De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

But it is worth while to see the slippery arguments of these men, namely both the Scriptures and the subtleties by which they have been cast into this pit. The first is that argument of theirs, most commonly used,¹ which Bucer also uses in the cited place on Paul. From this, they say, that God is not the efficacious cause of our hardening, and of our being handed over to evil desires, it follows that God is not God: that is, the first and whole cause of all things. These are their own words. See, pious reader, how they always make a new accession to their error. They do not think it enough to assert that God compels us to evil, unless they add that he is the whole cause of evil. For they say that he is not only the first, but the whole cause of all things which are in things. By this reasoning they wish to tear up from the minds of men all natural and divine philosophy. For that God alone created all things out of nothing, there is no one among Christians who would deny. But that no cause can now effect anything without the nod and influence of God, not only do we Christians confess, but natural philosophers also teach. But that (as these men philosophize) God is so the whole cause of things that secondary causes do nothing, this, as it contradicts sacred Scripture, so it also takes away the order of the universe. For all causes in their own order come together at once into the same effect. God, namely, as the most high: heaven, as in its own way universal, and finally particular causes in their degree. For the sun and a man generate a man.² For it is held in Gen. 1: Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth. Behold, the earth brings forth, and the trees bear fruit, having perpetual seed in themselves. Wherefore Augustine, book 3 On the Trinity,³ says: God so administers the things which he has created, that he allows them to perform their own motions. And book 9 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 19: The reasons and powers of acting are not only in God, but are also implanted and concreated in created things by him. I remember that I dealt with very many things on the second book of the Physics, q. 4, against this insane opinion, that secondary causes do nothing, but God alone acts by himself at their presence. For if they did not have in their several natures the power to produce this diverse variety of effects which we experience in the world, why would God illuminate at the presence of the sun rather than at the presence of another thing which he had commanded, and generate cold at the presence of water rather than at the presence of fire? Nay, unless he had created things for their own several offices and works, he would have created so numerous a mass of things in vain. For if he alone produced light at the presence of the sun, he would do just as much in its absence. And besides, what need would there be of the mingling of sexes for generating animals? What need of limbs with such consonant diversity for nourishing them? What finally need of eyes for seeing and ears for hearing, if God alone so accomplishes these things that creatures do nothing? But if natural things are truly the causes of their own works and offices, why should not the will also be the cause of its own? Although as it does nothing without the general help of God, so neither does it perform a work of grace without special help. But if God is not so the cause of good works, much less is he the whole cause of evil ones. Nay, he is no cause at all except by permitting, as we shall now proceed to show.

Second argument.— To permit.— For the things by which these men most vehemently attack us are the sacred testimonies. For we read in Romans 1 that God handed the Gentiles over to the desires of their heart, and to a reprobate sense; in Isa. 6: Blind the heart of this people, O Lord, and make their ears heavy. And in Romans 9: Of whom he wills he has mercy, and whom he wills he hardens. And Exod. 10: The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh. And Matth. 6: Lead us not into temptation: but to hand over, to blind, to make heavy, to harden, and to lead into⁴ designate a certain necessity. Namely, that God sent darkness into the hearts of the people, and subjected the Gentiles to their own desires, by which they were overcome, and suggested malice into Pharaoh's heart. Whence,⁵ Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord has not done? All the holy Fathers, in their exposition of Paul, interpret the word "handed over" as "permitted." And in the other places God is said by himself and directly to lead no one to evil. For there is the rule of Fulgentius,⁶ most celebrated among theologians, that God is not the author of that of which he is the avenger. From which it follows that God is said to blind hearts for this reason, that he withdraws the light of grace: and to harden, because he takes away the help without which man cannot soften his heart to good. This interpretation our Lutherans think vain and illusory. Because, they say, the word "permit" is not milder or softer than "do." For since God certainly knows that we cannot without his light and favor overcome our desires and avoid sins, it follows that while he does not send us these supplies, he is most truly the cause of our sin. Whence it still follows, says Bucer,⁷ that every sin is principally from God. And therefore there is no reason why we should fear to affirm that he directly, by compelling, leads [us] in, and by sending efficacious error, blinds and seduces. See how openly they confess that every sin is from God: which ears shudder at. What then shall we answer? Truly, that what they say is most false, that there is no difference between permitting and doing. Here it must be carefully noted that we can think of God's withdrawing help in two ways. In one way, that in punishment for preceding sin, God so forsakes a man with his favor and aid that he has determined, as if sentence had been pronounced, never again to help him, but has it fixed and firm with himself to desert him perpetually: so that it is brought about by God himself that he does not emerge from his past fault and avoid new crimes. As, in a contrary manner, when he confirmed the most holy Virgin and the Apostles in grace, he determined never to allow them to fall. In another way, to permit could mean the same as to allow each one to act freely according to his own will: yet in such a way that God is always most ready to stretch out his hand, unless it stands in the way of man. In the first way, I am certainly more sure⁸ — nay, I believe it has always been most certain to the holy doctors who were worthy of that name — that no one was ever forsaken by God and left to his own desires in this mortal life, but precisely only in the second way. For to permit in the first way, I confess, has nearly as much force as if God directly subjected us to our depraved desires, and drove us to evil. But far be it from a Christian to bring himself to think so of him. For if God thus forsook anyone with help, whom he had determined never to assist, how would it be true that God wills all men to be saved?⁹ For even if Augustine somewhere understood this of the will of his good pleasure (as they call it) and consequent will, and therefore restricted its distribution only to kinds, that is, that he wills some from each order and state to be saved: or in such a way that however many are saved are preserved by the will of God: nevertheless this authority is most true universally concerning individual men, whether it is understood of antecedent will: as the holy doctors nearly interpret it with a most consonant sense. For he so wills all and each universally to be saved, that as he has abundantly given laws, counsels and examples to all, so he is most present to all, knocking at the door, so that no office is lacking on his part, but that he would bring help even to the most lost, unless man himself refuses. And Paul carries this understanding before him when he admonishes Timothy¹⁰ to pray for all and each, because God wills, etc. Otherwise the sun would not be common,¹¹ illuminating of itself every man coming into this world, who has not closed his mind. Nor would those evangelical voices be true universally concerning all men: Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. And, Do penance. And, Be converted to me with your whole heart. And, God does not will the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted, etc. And, I am at the door and knock. And — not to run through countless passages — how would it be true, The impiety of the impious shall not harm him, in whatever day he shall be converted from his impiety. And as Augustine and the saints cite: In whatever hour the sinner has groaned, I will no longer remember his iniquities. By which word God expresses nothing more significantly than that he is always (as Chrysostom has it in a certain homily)¹² in labor with his mercy, and as it were groaning with pains because we do not prepare the widest bosoms into which he may benignly give birth to most abundant fruits. But in what way would it be credible that he who so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son,¹³ that everyone who believes in him may not perish, should so shut the bowels of his mercy to a man for some fault that he should have it fixed never to open them to such a wretch. Truly Christ instituted his vicar Peter far otherwise,¹⁴ where, when he asked whether he should forgive one who had fallen seven times a day, he answered: Not only seven times, but seventy times seven. And it is confirmed. If it were lawful so to think of God, a most wicked man might doubt whether he was thus forsaken by God forever. Wherefore there would be no reason why the despair of Judas, or that blasphemy of Cain, should be so greatly reprehended: My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon.¹⁵ But since man can no more rise from fault without the special favor and help of God than walk without feet, or see without eyes or light, I do not understand why fault should be imputed more to that sinner, thus blinded or forsaken, for not repenting, than to a blind man for not seeing, or to one in chains for not walking. Although it would be the punishment of a committed fault. For in this we differ in this life from those who have been thrust down into hell:¹⁶ that while we live we are wayfarers, and the rule of the way is this, that no one is so established in grace that (apart from privilege) the danger of falling does not threaten him, nor is anyone so far alienated from God to whom he is not most ready to bring help, unless by his own fault he rejects grace. Otherwise it is not intelligible how what that forsaken man would do should be a sin deserving new punishment. For it is the law of hell that they are altogether forsaken and cast off by God, and therefore persist in irreparable obstinacy to their destruction in hatred of God. But because they are so forsaken that they have no possibility of changing their mind, they do not merit new punishments by that hatred. But in this life of our pilgrimage and warfare, it is fitting to contemplate God no otherwise than as a most patent sun universally irradiating the doors of all hearts, and a spirit continually breathing, and eager to open wherever he may enter. But we are the ones who oppose the iron mass of our depravity. And therefore, as he is the one who permits us to our liberty, so we also are the ones who do not permit him to enter. For since our assent is also his effect, as we said in ch. 16, he does not open otherwise than if we cooperate by cooperating with him to the same assent. Wherefore, to return to the matter with the Lutherans,¹⁷ we deny that there is no difference between this, that God permits something, and this, that he does it with intended action. For the latter denotes the true and proper cause: which, with respect to sin, God cannot be. But to permit is to allow and suffer each one to act as it pleases his mind: nor does this come down to the same as if he did it. Since God, as author of nature, permits a free man to act freely. And therefore he determined so to work our salvation that he placed it in our free will, whether we wish to use his benefit. And therefore that he converts us is grace: but that he allows us to go to perdition is in the cause and fault of our own will.

Hardening.— But if these men continue to beat us more closely, urging with the words "hand over," "harden," and the rest, which mean something other in Latin than "permit": for God is said not only to permit us into our desires and into the hardness of heart, but truly to hand over, to harden, and to lead into temptation — the answer is according to St. Thomas, 1.2 q. 79.¹⁸ For since God is the true light, illuminating every man coming into this world, as the sun is a universal and everlasting source of bodily light, yet there is a difference, that the sun shines by necessity of nature, but God by reason and judgment. And therefore when a hall, its window closed, is deprived of light, the sun is in no way the cause of that darkness, but the barrier of the closed window is. But when God withdraws either the light of knowledge or the favor of grace, although the direct cause is the man's conversion to evil, by which he turns himself away from God, nevertheless because God knowingly and wisely permits man to his own will, that withdrawal of grace, by which the mind is illuminated to see rightly and softened to live rightly, is called blinding and hardening and making heavy. Which are distinguished by comparison to the effects of grace. For there are two organs and senses for acquiring knowledge:¹⁹ namely, sight, serving invention, and hearing, serving discipline. To blind refers to the first, to make heavy to the second: and to harden to the affection. Nevertheless I would add²⁰ that perhaps not without reason "to permit" is broader than the others. So that every hardening is a permission, but they are not converted. For a man is permitted to fall into the first sin, but he is not so properly said to be hardened, or blinded, or made heavy, until a long chain of evils has dragged the wretch into the depths. For then he becomes both blind and deaf, and indeed a stone, to divine helps. Whence Paul,²¹ after he related that those ancient Gentiles changed the glory of God into the likeness of birds and serpents, because that was the first impiety, did not say that they were then handed over: although they were permitted and committed it. But when thereafter they rushed headlong into carnal desires down the steep ways of shameful deeds, then he said significantly that they were handed over to the desires of their own heart: that is, of a heart which God had not made alien from himself, but they had first made alien from him.

To the third argument.— The third argument of these men is that Augustine,²² against Julian book 5, and in On Grace and Free Will ch. 20, and more expressly ch. 21, while explaining how a subsequent sin is sometimes permitted in punishment of a preceding one, persists in asserting by several testimonies of sacred Scripture that God sometimes inclines men to evil. Among these he recalls that of Paul: God handed them over to the desires of their heart. Having reviewed these, near the end of the same ch. 21 he concludes somewhat harshly with these words: By these and such testimonies of the divine utterances it is sufficiently shown, as I think, that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills wherever he wills, whether to good according to his mercy, or to evil according to their merits: by his judgment, at one time open, at another hidden, but always just. To this we must answer²³ by considering first, clear-eyed reader, how much harsher is their word than this of Augustine. For what he here said, "God inclines," they say, "God compels." But besides, from the diverse nature of good and evil, unless they were blind, they would easily have hunted out that the reason in God for inclining to good and inclining to evil is different. For since all good things by their own nature are referred to God himself, who is the highest goodness, God's inclination to good designates his intention and nod, so that it is the very thing. But since the evil of fault is a certain deviation of our free will from the law of God, according to the inclination of one's own desire, "God inclines us to evil" has as much force as "he permits us to our own inclination." This Augustine himself,²⁴ the best interpreter of himself, often and most clearly acknowledged. For in the epistle to Sixtus, which is 105, he says thus: God does not harden by imparting malice, but by not imparting grace. Whence the Apostle in Rom. 9 calls mercy the adding of grace, but hardening the privation of grace. And to Simplician he says: It is not to be understood that God so hardens as if he compelled anyone to sin: but nevertheless he does not bestow on certain sinners the mercy of his justification: and for this he is said to harden them, because he does not have mercy on them: not because he impels them by force to sin. And in the book On the Essence of the Divinity he says: God is said to harden the hearts of certain evil men, as it is written of Pharaoh. Not that almighty God by his power hardens their hearts, which it is impious so to believe: but when their faults demand it, since he does not take away the hardness of heart which they themselves nourish by perpetrating evils, he is said as it were to harden them, because he permits them to be hardened by a just judgment. What is clearer?

But Chrysostom, Ambrose and all the Fathers agree with Augustine on that word of Paul in Rom. 1, God handed them over, etc. Wherefore certainly the most learned otherwise Rossensis²⁵ in article 36 has gratuitously granted to Luther that God so forsakes certain men that they cannot repent. For (as I said to the contrary) the consideration of that most grave man is the sentence of St. Thomas,²⁶ 3 q. 86, asserting that it is erroneous that there is any sin of which a man cannot repent. Where, to that concerning Antiochus,²⁷ The wicked man prayed to God, from whom he would not obtain mercy, he answers that the cause was that he did not have true penance on account of God, but on account of the infirmity which he suffered. And Jerome acknowledged the same in that word of Amos:²⁸ For three crimes of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away from him: namely, that it is impenitence alone which is the cause why God does not spare the wicked. But if anyone has the mind to see this matter most fully expounded, let him consult Origen, book 3 On First Principles, in that golden chapter on free will. For those against whom he disputes there denied, just like these men, that we sin by free will alone, relying on that passage about the hardening of Pharaoh. But Origen most keenly refutes them, saying that if God so hardened that wretched heart and denied help, so that he himself was not ready to soften it: even if Pharaoh had consented, surely God himself would have been the cause of his perdition, nor would he deservedly blame him, saying: But because thou wilt not let the people go, behold I will smite all the firstborn of Egypt. Consider what Origen noted: the word "because thou wilt not." Whence most considerately he adds that God does not harden hearts otherwise than by patiently bearing with us. Nor is there need of Origen's testimony where Paul uses such evidence: Do you despise, he says, the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads thee to penance? But according to thy hardness²⁹ and impenitent heart thou treasurest up to thyself wrath on the day of wrath. Therefore from the goodness by which God intends to soften and entice us, we take occasion to harden ourselves more stubbornly. And so (says Origen) God is said to harden us by such a trope of speech³⁰ as a master, the more benign and clement he is to a servant, the more insolent and wicked the servant becomes, can say: I made you such, servant; I ruined you; my patience was the cause of your insolence. For by this figure they say that those in Isaiah:³¹ Why hast thou made us err, O Lord, from thy ways? Thou hast hardened our heart that we should not fear thee. Return for thy servants' sake. For they prayed that God would be converted to them in such a way as no longer to indulge them (which was an occasion of evil to them), but rather to scourge them: since whom the Lord loves, he chastises.³² And this same thing we have most certainly in the history of Pharaoh. For this reason³³ God did not at once kill the children of the Egyptians and sink the parents in the sea: because he did not will the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live. And therefore as with rains on the earth, so with lighter plagues he watered Pharaoh's heart, that it might grow mild and soften to penance. Nay, that wicked king had profited somewhat by those scourges when he said: Go three days' journey: but he was not yet sufficiently amended, since he forbade them, saying: Do not go far away, and leave your wives, etc. Nevertheless I would acknowledge this in the history of Pharaoh, that that hardening had a peculiar reason in divine providence. Namely, that those judgments of divine majesty might raise the minds of the Hebrews to fear and love of God. Let us therefore gather from all these things that our obstinate hardness and crudity is not intended by God, but that our own will, abusing the patience of God, is the cause of it. For as the same³⁴ rain produces precious herbs in one soil, but thorns and thistles in another: and as by the same sun wax melts but mud dries up, so the same goodness and patience of God, which by its own nature invites all to penance, leads some, but is the occasion of greater hardening for others. But the last confirmation of all is the sentence of Augustine,³⁵ from whom these men demand help. Let us hear him in the book On Predestination and Grace, ch. 14. Or perhaps, he says, if we think piously of God as is fitting, do we find that mercy was also given to Pharaoh? For the patience of God ought to have availed him for salvation. And ch. 15, comparing Pharaoh with Nebuchadnezzar:³⁶ that as regards nature, both were men: as regards dignity, both kings: as regards cause, both possessing the captive people of God: as regards punishment, both clemently admonished by scourges. What then, he says, made their ends different, except that the one, feeling the hand of God, groaned in remembrance of his own iniquity: while the other with free will fought against the most merciful truth of God. Go, Lutherans. Cite Augustine saying that God inclines men to evil. But we, after so many testimonies of Scripture and monuments of the most approved Fathers, even of Augustine, will beware of defaming God, who is not the cause of our sinning. So far are we from suspecting that by his compulsion, or certainly by his impulse, we are addicted to our desires.

The theologians indeed do not disagree³⁷ that God is the cause of the entity (as they call it) which is sin: in that kind of efficiency by which he moves all things, both animate and inanimate, to their natural actions. But from this it is not immediately concluded that he is the cause of sin, in that part where it turns aside from the law and will of God. And although there are very many to whom it is not easy to explain how in the hatred of God, which has an inward and indivisible malice, God can be the cause of the entity but not of the fault, nevertheless it is not so difficult to understand. For when the Fathers (nay, canonical Scripture) deny that God is the cause of sin, they do not look to that universal influence. For that, as we explained in ch. 2, is reckoned among natural causes. And therefore just as God is not said to be the cause of homicide because he gave man hands and eyes (as neither is the smith who made a sword with a good intention), so neither from the fact that he provides universal help to man in the way he provides it to a beast is he said to be the cause of sin. Since in moral matters he is truly and is judged to be the cause who by law, help, counsel, favor or persuasion moves someone, whether to good or to evil. But by these modes and reasons³⁸ God moves all to good and honest things, but no one to evil. Nay, as when a lame man walks, the man is the cause of the walking, but that he walks badly and awkwardly is entirely referred to the distorted shin: and as when a most excellent writer writes with an awkward pen or on bad papyrus, he is indeed the cause of the writing, but the badness of the characters is referred to the pen or the papyrus: so altogether when someone sins, God is indeed with the man the cause of the action, insofar as it is a certain thing, but that he declines from the law is imputed solely to free will. And concerning free will enough here. For besides that (as we said) we have not determined to pursue all things here, many things also must be added in the subsequent books, in the discussion of dispositions and of works.