Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

Neither the question of St Prosper in ep. ad Augustinum n. 8., nor the reply of St Augustine, can be understood as concerning predestination to glory before or after foreseen merits, which are through truly gratuitous grace.

« We do not think it probable that St Prosper, in ep. ad August. n. 8., asked about the doctrine of the earlier Fathers concerning predestination to glory after foreseen merits in the sense in which Catholics defend it; and it is evidently false that Augustine, in his reply in de Praedest. SS. n. 27., refused as to this doctrine the authority of the holy Fathers. For Prosper's question must be understood according to Semipelagian principles, and « a question difficult to solve », in which, Augustine says, the older Fathers were only incidentally engaged, so that there is no need to search through their little works, pertains plainly to something other than predestination to glory before or after foreseen supernatural merits. »

Let it first be observed, in the doctrine of the Fathers who wrote before the Pelagian heresy arose, that on each of the two heads, grace and predestination, something is stated wholly expressly and clearly, and very often inculcated on purpose, while something else is rather implicit and presupposed or mentioned in passing. As we have seen enough in thesis LIX, they teach clearly and explicitly by negations that predestination to eternal life is not made « simply, but because God had foreknown men's merits, he predestined them »; that God « did not predestine before he foreknew merits; but whose merits he foreknew, their rewards he predestined »; that « election is not without preceding causes and without the truth of judgment »; that « election is not of an indiscriminate judgment, but from a choice of merit »; that it is « not from the sole charity of God but also from our virtue, because if it were from the sole charity, all would have to be saved. » The Fathers next teach by affirming that « dwellings are prepared for the pious as well as for the impious according to foreknowledge of future things »; that « the kingdom was prepared by the Father consequent upon labours, prepared by the Father's foreknowledge on account of the excellence of virtues »; that « the kingdom was once prepared for the just, because God foreknew they would be such »; that « those whom he foreknew to be devoted to him, these he chose for the promised rewards. »

It is, however, implicit in these and many other passages of those Fathers, and often presupposed or less distinctly expressed, that the beginning of a good and saving will, which is the root and principle of the merits by which eternal life is predestined, is itself also a gift of God and from grace; and therefore that eternal life is predestined on foreseen merit, which merit is itself the grace of God. Whence it follows that predestination to glory, in its root (in the first grace, I say), cannot have a meritorious cause on the part of the predestined men, and so is truly, yet not purely, gratuitous. This principle of predestination of grace, from no human merits, and predestination to eternal life, indeed from merits but from merits obtained¹ through grace, was most fully defended and made clear in the Pelagian controversy. Hence what the older Fathers said, «those whose merits God foreknew, their rewards he predestined,» is seen to be explained more distinctly by the Fathers who followed, in accordance with the doctrine of Augustine and of the Catholic Church, in this sense: «he predestined to the kingdom those whom he foreknew would return to him by the aid of preventing mercy» etc. S. Fulgent. ad Monim. I. 24. The Semipelagians, on the contrary, although they did not simply deny the merits of grace from which predestination to life comes, nevertheless attributed the very beginning of a good will, the will to believe, and perseverance in faith, not to the grace and gift of God but to human merit, by foreseeing which God predestined us to the graces of works and to eternal life. In this way, what the older Fathers in their explicit doctrine of predestination from foreseen merits either presupposed or expressed less distinctly², those erring men altogether denied, and they tried to establish their error from the opinions of the Fathers. Hence St Augustine's whole disputation on predestination against the Semipelagians bears on this one point: to demonstrate that predestination is entirely gratuitous in its first root, and independent of human or natural merits.

Having thus set forth beforehand the manner of preaching before the Pelagian controversy and the error of the Semipelagians, the way is cleared to understand both Prosper's question and Augustine's reply, which we are discussing. Prosper's question in his letter n. 8. was this: « Please also show us, bearing patiently our foolishness, how this is to be resolved: that on reviewing the earlier opinions on this matter there is found an almost universal agreement and one view, by which they received the purpose and predestination of God according to foreknowledge, so that for this reason God made some vessels of honour and others of dishonour, because he foresaw the end of each, and foreknew in what will and action he would be under the very help of grace. » Many understand these words in this way: that one asks what is to be thought of the earlier Fathers, who almost all taught predestination after foreseen supernatural merits in the sense in which predestination is now disputed. From these, others (like Alticotius) affirm that the question was Prosper's own, not the difficulty of the Massilians; whence they find no reply to it in Augustine's books. Others do not hesitate to assert that the question is indeed the same that is now called in controversy among Catholics, but proposed from the opinion of the Semipelagians; and Augustine's reply is found in the book de Praedest. SS. n. 27., in these words: « Why then is there need that we search the little works of those who, before this (Pelagian) heresy arose, had no necessity to engage in this difficult question to solve? » Augustine would therefore have judged that the earlier Fathers, who affirmed in passing predestination to glory after foreseen supernatural merits while the question was not yet sufficiently refined, were not to be heard; but predestination to glory before the foreseeing of any merits is to be defended. See Suarez, l. I. c. 8. n. 38; Gonet, disp. II. n. 15. 24; Cercia, Apparat. ad Tract. de Grat. lect. 10. p. 162.

We are not now asking in general what Augustine thought of predestination to glory considered in itself; but we affirm two things: first, that Augustine's reply, l. c., cannot be referred to the doctrine of the earlier Fathers concerning predestination to glory, whatever sense of Prosper's question is supposed; second, that this question itself was not proposed in the sense which those theologians suppose.

I. What we affirm of Augustine, first, is evident from the very look of the words. For the question is not about predestination to glory; rather, in the most eloquent words of the Holy Doctor, the question is of gratuitous grace; and in it he thinks there is no need to dispute with the Pelagians and Semipelagians about each opinion of the older Fathers, because the Fathers had either often presupposed it or touched upon it in passing, and so all the more obscurely. « Certainly, if I were to bring forward, he says, a defence of this opinion from the writers of the divine Scriptures who were before us, which now we are urged to defend more carefully and copiously against the new error of the Pelagians, namely that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, and that it is given freely to whom it is given, because it is neither of the one willing nor of the one running, but of God who shows mercy… if then I were to draw a defence of this opinion from the divine oracles and from the Catholic writers who preceded us, surely these brethren, for whom we now act, would acquiesce; for this you have signified in your letters. Why then is there need that we search the little works of those who, before this heresy arose, had no necessity to engage in this difficult question to solve, which without doubt they would have done if they had been compelled to reply to such men? Whence it came about that what they thought about the grace of God they touched upon briefly and in passing in certain places of their writings » de Praedest. SS. n. 27.

2°. The reason why Augustine was unwilling to be drawn into a discussion of each opinion of the Fathers cannot be that they «touched briefly and in passing» on the doctrine of predestination to glory before any merits whatever were foreseen. For the Fathers older than Augustine set out the doctrine of predestination after the foreseeing³ of supernatural merits frequently, explicitly, and most clearly; but the doctrine our adversaries hold they touched on neither briefly nor at length, except to refute it. On the contrary, it is most true that the Fathers, especially the Greeks, most well known to Cassian, once a hearer of Chrysostom, and to the other Massilians, touched briefly and in passing on the doctrine of preventing grace, which goes before every beginning that would be from us, and sometimes even presupposed it. From this it came about that those holy Fathers, and Chrysostom by name, were not rarely charged with calumny, even by more recent writers, as though they were forerunners of Semipelagianism.

3°. Augustine indeed could, and wished, to declare and defend «more diligently and laboriously» what the earlier Fathers had taught more obscurely and more simply (de Dono persever. n. 53.); but he never shrank more from teaching things contradictory to his predecessors, and nothing was more at heart for him than to keep agreement with them, to bring it forward and demonstrate it everywhere, as is clear to readers even of these two books, de Praed. SS. et de Dono persev. Cf. Maffei Hist. theol. l. X. §. II. n. 2. But if the sense of the answer in this place were the one the adversaries say, he would no longer be «diligentius et operosius defending» what the Fathers had said «briefly and in passing», as he professes to be doing; he would instead contradict their plain opinions. It is therefore most certain⁴, that this is not the sense of Augustine's words. Hence if the question of Prosper means this: what (grace being supposed gratuitous and preventing every human and natural beginning on the way of salvation) is to be thought of predestination to glory considered in itself, after foreseen merits obtained through gratuitous grace, as «there is found an equal and one opinion of almost all the earlier ones;» if, I say, this is the sense of the question, the answer to it is certainly not found in this place, in de Praed. SS. n. 27, where the adversaries seek it; but it would have to be found, wholly consonant with the earlier Fathers, in other works of Augustine written long ago, to whose reading he also commends in these books: ad Simplic. l. II. q. 2. n. 6. 22; de Gratia et lib. arbit. n. 14. 15; ep. 194. ad Sixt. n. 19. etc.

II. What then is the sense of Prosper's question? First note that he proposes something to be resolved, that is, a difficulty to be solved along with the other objections of the Massilians. « How this also is to be resolved, … you should show. » Therefore, without doubt, the sense of the Semipelagians lies hidden under the words of Prosper. Note further that the whole of this eighth number, where the words are quoted, is nothing other than a recapitulation and summary of what he had set out in the whole letter. Let us see, then, how the doctrine of the Massilians on predestination is expressed in the preceding part, so that from these we may understand the sense of the words which are in question. He had set out the opinion of the Massilians on predestination at n. 3 thus: « But those who are going to believe, and those who, in that faith which henceforth is to be aided by grace, will persevere, God foreknew before the constitution of the world, and predestined to his kingdom those whom he foresaw would be freely called, would be worthy of election, and would depart from this life with a good end… » And they affirm that those things which are brought forward from the letter of the Apostle Paul writing to the Romans for the manifestation of the divine grace going before the merits of the elect are not understood by any ecclesiastical writer in the way that they are now understood (by Augustine and the other conquerors of the Pelagians).

Therefore, the Massilians, according to the testimony of Prosper, say a) that faith, or the will to believe, and the remaining in the faith and perseverance, are foreknown by God, but are not predestined; that is, that faith and perseverance⁵ in the faith are from the natural powers of free will. Prosper declares this still more distinctly in what follows. «As regards the liberty of the will, they say that eternal life is laid hold of by those who believed of their own accord and received the help of grace by the merit of belief... they want the obedience to be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation is to be believed to stand from him who is saved, not from him who saves; and the will of man should procure for itself the help of divine grace, not that grace should subject the human will to itself» (that is, not that grace should precede and the will follow). The same things are set out clearly in the letter of Hilary, and in Augustine's reply in both books, de Praedest. SS. et de Dono persev.

b) Therefore they do not say « freely called » in the sense that nothing of merit precedes the calling itself to the fullness of faith. For they teach that even the external calling through the preaching of the gospel is according to the foreseeing of « merits of belief » (Prosper's letter n. 5.). But they call the calling gratuitous, because there does not precede it either holiness or such merit as would make men worthy of the calling; which in our way of speaking would be said to precede by merit of congruity, but not by merit of condignity.

Their same sense is gathered also from the letter of Hilary, who says that the testimonies of Scripture are explained by them thus: « that from them they receive that grace to be commended by which each man is helped after the will; or they refer them to the very calling, which is granted to the unworthy » n. 7. For « grace (gratuitous) is not denied, if such a will is said to precede as merely seeks a physician, but not one which is itself already capable of anything » ib. n. 2.

c) Therefore, according to their opinion, God predestined to eternal life those whom he foresaw would first believe by their own powers, and thereafter, through the help of grace, would be worthy of election, and would depart in that merit which cannot be had without the help of grace.

d) They sought the defence of this their error from the fact that the older Fathers had less distinctly insisted on the grace which goes before every merit, a grace which Augustine was compelled to vindicate more copiously and diligently against the Pelagians; whence they themselves thought that the testimonies of Scripture which Augustine brought forward « for the manifestation of divine grace going before every merit of the elect, were understood by none of the ecclesiastical writers in this way. »

Since this is the doctrine of the Massilians, set out by Prosper and Hilary in their letters to Augustine, it is now easily plain that the same meaning underlies the difficulty which Prosper proposes to be resolved at n. 8. «That also how it is to be resolved... you should show, that... there is found an equal and one opinion of almost all the earlier ones (according to the assertion of the Massilians), by which they accepted the purpose and predestination of God according to foreknowledge... because he foresaw the end of each one (the end which each justified man attains in the state of grace by persevering with the powers of nature implanted in him, whence God is said to have foreseen that end only, and not also to bestow it), and under the aid of grace foreknew in what will and action he would be.» For a good will and action sufficient for salvation, in the opinion of the Massilians too, is only through the aid of grace; which fact, as Augustine speaks in Praed. SS. n. 2, greatly distinguishes them from the error of the Pelagians. Yet they thought that this good will and good action was preceded by another good will, which is not from grace, and which at least merits congruously grace for good working. In this way, Augustine adds at ib. n. 3, «one does not depart from that opinion... that the grace of God is given according to our merits, if it does not pertain to the grace of God that we have begun to believe⁶, but rather that which is added to us for this reason, that we may believe more fully and more perfectly; and so we first give the beginning of our faith to God, that it may be repaid to us, and its completion.»

If this is the sense of the difficulty, it is plain that the two whole books of Augustine, de Praedest. SS. and de Dono persev., are nothing other than a response to each part of this very difficulty; it is plain also that, especially in the words described above from n. 27 de Praed. SS., a reply is made to the same; and it is plain that Augustine rightly there refuses an examination of the individual opinions of the earlier Fathers in the doctrine of grace, « because they touched upon what they thought concerning the grace of God, briefly and in passing in certain places of their writings. »