Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

The universal saving will of God is demonstrated from the doctrine of the Fathers.

« That the sense of the holy Scriptures which we have mentioned is genuine, the Catholic understanding of all antiquity assures us. For the holy Fathers unanimously teach that God wills¹ all men to be saved by an antecedent will², which he conceives from himself and from his goodness; nor is there any other will of his in denying eternal salvation and in condemning, except a consequent will, conceived from justice on account of sins, which, never expiated, stand before the divine foreknowledge. »

The doctrine of the Fathers stated in this thesis anyone can learn from Petavius, de Deo l. X. c. 4. 5; de Incarnat. l. XIII. c. 1-14; Did. Ruiz de volunt. Dei disp. XIX. sect. 5. 6; disp. XX. sect. 1. 6. 7; Scip. Maffei Histor. dogmat. praesertim ll. IV. V. VI. For us, in a matter which is not difficult, it is enough to have indicated a few things.

1°. Among the Greek Fathers there is none, and among the Latins at least up to the age of Augustine there is no one, who has denied that the will of God to save men is universal and extends to each individual. What Augustine's opinion was we shall see a little later. Indeed there is none of the Fathers who, when the opportunity offered, did not most explicitly profess that breadth of the saving will.

They teach a) that the will to save is primary in God and conceived from the goodness of his nature, whereby God therefore wills only what is good for the creature in every way. Whence, if there is not a will to save but rather a will to damn toward some man, they say that this is not conceived by God except insofar as it is provoked by the sins of men. See th. XLVII. n. II. Hence b) they teach that God wills the eternal salvation of all, whose creator and God he is. « He wills all those to be his whom he founded and created; would that you, man, not flee and hide yourself: he also seeks those who flee, and does not will the hidden ones to perish » Ambros. in Ps. 39. n. 20. « For one God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, is God of all men, and therefore desires all whom he made to be saved » Primasius in 1. Tim. II. 5. Hence c) they say: as far as the part of God is concerned, all would be enlightened, all just, all saved, ὡς τὸ γε αὐτοῦ μέρος, διεσῳθησαν ἅπαντες, καὶ γὰρ ἐκλήθησαν ἅπαντες: Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Theophylact, Ambrose, Paulinus. In accordance with these things d) the Fathers call it « salus generale beneficium, commune ius indulgentiae » Ambros. καθολικὴ καὶ γενικὴ σωτηρία Didym. Alex. Trin. I. 27; κοινὴ βασιλεία καὶ γενικὴ³ κοινὴ Gregor. Nyss. in Eccl. hom. III. 3. T. I. p. 407. Since this is the breadth of the saving will, e) the Fathers often ask whence it comes that not all are saved. And they constantly answer that this is because « not all were willing to come », because « men defraud themselves of the general benefit », because « they are envious of themselves », because « men do not want to be saved, but God does not impose necessity. » Ambros. Paulinus, Chrysost. Oecumen. That this answer, if the question concerns adults, was common in the fifth century, St Augustine indicates in Enchir. c. 97. « When a cause is asked, « why not all are saved, the usual answer is, because they themselves do not want it. » Nor did Augustine disapprove of this answer, except when it is taken in a Pelagian sense, as if it belonged to man, by the natural powers of free will, to save himself. Hence, answering difficulties about the sense of Augustine's doctrine which arose after his death, his most faithful disciple St Prosper of Aquitaine speaks on this matter in the same way as the other Fathers, although everywhere with diligent caution against the poisons of the Pelagians and Semipelagians. Thus (« ad Capitula Gallorum » n. 8.), to the objection that according to Augustine « God does not will all men to be saved, but a certain number of the predestined, » Prosper replies that we cannot indeed search out how God wills all absolutely to be saved, yet this is to be believed from the oracles of the Scriptures; then he adds: « the care of all men is therefore with God, and there is no one whom either evangelical preaching, or the testimony of the law, or even nature itself, does not reach⁴. But let us ascribe the unbelief of men to men themselves, and confess that faith is the gift of God, without whose grace no one runs to grace. » And in the recapitulation of the same objection he writes: « likewise he who says that God does not will all men to be saved, but a certain number of the predestined, speaks more harshly than is to be said about the depth of the inscrutable grace of God, who both wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, and fulfils the purpose of his will in those whom he foreknew and predestined... so that those who are saved are saved because God willed them to be saved; and those who perish perish, because they deserved to perish. » Cf. Prosper's response there to objections 2 and 12; St Fulgentius, ad Monim. l. 1. cc. 23. 24.

Moreover, the way of thinking and speaking in the Councils is no different. At the Council of Arles, about the year 475, there is a letter of the Fathers to the priest Lucidus, where it is said in II: « Anathema to him who says that the one who perished did not receive it, so that he might be saved; that is, concerning one baptized, or a pagan of that age, who was able to believe and was unwilling. » VI. Likewise: « Anathema to him who says that Christ did not die for all, nor that He wills all men to be saved. » In the Council of Quierzy against Gottschalk, chap. III: « Almighty God wills all men without exception to be saved, although not all are saved: that some are saved is the gift of the Saviour; that some perish is the merit of those who perish. » In the Council of Valence III the consensus on this point with the Fathers of Quierzy is full, chap. II: « We believe that no one is condemned by a prejudgment of God, but by the merit of his own iniquity. Nor do the wicked perish for this reason, that they could not be good; but because they were unwilling to be good, and by their own vice remained in the mass of damnation, either by original merit or even by actual merit. »

2°. From this universal will of God, that all be saved, this⁵ is Christ's economy and universal redemption through Christ. The Fathers teach expressly, a) that the will of the incarnate Son to save extends to all men, because the Father wills all men to be saved. Thus the opinion of Apollinaris, « that Christ by his operation according to the flesh does not quicken all (as far as in him lies), but only those whom he willed, » Gregory of Nyssa condemns in these words: « The Son quickens whom he wills: we do not so understand this as if some were rejected by the quickening will; but since we have received and believe that all things that are the Father's are also the Son's, therefore we contemplate also the will of the Father in the Son. The Father, however, wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth... Thus it is manifest that all whom the Father wills to be quickened, the Son himself also quickens (as far as in him lies)... and that in a beneficent will toward men he is not inferior to the Father, as Apollinaris thinks, when he says that not all but only some were willed to be saved. For the divine will is not the cause why, while some are saved, others perish; otherwise the perdition of these would have to be referred to that will as to its cause » Nyss. in Antirrhet. Bibl. Gallandi T. VI. p. 543. b) The Fathers frequently teach that Christ administered the economy of redemption and shed his blood for the human race, for human nature, for all whose nature he assumed, for the nature of each man. « Those who say that the Lord is not good have forgotten that this is the summit of his love toward men, that he was made man because of us. For this reason our Pedagogue the Lord is supremely good and open to no complaint, because through the excess of his love toward men he suffers with the nature of each man.... Wherefore God indeed is good through himself, but just consequently on account of the things that are ours, and this very thing because he is good » Clemens Alex. Paedagog. l. 1. c. 8. p. 113. 127.⁶ Cf. th. XLVII. c) The Fathers repeat that the necessary helps to salvation, and especially the merits of Christ, are prepared for all men and set forth as if in common. Just as the goods of nature, says Gregory Nazianzen (or. 33. al 34. n. 9.), are common to men, common heaven, common sun and moon and stars, the changes of the years, rains and fruits and air, and common reason, so « the law, the prophets, and the very sufferings of Christ are common, through which we have been restored, no exception having been made, but all are partakers of the same Adam, and were led into deceit by the serpent and affected by death through sin, and have been restored to salvation through the heavenly Adam, and have been recalled through the wood of shame to the tree of life, whence we had fallen. »