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.