De gratia Redemptoris

The just man can persevere in justice, he can with special divine help avoid mortal sins (thes. 12); but he can sin again and lose grace (thes. 13); therefore not everyone who can persevere by that very fact already de facto perseveres to the end of life and obtains eternal beatitude. To persevere in act is without doubt a greater good than to be able to persevere. Final perseverance is called in the thesis a great gift of God in order to signify 1) that it really is a gift of God and not identical with those gifts which every just man has and whereby he is able to persevere; 2) that this gift is for that reason called great, because he who receives it will obtain eternal beatitude.

The discourse in the thesis is not about the virtue of perseverance, which is a virtue annexed to fortitude and inclines one to persist in a good work notwithstanding the difficulties which arise precisely from the length of the work.

Perseverance in the thesis is understood as remaining in the justice received.

It is temporal, if the just man remains in justice for some time, but afterwards sins again; this in practice every just man has, since a man is scarcely found who sins immediately after justification; but it is clear that it is a greater gift if someone remains free from sin for a longer time than if only for a short time.

Final perseverance is that which endures from the last justification to the end of life. Of itself it need not last long, because it is possible for someone to die very shortly after receiving justification.

Final perseverance can be potential, that is, the power of persevering, which according to thesis 12 every justified man has; actual perseverance, however, is that which includes the act of persevering; it is therefore the actual remaining in the justice received until death. This a man can have who is at present indeed a sinner, but who will be converted and will then remain in grace and die in it; the same can be lacking in someone who is now in the state of grace, who nevertheless will afterwards sin and die in sin. Hence it is already clear that the principal element in actual final perseverance is death itself in the state of grace, which is usually called passive final perseverance; active perseverance, however, is understood as remaining in good works from the last justification until death.

The gift of final perseverance comprises both; yet there can be cases in which final perseverance is only passive; thus in baptized infants, who die before the use of reason; and in adults who die at once or shortly after their last justification.

From what has been said it is clear why this perseverance is rightly called a great gift of God, which is not conferred by justification itself as such: 1) by reason of passive perseverance: the end of man’s life is under divine providence; it does not depend on man that, while he is in the state of mortal sin, he does not die, but that time for justification is still granted him, and that he then dies in grace; 2) by reason of active perseverance: for the power to persevere special divine help is already required; but without doubt it is a far greater benefit to receive from God graces with which a man can indeed persevere but will not de facto persevere (truly and merely sufficient graces), than graces with which he will de facto cooperate, avoid sin and persevere in grace (efficacious graces); 3) there can be added the special providence by which God keeps a free man from the temptations to which he would succumb; but this can in some way be reduced to 2).

Against the thesis stand, besides the Pelagians, the Semi-Pelagians, whose opinion Hilary sets out to St Augustine thus: “But what your Holiness says, that no one perseveres unless he has received the virtue of persevering, they understand thus far, that to those to whom it is given, although inert, it is nevertheless attributed to their own preceding will; which they assert to be free only to this extent, that it may will or not will to admit the remedy. For the rest, they also testify that they abominate and condemn it, if anyone should think that any power has remained in anyone by which he could advance to health. But they do not wish this perseverance to be preached in such a way that it cannot either be obtained by supplication or lost by contumacy. Nor do they wish to be brought to the uncertainty of the will of God, where it is evident to them, as much as they think suffices for obtaining or admitting it, whatever beginning of the will there is. That testimony also which you have set down: He was taken away lest malice should change his understanding¹, they define as to be omitted as not canonical. Whence they so take that foreknowledge, that they are to be understood as foreknown on account of future faith: nor is such perseverance given to anyone that he is not permitted to transgress it, but such that he can by his own will fail and be weakened… For the rest, whatever has been given to the predestined, they contend that it can both be lost and retained by their own will; which would then be false, if they thought it true that some have received perseverance in such a way that they cannot but be persevering”².

The error seems to consist in this, that they deny that there is any gift of perseverance which cannot by man’s free will be actually frustrated of its effect, or which does not infallibly include death in grace. For if anyone has the gift of perseverance, as has been explained above, it is metaphysically repugnant that he should not actually persevere.

The documents of the Church

CONC. TRID. cap. 12 says that the just man, if he has sinned, cannot promise himself a certain repentance, because without revelation it cannot be known whom God has chosen for himself; therefore it depends on the election of God³.

Cap. 13: The gift of perseverance “of which it is written: He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved⁴… cannot be had from elsewhere, except from him who is able to establish him who stands⁵, that he may stand perseveringly, and to restore him who falls…”⁶; therefore final perseverance is a gift of God. Can. 16 calls it “that great gift of perseverance unto the end”⁷.

SACRED SCRIPTURE

According to Sacred Scripture death in the state of friendship with God is a divine gift: Sap 4, 11: “He was taken away, lest malice should change his understanding”; 4, 14: “For his soul was pleasing to God; for this cause he hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities”. — The Lord warns that they should pray constantly in order to obtain this perseverance: Luc 21, 34 ss.: “And take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life: and that day come upon you suddenly: for as a snare shall it come upon all that sit upon the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, praying at all times, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that are to come and to stand before the Son of man”.

THE FATHERS

St AUGUSTINE treats this question at length in the book “De dono perseverantiae”⁸. At the beginning he shows what this perseverance is: “Now perseverance must be discussed more diligently: for in the earlier book⁹, when we were treating of the beginning of faith, we also said something about it. We assert therefore that perseverance, by which one perseveres in Christ unto the end, is a gift of God. But I call the end that by which this life is ended, in which there is only the danger lest one fall. And so whether each one has received this gift, as long as he has led this life, is uncertain. For if he falls before he dies, he is said not to have persevered, and is said most truly. How then is he who has not persevered to be said to have received or to have had perseverance? For if someone has continence, and falls from it and becomes incontinent, if he has justice similarly, if patience, if faith itself, he is rightly said to have had it and not to have it: for he was continent, or he was just, or patient, or faithful, as long as he was: but when he ceased to be, he is not what he was: but he who has not persevered, how was he persevering; since each one shows himself persevering by persevering, which this man did not do? But lest anyone should strive against this and say: if each one, from the time he became faithful, lived, for example, ten years, and in the middle of that time lapsed from the faith, did he not persevere five years? I do not contend about words, if that also is thought to be called perseverance, as it were of its own time: this perseverance certainly, of which we now treat, by which one perseveres in Christ unto the end, he who has not persevered unto the end is in no way to be said to have had; and rather did the faithful man of one year have it, and, as much less as can be conceived, if he lived faithfully until he died, than the man of many years, if he defected from the stability of faith a short time before death. This being settled, let us see whether this perseverance, of which it has been said: He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved¹⁰, is a gift of God”¹¹.

Then by many arguments he proves that perseverance is not from the powers of free will, not from our merits, but a gratuitous gift of God, where among other things he insists greatly on this, that perseverance is the object of prayer (nr. 3: “But why is that perseverance asked of God, if it is not given by God?”)¹², an argument which he finds already set out at length in Cyprian (nr. 4-9).

Cap. 7, nr. 15: “For from whom, unless from him, do we receive, by whom it has been commanded that we ask? Altogether in this matter let the Church not expect laboured disputations: but let her attend to her daily prayers. She prays that unbelievers may believe; God therefore converts them to the faith. She prays that believers may persevere: God therefore grants perseverance unto the end”¹³.

Cap. 17, nr. 41: “There remains among these goods perseverance unto the end, which is daily asked of the Lord in vain, if the Lord does not work it by his grace in him whose prayers he hears. See now how alien it is from the truth to deny that perseverance unto the end of this life is a gift of God: since he himself gives to this life its end when he wills; which if he gives before an imminent fall, he makes the man persevere unto the end”¹⁴.

Towards the end of the book he shows that he teaches these things not as new, but had already taught the same before, cap. 21, nr. 55: “And I indeed in that book whose title is De correptione et gratia, which could not suffice for all our lovers, think that I so laid it down that even to persevere unto the end is a gift of God¹⁵, that this, before that, if forgetfulness does not deceive me, I had written either nowhere or almost nowhere so expressly and evidently. But I have now said this in such a way that it is not the case that no one before me has said it. For blessed Cyprian in the Lord’s Prayer, as we have already shown, so expounded our petitions, that in the very first petition he said that we ask for perseverance; asserting that we pray this, by saying, ‘Hallowed be thy name’¹⁶, when we have already been sanctified in Baptism; that in that which we have begun to be, we may persevere. Yet let those see, to whom, loving me, I ought not to be ungrateful, who besides this which has come into question profess, as you write, to embrace all my works: let them see, I say, whether in the later parts of the first book, of those two which I wrote at the beginning of my episcopate, before the Pelagian heresy appeared, to Simplician bishop of Milan¹⁷, there has remained anything by which it may be called in doubt that the grace of God is given not according to our merits: and whether there I have not sufficiently treated that even the beginning of faith is a gift of God: and whether from those things which are said there it does not consequently shine forth, even if it is not expressed, that perseverance even unto the end is given by no one except by him who has predestined us into his kingdom and glory. Then the epistle itself, which I have already made against the Pelagians to Saint Paulinus bishop of Nola¹⁸, to which epistle they have only now begun to contradict, did I not publish it many years ago? Let them inspect also that which I gave to Sixtus, presbyter of the Roman Church¹⁹, when we strove against the Pelagians in a most keen conflict; and they will find it such as that to Paulinus. Whence let them recall that against the Pelagian heresy these things were said and written already some years ago, which now they wonder to find displeasing to them.

Although I would not wish anyone so to embrace all my works as to follow me, except in those things in which he has perceived that I have not erred. For I am now making the books in which I have undertaken to retract my little works for this reason, that I may show that I have not followed even myself in all things, but I think that I have written with profit, by the mercy of God, yet not begun from perfection: since I should speak more arrogantly than truly, if even now I said that I had already come to perfection in this age without any error in writing. But it matters how much and in what matters one errs; and how easily each one corrects himself, or with how great pertinacity he tries to defend his error. For a man is of good hope, if the last day of this life finds him so advancing, that there may be added to him the things which were lacking to him as he advanced, and he be judged rather to be perfected than punished”²⁰.

THE THEOLOGIANS

Although the opinions of theologians about predestination, about efficacious grace and its nature are diverse, yet in this all agree, that final perseverance is a great gift of God. St THOMAS: “Perseverance is spoken of in three ways: for sometimes it signifies a habit of mind, by which a man stands firmly, so as not to be removed from that which is according to virtue, by sorrows rushing in; so that perseverance is related to sorrows as continence to concupiscences and pleasures, as the Philosopher says in 7 Eth. In another way perseverance can be called a certain habit, according to which a man has the purpose of persevering in good unto the end: and in both of these ways perseverance is infused together with grace, as also continence and the other virtues. In another way perseverance is called a certain continuation of good unto the end of life; and to have such perseverance a man established in grace does not indeed need any other habitual grace, but divine help directing and protecting him against the impulses of temptations, as appears from the preceding question. And therefore, after a man has been justified through grace, he needs to ask of God the aforesaid gift of perseverance, namely that he be kept from evil unto the end of life. For to many grace is given, to whom it is not given to persevere in grace”²¹.

If it is asked in what the gift of perseverance properly consists, it is clear already from what has been said that it does not consist in the gifts which are conferred in justification itself, and therefore neither in the grace which is called sacramental, however that be explained; moreover not, as St Thomas observes above, in some other infused habit; nay, in no particular gift, but in the complex of gifts which have already been indicated, namely divine direction through providence, protection through efficacious graces, and death in the state of grace²². He who has the gift of perseverance is in some sense impeccable, which impeccability is external, since there is not in the subject himself the reason by which sin is excluded from the subject.

There is to be distinguished from the gift of final perseverance the gift of confirmation in grace, which has been granted by God to some saints. In what the difference consists is explained by theologians in different ways, and that explanation depends for the most part on the different opinions about predestination and about the nature of efficacious grace²³.