De gratia Redemptoris

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.