Tractatus de Gratia Divina Actuali

They also contend in vain that those formulas which are to be approved by those who reject Calvinian and Jansenian grace were rejected by the Fathers.

I. In order that the force of these formulas may be understood, which are to be understood not according to the manner of speaking of recent times but according to the mind of Augustine, the following things, which we briefly subjoin, are to be considered.

a) Pelagian grace was the grace that gives the power to act, or the grace of possibility, namely, the grace by which possibility, i.e., capability, is given, which is the very power of free will that was gratuitously given by God; and, moreover, the grace by which this possibility is helped, i.e., the grace of knowledge, through which it comes about that that power or capability of nature can be the more easily exercised, without any physical powers being added to nature and without the will being helped by any immediate assistance. Thus grace of this kind consists in this: that it is positively the capability of nature itself for willing and acting holily, and, although it is not necessarily helped by that grace of knowledge, it negatively excludes the necessity of any gratuitous assistance which would confer powers for willing and acting holily and which would be the principle of good will and action. Wherefore the grace of possibility is contained in this bestowal of free will and is purely natural; but the grace of knowledge, which was called the help of possibility, without, however, conferring physical powers for acting, was not necessary according to the Pelagians. Note, however, that the fault is not in the name but in the thing signified by the name. For Augustine also acknowledges a grace of possibility which is grace properly so called, Bk. XXII, Against Faustus, c. 23: «Human nature is restored through that possibility (of restraining delight from unlawful things) through which, had it willed, it would not have fallen.» Cf. also Auctoritates Apost. Sedis, n. 1.

β) Against this help Augustine sets the help of willing (namely, of volition) and of action — the help, namely, by which man is prepared, not only by illumination but also by inspiration, so that he wills; by which help a good will and a good action are made; by which help, to be sure, gratuitous powers are conferred upon the will so that it may will well and act well; and without which, moreover, nature can do nothing. Accordingly, by this help not only is possibility helped, so that mere possibility of nature remains, but the will itself and the action are helped by supernatural powers conferred on man, inasmuch as through them a good will, or volition, and action are posited which could not come to be without them. Whence this appellation of grace as the help of willing and of action? First, indeed, to distinguish it from the Pelagian help, by which man was not helped, i.e., did not obtain powers for willing and acting beyond those which he would have from nature; then, because in reality by such a help powers are added to man so that he may will and act salutarily, in such a way that the salutary volition and action can be posited only by the force of that help.

v) Wherefore the grace that gives the power to act, which, as opposed to the other, is the grace that gives only the power to act, namely the grace of possibility, is in Augustine's view not the sufficient grace of the Catholics, but is that Pelagian grace of which we have spoken. Against this, however, is set the Catholic grace, which, because it gives powers, and gratuitous ones, for willing and acting — a thing which nature cannot do of itself — and is in reality, whenever a man wills and acts well, the efficacious principle of the good act which could not exist without it, is called the grace of willing and of action, the grace that gives a good will, that gives the willing, gives the act, makes us act.

Therefore the grace that gives the willing, gives the act, makes us act, does not signify in Augustine a grace that determines the act, nor, if we look only at the terms, does it of itself signify a grace that is joined with the act; but it signifies a grace that is in us the principle of willing and of action, that gives powers for willing and acting whether the act follows or not, and that, when the act exists, is its cause.

This is proved 1° from the opposition to Pelagian grace and from the aim of the disputation. For a) the grace that gives the willing is not opposed to that grace which would add powers of nature for willing, but is opposed to nature itself, which, by the powers implanted of the free will received in creation, is said to be able to act justly and holily. b) It is not opposed to a possibility which is only toward the good, of which sort is the possibility through grace, but to that possibility which «makes us able to do good no less than evil» (De Grat. Christi, c. 17). Moreover, the grace opposed to these is not to be conceived as a grace always joined with the act, much less as determining the act, but as a grace supplying powers for the act. And of this matter alone there was then controversy; for the question was not whether grace can be resisted — which no one denied — but about the necessity and gratuitousness of grace, i.e., about the necessity of a gratuitous assistance beyond the powers of nature.

This is proved 2) by the words of the same author from the Bk. On the Spirit and the Letter, c. 34. For he says: «in these ways, then, when God acts with the rational soul that it may believe (for it cannot believe anything by free will, if there is no persuasion or calling to which it believes), certainly God works in man the very will to believe itself, and in all things His mercy prevents us: but to consent to the calling of God, or to dissent from it, belongs to one's own will.» The calling, from which one can dissent, is so described that through it God works in us the will to believe: therefore by this formula is signified a grace that gives powers, which can be resisted, not a grace always joined with its effect. Cf. Faure, in Enchir., note on c. LII.

Here, indeed,3) grace of itself, as such, is a grace to be joined with its effect, since it is ordered to it; wherefore it must be conceived logically together with its effect, so that its force may be understood. Logical conjunction, therefore, must be distinguished from real conjunction. Moreover, the concept of grace logically joined with its effect is common to the grace which is consented to and to that from which one dissents: but that concept exhibits a grace that makes us act, that gives the act, namely, that supplies powers so that we may be able to act, and when we act, we act by its help, and therefore it itself brings it about that we act. Therefore the grace that gives the willing, makes the willing, gives the act, makes us act, is a help by which gratuitous and supernatural powers are conferred for willing and acting holily, and by which, when the act is freely done, the act itself is really posited; it is not a grace determining or necessitating the will. (These things are from the manuscript Tract of Bolgeni on Grace.)

And let these things suffice for now; for the demonstration of this matter will be completed after, when treating of sufficient grace, we shall have proved that it was known and vindicated by Augustine. Cf. therefore Th. XLVIII, p. 1a.

These things being posited, what is contained in the first part of the Thesis is easily settled.

II. Namely, that by those formulas first set forth a necessitating grace is not signified can be proved in two ways: ad hominem, in itself. Ad hominem thus: it is certain that, according to Jansenius, the grace of the first man and of the Angels was not a grace which imposed any necessity upon the will: but, according to Augustine's view, the grace of the first man and of the Angels also worked the very willing itself, gave a good will, made him will, and all his merits were from grace (Appendix to c. II, p. 249.); therefore it cannot be that by those phrases Augustine wishes to signify the mode in which grace acts, and that mode which consists in an antecedent determination to one alternative.

Indeed, by those formulas asserted against the Pelagians this one thing is signified: that grace is necessary for man — a grace that prevents and prepares the will — and that this grace is in us the efficacious principle of the good act; that accordingly there are no merits before grace, but that they begin from grace and depend on it. For if grace is such a principle, truly God through it makes us act, gives the good act, gives the salutary willing itself, which nature cannot give. Hear the interpreter of Augustine's doctrine, Fulgentius, to Monimus, Bk. 1, c. 14: «what is "I will make you act" except that every good which you shall have done will be of my work? He himself, therefore, makes us act, since, with Him working in us, every good that we do is done.» But it is one thing entirely to teach that grace is in us the necessary immediate efficient principle of the salutary act, and another to teach the mode in which grace discharges this office, and that that mode consists in this, that it imposes necessity upon the will. Moreover, it is not this second but the first that is handed down by Augustine only. Therefore.

III. Likewise that formula — that all is to be attributed to the grace of God — looks to asserting the necessity of grace for all acts, of prevenient and helping grace, so that nothing is from nature alone (for example, the beginning of conversion to God, which the Pelagians at least demanded, and after them the Massilians), partly from grace (to be sure, together with nature), but that all, i.e., every good work, even the least, is from grace, i.e., from God preventing, preparing, and helping the will through grace. But this formula would be applied altogether wrongly to signify the mode in which grace acts, unless one wished to say that God alone acts and the will is related only passively, which is most alien to Augustine's mind. Cf. Th. XVII, Palm. De Grat. 25.

Note. Let these things have been said in general. For perhaps sometimes in Augustine that formula — grace makes us act — signifies a certain function of the grace which is called efficacious: but because neither does such efficacious grace, according to Augustine, impose necessity upon the will, and about efficacious grace we shall have to speak later, therefore on this point we refer our hearers thither.

IV. They say: if the use of prevenient grace is left to free will, or if the will, when it has been prepared by the grace of God, is itself that which freely determines itself to the good, it must be said that it is man who distinguishes himself; for the faithful man is distinguished from the unbeliever, the just from the sinner, by good acts: but this is the Pelagian opinion, which Augustine always attacks, maintaining that it is God who through His grace distinguishes the faithful and the just from the unbelievers and sinners.

The answer, as in the preceding part, is twofold. For, according to Augustine, what Paul brings forward about men holds also in the Angels: *Who distinguishes you? what do you have that you have not received?*1 Cor. 4:7 In De Civ. Dei, Bk. XI, c. 19 he has these words: «When that first light was made, the Angels are understood to have been created, and there was a distinguishing between the holy Angels and the unclean, where it was said: and God divided between the light and the darkness (God, therefore, distinguished), and God called the light day and the darkness night. For He alone was able to distinguish those things, He who was able also, before they fell, to foreknow that they would fall.» And Bk. XII, c. 1: «Made, they adhered by love, and by this they were distinguished from the fellowship of those (the evil ones) (if distinguished by the love which they received from God, therefore distinguished by God, according to Paul's argumentation), because these remained in the same good will, while those, falling away from it, were changed, namely by an evil will, by the very fact that they fell away from the good. While these fell by an evil will, those, helped more fully, attained to that fullness of blessedness from which they would be made most certain never to fall.» But the will of the Angels under grace was free from necessity, with Jansenius himself as the authority. Therefore the distinguishing of God does not require that God determine our wills.

Therefore, when Augustine teaches that men are distinguished not by themselves but by grace, he excludes the operation and effort of nature and the merits preceding nature which were maintained by the Pelagians and Massilians, but he does not exclude the free cooperation of the will with the grace of God, by which it has been prepared and by which it is helped. To be sure, God distinguishes us for this reason: because God is the author in us of the good will, which cannot exist unless He gives it: whence by this formula Augustine teaches the same thing that he handed down in the preceding ones. Indeed, Augustine, ep. CLXXXVI to Paulinus, c. 2, thus explains the testimony of the Apostle: «Who distinguishes us from that mass and lump of perdition, except Him who came to seek and save what was lost? Whence the Apostle asks, saying: for who distinguishes you? where, if a man says, my faith, my good work, it is answered to him: for what do you have that you have not received? but if you have received, why do you glory, as if you had not received? This, to be sure, is all for this reason: not that man should not glory, but that he who glories should glory in the Lord, not from works, lest perhaps anyone be lifted up. Not because good works are frustrated, since God repays each one according to his works, and glory and honor and peace are for everyone who works good, but because the works are through grace, not grace from the works; since faith, which works through love, would work nothing, unless the love of God itself were poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Nor would faith itself be in us, unless God distributed to each one the measure of faith.» And in Bk. II, On the Merits and Remission of Sins, c. 18: «Since that we turn away from God is ours, and this is the evil will; but that we turn to God we cannot do unless He Himself is exciting and helping, and this is the good will: what is it that we have not received?» Namely, we are distinguished formally by faith, by a good will, by a good work; but we are distinguished efficiently by God, because we receive from God faith, a good will, a good work; and we receive them because, by freely consenting to Him exciting and helping, we believe, we will, we act well. God, therefore, does not distinguish us by the fact that He determines us, but because He is through His grace the author of the salutary act, which could not exist without the grace of God.

To this distinguishing our will indeed also concurs, but a will prepared and helped by God, not by the powers of its own nature, but by powers gratuitously received; and therefore it is a dependent and secondary cause, whereas God, on the contrary, is the principal cause. Thus Thomas, III p., q. XIX, a. 3: «A person is said to have something by himself, of which he is in some way the cause to himself. But the first cause of all our goods, by authority, is God; and in this way no creature has anything good by itself, itself, according to that text «1 Cor. 4: what do you have that you have not received?» Yet secondarily a person can be the cause to himself of having some good, inasmuch as, namely, in this very thing he cooperates with God.» Augustine never denied this distinguishing, he who only denies that the will distinguishes itself by the powers of its own nature, without grace and before grace, which the Pelagians and Massilians taught.

Note again that a certain distinguishing is repeatedly referred by Augustine to the gratuitous predestination of efficacious grace; but this interpretation can be accommodated neither to all of Augustine's testimonies, nor does this opinion infer a necessitating or predetermining grace, as will be clear in its own place.

V. As to those words of the Apostle («not of the one willing nor of the one running», etc.), here is Augustine's exposition in Enchir., c. 32: «How is it not of the one willing nor of the one running, but of God who shows mercy, except because the will itself also, as it is written, is prepared by the Lord? Otherwise, if for this reason it was said "not of the one willing" etc., because it is done from both, that is, from the will of man and the mercy of God,... as if it were said: the will of man alone does not suffice, if the mercy of God is not also present; then neither does the mercy of God alone suffice, if the will of man is not also present. And hence, if it was rightly said: "not of the willing man, but of God who shows mercy," because the will of man alone does not fulfill it; why, on the contrary, is it not rightly said: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man," because the mercy of God alone does not fulfill it? Moreover, if no Christian will dare to say: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man," lest he contradict the Apostle most openly; it remains that it be understood to have been said rightly for this reason: "not of the one willing nor of the one running, but of God who shows mercy," so that all may be given to God, who both prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it when prepared.» Therefore, they say, the will does not distinguish itself by determining the act with an indifferent power, but is distinguished, determined by God: otherwise, with equal right one could say: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man."

I answer. Augustine does not exclude the willing and the running of man freely cooperating with the grace by which he is prevented; but he excludes the willing and the running which precede and merit the grace of God: namely, he excludes that error which was afterwards that of the Massilians and which he himself had handed down in the Exposition of certain propositions of the Epistle to the Romans, in which exposition he had explained that testimony of the Apostle according to that erroneous sense, which explanation he now disapproves and rejects. Indeed, the free cooperation of man is not excluded, 1) because about grace only this is asserted, that it prepares and helps, not that it determines the will; but it can prepare and help without imposing necessity. 2) Once prevenient grace is admitted, even if it leaves to the will the dominion of the act, it is most truly said that that proposition of the Apostle cannot be inverted, and one cannot say: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man"; because the very will of the man willing well is already the work of the mercy of God preparing and helping the will, and therefore is already contained under the term "of God who shows mercy." («For if God shows mercy, we also will: for to the same mercy it belongs that we will.» Ad Simplic., Bk. I, q. II, n. 12). But if prevenient grace is denied, then with equal right one could say: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man"; because the will would be distinguished entirely from the mercy of God, on which it would not depend, and which would be necessary for grace to follow. Augustine, therefore, asserts prevenient grace, not grace imposing necessity. Cf. Faure on this passage.

VI. First it must be noted that Augustine does not say that grace is omnipotent, but that the will or power of God is omnipotent — two things which are to be entirely distinguished; for grace is something created, to which omnipotence cannot belong. Indeed, poetically, Prosper in his poem on the ungrateful calls grace omnipotent: «But truly omnipotent grace saves a man, It itself completes its own work, etc.» But it is so called for this reason, inasmuch as it is considered as joined with God, whose instrument, as it were, it is.

This being posited, we answer, having recourse again to a twofold response, as before. For if Calvin and Jansenius infer that the will is determined by grace antecedently to one alternative, because, on Augustine's authority, God has a most omnipotent power of inclining hearts whithersoever He wills, they must concede that the wills of the Angels and of any possible intelligent creature cannot but be necessarily determined to one alternative by the grace of God which is conferred upon them; for not only with respect to the wills of fallen men, but with respect to all wills, whether angelic or possible, it is true and must be affirmed that God has a most omnipotent power, or that the will of God is most omnipotent, i.e., can do whatever it wills. For this power belongs to the divine will, both because it itself is infinite, and because wills are finite and created: but this holds for any will whatsoever. And indeed Augustine vindicates this omnipotence for God not only with respect to our wills, but also with respect to the angelic ones, and in general with respect to all. Enchir., cc. 95 ff. Our God in heaven and on earth did all things whatsoever He willed. Which certainly is not true, if He willed some things and did not do them.... For not for any other reason is He truthfully called omnipotent, except because He can do whatever He wills, nor is the effect of the omnipotent will impeded by the will of any creature.... However many the wills may be, whether of Angels or of men, whether of the good or of the evil, whether willing what God wills or something other than God, the omnipotent will of God is always unconquered. Whence in De Civ. Dei, Bk. XIV, c. 27 he says: «who would dare to believe or say that it was not in God's power that neither Angel nor man should fall?» Therefore, if the omnipotent will of God, to which the created will is subject, is the reason why the grace of God binds this created will with necessity; why do these heretics will that Adam and the Angels were free from necessity? and if they were free, why will human wills not be free now?

Wherefore it must be said that it is altogether false that Augustine taught that the grace of God determines our wills to one alternative because he taught that grace is in us the operation of omnipotent God, who can do in us and from us what He wills. To be sure, from this omnipotent power it follows indeed that God can do in us what He wills; but it does not follow that He can do it in that special mode which the heretics will; rather, the mode, whatever it be, must be such that our freedom remains safe. And this Augustine presupposes. Omnipotent God, therefore, can infallibly obtain from our will that effect which He has willed, not by destroying free will, but by working good wills in the hearts of men by an internal and hidden, wonderful and ineffable power (De Gratia Christi, c. 24), namely, by calling and exciting men in such a way as He knows to be congruous to them, so that they do not reject the one calling (Ad Simplic., Bk. I, q. 2, n. 13).

VII. As to the other appellations by which the heretics think grace is called by Augustine insuperable and indeclinable...ble, they are taken from the Bk. On Correction and Grace, c. 12: «Help was brought to the infirmity of the human will, so that it might be moved by divine grace indeclinably and insuperably ¹ reading and it by no means fits the context.» But the heretics manifestly err in the interpretation of these words. For they think that by them is signified the relation of grace to the will, namely, that the will is overcome by grace, that it is invincibly inclined whither God wills; whereas, on the contrary, they signify the relation of the will, strengthened by grace, to concupiscence or temptations — a relation which is an effect of grace; inasmuch as, namely, through grace the will obtains that it is not overcome by concupiscence or temptations, that it is not bent now here, now there, to evils; but stands unconquered, indeclinably, not declining to the right or to the left, proceeding in the way of salvation, and being insuperable by its adversaries. It is, namely, a heavenly delight by which not the will, but «every earthly delight is overcome.» Serm. XLII, c. 3. Whence Augustine also uses the appellation "most unconquered" when he signifies the effect of some grace, by which, namely, as he says in the same place, men «most unconqueredly would will what is good, and most unconqueredly would refuse to abandon it.» But a relation of this sort, of an insuperable and most unconquered will toward concupiscence, does not signify a will determined to one alternative, but signifies a will strengthened with those powers by which, freely indeed, it is able to resist every movement of concupiscence and temptation, and by which, moreover, it infallibly resists them. And to this comes back the most efficacious appellation which Augustine sometimes applies both to the calling by which we are called (De Gratia et lib. arb., c. 5) and to the hidden power by which the heart is converted (Cont. duas epistt. pelagg., Bk. I, c. 20); for by this appellation is signified a grace that provides most efficacious powers to the will against concupiscence or against temptations, and that also infallibly obtains the effect for the sake of which it is given: VIII. In De Praed. SS., c. 8, grace is predicated of that sort which is rejected by no hard heart, since it is given by God precisely so that the hardness of heart may first be removed. This, of course, is true; but that grace should be such and should do this, we deny that it is necessary for it to impose necessity upon the will, but it suffices that, by the knowledge of God, the grace be so congruous that the effect infallibly follows. Cf. what we shall say in Th. LVI.

IX. Finally, as to what is said in the last place about certain formulas, see them in Thesis XXXVII, n. X. Now then, although it must be conceded that these formulas were rejected by the Fathers: it is nevertheless false that they were rejected in that sense in which they can be accepted by Catholics; but they were rejected in the sense of the Pelagians and Massilians, inasmuch as, namely, the merits of nature were said to precede grace and grace to be given according to them, and by them the bestowal of grace to be determined — things which are utterly abhorrent to the Catholic sense. Cf. I. c. the explanation of those formulas and the sense in which they were rejected by Catholics; for it does not help to repeat the same thing.