De gratia Redemptoris

“To no sinner”: therefore the obdurate and the blinded are included as well.

“To an adult”: to one capable of moral acts. Just as God can take from this life a man established in mortal sin and damn him for ever, so he can also deprive a man in mortal sin of the use of reason for all the rest of his life; consequently the man is no longer capable of a moral act, nor capable of conversion. This is not excluded by the present thesis; the impossibility of conversion in this case does not arise from a defect of grace.

“To no one does he deny it”: that is, anyone receives it; therefore he does not give it only in that sense in which “to give” has no corresponding “to receive”, but he truly confers it. Yet he does not arouse him to conversion at every moment, as experience proves, but “in his own time” or “for a time”, as the phrase goes, when, for example, the precept of penance presses, when fitting occasions are at hand, preaching or the like.

“Sufficient grace”: it is not affirmed that this grace is always proximately sufficient for justification, but at least it is remotely sufficient, so that the sinner can pray and dispose himself for justification.

The thesis is denied, as is plain, by those who deny God's universal salvific will, such as Luther, Calvin and Jansenius; formerly it was denied, as has been said above, by several Bannezians in regard to some who were antecedently negatively reprobate; today the thesis, in its universal sense, therefore including the obdurate as well, seems to be the common and certain opinion.

THE DOCUMENTS OF THE CHURCH

THE FOURTH LATERAN COUNCIL: “And if after the reception of baptism anyone shall have fallen into sin, he can always be restored through true penance”¹. Therefore it is said universally: anyone can always be restored; but he could not, if he did not have sufficient grace. — The Council of Trent too speaks universally of the sacrament of penance “for the faithful, as often as after baptism they fall into sins, to be reconciled to God himself”². — The Church commands all adults to make confession and communion yearly in the paschal season³, therefore she supposes that every sinner has the grace to fulfil those precepts, for conversion.

SACRED SCRIPTURE

Sacred Scripture exhorts all sinners to penance and promises them forgiveness, with no restriction or exception made.

Is 1, 18: “And come, and accuse me, saith the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be as white as wool.” — Ez 18, 30 ff.: “Therefore I will judge every one of the house of Israel according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Return ye, and do penance for all your iniquities: and iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, by which you have transgressed, and make to yourselves a new heart, and a new spirit: and why will you die, O house of Israel? For I desire not the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: return ye, and live.” — Ez 33, 10 ff.: “Thou therefore, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: Thus you have spoken, saying: Our iniquities and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them: how then can we live? Say to them: As I live, saith the Lord God, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your most wicked ways: and why will you die, O house of Israel?... And if I say to the wicked: Thou shalt surely die: and he do penance for his sin, and do judgment and justice, and if that wicked man restore the pledge, and render what he had robbed, and walk in the commandments of life, and do no unjust thing: he shall surely live, and shall not die. All his sins, which he hath committed, shall not be imputed to him: he hath done judgment and justice: he shall surely live.” — Cf. Prov 1, 23 ff.; Sap 11, 24 ff.; 12, 20. — Luc 5, 31 f.: “They that are whole need not the physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the just, but sinners to penance.” Cf. 15, 4 ff. — Rom 2, 4 ff.: “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and patience, and long-suffering? Knowest thou not that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance? But according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest up to thyself wrath, against the day of wrath and revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works.” — 2 Petr 3, 9: “The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some imagine: but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.”

THE FATHERS

St AUGUSTINE: “My eye is troubled because of wrath: is it his own wrath, or God's, in which he asks that he be not reproved or corrected? But if that wrath signifies the day of judgment, how can it now be understood? Or is its beginning that here men suffer pains and torments, and chiefly the loss of the understanding of the truth, as I have already recalled that it was said: God gave them up to a reprobate sense?⁴. For that is the blindness of the mind; whoever is given up into it is shut off from the inner light of God, but not yet utterly, while he is in this life. For there are the outer darknesses⁵, which are understood to belong rather to the day of judgment, so that he be utterly outside God, whoever, while there is time, has refused to be corrected; for what is it to be utterly outside God, but to be in the utmost blindness? since God inhabits inaccessible light⁶, into which they enter to whom it is said: Enter into the joy of thy Lord⁷. The beginning of this wrath, then, is what every sinner suffers in this life: fearing therefore the day of judgment, he labours and laments, lest he be brought to that day whose beginning he now experiences as so pernicious; and therefore he did not say: It is extinguished, but: My eye is troubled because of wrath”⁸.

“Here another question occurs, on which indeed, for anything to be disputed to the point, and for all its most hidden recesses to be searched out and sifted as is worthy, I judge it to be neither within my powers, nor within the straits of the time, nor within your capacity. Yet because we are not allowed by your expectation to pass on to other things unless we say something of it, receive what we have been able... What did the Jews do, or what was their fault, if it was necessary that the word of the prophet Isaiah be fulfilled which he spoke: Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? To which we answer that the Lord, foreknowing things to come, foretold through the Prophet the unbelief of the Jews; foretold it, however, he did not make it... But the words of the Gospel which follow press harder and make the question deeper: for he adds and says: Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. For it is said to us: If they could not believe, what sin is it of a man not to do what he cannot do? But if by not believing they sinned, they could therefore believe and did not... You have heard, brethren, the question proposed; you see indeed how deep it is: but we answer as we can. They could not believe, because the prophet Isaiah foretold this; but the Prophet foretold this, because God foreknew that it would be. But why they could not, if I am asked, I answer at once: because they would not. For God foresaw their evil will, and he foretold it through the Prophet, he to whom things to come cannot be hidden. But the Prophet, you say, gives another cause, not that of their will. What cause does the Prophet give? Because God gave them the spirit of compunction; eyes, that they should not see, and ears, that they should not hear, and he blinded their eyes and hardened their heart. To this too I answer that their will had deserved it. For so God blinds, so he hardens, by deserting and not helping, which he can do by a hidden judgment, but cannot do by an unjust one... It is not therefore wonderful that they could not believe, whose will was so proud that, ignorant of the justice of God, they wished to establish their own, as the Apostle says of them: They are not subject to the justice of God⁹. For because they were puffed up not from faith but as it were from works, blinded by their very puffing up, they stumbled at the stone of stumbling. But it is said in this way, they could not, where it is to be understood that they would not; just as it is said of the Lord our God: If we believe not, he continueth faithful, he cannot deny himself¹⁰. It is said of the Almighty: he cannot. As therefore that the Lord cannot deny himself is the praise of the divine will, so that they could not believe is the fault of the human will”¹¹. Therefore the impossibility of conversion is not attributed to a defect of grace, but to their own evil will, which resists grace.

“Elsewhere, the sin of a brother unto death, of which the apostle John says: I do not say that anyone should ask for it¹², I so defined as to say: I think the sin of a brother unto death to be when, after the knowledge of God through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, someone fights against the brotherhood, and against that very grace by which he was reconciled to God, and is driven by the torches of envy¹³. This indeed I did not confirm, since I said that I thought it: but yet it should have been added, if he shall have ended this life in this so wicked perversity of mind; since of anyone however wicked, so long as he is established in this life, we must not indeed despair, nor is prayer made imprudently for him of whom there is no despair”¹⁴.

St PROSPER: “Objection: that all those faithful and saints who are predestined to eternal death, after they have fallen, are so dealt with by God that they can neither be freed through penance nor will to be. Answer: this is said neither truly nor wisely. For those who have fallen away from faith and holiness, as they fell by their will, so they do not rise by their will, and they willingly suffer the dominion of the concupiscences to which they have succumbed. But if any groan over their captivity, and judging themselves flee with a changed heart to the mercy of God, they do this not without the spirit of divine visitation. For this change is of the right hand of the Most High¹⁵; who gives penance to countless fallen ones, that they may recover themselves from the snares of the devil, by whom they were held captive at his will¹⁶. But God takes away from no one the way of correction, nor does he despoil anyone of the possibility of good. Because he who turns himself away from God has himself taken from himself both to will what is good and to be able. It does not follow, therefore, as those who raise such objections think, that God has taken away the recovery of sense from those to whom he did not give penance, and has dashed down those whom he did not raise; since it is one thing to have brought an innocent man into crime, which is alien to God; another not to have given pardon to a guilty man, which is of the sinner's desert”¹⁷.

St CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: “When he says (God) to sinners: Thou shalt still have help¹⁸, he raises them to hope and confidence, that although they be entangled in many and inevitable faults, there are nevertheless reserved the remnants of goodness and humanity, nor does anything stand in the way why they too should not be saved, if they will return to better and more seemly things and to those consonant with his laws”¹⁹.

St CAESARIUS OF ARLES: “God never deserts a man unless he be first deserted by man. For when anyone has committed grave sins once and a second and a third time, God nevertheless waits for him, as he says through the prophet, that he be converted and live²⁰; but when he has begun to remain in his sins, from the multitude of sins despair is born, and from despair hardening is engendered”²¹²²

THE THEOLOGIANS

The theologians now agree in this question. St Thomas: a man can have firmness in sin “so that he cannot easily cooperate to that whereby he may go out from sin; and this is imperfect obstinacy, by which someone can be obstinate in the state of the way, namely while a man has his will so firmly set in sin that the movements toward good which arise are only weak. Yet because some do arise, from them a way is given that they be prepared for grace”²³.

This truth follows from what we said in the treatise on predestination concerning God's serious universal salvific will; for in every sign in which this will remains serious, God confers grace at least remotely sufficient for conversion.

For the solving of the objections it must be noted that God does not of himself have a special benevolence toward those who wish to remain in sin, that he deserts sinners after they themselves have deserted God, that he threatens them with the withdrawal of grace and even withdraws it from them, but not in such a way that he does not sometimes confer on them grace even remotely sufficient²⁴. Hence to the texts which are opposed the general solution is: therefore they do not have abundant and proximately sufficient grace, granted; not even remotely sufficient, I distinguish: not always, granted; never, I deny. For the objections see St Thomas, De veritate q. 24 art. 11; Beraza nr. 421 ff.

By negative unbelievers are understood those to whom the preaching of the gospel has never come, who therefore without their own fault know nothing of the fact of revelation, and hence without personal fault cannot elicit an act of faith. That negative unbelief is inculpable is certain. Pius V condemned proposition 68 of Baius: “Purely negative unbelief in those (in whom) Christ has not been preached is a sin”¹. Similarly Pius IX: “It must likewise be held as certain that those who labour under ignorance of the true religion, if that ignorance be invincible, are bound by no guilt of this matter before the eyes of the Lord”². Concerning these a special question is raised, because on the one hand faith, and that actual faith, is necessary for all adults that they may attain salvation³, while on the other hand they are found without their own fault in such a state that it is altogether impossible for them to elicit an act of faith; thus therefore they seem not to have help sufficient that they can come to salvation.

The thesis speaks of adult unbelievers, that is, of those who are capable of moral acts; because only in them can there be question of the conferring of actual grace.

The same men oppose this thesis who deny the preceding thesis.

That grace at least remotely sufficient is granted for a time to adult negative unbelievers, so that they can come to salvation, is now an almost common and certain opinion.

The sense of this doctrine is: adults can arrive at the knowledge of God and of the obligations they have, and can perform acts morally honest and evil. Since God seriously wills the salvation of all, he grants to all the possibility of avoiding mortal sin. They have this possibility partly by their own natural powers, since not all temptations and difficulties exceed the physical and moral powers of men. But if difficulties occur which it is morally impossible to overcome by natural powers, God on account of Christ grants them help by which they can overcome them. This help need not be entitatively supernatural, but can be entitatively natural, supernatural as to mode. If a man succumbs to temptations and sins gravely, something similar seems to be said as was said of sinners in the preceding thesis, namely that for a time they will still have help at least remotely sufficient for avoiding other mortal sins. But if someone does not sin mortally but observes the natural law, God will have such providence concerning him that he can elicit the act of faith necessary for salvation and thus positively prepare himself for justification; therefore no one morally adult is punished with eternal punishment with only original sin. But in what way God makes the act of faith possible to a man in such a case cannot be said determinately, so long as several ways are possible to God and God has not revealed to us which of the possible ways he wills to choose; nay rather, from the fact that we cannot indicate which way is possible to God it does not follow that no way is possible to God⁴. Of the number of those who are thus led to the true faith by a special providence of God, whether it be great or small, we know nothing at all, because God has not revealed it⁵. “But so long as we converse on earth, weighed down by this mortal mass which dulls the soul, let us hold most firmly from Catholic doctrine that there is one God, one faith, one baptism⁶; to go further by inquiry is unlawful”⁷.

This doctrine is nothing else than the application of the principle: to him who does what is in him God does not deny grace. This axiom can indeed be understood in various ways, and has been so understood⁸; many theologians have understood it and do understand it in the sense of a negative disposition for receiving supernatural actual grace⁹. The principle so understood is a special way of considering or enunciating God's universal salvific will. For from this serious and painstaking will God wills to confer the helps necessary for salvation; consequently God will give grace to the man who does not place an impediment against grace by sin. For if God denied grace to such a man, it would be a sign that the serious universal salvific will were not present. Not to place an impediment to grace, not to sin, can come about through acts entitatively natural. Such acts are not a positive disposition for grace, but a negative one, that is, the man who does not commit mortal sin is less indisposed for receiving grace than he who sins. And this is what the thesis says: God will help the negative unbeliever, who as far as in him lies observes the natural law and does not sin, so that by supernatural acts he can positively dispose himself for justification.

THE DOCUMENTS OF THE CHURCH

ALEXANDER VIII condemned the errors of the Jansenists: “4. Christ gave himself for us as an oblation to God, not for the elect alone, but for all and only the faithful. — 5. Pagans, Jews, heretics and others of this kind receive no influx whatever from Jesus Christ: and hence you will rightly infer that in them there is a bare and unarmed will without any sufficient grace”¹⁰.

CLEMENT XI condemned the errors of Quesnel: “26. No graces are given except through faith. — 27. Faith is the first grace and the source of all the others. — 29. Outside the Church no grace is granted”¹¹.

Pius IX: “For the rest, as the reason of charity demands, let us pour forth assiduous prayers, that all peoples, in whatever direction, may be converted to Christ, and that we may serve the common salvation of men according to our powers, for the hand of the Lord is not shortened¹², and the gifts of heavenly grace will by no means fail those who with sincere mind will and ask to be recreated by this light”¹³. — “It is known to us and to you that those who labour under invincible ignorance concerning our most holy religion, and who diligently observing the natural law and its precepts engraved by God in the hearts of all, and being ready to obey God, lead an honest and upright life, can, by the operating power of divine light and grace, attain eternal life, since God, who plainly beholds, searches and knows the minds, hearts, thoughts and habits of all, in his supreme goodness and clemency would by no means suffer anyone to be punished with eternal torments who has not the guilt of voluntary fault”¹⁴.

SACRED SCRIPTURE

Sacred Scripture does not treat our question explicitly; but the things which the thesis says are contained in the doctrine of God's serious universal salvific will in every sign antecedent to final impenitence, and in the doctrine of Christ the Redeemer of all men¹⁵. For this universality would not be present if a vast number of negative unbelievers were excluded from every influx of the redemption of Christ.

THE FATHERS

St CLEMENT OF ROME: “Let us look with intent eyes upon the blood of Christ, and know how precious it is to God and to his Father, which, poured out for our salvation, offered to the whole world the grace of penance. Let us pass through all the ages of the world, and learn that in every generation the Lord granted a place of penance to those who willed to be converted to him”¹⁶.

St JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: “If he enlightens every man that comes into this world¹⁷, in what way do so many men remain without light? For not all know Christ. How then does he enlighten every man? He enlightens, truly, as far as in him lies. But if some, closing the eyes of their mind of their own accord, would not direct their gaze to the rays of this light, they have not remained in darkness from the nature of the light, but through their own malice, since of their own will they made themselves unworthy of so great a gift. For grace has been diffused upon all, and it flees or disdains neither Jew nor Greek nor barbarian nor Scythian, neither free man nor slave, neither man nor woman, neither old nor young; it is the same for all, it shows itself easy to all, it calls all with equal honour. But those who neglect to enjoy its gift should impute this their blindness to themselves”¹⁸.

St AMBROSE: “The earth is therefore full of the mercy of the Lord; because to all is the remission of sins given. The sun is bidden to rise upon all. And this sun indeed rises daily upon all. But that mystical sun of justice has risen for all, has come for all, has suffered for all and has risen again for all; and he suffered for this, that he might take away the sin of the world. But if anyone does not believe in Christ, he himself defrauds himself of the general benefit”¹⁹.

St AUGUSTINE: “And there is no one that can hide himself from his heat²⁰.

But when the Word was also made flesh and dwelt among us, taking up our mortality, he did not permit any mortal to excuse himself by reason of the shadow of death; for the heat of the Word penetrated even that”²¹.

“But that light²² does not feed the eyes of irrational birds, but the pure hearts of those who believe in God and turn themselves from the love of visible and temporal things to the fulfilling of his precepts. Which all men can do if they will, because that light enlightens every man coming into this world”²³. On this text he afterwards notes: “But what I said, But that light etc., let not the new Pelagian heretics think was said according to them. For it is altogether true that all men can do this if they will; but the will is prepared by the Lord, and is so increased by the gift of charity that they can. And this was not said here, for the reason that it was not necessary for the question in hand”²⁴.

PAULUS OROSIUS: “This is always my faithful and undoubted opinion, that God supplies his aid not only in his body, which is the Church, to which he bestows special gifts of his grace on account of the faith of believers, but also to all the nations in this world, on account of his long-suffering and eternal clemency; not, as you (Pelagius) assert with your disciple Caelestius, whose hidden nature of impious dogmas has already been crushed before the African synod, that one grace is contributed generally to all in natural good alone and in free will, but that he ministers specially every day, through times, through days, through moments, through atoms, both to all and to each”²⁵.

St PROSPER (?): “Whether therefore we contemplate the latest ages, or the first, or the middle, it is reasonably and piously believed that God wills all men to be saved, and always willed it, and this is shown from no other source than from those benefits which the providence of God bestows commonly and indifferently on all generations. For there have been and there are gifts of this kind so general that by their testimony men could be helped to seek the true God: while these gifts proclaimed their author through all ages, the largess of special grace was poured over them. Which although it is bestowed more abundantly now than before, yet the Lord kept the cause of its distributions with his own knowledge, and hid it within the secret of his most powerful will; which, if they flowed uniformly upon all, would not be hidden; and as there is no ambiguity concerning the general benignity, so concerning the special mercy nothing would exist that should be wondered at; and accordingly the one would be grace, and the other would not. But it pleased God both to bestow this one on many, and to remove that one from no one; so that from both it appears that what was bestowed on a portion was not denied to the whole, but that in some grace prevailed, in others nature recoiled”²⁶.

“For although many, loving their own darkness, do not receive the splendour of the truth, and many who had been enlightened grow dark, yet the word of God remaineth for ever²⁷, and nothing has fallen out from the truth of the promise. There enters daily the foreknown and promised fullness of the nations, and in the seed of Abraham every nation, every tribe, every tongue is blessed. For what the Father gave to the Son, the Son does not lose, nor can anyone snatch from his hand what he has received²⁸. The firm foundation of God standeth²⁹, and the building of the temple that is to remain for ever does not totter, the truth and mercy of God being spread over all; by whom what is both denied to no one and owed to no one is accomplished in those whom he promised. For he worketh all things in all³⁰, but all things beyond doubt just and good. For all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth³¹. He who foresaw before the ages how great a multitude of the men of the whole world, having used the common gifts or having been aided by special protections, yet turning aside from the path of truth and life, would enter the breadth of error and death: always had foreknown how great a number of the pious would attain eternal beatitude through the help of grace and through the service of obedience: so that, no one falling out of the fullness of the promises, he who was neither to be deceived by progress nor to fail in help, might glorify them before all whom he chose out of all. For to the whole of mankind, as we have abundantly proved, the manifold and ineffable goodness of God has always provided and does provide, in such a way that neither does any excuse remain to any of the perishing for the light of truth denied to them, nor is it free to anyone to glory in his own justice; since both their own wickedness sinks the former to punishment, and the grace of God leads the latter to glory”³².