Tractatus de vera et legitima concordia liberi arbitrii creati cum auxiliis gratiae Dei

1. — Just as for the ancient philosophers it was very difficult to compose human free choice with God's providence, to the point that they were divided into extreme errors, because they could not satisfy themselves: —for some denied that divine providence and government extend to man's free choice; but others, to defend divine providence, affirming the infallible disposition of fate, denied man's free choice—; so too after the preaching of the Gospel, proud men, overcome in the difficulty of this concord, have been divided into contrary heresies. For some, as the Pelagians and Caelestius, to defend man's freedom, denied that the interior and supernatural aids of divine grace are necessary; but they said that the exterior aids of teaching and of the law and of miracles suffice, so that man through the faculty of free choice may avail to believe and to act. If at any time God assisted man with interior supernatural aids, this was not simply necessary, but for better being. But other heretics by the other extreme, such as Luther was and his followers, denied free choice, especially after sin, wishing to attribute so much to the divine omnipotence and to God's will that they said God is equally the author of good and of evil works. Both indeed from the same proud ignorance of the concord of free choice with the divine will came to such diverse extremes of error.

And indeed the error of the Lutherans has been abundantly enough demonstrated and condemned in the Council of Trent.

2. — But the error of Pelagius and his followers, especially Caelestius, was condemned in the first Council of Carthage and in the Council of Milevis. But afterward there arose in Gaul certain men infected with the remnants of the Pelagians, concerning whom Prosper of Aquitaine and Hilary of Arles write individual letters to St. Augustine, which are had in volume 7 before the book On the predestination of the saints. Those, therefore, who were infected with the remnants of the Pelagians vehemently contradicted the teaching of St. Augustine, because the testimonies of the Apostle writing to the Romans for the manifestation of divine grace had been understood by no churchman as by St. Augustine. But when they were asked to expound them, they answered that they had found nothing that pleases, and they said that silence must be kept concerning those things whose depth no one has reached. And they came so far as to say that the faith which Augustine's disciples preached is contrary to the edification of hearers; and although it were true, yet it must be contained in silence. And certain others, confessing Christ's grace, which goes before all human merits, nevertheless «would have it pertain to this condition of each man, in which the grace of the Creator institutes him, before meriting nothing, since not even existing, free in choice and rational, so that through discernment of good and evil, both unto knowledge of God and unto obedience to his commands he can direct his will, and unto this grace by which he is reborn in Christ arrive through natural faculty, by asking, seeking, knocking; so that for that reason he receives, for that reason he finds, for that reason he enters, because, having used the good of nature well, he merited to arrive at that saving grace with the help of initial grace». And he reports many other things in which they confess «that there are two things which work human salvation, namely God's grace and man's obedience; and they will obedience to be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation is to be believed to stand from him who is saved, not from God who saves, and man's will procures help for itself from divine grace, not grace subjects to itself the human will». And Prosper himself complains that, although he is constant in not believing them, yet he is not equal to contending against their authority: «for, he says, they far surpass us in merits of life», and some of them are bishops and therefore few are intrepid lovers of perfect grace. «Whence in these remnants of Pelagian depravity a fiber of no slight virulence is nourished». And at length he concludes asking a solution from Augustine, because they affirmed that God's purpose and predestination is from foreknowledge, «so that for this reason God made some vessels of honor, others of disgrace, because he foreknew the end of each, and foreknew under that very assistance of grace in what will and action he would be». So far from Prosper's letter.

And like things are had in Hilary's letter. These men, infected with the remnants of the Pelagians, were convicted by this argument, that if predestination and God's purpose had been absolute and the efficacious cause of the good use of free choice, the faculty of intellect and will for either alternative would have been altogether destroyed, and men would have been led into despair by this teaching, and exhortations and preachings to induce men to live rightly would have been in vain.

3. — To which question Augustine answers luminously writing back to Hilary and Prosper in the books On the predestination of the saints. Against these remnants of the Pelagians the second Council of Orange was gathered under Leo the first, in which are contained almost the express words of St. Augustine through all the canons, in which, as it seems to us, not only those remnants of the Pelagians are condemned, but the door is also closed to certain opinions of our time, which I do not judge to be now altogether those ancient remnants of the Pelagians, but I judge them to be false, in that they intend that free choice, with initial grace and sufficient aid existing, have real efficacy of using well and of applying itself to the work from its own property, not from God's motion. So that when one man has received nothing more real than another, indeed sometimes less, one man is converted and the other remains in unbelief. Now at length I see the authors of these opinions have invented a certain inequality of the sufficient aid of God's grace which they say to be moral; and they reduce this morality to opportuneness of time together with God's foreknowledge knowing that that man will act well, if, placed in such a time, he receive that grace of sufficient aid. And thus they think that aid of grace to agree and be coadapted to the property of this free choice. And through this they make the concord between the aid of grace and man's free choice, for both, they say, at once enjoy their own right in the free action. For neither could free choice have been converted to God without prevenient sufficient aid, nor yet would it consent freely if it were prevened by the efficacy of the divine motion.

4. — But we, lovers and defenders of the perfect grace of God which is given to us from Christ's merits, with St. Thomas and St. Augustine and the other holy fathers whom there is no leisure to cite, think far otherwise concerning this divine and legitimate concord. For the aforesaid concord which Fathers Molina and Suarez judge necessary, although at first spring, to those looking at few things, it seem easy to understand, yet, if one look within, it is shown to contain many false things.

And besides the arguments made concerning the efficacy of the divine aid, in the first place it is against it, that it seems to derogate from the omnipotence of the divine will, which did and does whatsoever it would; but above all it wills and loves our free consent by which we are converted to God and most please him: therefore this itself it makes truly and really in us, and not only gives whereby we can, but also whereby we actually do. How then do they deny an aid of the divine motion really efficacious of this consent?

And it is confirmed from Iac., 1 (v. 17): Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights. But the very act of charity by which man is converted to God is a best gift. Therefore it comes down from the father of lights. But if the efficacy of the aid be from free choice, to love him and actually to adhere to him does not come down from the father.

It is confirmed secondly from the words of the Church praying: «God who manifestest thy omnipotence chiefly by pitying and sparing». For if God were not the real cause both physically inflowing by efficaciously moving free choice to consent, but only the moral cause by conferring whereby it can move itself physically to operation, he would not much show his omnipotence in the justification of the ungodly. For man really and physically does something which God does not do but leaves to man to do; and accordingly he does not rule man's free choice by inclining it whither he wills.

It is confirmed thirdly from that ad Rom., 11 (v. 2): God hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew. Which passage Augustine in book 2 On the good of perseverance, chap. 18 understands so that by the name of foreknowledge predestination is signified. And he proves it because the Apostle «spoke of the remnant of the Jews, which were made safe with the rest perishing». And to show that the remnants were left by God's grace, he subjoins what the divine answer said to Elias 3 Reg. chap. 19,18: I have left me seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee before Baal (Rom., 11,4). And Augustine notes that he did not say, «they were left to me, or they left themselves to me, but I left to me. So therefore, he says, also at this time the remnants were made safe through election of grace». The election of grace, therefore, efficaciously separates him who is converted from him who is not converted. Otherwise man himself alone by his free choice would distinguish himself physically and really from the other who bows the knee before Baal, and would leave and keep himself for God.

5. — Secondly that concord principally displeases because it seems to derogate from Christ's merits. And I prove it from that Is., 53 (v. 10): If he shall lay down his soul for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be directed in his hand. Where Jerome says that whatsoever the Father willed be fulfilled through his powers, that is, that by Christ's merits there be given to us whatsoever comes from God's grace ordained to our salvation.

From this I argue thus: Although those who embrace such a concord confess that Christ the Lord merited that that sufficient aid be given and that it be given to this man in the opportune time in which God knew that, if that man were placed, he would act, yet they cannot grant that that known thing, namely that that man, if placed in such a time, would apply himself to operation with that sufficient aid, falls under Christ's merit. For such actual application does not come from that aid physically and really as it is sent by the divine will, but according to them it comes from the property of this singular free choice known by God through natural and necessary knowledge, which does not fall under Christ's merit.

And indeed such an assertion differs little from the assertion of those whom Prosper reports above, who said that grace and Christ's merits extend to this, that those men be created rational and with free choice, by which they discern between good and evil, so that then God direct their wills. Indeed much less can it fall under merit, that this man, already created and placed in such circumstances, have such a property in his free choice, that he infallibly determine and apply himself to operation.

6. — Thirdly that concord, while it intends to establish free choice, seems rather to destroy it. It is proved. For that certitude of divine knowledge with respect to that conditional is natural and necessary. Otherwise that man placed in such circumstances could have not acted; which possible thing, if placed in being, that conditional would already be false, and accordingly God's knowledge would not be certain nor infallible foreknowledge. Therefore the certitude of that conditionate must be founded on some natural property of Peter necessarily known by God. Therefore he does not then so act freely, because the determination of that operation proceeds necessarily from his native property.

Moreover they derogate from free choice, while they subject its operation here and now to individual complexion and to the influences of the heavenly bodies, as was granted to me in a public disputation.

Furthermore on occasion of that teaching men are made confident of themselves, so that they dare to promise God of themselves that, if he himself give even less aid than to another in opportune time, they themselves will be converted and once converted will profit more than others.

And at last they fall into the same straits, indeed greater, into which they think we fall, positing efficacious aid really distinct from the sufficient. For as we said, they derogate from that freedom; and again they will render no account which men little humble desire, why God gave aid in opportune time to this man and not to another, to whom perchance he also conferred greater sufficient aid, and he is not converted. Of which difference they will be able to assign no other account besides the absolute divine will. For to say that he who, roused by God, is not converted, could not have had the opportune time, is to say that he could not have been saved, nor God justify him through his free consent. In vain therefore is the account of the difference sought, why this one is converted and that one is not converted, from foreknowledge of future things, before the decree of the divine will, which hath mercy on whom it will and hardeneth whom it will.

7. — We therefore are more deterred by the aforesaid unfitting things, and therefore we constantly follow the teaching of St. Thomas and St. Augustine, who in the book On the good of perseverance says: «But why those have ears for hearing, those have not, that is, why to those it is given by the Father to come to the Son, but to those it is not given, who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor? (Rom., 11,34) … Shall what is open therefore be denied, because what is hidden cannot be comprehended?» So he. Whose teaching teaches scholastic theologians humility, not to be wise more than it behooveth to be wise.

Since therefore we experience free choice in ourselves, and on the other hand God's omnipotence is shown by evident reason, who can do and does whatsoever he would, of whose divine will no cause is to be assigned, it seems foolish to deny either that we are endowed with no free choice, or that divine providence and predestination are not certain, because we do not comprehend by our wit how these cohere among themselves, as Ferrariensis well noted book 3 Contra gentes, chap. 94 near the end.

8. — But they say it is necessary to satisfy the heretics' arguments.

To whom we answer that it is one thing evidently to solve the arguments, and another thing evidently to demonstrate our conclusion concerning the concord. The former indeed we promise and do. For, as Cajetan says, he who solves the arguments probably, solves evidently; for if the argument evidently convinced, neither would it probably be solved. Since therefore from the efficacy and efficacious physical premotion of divine grace it is inferred, whether by the Lutherans or by the adversaries, that the use of free choice is destroyed, we confidently deny the consequence, because those so inferring do not understand the very what-it-is of free choice and of free action, as was shown in the first part of this treatise. But rather from the conjunction of the divine free choice to the human, through the intimate motion of his grace, our free choice is perfected, so that in its operation it is made more like to the divine than if it were left in itself. For from its own powers it can fail and sin. But to adhere to God will never befall, unless God by special aid of efficacious grace draw it to himself.

But the other, which is evidently to demonstrate how this concord comes about, neither do we profess, nor can we; but with St. Augustine and the other holy fathers, we ingenuously confess our ignorance. For Augustine says in the Enchiridion, chap. 94: «Then, that is in eternal beatitude, the saints shall know more fully what good his grace conferred; then, with the things themselves evident, shall appear what is written in the Psalm: Mercy and judgment I will sing to thee, O Lord … Then what now lies hidden shall not lie hidden, when of two little ones one was to be taken through God's mercy … Then in the clearest light of wisdom shall be seen what now the faith of the pious holds, before it be seen by manifest knowledge, how certain and immutable and most efficacious is God's will; how many things it can and wills not, but wills nothing which it cannot; and how true is what is sung in the Psalm: Whatsoever he would he did in heaven and on earth». So he.

From which we gather how far from this teaching differs the curiosity of certain schoolmen, who contend openly to show how the use of freedom is preserved with the efficacy of divine grace, asserting this efficacy to be only moral, not really and physically, as they say, touching free choice, but only inviting and rousing and proposing to it the supernatural good, so that man from the property of his free choice, not from efficacious grace, apply himself to operation. For if these things so stood; the saints would in vain marvel at the efficacy of divine grace powerfully subjecting to itself man's free choice strongly and sweetly, so that it be freely conformed and consent to the divine will.

9. — To what end too, when the Apostle speaks of mysteries of this kind, commending the efficacy of divine grace coming from predestination and absolute purpose in God, is he angered against the curious inquirer into the divine disposition and the counsels of God over the sons of men, saying: O man, who art thou? And again vehemently marveling he cries: O the depth of the riches of the knowledge and wisdom of God, how incomprehensible are his judgments and unsearchable his ways. Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor, or who hath first given to him that it be repaid to him? For of him, and by him, and in him are all things. To him glory for ever (ad Rom., 11,33-36).

On which passage see St. Thomas in the last lecture excellently interpreting the single words, especially those three: of him, and by him, and in him are all things. For he says that by the first word, of him, is signified the efficient cause; by the second, by him, is signified the formal, ideal, and exemplary cause; but by the third, in him, is signified the conservation and government and disposition of all things, according to that Actorum, 17 (v. 28): For in him we live, and move, and are. But by the distribution all things, he understands whatsoever has the character of being. Whence sin is not understood, because according to Augustine, sin is nothing. Nevertheless St. Thomas says that «whatsoever of entity is in sin is wholly from God».

From this testimony of the Apostle, therefore, I argue thus in refutation of the moderns' concord and in confirmation of our concord: The good deliberation of our free choice is counted among the best real goods which are in the world: therefore it is from God as from the efficient cause, and through God as from the exemplary cause, and in God as in the conserving cause, according to the disposition of the incomprehensible divine wisdom. It does not suffice, therefore, to assert God to be only the moral cause in the execution of human deliberation, especially the supernatural, but it is also necessary to assert him to be the really efficient cause, premoving free choice to exercise such deliberation efficaciously. This conclusion is proved. For otherwise, man himself first from his own free choice, which is not God's grace, would give to God something, namely to apply himself with that sufficient aid to the good operation; which application indeed he did not receive truly and really from that aid itself, which was common to the other who does not apply himself to operation.

Likewise when the Apostle says ad Rom., 8 (v. 14): Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, it does not seem explicable that they are led only morally by the Spirit showing them the good, but also physically and really by him efficaciously inspiring unto the exercise of love of God. Likewise when in the same place he says that in the spirit of adoption of sons we cry, Abba, father, surely he signifies the efficient cause of this cry. Likewise that, The Spirit himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings, designates the most efficacious efficient cause, which makes us ask and desire what pleases God, as is the common interpretation of the saints on that passage.

10. — Let us conclude therefore in sum that our concord in many things excels the moderns' concord. First indeed in antiquity in the school of theologians; secondly in that it agrees more with natural reason concerning the manner of causing of the first cause: for neither do we deny metaphysical principles, as others deny; thirdly because it is more conformed to the teaching of the holy fathers, if they be read with attention and sincerely, whose testimonies it were easy for us to insert, were we not constrained by narrowness of time; fourthly in that we solve the arguments of the contraries more briefly and easily, as has been seen; fifthly in that through this teaching faithful men are made more humble, while they glory in God alone, giving thanks not only because he gave to be able, but because he truly and really gave to will and to do, and with greater humility they seek God's maintenance, placing all hope in God.

But the new concord which the moderns, perchance with good zeal, strive to introduce into the school of theologians, has none of the aforesaid. But rather with excessive curiosity concerning a thing incomprehensible to human wit they offer satisfaction, so that it be wise not unto sobriety. Then I know not what greater consolation they bring to men while they intend to make them more confident concerning the power of their free choice for working their eternal salvation, while they opine that through their own powers they can determine and render efficacious God's aids which do not bring prevenient real efficacy with them, provided God give them in opportune time.

But we acknowledge that grace to be efficacious with Augustine «which is refused by no hard heart», which brings with it, not opportuneness of time, but the most efficacious power of God's eternal good pleasure, to do in us what is pleasing before God.

But those who reduce the account of the difference and distinction of him who is converted from him who is not converted to opportuneness of time and to middle knowledge, against which we spoke elsewhere, ought to have considered that they leave proud men no less anxious and ignorant in consideration of their eternal salvation. For when it is asked of the authors of this new concord, why to this man he gave in opportune time and not to another; whether the other, as the object of that middle knowledge, never had any opportuneness of time? Why then did God not decree then to give him the prevenient aid of grace, which he knew he would use well, if it were given? Surely they will be able to bring forward no account, besides the free divine will, which mercifully elected whom it would; but the rest, that the order of divine wisdom and justice be shown, it permitted to fail through sin and to remain in it. Let us all therefore cry: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. To him glory for ever.