On the Predestination of the Saints 14–18

Cyprian wrote a book On Mortality, well known and praised by many, indeed by nearly all who love church literature; in which he says that death is not only not useless to believers, but is even found to be useful, because it withdraws a man from the dangers of sinning and sets him in the security of not sinning. But what does this profit, if even future sins, which have not been committed, are punished? Yet he argues most fully and very well that the dangers of sinning are not lacking in this life and do not remain after it. There he also sets down that testimony from the book of Wisdom: “He was snatched away lest wickedness should change his understanding.” When I too set this down, you said these brothers rejected it as not brought forward from a canonical book; as if, even apart from the witness of this book, the very thing I wanted to be taught from it were not clear. For what Christian would dare to deny that the righteous man, if he is overtaken by death, will be in refreshment? Whoever says this, what man of sound faith will think he should be resisted? Likewise, if he says that the righteous man, if he departs from his righteousness in which he lived long and dies in that ungodliness in which he has lived, I do not say one year, but one day, will go hence into the punishments due to the wicked, and his past righteousness will profit him nothing, what believer will contradict this plain truth? Further, if we are asked whether, if he had died then when he was righteous, he would have found punishment or rest, shall we hesitate to answer rest? This is the whole reason why it was said, by whomever it was said, “He was snatched away lest wickedness should change his understanding.” For it was said with reference to the dangers of this life, not with reference to the foreknowledge of God, who foreknew what was going to be, not what was not going to be; that is, that he was going to grant him an early death so that he might be withdrawn from the uncertainty of temptations; not that he would sin, who was not going to remain in temptation. For of this life we read in the book of Job, “Is not human life on earth a trial?” But why it is granted to some to be taken from the dangers of this life while they are righteous, while other righteous men are held in those same dangers by a longer life until they fall from righteousness, “who has known the mind of the Lord?” And yet from this it is given to understand that even those righteous who keep good and godly ways to the ripeness of old age and the last day of this life must glory not in their own merits but in the Lord; since he who by shortness of life snatched away the righteous man lest wickedness should change his understanding himself guards the righteous man in any length of life whatever lest wickedness should change his understanding. But why he kept here the righteous man who was going to fall, when he could have taken him away before he fell, his judgments are altogether most just, but inscrutable. Since this is so, the statement of the book of Wisdom ought not to have been rejected, which has deserved to be read in the church of Christ from the rank of readers of the church of Christ for so long a span of years, and to be heard by all Christians, from bishops down to the lowest lay believers, penitents, and catechumens, with the veneration due to divine authority. Certainly, if I were to bring forward from the expositors of the divine Scriptures who were before us a defence of this teaching, which we are now urged to defend more carefully and fully than usual against the new error of the Pelagians, namely that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, and is given freely to whom it is given, because it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, while by just judgment it is not given to whom it is not given, because there is no iniquity with God: if, then, I were to produce a defence of this teaching from the Catholic expositors of the divine oracles who preceded us, these brothers for whom we are now acting would surely acquiesce; for this you have indicated in your letters. What need is there, then, for us to search the works of those who, before this heresy arose, had no need to busy themselves with this question, difficult to solve? Which they would without doubt have done if they had been compelled to answer such men. Hence it came about that they touched briefly and in passing, in some places of their writings, on what they thought about the grace of God; but they dwelt on the things they were arguing against the enemies of the church, and on exhortations to every virtue by which the living and true God is served for the attaining of eternal life and true happiness. But by the frequency of their prayers what the grace of God avails appeared simply; for things that he commands to be done would not be asked of God unless it were given by him that they be done. But those who want to be instructed by the opinions of expositors ought to put this book of Wisdom, where it is read, “He was snatched away lest wickedness should change his understanding,” before all expositors; since even eminent expositors nearest in time to the apostles put it before themselves, who, bringing it forward as a witness, believed that they were bringing forward nothing but a divine testimony. And it is certainly established that the most blessed Cyprian argued, in order to commend the benefit of a speedier death, that those who end this life, in which one can sin, are rescued from the dangers of sins. In the same book he says among other things: “Why do you not embrace being called to Christ, you who will be with Christ and are secure of the Lord's promise, and rejoice that you are free of the devil?” And in another place: “Boys,” he says, “escape the danger of a slippery age.” And again in another: “Why do we not hasten and run, so that we may see our homeland and greet our parents? A great number of those dear to us await us there, parents, brothers, children; a dense and abundant throng longs for us, already secure of its own safety, still anxious for our salvation.” By these and similar statements that teacher, in the most clear light of the Catholic faith, testifies plainly and clearly enough that the dangers of sinning and temptations are to be feared until the laying down of this body, and that thereafter no one will suffer any such things. And even if he did not testify to this, what Christian of any kind would doubt about this matter? How, then, for a man who has fallen and ends this life wretchedly in that same fall and goes into the punishments due to such men, how, I say, would it not be of the greatest and highest profit to him if he had been snatched by death from this place of temptations before he fell? And therefore, if excessively ill-considered contention is absent, this whole question is settled concerning him who was snatched away lest wickedness should change his understanding. Nor should the book of Wisdom, which has deserved to be read in the church of Christ for so great a number of years, and in which this too is read, suffer wrong because it resists those who are deceived about the merits of men so as to come against the most manifest grace of God; which appears most of all in little children, of whom, since some end this life baptized and others not baptized, they indicate clearly enough mercy and judgment: mercy freely given, judgment due. For if men were judged according to the merits of their life which they did not have, being prevented by death, but would have had if they had lived, it would profit nothing to him who was snatched away lest wickedness should change his understanding; it would profit nothing to those who die fallen if they had died before; which no Christian will dare to say. Therefore our brothers, who with us attack the ruin of the Pelagian error on behalf of the Catholic faith, ought not to favour this Pelagian opinion, by which they think the grace of God is given according to our merits, so far as to try to destroy what the Pelagians cannot dare, a statement plainly true and anciently Christian, “He was snatched away lest wickedness should change his understanding,” and to assert what we would have thought no one, I do not say would believe, but would dream: namely, that each of the dead is judged according to what he would have done if he had lived a longer time. So clear is it that what we say is invincible, that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, that talented men contradicting this truth are compelled to say things that should be driven away from the ears and thoughts of all.

There is also the most illustrious light of predestination and grace, the Saviour himself, the Mediator himself between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. By what preceding merits of his own, whether of works or of faith, did the human nature that is in him obtain to be this? Let it be answered, I pray: that man, so as to be the only-begotten Son of God, taken up by the Word co-eternal with the Father into unity of person, from where did he merit this? What good of his of any kind went before? What did he do beforehand, what did he believe, what did he ask, so as to come to this ineffable excellence? Was it not by the Word's making and taking him up that that man, from the time he began to be, began to be the only Son of God? Did not that woman full of grace conceive the only Son of God? Was not the only Son of God born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, not by the desire of the flesh, but by a singular gift of God? Was it to be feared that, as he grew in age, that man would sin by free choice? Or was the will in him therefore not free, and not all the more free, the more it could not serve sin? Surely all these things, singularly to be wondered at, and any others that can most truly be said to be his own, human nature, that is, our nature, received singularly in him, with no preceding merits of its own. Let a man here answer back to God, if he dares, and say, “Why not I too?” And if he hears, “O man, who are you to answer back to God?”, let him not restrain himself even so, but increase his impudence and say, “What do I hear, ‘Who are you, O man?’ Since I am what I hear, that is, a man, which he too is of whom I speak, why should I not be what he is?” But it is by grace that he is such and so great. Why is grace different where nature is common? Certainly there is no respect of persons with God. Who, I do not say Christian, but madman, would say these things? Let the very fountain of grace, then, appear to us in our Head, from whom it spreads through all his members according to the measure of each. By that grace every man becomes a Christian from the beginning of his faith, by which grace that man from his beginning became Christ; this man too is reborn of the same Spirit of whom that one was born; by the same Spirit the remission of sins takes place in us by which Spirit it came about that he had no sin. That he would do these things God certainly foreknew. This, then, is the predestination of the saints, which shone most of all in the Holy of holies: who of those who rightly understand the words of truth can deny it? For we have learned that the Lord of glory himself, inasmuch as man was made the Son of God, was predestined. The teacher of the Gentiles cries out at the head of his Epistles, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification by the resurrection of the dead.” Jesus, then, was predestined, so that he who was to be the son of David according to the flesh should nevertheless be in power the Son of God according to the Spirit of sanctification; because he was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. This is that singular taking up of man by God the Word, ineffably done, so that he might truly and properly be called at once Son of God and son of man: son of man because of the man taken up, and Son of God because of the only-begotten God who takes him up; lest not a trinity but a quaternity be believed. This so great, so lofty, and so supreme raising up of human nature was predestined, so that it had nowhere higher to be raised; just as for us the divinity itself had nowhere lower to put itself than by taking up the nature of man with the weakness of the flesh even to the death of the cross. Just as, then, that one man was predestined to be our Head, so we many have been predestined to be his members. Let human merits, which perished through Adam, be silent here, and let the grace of God reign, which reigns through Jesus Christ our Lord, the only Son of God, the one Lord. Whoever finds in our Head preceding merits of that singular generation, let him look in us his members for preceding merits of the multiplied regeneration. For that generation was not repaid to Christ but bestowed on him, so that, free from every bond of sin, he might be born of the Spirit and the Virgin. So too to us it was not repaid for any merit, but freely bestowed, that we should be reborn of water and the Spirit; and if faith led us to the washing of regeneration, we ought not therefore to think that we gave something first, so that saving regeneration might be repaid to us; for he made us believe in Christ who made for us the Christ in whom we believe; he makes in men the beginning of faith and its completion in Jesus who made the man Jesus the author and finisher of faith; for so he is called, as you know, in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

For God calls his many predestined sons so as to make them members of his only predestined Son, not by that calling by which those too were called who would not come to the wedding; for by that calling the Jews too were called, to whom Christ crucified is a stumbling block, and the Gentiles, to whom the crucified is foolishness; but he calls the predestined by that calling which the Apostle distinguished when he said that he preached to those who are called, Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For he says, “but to those who are called,” so as to show the others as not called; knowing that there is a certain sure calling of those who are called according to his purpose, whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Signifying this calling, he says: “Not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, ‘The elder shall serve the younger.’” Did he say, “Not of works, but of him who believes”? He took even this away from man altogether, so as to give the whole to God. He said, then, “but of him who calls”: not by any calling whatever, but by the calling by which one becomes a believer. He was looking at this calling too when he said, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” For notice for a little what was being dealt with there. For when he had said, “For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, lest you be wise in yourselves: that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel would be saved; as it is written, ‘The deliverer will come from Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob; and this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins,’” he at once added what must be carefully understood: “As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake; but as regards the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.” What does “As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake” mean, but that their enmity, by which they killed Christ, without doubt profited the gospel, as we see? And he shows that this came from the disposition of God, who knows how to use even evil men well: not so that the vessels of wrath may profit him, but so that, as he uses them well, they may profit the vessels of mercy. For what could be said more plainly than what was said, “As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake”? It is in the power of the wicked, then, to sin; but that by sinning they do this or that by their wickedness is not in their power, but God's, who divides the darkness and orders it; so that even what they do against the will of God, only the will of God is fulfilled. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that when the apostles, released by the Jews, had come to their own and reported all that the priests and elders had said to them, they all with one accord raised their voice to the Lord and said: “Lord, it is you who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your holy servant, said, ‘Why did the nations rage, and the peoples plot vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.’ For truly there gathered together in this city against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod and Pilate and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your counsel predestined to be done.” See what is meant by “As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake.” For the hand and counsel of God predestined to be done by the hostile Jews as much as was necessary to the gospel for our sake. But what is it that follows, “But as regards the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers”? Are those enemies who perished in their enmity, and those of that same nation who still perish opposing Christ, themselves the chosen and beloved? Far from it! Who, even the most foolish, would say this? But both, though contrary to each other, that is, enemies and beloved, apply, though not to the same men, yet to the same nation of the Jews and to the same fleshly seed of Israel, some of them belonging to the lameness, others to the blessing of Israel itself. For he explained this sense more plainly above, where he says, “What Israel sought, it has not obtained; but the election has obtained it, and the rest were blinded.” Yet in both is the same Israel. Where, then, we hear, “Israel has not obtained,” or, “the rest were blinded,” there the enemies for our sake are to be understood; but where we hear, “But the election has obtained it,” there are to be understood the beloved for the sake of the fathers: to which fathers certainly these things were promised. For the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Hence also the wild olive of the Gentiles is grafted into this olive tree. Now what election he means, which is according to grace, not according to debt, ought certainly to come to mind; since a remnant has come about by the election of grace. This election obtained it, while the rest were blinded. According to this election the Israelites are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For they were not called with that calling of which it is said, “Many are called,” but with that by which the elect are called. Hence here too, after he had said, “But as regards the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers,” he at once added what we are dealing with: “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance,” that is, they are stably fixed without change. Those who belong to this calling are all taught by God; nor can any of them say, “I believed so as to be called thus”; for the mercy of God went before him, because he was so called that he might believe. For all those taught by God come to the Son, since they have heard and learned from the Father through the Son, who says most plainly, “Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me.” Of these none perishes, because of all that the Father has given him he will lose nothing. Whoever, then, is of that number does not perish at all; nor was he of it who perishes. That is why it is said, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would certainly have remained with us.”

Let us understand, then, the calling by which men become elect: not those who are chosen because they have believed, but those who are chosen so that they may believe. For the Lord himself discloses this calling clearly enough when he says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” For if they were chosen because they had believed, they themselves had certainly first chosen him by believing in him, so as to deserve to be chosen. But he who says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you,” takes this away altogether. And they indeed without doubt chose him when they believed in him. So he says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you,” for no other reason than that they did not choose him so that he might choose them, but he chose them so that they might choose him; because his mercy went before them, according to grace, not according to debt. He chose them, then, out of the world while he was wearing flesh, but they were already chosen in himself before the foundation of the world. This is the immovable truth of predestination and grace. For what is it that the Apostle says, “As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world”? If this was said because God foreknew that they would believe, not because he himself was going to make them believers, the Son speaks against such a foreknowledge, saying, “You did not choose me, but I chose you”; since God would rather have foreknown this, that they would choose him, so as to deserve to be chosen by him. They were chosen, then, before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his own future deeds; but they were chosen out of the world by that calling by which God fulfilled what he predestined. “For those whom he predestined, he also called,” that is, with that calling according to his purpose; not others, then, but those whom he predestined he also called; nor others, but those whom he so called he also justified; nor others, but those whom he predestined, called, justified, he also glorified; with that end, certainly, which has no end. God chose believers, then, but so that they might be such, not because they already were. The apostle James says: “Has not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which God has promised to those who love him?” By choosing them, then, he makes them rich in faith, as he makes them heirs of the kingdom. For he is rightly said to choose this in them which he chooses them in order to make in them. Who, I ask, would hear the Lord saying, “You did not choose me, but I chose you,” and dare to say that men believe so that they may be chosen, when rather they are chosen so that they may believe; lest, against the statement of the Truth, they be found to have chosen Christ first, to whom Christ says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you”?

Who would hear the Apostle saying, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, in which he has graced us in his beloved Son; in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, which has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, so that he might make known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good will, which he purposed in him, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to restore all things in Christ, which are in heaven and which are on earth, in him; in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we should be to the praise of his glory”: who, I say, would hear these things carefully and intelligently, and dare to doubt this truth which we defend, so clear as it is? God chose in Christ before the foundation of the world his members; and how would he choose those who did not yet exist, except by predestining? He chose us, then, by predestining. Would he choose the ungodly and unclean? For if the question is put whether he chooses these or rather the holy and blameless, who would ask which of these to answer, and not at once give judgment for the holy and blameless? “So he foreknew,” says the Pelagian, “who would be holy and blameless through the choice of free will; and therefore before the foundation of the world, in that very foreknowledge of his by which he foreknew that they would be such, he chose them. He chose them, then,” he says, “before they existed, predestining as sons those whom he foreknew would be holy and blameless: certainly he did not make them so, nor foresaw that he would, but foresaw that they would be so.” Let us look, then, at the words of the Apostle, and see whether he chose us before the foundation of the world because we were going to be holy and blameless, or so that we might be. “Blessed,” he says, “be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish.” Not, then, because we were going to be, but so that we might be. Surely it is certain, surely it is plain: we were going to be such for this reason, that he himself chose us, predestining that we should be such through his grace. So, then, he has blessed us with a spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him, in love having predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself. Then notice what he adds: “according to the good pleasure,” he says, “of his will”; lest in so great a benefit of grace we should glory in the good pleasure of our own will. “In which he has graced us,” he says, “in his beloved Son”: in which will of his, certainly, he has graced us. “Graced” is said from “grace” as “justified” is said from “justice.” “In whom we have,” he says, “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace, which has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, so that he might make known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good will.” In this mystery of his will he placed the riches of his grace, according to his good will, not according to ours; which could not be good unless he himself, according to his good will, came to its aid so that it might become good. And when he had said, “according to his good will,” he added, “which he purposed in him,” that is, in his beloved Son, “in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to restore all things in Christ, which are in heaven and which are on earth, in him; in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we should be to the praise of his glory.” It would be too long to discuss each point. But you see without doubt, you see with how great clearness of the apostolic words this grace is defended, against which human merits are extolled, as though man gives something first so that it may be repaid him. God chose us, then, in Christ before the foundation of the world, predestining us to adoption as sons; not because we were going to be holy and blameless by ourselves, but he chose and predestined us so that we might be. And he did this according to the good pleasure of his will, so that no one may glory in his own will, but in God's will toward him; he did this according to the riches of his grace, according to his good will, which he purposed in his beloved Son, in whom we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose, not ours, but his who works all things, to the point that he himself works in us even to will. And he works according to the counsel of his will, that we should be to the praise of his glory. Hence it is that we cry out that no one should glory in man, and therefore not in himself either, but that he who glories should glory in the Lord, that we may be to the praise of his glory. For he himself works according to his purpose that we may be to the praise of his glory, holy, certainly, and blameless, for which he called us, predestining us before the foundation of the world. From this purpose of his comes that calling proper to the elect, for whom all things work together for good, because they are called according to his purpose, and the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.