Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

There is no positive reprobation antecedent to the foreseeing of sin.

« From the very nature of God's saving will it follows that, 1° the doctrine of the heretics who are commonly called supralapsarians is plainly impious, and among these the doctrine of Calvin himself, by which they hold that God, antecedently to any foreseeing of evil merit, even of original sin itself, by an absolute decree destined to eternal ruin the men who perish, in order to manifest his justice in them; 2° likewise the doctrine of an absolute and antecedent decree of reprobation is to be condemned, considered together with the execution of this decree, as it was declared by the Calvinists in their synod of Dort and by the Jansenists. »

From what we have demonstrated in the preceding chapter concerning the antecedent will by which God wills the eternal salvation of all men, it follows closely and necessarily that there is no will in God by which he antecedently to the foreseeing of sin should will the eternal damnation of any man. Therefore the treatment of this will of the just and holy God, which, pertaining solely to the consequent will, is called reprobation, is immediately connected with what precedes. But the chief reason for prefacing in this chapter the doctrine of reprobation is for us the intimate bond between the true and genuine concept of reprobation and the declaration of the manner in which the consequent saving will of God, the particular one, stands, and predestination to eternal life: which declaration of predestination is the aim and the subject of this whole chapter. In this first article, therefore, we shall indicate and exclude false notions of reprobation, by which the doctrine of predestination itself is either wholly perverted or at least its declaration is presented less sincerely; and with the false notions excluded, a true concept of reprobation will follow of itself, on which nearly the whole declaration of predestination is sustained and governed.

I. First we shall sincerely set forth both the opinions of the supralapsarians and of the infralapsarians, and then, from the principles already laid down, we shall demonstrate the impiety of these same opinions.

1°. The heresy of Calvin on predestination and reprobation, as he explained it both elsewhere and most of all in Institution. l. III. cc.21-24., comes back to these heads. a) Some men are created for eternal life, others for eternal damnation: « therefore, he says, insofar as each is created for one or the other end, so we say that one is predestined either to life or to death » l. c. c. 21. n. 5. This predestination and ordination of God to eternal death, therefore, no less than to life, is contained in the very divine plan of creating man. Hence b) the ordination to death is not consequent upon sin, but rather the very sin of Adam and the ruin of the human race in him is an effect consequent upon and proceeding from that very antecedent predestination of many to eternal death. Calvin calls it a cold fancy that God did not, by the very plan by which he willed to create the first man, ordain him to sin, and did not by the same antecedent plan predestine the ruin of the human race and the eternal death of all who perish. « If such a cold fancy is accepted, he says, where will be that omnipotence of God which, according to his secret plan, which depends on nothing else, governs all things..... A horrible decree, I confess; yet no one will be able to deny that God foreknew what outcome man would have, before he founded him, and therefore foreknew, because he so ordained by his decree..... Nor ought it to seem absurd, what I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man and the ruin of his posterity in him, but also dispensed it by his own choice » c. 23. n. 7. Further, c) the execution of this decree is such that God, by his will, which is the necessity of things, antecedently to the elect grants the calling to faith and in it justification (the external declaration of righteousness); antecedently he denies all graces to the reprobate and hardens them into impiety. Faith and the other gifts, however, in the elect do not have the character of merit; but they are symbols and testimonies of the antecedent election: likewise in the reprobate unbelief and sins are signs of antecedent reprobation. « In the elect we establish the calling and justification as a testimony and symbol of the election to be manifested... thus, by excluding the reprobate either from knowledge of his name or from the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, he reveals to them, as it were by these marks, what judgment remains for them » c. 21. n. 7. « Those whom therefore he created for the shame of life and the destruction of death, that they might be instruments of his anger and examples of severity, these he now deprives of the faculty of hearing his word, now makes more blind and stupefied by its preaching » c. 24. n. 12. « Nor indeed is it probable in itself that man brought destruction upon himself by the permission of God alone, without any ordination..... I will not hesitate therefore, with Augustine (de Gen. ad litt. VI. 15.), simply to confess that the will of God is the necessity of things»¹ c. 23. n. 8.

Nevertheless Calvin not infrequently, in other places, where he treats of the cause of sins and of the death of men, considers their proximate cause, which according to him is the corruption of nature and the necessity of sinning introduced through original sin. This doctrine gave many Calvinists, who were ashamed of the impiety of their master, grounds for denying that Calvin was in the heresy of the antelapsarians, and it made it probable to some Catholics, such as Honoratus Tournely (De reprob. art. 2.), that he « at times passed over to the side of the postlapsarians. » But Calvin himself protests against this softening of his heresy in the most explicit words. « Since the reprobate do not obey the word of God once revealed to them, this is rightly imputed to the corruption of their heart; yet let it be added at the same time that they are given over to this corruption because, by a just but inscrutable judgment, they were raised up to have his glory illustrated by their damnation » c. 24. n. 14; cf. c. 23. n. 9. Thus the proximate cause of sins in the reprobate is assigned by Calvin to a nature corrupted and infected through the sin of Adam; but the supreme cause, which predestines both the sin of Adam and the depravity of the posterity, is God himself. What more impious doctrine, more repugnant to Scripture and to all revelation, or indeed to the very light of reason, by which we understand the divine attributes of holiness, goodness and justice, could be devised? See Petav. l. X. c. 6. sqq.

2°. We shall reduce the infralapsarian doctrines, as they were declared in the Synod of Dort by the Gomarists, or Counter-Remonstrants, against the Arminians, or Remonstrants, in the years 1618 and 1619, to a few heads, noting at the same time how far Jansenius, in his Augustinus P. III. de Grat. Christi l. IX. and X., agrees with them.

a) The decree of election and reprobation is referred to men who are all liable to damnation through the sin of Adam. So teach the canons of Dort, ch. I. art. 1-6. But concerning the decree antecedent to the very foreseeing of original sin they say nothing; for they neither dared to condemn the author of their sect, nor to approve him.

Jansenius, concerning the predestination and reprobation of angels and men in the state of innocence, seems to retain orthodox doctrine, if you remove his errors about the state of integral nature, in which grace would have been natural, and the consequent manner of speaking about predestination, which is almost Pelagian.

b) Further, the same Calvinists teach: from that condemned mass God did not only decree gratuitously to save some; but he also decreed to save them gratuitously, with no account taken of faith, obedience, or holiness as causes or conditions without which not (c. I. art. 8-10; Doctr. damn. art. 5.). God decreed by his mere just will to leave all the other men in the fall of Adam and in the state of damnation, and to pass them over in the communication of grace necessary for faith and conversion» c. I; Doctr. damn. art. 8.

Jansenius differs only in this, that he does not deny the merit of good works, nor does he deny that temporary faith and sanctification are granted to the reprobate. Nevertheless, not only predestination to grace (as all Catholics teach), and predestination to glory (which some Catholics hold), according to Jansenius were made by God by antecedent will and with no account taken of merits; but also the reprobation of all who perish, and indeed positive reprobation, insofar as it is exclusion from eternal life and condemnation to the punishment of loss, was made by antecedent decree; namely, God, having foreseen the ruin of human nature in Adam, decreed to leave all of them in the condemned mass, out of which they are not rescued either through the remission of original sin or through temporary justification. « Positive reprobation, says Jansenius, is to be understood in such a way that by this very fact he willed positively to exclude the others, passed over (in predestination), from eternal life... which surely is nothing other than to will to damn, insofar as exclusion from eternal life and from the kingdom of God is the most grievous damnation of a rational creature... Original sin is the cause of positive reprobation, by which, as unworthy, one is repelled from the benefit of eternal life, whether that little one or adult is, or is to be justified for a time, or will remain in iniquities for his whole life. For in order that someone be freed from the mass of perdition, so that he does not perish, and is not considered to be excluded by the divine decree of reprobation from actually attaining the kingdom of God, it is not enough to have received justice for a time... Although it is true that in many the original guilt is removed in baptism... nevertheless it remains stable and most true that, on account of that guilt to which man lay subject, God willed not to decree for him the total benefit of liberation, nor to free him from perdition in such a way that he actually escapes it » Ians. de Grat. Christi l.² X. cc. 2. 3; cf. l.³ IX. c. 9. See I. B. Faure ad Enchir. Aug. c. 55.

c) Concerning the execution, from which the very reason of predestination and reprobation can be understood, the Synod of Dort teaches the following. To save only the predestined God sent his Son; for these alone Christ died; to these alone and to all God gives grace to believe, which no one can resist: therefore to these alone and to all he gives justifying faith, which once received cannot be lost; for even though the faithful sin, they cannot fall from adoption and the grace of God (ch. I; Doctr. damn. art. 2. 6; ch. II. art. 8; ch. IV. art. 12. 14; ch. V. art. 4–7.). On the other hand the reprobate, just as in the eternal decree they have been excluded from all supernatural gifts, so in execution receive no sufficient grace, so that they might be able to believe and be converted; they have been left to a corrupt nature and to the law, delivered over to malediction, so that they obtain no saving grace (ch. I; Doctr. damn. art. 8; c. III. art. 5; c. V. art. 10).

Jansenius agrees that towards the reprobate there is no will of God that they be saved; but that God wills all and only the predestined to be saved, and that Christ died solely for the salvation of the predestined; accordingly, that in the present state of fallen nature no sufficient grace is given; that the reprobate, if they are justified for a time, cannot persevere, because the efficacious help is denied them, by which one perseveres; and that the help without which one cannot, and by which the just can persevere, is given in the present state to none: and further, that those deprived of efficacious grace necessarily sin, because in fallen nature sufficient grace is not given; and that this very necessity of sinning is one of the conditions and characters of the condemned mass, which was made through original sin.

It has pleased us to set out more distinctly the doctrine of the Synod of Dort, both because it was held by the Calvinists as a genuine declaration of their own dogma, and because some Catholic theologians have not judged it correctly. Among these, Petrus Gazzaniga T. II. dissert. VI. n. 242. writes: « The Synod (of Dort) was split into two parts, namely of the Arminians and of the Gomarists.... Those who, with Francis Gomarus, won a full victory over the Arminians in the synod, descended to the sound Thomist doctrine of predestination and reprobation, few clinging to rigid Calvinism. » See, on this opinion of Gazzaniga, the judgment of Georgius Albertinus O. P. (de Deo acroas. XVII. n. 4. 5; de Gratia acroas. XV. n. 15; ad Bannezian. et Lemosiens. theologos orat. 2. n. 39; epist. 1. ad Dominic. Pellegrini c. 3).

II. We have demonstrated above that the antecedent saving will of God is not only, with regard to human nature standing and integral, but also, in this order of fallen and restored nature, entirely universal: in this fundamental doctrine itself, however, it is included, and from it it follows, that the will of justice, in which the decree of reprobation and damnation is contained, can be nothing but consequent.

1°. Therefore, given these principles, the doctrine of the supralapsarians as well as of the infralapsarians is understood to be already evidently refuted. For in each opinion a) there are plainly denied the things which are taught expressly in Scripture and the Fathers concerning the will of God that all men be saved, and concerning the death of Christ for all men. b) Then, in each opinion, the damnation of all the reprobate is concluded, antecedently to the foreseeing of human actions, in such a way that by virtue of that antecedent reprobation there is denied either every supernatural gift and even, by name, the effects of the sacraments (among the Calvinists), or at least every grace ordained to salvation and conferring the possibility of salvation (among the Jansenists). c) Consequently, in each opinion the liberty of the will, whether to good or to evil, and therefore the entire moral order, is wholly subverted; and likewise, at least by the Calvinists, is subverted the most certain head of Christian doctrine, by which we profess that the merits of supernatural virtues are true, by which eternal life is rendered as wage and crown, and the true guilt of actual sins, which are not punished because they were free in the will of the first man, but insofar as they are free in the will of each sinner.

d) In each opinion there are taught things which, when set beside especially the divine precepts, promises, threats and attestations, plainly clash with the goodness, justice, truthfulness, wisdom and holiness of God. This impiety is wholly manifest in the doctrine of the supralapsarians: for « if God is believed to condemn a man who is undeserving and subject to no sin, he is not believed to be free from iniquity » S. Aug. ep. 186. n. 20; « nor will it be called just, if the guilty man is said not to have been found punishable but to have been made so; and the injustice will be greater, if God repays punishment to one fallen, whom he is said to have predestined to ruin while standing » S. Fulgent. ad Monim. l.⁴ I. c. 22.

But the opinion of the infralapsarians might seem to someone who does not look more deeply to differ little from the opinion of certain Catholic theologians, who ascribe to the antecedent will of God, with a foreseeing of merits, the predestination and reprobation which they call negative, as they say, or even a positive exclusion from eternal life; and they think this same opinion was that of St Augustine. Nevertheless, the difference between this opinion and the doctrine of the Calvinists and Jansenists is great; not so much in this, that Catholics call that antecedent reprobation negative, while heretics call it positive (for this is not clear enough in the explanations of all those Catholics): but the difference stands out far more clearly in that the heretics defend antecedent reprobation in such a way that α) they expressly exclude the saving will of God and the death of Christ for the salvation of the reprobate; that β) they exclude for the reprobate either all grace or at least sufficient grace and the possibility of attaining salvation; that γ) they deny all merely sufficient grace, and further introduce necessity both into good acts under efficacious grace and into evil ones under the dominion of concupiscence, and expressly affirm that God, under the threat of his wrath and of eternal punishment, commands the reprobate impossible things, and that in these things a man sins necessarily yet damnably. But all those Catholics, of whom we shall speak later, condemn these things and deny that they follow from their own principles. Catholics therefore freely defend their own opinion of antecedent negative reprobation; nor is it right to confuse it with the opinions of the heretics. This does not, however, prevent those who think it false from setting forth their reasons with the same freedom, and from asserting and vindicating the contrary opinion from all⁵, the theological principles available to them; as we shall endeavour to do below.

2°. The doctrine of the heretics is convicted of manifest impiety from the heads which we have touched on in passing; moreover, it has been explicitly refuted, and « what the Catholic understanding holds concerning those whom we believe to be predestined to destruction » (S. Fulg. 1. I. c. 28. ad Monim.) has been clearly declared in those ecclesiastical documents by which either the doctrine of Augustine was defended against the slanders and difficulties raised about this matter, or in the fifth and ninth centuries the predestinarian heresy was attacked and condemned. The Council of Orange II, can. 25., has: « We also believe according to the Catholic faith that, when grace has been received through baptism, all who are baptized (therefore also those who are reprobate in God's foreknowledge) are able, with Christ's help, and ought, if they wish to labour faithfully, to fulfil those things which pertain to the salvation of the soul. But that some are predestined to evil by divine power we not only do not believe; but also, if there are some who want to believe in so great an evil, with all detestation we say anathema to them. » The councils of Carisiac. cap. I. III; Valentin. III. can. III; Trident. sess. VI. can. XVII agree. Among the Fathers, above all, are to be read St Prosper in his responses to the chapters of the Gauls and to the Vincentian objections, and St Fulgentius throughout book I to Monimus, especially from ch. 19 onwards. « The strength of obedience, says Prosper (ad cap. 12. Gall.), God has not withdrawn from anyone because he did not predestine him; but he did not predestine him because he foresaw that he would fall away from that very obedience. » Prosper's opinion is perfectly clear in his reply to obiect. XII. Vincentianam. « They went out by their will, they fell by their will, and because they were foreknown as going to fall, they were not predestined; but they would have been predestined if they were going to return and remain in holiness: and thus God's predestination is for many the cause of standing, for no one the cause of falling. » Fulgentius argues to the same effect through almost the whole of the book cited. « No one was ever wicked, except insofar as he departed from God; nor did God predestine that he would depart, although divine knowledge foreknew that he would depart.... Therefore in the holy ones the Lord will bring to perfection what he gave freely that they might be good; but what he foreknew he would give, he predestined in the eternal disposition of goodness... Moreover, in the wicked he will punish what he did not give, so that they might be bad; nor did he predestine them to iniquity at all.... And because the persevering iniquity of an evil will ought not to remain unpunished, he predestined such to destruction, because he prepared for such the punishment of just penalty.... Behold to what the Lord predestined the wicked and impious... To the destruction which the wrath of the just judge rendered to sinners, not to destruction (that is, to sin), by which the iniquity of sinners provoked the wrath of God against themselves » l. c. cap. 25. 26. As far as Augustine is concerned, Fulgentius himself, c. 28. 29., shows that this was his same doctrine concerning the reprobation of adults on account of « the persevering iniquity of an evil will. » He quotes from Augustine's book II. c. 17. de pecc. merit. et remiss. this passage: « That what was hidden may be made known, and that what did not please may be made sweet, is of the grace of God, which helps human wills; if they are not helped by it, the cause is likewise in themselves and not in God, whether the predestined to be condemned are so on account of the iniquity of pride, or, against pride, to be judged and instructed, if they are children of mercy..... Therefore refer the cause of no human fault to God, for pride is the cause of all human vices. » In these words of Augustine, Fulgentius warns that the following things are to be carefully noted. « First, that when men are not helped by God, the cause is said to be in them, not in God; then, because on account of the iniquity of pride they are said to be predestined to be condemned, which pertains to judgment, not to depravation, which pertains to sin; thirdly also consider that he admonishes that the cause of no human fault is to be referred to God, because if any iniquity of a sinner is believed to be predestined by God, the cause of that iniquity would be placed in the divine predestination, which, how impious it is and how contrary to the Christian faith, I think no Christian can fail to see. »

Therefore, the doctrine of the holy Fathers having been sufficiently explained in the very conflict with the Pelagians and Semipelagians: a) God predestines no one to evil, by which someone merits destruction; and so he does not will that in any way, but only foreknows it. Nor does God withdraw strength from anyone, so that he falls; but on the contrary he wills of himself to help all; yet that many are not actually helped, the cause is in themselves. For if it were otherwise, if God predestined iniquity, he would himself be the cause of sin; and to think this is impious and contrary to the sense of all Christians and to the Christian faith. b) In respect of destruction there is no antecedent predestination, but only consequent to the foreseeing of « persevering iniquity; » for this predestination⁶ or reprobation is an act of justice willing to punish eternally, which can be nothing but consequent upon sin (August. c. Iul. III. n. 35; de lib. arb. III. n. 51.); and in the present restored order it is nothing except consequent upon persevering and final sin. Moreover, c) not to be predestined and to be reprobated are equivalent for the Fathers; hence also there is no one to whom predestination to eternal life is denied except consequently, because he is foreseen « as going to fall and not going to return. » Hence those who are reprobate through their own fault, if they were foreseen as finally going to return, so that they could and ought to return, would no longer be reprobate but predestined.

Yet this whole Christian doctrine condemns on every side the invention of the heretics, not only of the supralapsarians but also of the infralapsarians, especially if one considers the manner in which they imagined that the execution of predestination and reprobation takes place.

Scholion. To answer the arguments which the adversaries draw from Rom. IX., the near and the remote context of Paul's discourse must be considered. For from the very context and aim of the Apostle it is made clear that there he is not speaking directly of predestination to glory considered in itself, nor of reprobation from glory; but of the gratuitous calling to faith, and of predestination consequently to grace. What is said of the hatred of Esau cannot be taken either in the literal sense or in the typical sense as antecedent reprobation from eternal life. Nor can the hardening mentioned there, or what is introduced by the comparison with clay in the potter's hand, be so taken; for in these passages the discourse is about the grace of faith, which Paul shows to be conferred by God not as a debt but out of mercy. The remaining things, concerning the stirring up of Pharaoh and concerning the vessels of wrath, are manifestly to be understood as concerning the consequent will with regard to the foreseen sin, by which will God also makes good use of evil men for his own ends. We shall explain chapter IX of Romans in another place; meanwhile, to demonstrate what we have indicated, let the inferences of the Apostle at IX. 32. 33; X. 12. sq.; XI. 20. sq. be considered; let IX. 22 likewise be compared with II. 4. 5; 2. Pet. III. 15; Sap. XI. 24–XII. 18. and with 2. Tim. II. 20. 21.

Besides chapter IX of the Romans, the Calvinists used to object the testimony of 1. Pet. II. 8: « but to those who do not believe..... a stone of stumbling and a rock of scandal, to those who stumble at the word and do not believe, unto which also they were appointed »⁷ For they said, namely with their Theodore Beza, that the reprobate were placed by God himself for this purpose, that they should not believe. But the Venerable Bede, on this passage (Opp. T. V. p. 971.), saw the entirely opposite sense in the words of St Peter: namely, that those very persons who do not believe, and by their own fault strike against the word of the Gospel and fall, are placed by God that they may believe. « By exaggerating the folly, he added: nor do they believe, unto which also they were appointed; because men are placed in this, that is, made by nature (given elevation in the present order) so that they may believe God and obey his will, as Solomon attests, when he says: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole of man. » Cornelius a Lapide, Alliolius and others have preferred this interpretation to the rest; but in fact, especially when the Greek text is inspected, it does not seem to be the genuine sense. In the commentary under the name of Didymus (Bibl. Max. PP. T. IV. p. 323.) the placing is explained as a placing by which they placed themselves in order not to believe. « It is a voluntary placing bearing the beginning of not believing... they were placed by themselves for not believing. » Almost the same comes back to the interpretation of Oecumenius on this passage (T. II. p. 496.), according to which God is said to permit unbelief by a will consequent upon the foreseeing of sins. « Unto which also they were appointed is not said as if they had been destined to this by God; for no cause of perdition is supplied by him who wills that all men be saved; but those who fitted themselves to be vessels of wrath (cf. Rom. IX. 22; 2. Tim. II. 20. 21.), unbelief followed them too; and into the order into which they prepared themselves, into this they were placed. And if man was created free, and no force is to be applied to free will, let no one rightly complain about him who assigns to man such a lot as man has won for himself by his own works. » Moreover, it should be noted that stumbling at the cornerstone is presented in the Scriptures as the punishment of unbelief: « and it shall be... for a stone of stumbling... and they shall be broken » Is. VIII. 14. 15; « and whoever falls upon that stone shall be broken; but upon whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder » Matth. XXI. 44. If therefore they are understood to be placed, on account of unbelief, to stumbling and to breaking on the stone, that is, on account of sin, to punishment, every difficulty disappears.

For the solution of the difficulties that arise from the teaching of St Augustine, as if original sin, antecedently to any other foreseeing, were the cause of reprobation for all the reprobate, even adults, both for those to whom it is remitted and for others in whom it remains unremitted, see the notes of I. B. Faure on Enchirid. Aug. c. 53, and the third note on c. 98. We shall treat of the opinion of St Augustine on predestination and reprobation at the proper places, with the care it deserves.