now holds…. how certain, unchangeable and most efficacious the will of God is; how many things he is able to do and does not will, while he wills nothing which he cannot do…. In heaven and on earth, whatever he willed, he did, which is certainly not true, if he willed some things and did not do them, and, what is more unworthy, did not do them because the will of man hindered what the Almighty was willing to happen. Nothing therefore comes about unless the Almighty wills it to come about, either by permitting it to happen or by doing it himself. » See I. B. Faure in the notes to the Enchirid. S. Aug. cc. 52. 95. 103.

Scholion. Among the Scholastic theologians there is another distinction of the divine will, first recalled by Hugh of St Victor (Summa sent., Tract. I. c. 13. T. III. p. 195.), into the will of good pleasure and the will of sign. St Thomas speaks of this distinction in 1. q. 19. a. 11. 12; de verit. q. 23. a. 3, and all the other Scholastics in this place of the Summae and in 1. dist. 45. The will of good pleasure² as distinguished from the will of sign, is every will of God properly so called, both antecedent and consequent, both conditional and absolute. The will of sign, as the Scholastics understand it, is not God's will itself; but is an extrinsic sign of the divine will, which they note is metaphorically (or rather metonymically) called a will. They enumerate, moreover, five such signs or objective manifestations of the will: « he commands and forbids, permits, counsels, fulfils. » These are, namely: precept, prohibition, counsel, operation and permission. Hugh, comprehending under the name of precept also counsel, lists only four signs of the will. Moreover, it is manifest in itself that a sign and manifestation of the will cannot come from God, who is infinitely good and true, without some will properly so called corresponding to it, which God wills to be made manifest by the sign. To one who considers it, it will be clear that precept, prohibition and counsel always correspond to a will at least antecedent and of good pleasure; operation and permission correspond to some will at least consequently absolute. I have said that a will which God wills to manifest always corresponds to the sign; but I have not said that in God there is always a will which men gather from the sign; for they can err. Thus he would have erred who from the precept given to Abraham had gathered that in God there is a will that Isaac be actually sacrificed.

Hence the distinction of Calvin into a manifest and a hidden will of God is truly impious, so that what God manifestly signifies he wills, the flight from sins, the observance of the law, the salvation of all men, he by a hidden will is unwilling should be done. The distinction of John Piscator also belongs to the same class, between the natural will of disapproval, by which God hates sins, and the free will, by which he decrees and wills that sins be done. See Petav. l. X. c. 10. n. 5.