De Deo uno

S. THOMAS, In 1 d. 46 q. 1; d. 47 q. 1 a. 1; S. Theol. 1 q. 19 a. 6 ad 1; De veritate, q. 23 a. 2; SUÁREZ, De Deo, tract. 1 l. 3 c. 8; tract. 2 l. 3 c. 1-4; RUIZ, De voluntate Dei, disp. 19-21; PETAVIUS, De Deo Deique attributis, l. 10 c. 3-6; De Incarnatione Verbi, l. 13 c. 1-14; K. PASSAGLIA, De partitione divinae voluntatis in primam et secundam deque universali reparati ordinis amplitudine, Romae 1851; SCHEEBEN, Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, III, 356 ss.; STENTRUP, Praelectiones dogmaticae de Verbo Incarnato. Pars altera: Soteriologia. Vol. 1. Oeniponte 1884, 343-440; FRANZELIN, thes. 47-54; DE SAN, II nr. 1-30; BILLOT, thes. 27; PESCH, prop. 49; 60; MUNCUNILL, nr. 690-719; VAN DER MEERSCH, nr. 454-467; 528-536.

432. “In the present order of salvation restored by Christ,” therefore after original sin has been foreseen; Christ came to redeem all human beings.

“God sincerely wills,” that is, God truly has this antecedent will. It is therefore not a will of sign in Calvin’s sense: God acts externally in such a way that people think he wills everyone’s salvation, when in fact he does not¹; nor is this will to be understood in Luther’s sense of the will of God preached and revealed, to which the will that God hidden in his majesty has may be opposed (above, nr. 415). But if God sincerely wills the salvation of all, it follows that he has also prepared the means by which it is made possible for human beings to attain salvation. From this saving will alone, however, it cannot be known what those means are. Once the saving will is posited, God remains free in choosing these means. To resolve this question, we must further consider what God has revealed about the matter. In the treatise on grace (De gratia Redemptoris, pag. 368 ss.) it is shown that God provides all adults with truly sufficient helps; and if people freely make proper use of them, they will attain salvation. Thus the salvation of adults also depends on their free will. The salvation of infants, however, cannot depend on their free will, since they do not have the use of free choice. But for them too the attainment of eternal salvation is possible through the sacrament of baptism: if they are baptized, they die in the state of grace and are saved; if they are not baptized, they die in original sin and are not saved. The conferral or non-conferral of baptism, and consequently salvation or non-salvation, does not depend on the will of infants; hence their not being baptized and not being saved is not the infants’ fault. From the saving will, however, it cannot be inferred that God ought to have made the attainment of salvation depend even for infants on their will, or that he ought to have prepared such means for them that all infants would be saved independently of their will. The way in which infants can be saved can be known only from what God has revealed about this matter, and this certainly corresponds to the saving will as it truly is.

“Salvation”: supernatural beatitude in the vision of God.

“Of adults”: the thesis deals only with those who have the use of reason—not because the arguments apply only to adults (the arguments are universal), but because the question of the necessity of baptism as the means by which alone infants can be saved is to be explained in the treatise on Baptism (cf. De Sacramento Baptismi, 1955, thes. 8).

“By an antecedent will”: in this thesis it is not yet necessary to determine the terminus that this will precedes; it is enough to show that God had a saving will even toward the reprobate, before this or that terminus. In the arguments, however, attention must already be paid to which terminus is indicated in the sources, especially whether it includes the use of free choice or precedes such use. What that terminus is will be shown at nr. 445 ss.

“There is therefore no positive antecedent reprobation”: see above, nr. 376, for what positive antecedent reprobation is. If God’s sincere saving will is truly universal, positive antecedent reprobation in the supralapsarian and infralapsarian sense (nr. 419) is excluded; for this is the direct denial of the universal saving will.

Class I, nr. 431, denies the thesis.

TEACHING OF THE CHURCH

433. COUNCIL OF ARLES, Book of Submission of the Presbyter Lucidus (above, nr. 388; Denz 160 a et b).

SECOND COUNCIL OF ORANGE: “We not only do not believe that any are predestined to evil by divine power, but also, if there are those who wish to believe so great an evil, we anathematize them with all detestation” (Denz 200).

COUNCIL OF QUIERZY, ch. 1: “The good and just God chose from the same mass of perdition, according to his foreknowledge, those whom by grace he predestined² to life, and predestined eternal life for them; but the rest, whom by the judgment of justice he left in the mass of perdition, he foreknew would perish, but did not predestine them to perish; yet, because he is just, he predestined eternal punishment for them. Accordingly, we speak of only one predestination of God, which pertains either to the gift of grace or to the recompense of justice” (Denz 316). Ch. 3: “Almighty God wills all human beings without exception to be saved³, although not all are saved. That some are saved is the gift of the one who saves; that some perish is the desert of those who perish” (Denz 318). Ch. 4: “Just as there is no human being, has been, or will be, whose nature was not assumed in him, so there is no human being, has been, or will be, for whom Christ Jesus our Lord did not suffer, although not all are redeemed by the mystery of his Passion” (Denz 319).

COUNCIL OF VALENCE, can. 2: “We faithfully hold, and it pleases us to hold, that God foreknew that the good would become good entirely by his grace and would receive eternal rewards through that same grace; that he foreknew the wicked would become wicked through their own wickedness and would be condemned to eternal punishment by his justice ... We believe that no one is condemned by his prejudice, but by the desert of his own iniquity. Nor do we believe that the wicked perish because they could not be good, but because they did not wish to be good, and by their own fault remained in the mass of condemnation, whether by the desert of original sin or also of actual sin.” Can. 3: “We confidently confess the predestination of the elect to life and the predestination of the impious to death; yet in the election of those to be saved, God’s mercy precedes good merit, while in the condemnation of those who perish, evil merit precedes God’s just judgment. By predestination God determined only those things that he himself would do by a just judgment, according to Scripture’s saying: He who made the things that are to come⁴; but in the case of the wicked he foreknew their wickedness, because it comes from them, and did not predestine it, because it does not come from him. Certainly, God, who foresees all things, both foreknew and predestined the punishment that follows their evil merit ... But we not only do not believe that some are predestined to evil by divine power, as if they could not be otherwise, but also, if there are those who wish to believe so great an evil, we anathematize them with all detestation, as did the Synod of Orange” (Denz. 321; 322). On the sense in which canon 4 objects to saying that Christ’s blood was shed even for those impious people who had already been condemned before Christ’s Passion, see above, nr. 395.

434. COUNCIL OF TRENT, sess. 6, ch. 3: “Although he died for all,⁵ not all nevertheless receive the benefit of his death” (Denz 795); can. 17: “If anyone says that the grace of justification is granted only to those predestined to life, while all the rest who are called are indeed called but do not receive grace, as though predestined to evil by divine power: let him be anathema” (Denz 827).

INNOCENT X, error 5 of Jansenius: “It is Semipelagian to say that Christ died or shed his blood for absolutely all human beings”; this proposition, “understood in the sense that Christ died only for the salvation of the predestined ..., is heretical” (Denz 1096).

ALEXANDER VIII, error 4 of the Jansenists: “Christ gave himself for us as an offering to God, not for the elect alone, but for all the faithful and for them alone” (Denz 1294); cf. error 5.

CLEMENT XI, errors of Pasquier Quesnel, 12: “Whenever God wills to save a soul, at whatever time and in whatever place, an indubitable effect follows the will of God” (Denz 1362; cf. error 13); 30: “All whom God wills to save through Christ are infallibly saved” (Denz 1380); therefore God’s saving will is not directed only toward those who are saved.

435. Therefore positive antecedent reprobation, as Calvinists and others taught it, is heretical; it is of faith that there is no positive antecedent reprobation. That Christ did not die only for the predestined, and therefore that God’s saving will extends beyond the predestined after original sin has been foreseen, is of faith, as follows from the condemned proposition of Jansenius. From the propositions condemned by Alexander VIII it follows that Christ did not die only for the faithful; therefore, after original sin has been foreseen, God’s saving will does not embrace only the faithful. That God’s saving will extends to all adults in the present order of salvation restored by Christ is theologically certain, and according to many theologians proximate to faith.

SACRED SCRIPTURE

436. 1 Tim. 2, 1 sqq.⁶. God’s saving will extends to all whose God he is; to all for whom Christ is mediator, who died for all: hence God’s universal saving will is clearly established. This will is manifested through the mediation of Christ, who died for all; original sin in the human race is therefore presupposed.

But they say: Not all are saved; therefore the text must be understood as referring to the will of sign (in Calvin’s sense; see nr. 432).

I answer: Such an interpretation is contrary to God’s truthfulness; the text expresses a will that truly exists in God—not an absolute will, but a conditional and antecedent one.

Other explanations of the text:

1. “To come to the knowledge of the truth” cannot be understood of all human beings, but only of adults; therefore some restriction is necessary, notwithstanding the universal terms.

I answer: Infants who are to be saved also come “to the knowledge of the truth” in heaven. But even if the text is understood of actual faith, which infants do not have, it follows that a restriction required by the nature of the case must be made: I grant; that a further arbitrary restriction must be made: I deny (cf. Franzelin pag. 544 s.).

2. “All” can be understood to mean “many.”

I answer: This must be denied if this universality is proved precisely from the text itself.

3. All who are saved are saved by God’s will, just as according to 1 Cor 15, 22 all will be made alive in Christ.

I answer a) This explanation has no basis in the text and makes no sense in the context;

b) But 1 Cor 15, 22 does not say: those who will be made alive will be made alive by Christ’s will; rather, just as all who are joined to Adam by generation died in Adam, so all who are joined to Christ by regeneration will be made alive in Christ. Thus a universality is expressed, but a conditional one, as in 1 Tim 2, 1 ss.

4. The sense is: some from every people, status, and so on—every kind of human being; likewise in Luke 11, 42 they tithed every herb, that is, every kind of herb.

I answer: This explanation is impossible in our text, because St. Paul proves a true universality.

5. God wills, that is, he wills us to will; thus in Gal 4, 6 he sent the Spirit “crying out”: the Father, that is, causing us to cry out.

I answer: Given this interpretation, which is in no way granted, either God wills us to will something that he himself also wills—and the point is established—or he wills us to will something that he himself does not will, which is inadmissible.

437. 2 Petr 3, 9⁷. God does not will “some to perish, but all to return to repentance.” The Apostle states a condition to be supplied by human beings, through which they are saved from perdition: an antecedent will conditioned on a condition to be supplied by sinful man.

Calvin also understands this text as referring to the will of “sign”: “Here there is no mention of God’s secret counsel, by which the reprobate are destined to their destruction, but only of the will revealed to us in the Gospel.”

SALMERÓN says most aptly on this passage: “Therefore [God] desires the salvation of all, whether they are predestined or not. Peter, the prince of the Apostles, and Paul agree with one another on this point and teach one and the same saving doctrine. For what Peter says here, ‘not willing any to perish, but all to return to repentance,’ because man is a precious thing whom Christ redeemed at so great a price, Paul said thus: ‘Who wills all human beings to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’”

Ezekiel 18, 23; 33, 11.

438. Christ came to redeem the whole fallen human race: Matth 18, 11; Io 1, 29; 3, 17; Rom 5, 12 sqq.; 8, 32; 2 Cor 5, 18 sq.; 1 Cor 15, 22; 1 Io 2, 2; 4, 14.

Therefore, after original sin, God has a universal saving will.

439. 1) Christ does not pray for the world (Io 17, 9); therefore he does not seem to intend the work of redemption for the world.

I answer: Pesch, Prael. dogm. II, 340: “This is easily explained from the context, because there Christ asks for his disciples’ perseverance in faith and love, and presents to the Father as the motive for his petition the faith and love that they already have. He cannot pray for the world in this way. He therefore prays for the disciples, that they may remain what they are; but for the world he prays that it may cease to be what it is (loc. cit., v. 21).”

2. Christ is said to have given his life for many; therefore perhaps “all” is to be understood as “many.” Matth 20, 28; 26, 28; Rom 5, 19; Hebr 9, 28.

I answer: Positively asserting that there are many neither denies nor restricts that they are all.

3. According to 1 Petr 2, 7 s., some are appointed to unbelief; therefore positive antecedent reprobation is established.

I answer. I distinguish the antecedent: they were appointed to unbelief—I deny; they were appointed so that, because of their unbelief, Christ, the supreme, cornerstone, chosen, precious stone, would be for them a stone of offense and a rock of scandal, an occasion of offense and ruin—I grant. “The only matter at issue is the punishment previously announced by God through Isaiah and to be inflicted later: if they do not believe and so take offense, and if the stone thus becomes for them an occasion of offense, then it will also be a scandal, or occasion of a fall.”⁸

4. God hardens whom he wills (Rom 9, 18); therefore he antecedently reprobates positively.

I answer. I distinguish the antecedent: by an antecedent will—I deny; by a consequent will, I subdivide: positively—I deny; permissively—I grant (or I subdivide: by withdrawing every sufficient grace—I deny; without withdrawing at least remotely sufficient grace—I grant). More on Rom 9 later.⁹

THE FATHERS

The holy Fathers explicitly teach both the universal saving will of God and the universality of Christ’s redemption.

1. Universal saving will.

440. ST. HIPPOLYTUS, De Antichristo 3: “willing all and desiring to save all” (MG 10, 692; R 389).

ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA, Adv. Apollin. Antirrh. 29: “If, then, the Father’s will is in the Son, and the Father, as the Apostle says, wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, then surely he who possesses all that belongs to the Father and has the whole Father in himself also has wholly within himself, along with the Father’s other goods, the saving will” (MG 45, 1188; R 1053).

ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, In ep. ad Eph., hom. 1 nr. 2: “‘According to the purpose of his will,’ he says, that is, because he wills it greatly. This is, so to speak, his desire. For everywhere good pleasure is a preceding will. There is another will as well: the first will is that those who have sinned should not perish; the second, that those who have done evil should perish” (MG 62, 13; R 1202). Homil. de ferendis reprehensionibus 6: “God has never compelled anyone by necessity or force; rather, he does indeed will all to be saved, but imposes necessity on no one, just as Paul also says: ‘Who wills all human beings to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ How, then, are not all saved, if he wills all to be saved? Because not everyone’s will follows his will, and he uses force on no one” (MG 51, 44; R 1211).

441. ST. AMBROSE, De Cain et Abel, l. 2 c. 3 nr. 11: “For he saw that those who suffered could not be saved without a remedy, and therefore he gave medicine to the sick; therefore he brought the aid of healing to all, so that whoever perishes may attribute the cause of his death to himself, because he refused treatment when he had a remedy by which he could escape. Christ’s mercy toward all is plainly proclaimed, since those who perish perish through their own negligence, while those who are saved are delivered according to Christ’s saying, who wills all human beings to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”¹⁰ (ML 14, 346; R 1279).

AMBROSIASTER, In 1 Tim 2, 4: “God wills all human beings to be saved, provided they come to him; for he does not will them to be saved in such a way that the unwilling are saved, but wills them to be saved if they too are willing. Indeed, he who gave the law to all excluded no one from salvation. Does a physician not make himself available publicly in order to show that he wishes to save everyone, provided the sick seek him out? For salvation is not true if it is given to one who is unwilling” (ML 17, 466; R 1343).

ST. JEROME, In ep. ad Eph., l. 1 c. 1 v. 11: “He wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. But since no one is saved without his own will (for we have free choice), he wills us to will the good, so that when we have willed it, he himself may also will to fulfill his plan in us” (ML 26, 454; R 1366).

ST. PROSPER OF AQUITAINE, Resp. ad capit. obiect. Gallorum, Sent. sup. cap. 8 (ML 51, 172; R 2030); see above, nr. 387.

ST. JOHN DAMASCENE, De fide orthod., l. 1 c. 29: “We must also know that God wills all to be saved and become possessors of his kingdom by his primary and antecedent will. For he did not create us in order to punish us, but because he is good, so that we might share in his goodness. He wills sinners to be punished, however, because he is just. Accordingly, the first will is called antecedent and good pleasure, whose cause is in himself; the second is consequent, a permission that arises from our cause” (MG 94, 968; R 2358).

On the various interpretations of the text 1 Tim 2 in ST. AUGUSTINE, see nr. 385.

2. Universal satisfaction of Christ.

442. ST. CLEMENT OF ROME, Ep. ad Cor 7, 4, 5: “Let us gaze with fixed eyes upon the blood of Christ and recognize how precious it is to God and his Father, since, shed for our salvation, it offered the grace of repentance to the whole world. Let us pass through all the ages of the world and learn that in every generation the Lord has granted a place for repentance to those willing to turn to him” (R 12).

ST. IRENAEUS, Adv. haeres., l. 3 c. 22 nr. 4: “Mary ... became a cause of salvation both for herself and for the whole human race” (MG 7, 959; R 224).

EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA, Demonstr. evangelica, l. 1 c. 10: “Since, then, according to the testimonies of the prophets, a great and highly esteemed price was found for redeeming Jews and Greeks alike—that is, a propitiation for the whole world, a propitiation for the souls of all human beings, that most pure victim for every stain and sin—namely, that Lamb of God ...” (MG 22, 85; R 664); ibid. l. 4 c. 12 (MG 22, 284; R 669).

443. ST. ATHANASIUS, Orat. de incarn. Verbi 9 (MG 25, 112; R 751); Adv. Arianos, orat. 2, nr. 68: “... God sent his own Son, who, having assumed created flesh, became the Son of Man, so that, since all were liable to death, he who is other than all might offer his own body to death on behalf of all; and thus, as all had died through him, the sentence passed against us might be fulfilled for all (for all died in Christ), and all thereafter might through him be freed from sin and the curse that followed from it, and remain so truly and forever, clothed in immortality and incorruption after rising again” (MG 26, 292; R 767).

ST. BASIL, Epist. 260, 9 (MG 32, 965; R 927).

ST. GREGORY NAZIANZEN, Orat. 33, 9: “I indeed ... hold ... that the sufferings of Christ, through which we were restored, belong to all of us who share the same Adam—not to this one and not to that one alone—all of us deceived by the serpent and struck by death through sin, and saved again by the heavenly Adam and recalled to the tree of life, from which we had fallen, by the tree of shame” (MG 36, 225; R 998).

ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, In ep. ad Rom., hom. 10, 1 (MG 60, 474; R 1184); In ep. ad Hebr., hom. 17, 2: “He says (the Apostle), ‘once offered to take away the sins of many.’ Why ‘many’ and not ‘all’? Because not all believed. He certainly died for all, so as to save all as far as he was concerned; for that death corresponded equally to the destruction of all. But he did not take away and remove the sins of all, because they themselves were unwilling” (MG 69, 129; R 1221).

444. ST. AMBROSE, Epist. 41, 7: “The Lord Jesus came, offered his death for the death of all, and shed his blood for the blood of everyone” (ML 16, 1115; R 1252); De excessu fratris sui Satyri, l. 2 c. 46: “His (Christ’s) death is the life of all” (ML 16, 1327; R 1275); Expositio in Psalm. 18, sermo 8, 57 (ML 15, 1318; R 1313).

ST. AUGUSTINE, Epist. 334, 4: “The blood of your Lord, if you are willing, was given for you; if you are unwilling to be his, it was not given for you. Perhaps you say: My God had blood with which to redeem me; but when he suffered, he gave it all—what did he have left to give also for me? This is the great thing: he gave it once, and he gave it for all. The blood of Christ is salvation for the willing, punishment for the unwilling” (ML 39, 1515; R 1527; cf. nr. 385).

ST. PROSPER OF AQUITAINE, Resp. ad cap. obi. Vincentianarum, ad obi. 1 (ML 51, 177; R 2031).

THEODORET, De incarnat. Domini 18 (MG 75, 1448; R 2149).

ST. LEO, Epist. 122, 3, 4 (ML 54, 1064; R 2188).