Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

St Augustine, against the Pelagians and their remnants, never taught predestination to glory before foreseen supernatural merits, but gratuitous predestination of grace, in order to exclude natural merits.

As regards Augustine's doctrine of predestination, it is certain that the holy Doctor, against the Pelagians and their remnants, never raised the question of the order between predestination of grace and predestination to glory; nor did he ever otherwise assert predestination to be gratuitous, and the very conferring of gifts; and so he demanded only this, that both the giving and the predestination, whether of grace or of grace and glory together, be admitted as gratuitous, with natural and human merits excluded.

What we say in this thesis is evident from the general character of the controversy about predestination with the Pelagians and their remnants; from the reason by which Augustine shows the preaching of predestination to be necessary; from the manner in which he shows that it has always been believed in the Church; and from those things whose profession he alone demands from the Pelagians and Semipelagians.

1°. The dispute between Augustine and the Pelagians and Semipelagians was altogether one and the same concerning the bestowal and the predestination of God's benefits, so that gratuity and the exclusion of merits are not otherwise in predestination than in the bestowal itself. Augustine requires two things for the reason of predestination: the first, which he defends more carefully and laboriously against the heretics, that the term of predestination be a supernatural gift of God; the second, which, once the first is granted, is evident in itself, that this gift be understood as prepared in the eternal foreknowledge of God. Now I ask: in what did the holy Doctor place the reason of gift, so that something may be said to be predestined by God? He does not require that the gift be not given as a recompense, prepared or bestowed for any merits; but he requires that the merit to which the recompense is rendered be through grace, and that, if some merit of impetration precedes this very grace, that merit again be through another grace, until one comes to the first grace, which is rendered to no merit, but wholly from pure gratuitous mercy. For unless this were so, man would already begin the way of salvation by some work which was not a supernatural gift of God, and therefore would not be predestined; and this, and no other, is the error which Augustine intends to exclude by the preaching of predestination. For although the Semipelagians would confess that the good works which follow are done through grace, which a human and natural merit has obtained, and that these works, just as they are bestowed by God through grace, are also predestined; this is nevertheless not the true grace which is given gratis, and therefore the genuine character of gift, which is required in the term of predestination, as it must be professed by Catholics, is lacking for no other reason than that the first grace is denied to be given gratis, and the inception on the way of salvation is ascribed to the powers of nature and to natural merit. Read and re-read the books of Augustine de Corrept. et grat.; de Praedest. Sanctorum; de Dono perseverantiae, in which he chiefly urges and explains the reason of predestination; and compare the other books against the Pelagians together, and you will find no other description of predestination in him besides this one, the denial of which he says the Pelagians and Semipelagians err in, the defence of which he has undertaken for the protection of the sincere preaching of grace, and the profession of which he affirms the Church of God has never not had from the Apostles onward, and whose faith he therefore most insistently demands from those who err. But in all this doctrine there is no trace of controversy about the order in which predestination to good works through truly gratuitous grace, and predestination to eternal life, considered apart, which is rendered to those works, succeed one another. If anyone, however, by deduction from this Augustinian notion of predestination should wish to inquire into the order between the predestination of reward and the predestination of merit, it ought to be said that Augustine, from his own principles, understood the preparation in foreknowledge, or the predestination to life, as consequent upon the preparation of grace and of merits, by the very fact that he teaches that the gift of eternal life is the recompense given consequently upon supernatural merits. See th. LVII. LVIII. At least this one thing which we now affirm is evident: that the doctrine of predestination defended by Augustine to exclude the error of the Pelagians and Semipelagians is not an assertion of predestination to glory considered in itself before foreseen supernatural merits.

2°. We can consider more distinctly this general character of the whole controversy about predestination against the Pelagians and their remnants in the doctrine of Augustine, so that what we proposed to demonstrate in the thesis may appear the more clearly.

Augustine plainly repeats and inculcates that he defends that reason of predestination which must necessarily be admitted by all who confess that grace is given gratuitously and is not rendered to merits, and without which it necessarily follows that the beginning of saving merit is from us and not from grace. « For, he says, either predestination is to be preached as Scripture plainly speaks of it... or it must be confessed that grace is given according to our merits, which the Pelagians savour » de Dono persev. n. 41. Namely, as the holy Doctor often demonstrates, if faith is said with the Massilians to precede grace, then by that very fact grace would be rendered to the merit of faith, which would be from us. Therefore, to exclude this error, he says that predestination is preached by him. « If both (the beginning of faith and perseverance) are a gift of God, and God foreknew that he would give these his gifts, predestination is to be preached, so that the true grace of God, that is, which is not given according to our merits, may be defended by an invincible bulwark » Ibid. n. 54.

The Massilians understood very well that the predestination preached by Augustine comes down in the end to this: that grace is believed to precede every beginning that is from our own powers. Hence, from their prejudgement that there is no liberty on the way of salvation unless we can at least begin it by our own powers, they say « that the grace which precedes the merits of the elect has never been so understood by any of the ecclesiastical writers » (above th. LXI. n. II.), and that by this preaching of predestination all exhortations to virtue are excluded. Augustine replies to this last point: « let them see... that by this preaching of predestination that most pernicious error alone is overthrown, by which it is said that the grace of God is given according to our merits » Ibid. n. 42. The Genuenses, in Excerpt. VIII., raised a difficulty against the Augustinian definition (from l. de Don. Persev. n. 35.), by which predestination is said to be « the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God, by which those who are freed are most certainly freed. » St Prosper replies, declaring the reason and sense of the definition in this way: « those who resist these things are most manifestly shown to hold that faith is not a gift of God, and that grace does not precede free will, but follows it, and that grace is given according to our merits. »

Now, to defend this whole doctrine of gratuitous grace, to which Augustine himself and his disciple Prosper declare that the preaching of predestination alone pertains and is necessary, it is indeed both useful and necessary to confess that predestination to grace, and to grace and glory together, is not from foreseen natural merits; but who does not see that to assert this gratuity of grace nothing pertains to predestination to glory with no supernatural merits foreseen and presupposed? Unless perhaps with the Protestants we shall also think it necessary to assert the gratuitous bestowal of glory without merits!

3°. Augustine proves that the ancient teachers of the word of God, Cyprian, Ambrose and Gregory Nazianzen, taught the same predestination which he himself defends more fully against the new heretics. But from what does he prove this? By this single argument, that « the aforesaid most excellent teachers preached the true grace of God as it is to be preached, that is, the grace which no human merits precede. » « Moreover, he says, if these (good thoughts, good will, faith, perseverance, of which he had spoken immediately before) they knew God to give in such a way that they were not ignorant that he had foreknown that he would give them, and could not not know to whom he would give them, beyond doubt they knew the predestination which, preached through the Apostles, we defend against the new heretics more laboriously and carefully » de Dono persev. n. 50.

When the querulous Massilians objected that « without this definition of predestination the Catholic faith was defended for so many years, both against others and especially against the Pelagians, by so many books of Catholics and of Augustine himself preceding, » how does Augustine prove that he had already long defended the same predestination? By this one argument again, that in the preceding books he had already preached « the grace by which God frees us from our evil errors and morals, not preceded by any good merits of ours; which, he says, I began to understand more fully in that dispute which I wrote to the bishop Simplicianus of blessed memory, of the Church of Milan, at the beginning of my episcopate, when I knew and asserted that even the beginning of faith is a gift of God » Don. persev. n. 52. 53.

In the same way Augustine demonstrates that this doctrine of predestination (asserted by himself) has always been in the faith of the Church, because the Church, praying that unbelievers may believe and the faithful may persevere, has always professed that faith and perseverance and the other saving goods are gifts of God. « Let him therefore say that the Church at some time did not have in her faith the truth of this predestination and of this grace, which now is defended with more careful attention against the new heretics; let him, I say, say this, who dares to say that at some time she did not pray for these things, or did not pray truly, whether that unbelievers should believe or that the faithful should persevere. For if she always prayed for these goods, she always believed them to be gifts of God, nor was it ever lawful to deny that they were foreknown by him. And THROUGH THIS the Church of Christ has never not had the faith of this predestination, which against the new heretics is now defended with new solicitude » de Dono persev. n. 65.

Whoever therefore teaches that faith, good works, and perseverance are not from us and from our natural powers, but are gifts of God through his grace, which is not rendered as a reward for human, that is natural, merits but is freely given, and at the same time confesses that God foreknew these from eternity in the manner in which he confers them in time, he teaches that predestination which Augustine defended. But how, I ask, is it contained in these things that God, with no foreseen grace and no supernatural works done through grace presupposed, predestined all who are to be saved first to glory?¹ How is it not evident that Augustine was solely concerned with the gratuitous gift, and therefore with the gratuitous predestination of grace, with human merits excluded? How, from the fact that the Fathers prior to Augustine confessed the necessity of grace for all saving works, and that the Church always prayed that unbelievers be brought to faith and the faithful persevere in faith and good works, could that absolutely antecedent predestination to glory of the more recent ones have come into the mind of the holy Doctor? Indeed, how, if he had thought about the order between predestination to glory considered in itself and the predestination of grace and of saving works, would he not rather have understood from the very older Fathers and from the prayers of the Church an order entirely reversed?

4°. The Pelagians taught that eternal life is rendered as a reward for human merits, and partly through the powers² of free will; hence also that eternal life is predestined after and on account of natural merits. The Semipelagians taught that the order of execution is this: that the beginning on the way of salvation precedes from the natural powers of the will; by this natural merit grace for saving works is obtained, and by the force of free will eternal life is at last rendered to those who persevere, as the reward of saving works. Hence they held that, in the same order, grace is predestined after and on account of the foreseen initial merit of nature; and eternal life is predestined after and on account of foreseen merit, which, from its immediate principle, is indeed supernatural, but has its first root and foundation in natural merit.

In this doctrine there are three quite distinct and different things. a) Between good works and eternal life there is a nexus of antecedent merit and subsequent reward; and according to the Massilians there is also a nexus among the merits themselves, so that one merit precedes, by which grace is obtained for another. b) This nexus is not only in the order of execution, but also in the order of predestination; for God does not predestine the reward of eternal life except consequently upon foreseen merits. c) These merits, at least simply, are not gifts of God through grace; for they depend, either in themselves and simply according to the Pelagians, or initially and as to perseverance in faith according to the Semipelagians, on the natural powers of the will alone; therefore good works, or at least the beginning and foundation of good works (as St Prosper speaks in Excerpt. VIII. Genuens.), are not predestined but only foreknown.

It is clear that someone may wholly repudiate the heresy set forth in the third place, and think about the gratuitous gift of grace in a manner wholly according to the Catholic faith, and nevertheless affirm what is said in the first and second places; although, that heresy being repudiated, the sense of these assertions will be different. Therefore, if Augustine judged that there is error not only in the third, but also in the two prior ones considered in themselves and absolutely, it was not enough for him to demand the rejection of the third member; he was necessarily bound to require the opposite faith also as to the first and the second.

But a) as to the first, Augustine, indeed all Catholics, concede and teach that eternal life is given to merits which are, of course, supernatural. Hence he corrects the Pelagian opinion by this single consideration: « When the Pelagians say... that eternal life is rendered to our preceding merits, it must be answered to them. For if they understood our merits so as also to know that they are gifts of God, this opinion would not have to be rejected » de Grat. et lib. arb. n. 15. Indeed, since it is certain that eternal life is the crown and the reward for merits, Augustine teaches in several places that it cannot be called gratuitous grace in any other sense, except because the merits themselves are obtained through grace (ep. 194. ad Sixt.; ep. 186. n. 10. ad Paulin.; de Corrept. et grat. c. 13; de Grat. et lib. arb. cc. 8. 9.). « This question, therefore (he says, de Grat. et lib. arb. c. 8.) seems to me in no way able to be resolved, unless it is understood that even our good works, by which eternal life is rendered, pertain to the grace of God. » Augustine declares distinctly the nexus of the good use of prior grace with the conferral of subsequent grace, and likewise the nexus of merits with the crown of eternal life, in the passages described above, th. LVIII. n. 2.

b) Augustine entirely agrees that the order of dependence of gifts upon one another, as they are conferred in time, is the same in predestination, and he asks of the Semipelagians nothing other than that they confess the beginning of a good work and perseverance also to be gifts of grace, and therefore predestined gifts. You have these things demonstrated in th. LVII. Certainly, what Augustine demands, whether of the Pelagians or of the Semipelagians, is this one thing: that they confess merits to be from grace and through grace, which is not given to human merits. « If Pelagius should consent that even the will itself and its action are divinely aided, and aided in such a way that without that help we do nothing well either willing or acting, and that this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, no controversy, as I think, will remain between us about the help of the grace of God » de Grat. Christi n. 52. To the Semipelagian Vitalis, Augustine in ep. 217. al. 107. n. 16. proposes twelve chapters as a full expression of Catholic doctrine against the Pelagian and Semipelagian heresy: « to you holding these, he says, no contention at all about this question remains with us. » But you will find in those chapters too no trace of the doctrine of predestination to glory before foreseen supernatural merits. Whatever in them can be referred to predestination is reduced to these two sentences: « we know that the grace of God is given neither to the little ones nor to the greater according to our merits; » « we know that for those who are unwilling to believe, we who already believe act with right faith when we pray that they may believe. »

So also, in the plenary Council of Carthage held in the year 418, « in the authorities of the Apostolic See » appended to the letter of Pope Celestine to the bishops of Gaul, and in the Second Council of Orange, and in the other documents against the Pelagians and Semipelagians, the sum of the whole definition is laid down in the doctrine concerning original sin, concerning the necessity of grace for every saving good, concerning the necessity of grace also for the beginning of faith and for saving invocation, and consequently concerning the gratuity of that same grace. Everything in the canons of Orange that pertains to the doctrine of predestination is traced back to these. Canon XII: « God loves us such as we are to become by his gift, not such as we are by our merit; » Canon XXV: « We not only do not believe that some have been predestined by divine power to evil, but also, if there are those who wish to believe so great an evil, we say to them, with all detestation, anathema. » « The authorities of the Apostolic See » in the letter of Celestine, after the necessity and gratuity of grace has been set forth, are concluded with those most well-known words: « the deeper and more difficult parts of the questions that arise, which those who have resisted the heretics have treated more fully, as we do not dare to despise them, so we do not need to affirm them »³.

From all these things it is manifest that the predestination which Augustine « defends with new solicitude against the new heretics, » « whose faith the Church of Christ has never not had, » « which Scripture speaks of plainly, » « by whose preaching alone that most pernicious error is overthrown, that the grace of God is given according to our merits, » and whose profession, finally, he alone demanded from the enemies of grace — predestination, I say, as preached by Augustine, pertains to nothing other than that the grace of God be vindicated, from which is the beginning of every good merit, and which grace is therefore given, and predestined, gratuitously and not for merits; and therefore that, with natural merits excluded, the merits by which eternal life is given and predestined are understood to be supernatural, acquired through grace, both each one in itself, and as to the beginning on the way of salvation, and as to perseverance. But in this doctrine there is contained neither explicitly nor implicitly the assertion of predestination to the crown of eternal life considered apart, before and without foreseen supernatural merits; indeed there are contained principles from which it is quite plainly gathered that the crown of glory, just as it is given to merits acquired through grace, is so also predestined to the same merits foreseen (Cf. th. LVIII.).