On Grace and Free Will (Against the Author of the Conferences) 1–6

Some people dare to say that the grace of God, by which we are Christians, was not rightly defended by Augustine, bishop of holy memory, and they do not cease to attack with immoderate slanders his books written against the Pelagian error. Their domestic malice, clamoring within, would be no less to be despised than the heretical loquacity barking outside, if they did not lend support to the wolves cast out of the Lord's fold, who go under the name of sheep (Matt 7:15), and if they were not men such that neither their rank in the church nor their talents seem negligible. For having "the appearance of godliness" (2 Tim 3:5) in their zeal, whose power they deny in their thought, they draw many unlearned people to themselves and disturb hearts that have no discernment of spirits; and they are trying to bring the church's cause to such a point that, while they assert that our people did not speak truly for grace, they persuade others that the enemies of grace were unjustly condemned. This evil, then, must not be neglected, which grows daily from hidden and small seeds and spreads further and wider from its source; we must strive, so far as the Lord helps, to uncover the hypocrisy of these deceitful slanderers. From the very greatness of the injury which, in one man, they have done to all, and above all to the pontiffs of the apostolic see, they are judged by the unlearned and the incautious to have superior knowledge; and by a wretched and perverse success they draw easy consent to falsehood, because they have won reverence for themselves by presumption. For since they are men of good reputation, no one believes that they could have broken out into the outcry of a needless complaint from slowness of understanding or rashness of judgment; rather, that they labored with great talent and intense zeal, so that, having taken in the arguments of a most subtle writer, a stricter censure and a keener inspection might now find what a secure favor and an incurious goodwill had not seen before. Where, then, has this diligence of so severe an examination come from? Where has the brow of a stern forehead armed itself with such austerity that an insidious scrutinizer sifts the measures of meanings, the weights of expressions, the numbers of syllables, and presumes that he accomplishes something great if he fixes the mark of error on a catholic preacher? As though some unknown work, hidden until now, were being attacked, and not that teaching being torn by these bites which scattered the inventions of the new heretics and crushed the devilish swelling of Pelagian pride. It is twenty years and more that the catholic army, under this man's leadership, has been fighting against the enemies of God's grace and conquering. And it conquers, I say, because it does not allow those it has conquered to breathe again, and for their destruction it wrote one sentence by the hand of all the bishops. Let those who were driven out by the pontiff's judgment and deprived of communion complain of the happiness of our victory and arm their tongues against us, since they preferred to be exiles from the truth rather than citizens of the church. But why do our own people, members of the same body and sharers of the grace of Christ, find fault with the arms by which the common faith was defended? Why do they reopen a war that is finished and weaken the fortifications of a peace long secure? Are the victors displeasing and the vanquished pleasing? And are condemned errors cherished with such insolence that, under the odium of depravity, both our authorities and our judges are assailed? Or has the more exact rule of the new censors so tempered itself that it asserts none of the things that were cut off, and rejects some of the things that were defended? See, with the peace of the catholic victory kept safe, and with reverence for the indissoluble decrees kept safe, we are ready to hear the patrons of an improved doctrine and to recognize lines of a most subtle discernment, trimmed of every error. Let what has come out of these new talents be put in the open.

And lest we seem, in order to obscure the knowledge of the more learned, to stir up what the ignoble crowd and the forward loquacity of fools pour out without restraint, we shall report the definitions of one man above all, who without doubt excels all of them in the study of the holy Scriptures. For the present it is right to take them into discussion for this reason alone, that there can be no doubt that they are as they are: they are written and published by their author's own edition, and the question is no longer whether they exist, but what they teach is to be shown. In the book, then, whose title is On the Protection of God, a certain priest, who excels among those with whom he lives in the practice of disputation, introduces a certain abbot discoursing on the grace of God and free choice, and shows that he approved and adopted his opinion in everything; so that our business now is not with that abbot, who might perhaps refute such opinions of his by denying them or wash them away by correcting them, but with this man, who has taken pains to bring out such a teaching, to the advantage of the enemies of the grace of God. 2. Yet at the beginning of the discussion this teaching does not depart from the godliness of the truth, and would deserve to be honored with just praise, if it did not turn aside from the right course it had begun by a headlong and sinister advance. For after the comparison with the farmer, which he fitted to the pattern of one who lives under grace and faith, and whose labor he said is fruitless unless it is helped in everything by God's aid, he brought in a most catholic definition, saying: "From these it is plainly gathered that not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God, who both inspires in us the beginnings of a holy will and grants the power and the opportunity of carrying out what we rightly desire. For every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (Jas 1:17), who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us, as the Apostle says (2 Cor 9:10): He who gives seed to the sower will also supply bread to eat, and will increase the fruits of your righteousness." Here, lest anyone should think that nothing remained to be done by free choice, he added, not unreasonably, something to prove that free choice is not taken away by these gifts but rather strengthened, unless, turned back to its own iniquities …, it should prefer to turn away from God's help. "But ours it is," he says, "humbly to follow the grace of God that draws us daily; or else, resisting it with stiff neck and uncircumcised ears, as it is written (Acts 7:51), to deserve to hear through Jeremiah: Shall not he who falls rise again? Or shall not he who has turned away return (Jer 8:4)? Why then has this people in Jerusalem turned away with a stubborn turning away? They hardened their necks and would not return." Again, further on, when he had taught that all efforts after the virtues need the grace of God, he added, acceptably, saying (Conference 13, chapter 6): "All these things, just as they cannot be desired by us continually without divine inspiration, so neither can they in any way be accomplished without his help." In the seventh chapter, wishing to show the general grace of Christ, which passes over no human being anywhere and does not forsake even the rebellious and hostile, he says: "The divine protection, then, is inseparably present with us, and so great is the Creator's kindness toward his creature that his providence not only accompanies it but also continually goes before it." In this he may be seen to have called providence a companion because it often does not forsake even those who forsake it, or because it follows all those whom it goes before. But he goes on to say: "When he has seen in us a certain beginning of good will, he enlightens it, strengthens it, and directs it to salvation, giving increase to what either he himself planted or he has seen to have sprung up from our own effort." Here too he can still say that he meant the beginning of a good will whose first principles were planted or inspired by God, because from hearts already enlightened wholesome efforts may come forth, which are said to belong to the man himself because he has already received the capacity for good efforts, while their seeds are referred to their author. But in the ninth chapter also he added: "Hence it is not easily discerned by human reason how the Lord gives to those who ask, is found by those who seek, and opens to those who knock; and again is found by those who did not seek him, appears openly among those who did not ask for him, stretches out his hands all day long to a people that does not believe him and contradicts him (Isa 65:1–2), calls those who resist and are far off, draws the unwilling to salvation, takes away from those who desire to sin the means of fulfilling their will, and kindly opposes those who hasten to wickedness." Here already, as though through an inscrutable diversity, a definition is introduced which teaches that many come to grace without grace, and that some have this disposition of asking, seeking, and knocking from the alertness of a free will; while in others that will is said to be blinded by so great an aversion that it cannot be called back by any exhortations, unless it is led unwillingly by the force of one who drags it. As though it were not the work of manifold grace, throughout, done in the souls of all, that the unwilling become willing; or as though anyone of those who already use the judgment of reason could receive faith except by the will. Hence it is as foolish to say that anyone strives to share in grace unwillingly as to assert that anyone comes to it without being stirred by the Spirit of God. Quickly, then, this disputant has forgotten the definition he set out first; quickly, with unstable lightness, he has departed from his own opinion. For he had said, as a rule: "Not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God." And lest this should be understood of a teaching applied from outside, he had carefully added: "Who both inspires in us the beginnings of a holy will and grants the power and the opportunity of carrying out what we rightly desire. For every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us." Catholic teacher, why do you abandon your profession? Why, leaving the light of most serene truth, do you roll down into the smoky darkness of falsehood? What you admire in those who ask, seek, and knock, why do you not ascribe to the same grace that is desired? You see good efforts and godly zeal, and do you doubt that they are gifts of God? The work of grace may have lain hidden as long as the faith implanted was shut up in the secret of thought; but when suppliant prayer, diligent searching, and frequent knocking appear, why do you not understand from the quality of the work the supply of the one who stirs it up?

And you think you are sufficiently on guard against the slanders of the Pelagians if you grant us in a portion what must be held of the whole number of the called. But you are in full agreement neither with the heretics nor with the catholics. They maintain that in all the righteous works of human beings the beginnings come from free will; we believe that the first principles of good thoughts always come from God; you have found some shapeless third thing, unsuitable to both sides, by which you would neither win the agreement of the enemies nor remain within the understanding of our people. How do you not notice that you fall into that condemned position, which you are convicted of saying whether you will or not, that the grace of God is given according to our merits, when you affirm that something of good work comes first from human beings themselves, on account of which we obtain grace? For the faith of one who asks, the … of one who seeks, the persistence of one who knocks cannot be held to be of no merit, especially since all such are said to receive, to find, and to enter. In this it is superfluous, indeed impious, to want to make room for merits existing before grace in such a way that what the Lord says would not be wholly true: "No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44). This would by no means be said if anyone's conversion were to be believed to happen without God's enlightenment, or if man's will could in any way stretch itself toward God without God. He draws the one called to the Son; he does not compel him while he resists and is unwilling, but makes him willing from unwilling, and by whatever means he bends the unbelief of the one who resists, so that the heart of the unwilling, a delight in obeying having been produced in it, rises where it was pressed down, learns where it was ignorant, trusts where it distrusted, wills where it did not will. "For the Lord will give sweetness, and our land will yield its fruit" (Ps 85:12). But let us see what follows (Conference 13, chapter 9): "But to whom will it be easily plain how the sum of salvation is attributed to our choice, of which it is said, If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land (Isa 1:19); and how it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy (Rom 9:16)? What also is this, that God will render to each according to his works (Matt 16:27); and, It is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, for his good will (Phil 2:13); and, This is not from yourselves but is the gift of God, not from works, lest anyone boast (Eph 2:8–9)?" And the rest, which he collected from the Scriptures as though they were opposed to one another in meaning, so as to entrust the zeal for the gifts of grace to human industry, and, having divided all human beings, so that there are some whom the grace of God saves and others whom the law and nature justify. But the law can command that no evil be done; it cannot free from evil. It makes the commandment known, but does not supply the disposition to obey, unless what kills by the command of the letter becomes life-giving through the spirit of grace. After this he concludes, saying (ibid.): "Except that in all these both the grace of God and the freedom of our choice are declared, and that man can sometimes by his own movements stretch out toward the desire for the virtues, but always needs to be helped by the Lord." And where is what was set out first as a rule: "Not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God, who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us"? See: here, even though you confess that God's help is necessary for good beginnings, you nevertheless ascribe those praiseworthy movements and desires for the virtues, with the grace of God removed, to the bare freedom of choice; so that good and wholesome efforts cannot indeed make progress unless God helps, yet can begin even if they are not inspired by God.

Then, to define more clearly what man has from free choice and what he receives from grace, you add and say (Conference 13, chapter 9): "For no one enjoys health when he wishes, or is freed from sickness and disease according to the desire of his choice." You teach, then, that man cannot indeed take hold of health by himself, but that he has the desire for health from himself, and comes to the physician of his own accord only, and that even this, that he comes, is not also the physician's work. As though the soul itself were not sick, and, being healthy, provided a remedy for its body. But the whole man, from it and with it, fell into the depth of his misery, where, before it receives from the physician knowledge of its calamity, it delights to lie, always loving its errors and embracing false things for true. Its first health is to begin to be displeasing to itself and to hate the oldness of its weakness; the next is to desire to be healed and to know by whom it is to be healed. These things precede its cure in such a way that they are implanted in it by the one who is going to heal the sick soul; lest, since they cannot in any way be in it to no purpose, it should seem to have been saved by merit, not by grace. Then you add (ibid.): "But that it may appear more clearly that sometimes, even through the good of nature which has been granted by the kindness of the Creator, the beginnings of good wills come forth, which yet cannot attain to the completion of the virtues unless they are directed by God, the Apostle is witness, saying: For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find (Rom 7:18)." Then, according to this definition, you said falsely before: "Not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God, who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us." But this cannot in any way be false in any part; and nothing contrary to it ought to have been brought in, so that what you rightly professed to begin from grace you would afterwards affirm that we have through the good of nature and through free choice. The blessed Apostle did say: "For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find" (Rom 7:18). But the same man said: "Not that we are sufficient to think anything from ourselves as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Cor 3:5). And the same man said: "For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will" (Phil 2:13). The Apostle, then, does not contradict himself. But when to will the good has been given to us, we do not at once find also how to do it, unless the one who gave the desire grants the accomplishment to those who ask, seek, and knock. For that voice of one saying, "For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find" (Rom 7:18), is the voice of one who has been called and is already set under grace, who delights indeed in the law of God according to the inner man, but sees another law in his members, fighting against the law of his mind and making him captive in the law of sin (Rom 7:22–23); and although he has received the knowledge of willing rightly, he does not find in himself the power to work what he desires, until, for the good will he has received, he is counted worthy to find the capacity for the virtues that he seeks.

After this you set out very many testimonies by which free choice is shown to be now strong, now weak; as though there were some who fulfil by their own strength what others cannot do unless God helps them, or as though man received a commandment for any other purpose than to seek divine help. You conclude, then, and say (Conference 13, chapter 11): "And so these things are in a way mixed and confused without distinction, so that which depends on which is turned over by many as a great question: that is, whether God has mercy on us because we have offered the beginning of good will, or whether we obtain the beginning of good will because God has mercy. For many, believing each of these singly and asserting it more than is right, have become entangled in various errors contrary to one another." See: as it seems to you, what was mixed has been distinguished, and what could not be unravelled has been resolved. For you define two errors contrary to each other, in which those are entangled who do not know what is to be held between free choice and grace. In one you place those who say that God has mercy on us because the beginnings of good will have been offered by us, meaning without doubt the followers of the Pelagian doctrine, who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits; in the other you put those who say that the first principles of good wills come forth from the mercy of God, wanting to be understood as those who have defeated the enemies of grace. If, then, it is an error to ascribe the beginnings of good will to a man not helped by God, and it is an error to confess that "the will is prepared by the Lord," where are we to be directed so as to avoid both? If we follow both, you say, we acquiesce in no error. You subject us to two, and double the depravities, as you understand them: by dividing you condemn, by mixing you justify. By this law, by this rule, you will be able to preach that those who say one must always deceive err as much as those who lay down that one must never deceive, but that, in order to sin in neither, both must be followed, because falsehood is not always to be avoided, nor truth always to be disregarded. Your opinion deceives you completely. From two evils one good cannot come; two vices do not beget one virtue; two falsehoods do not make one truth. For things that are equal in deserving are not lessened by coming together, but increased. So those who assert that the beginnings of good wills are produced by the inspiration of God ought not to have been censured with the same sentence that convicts those who think that free choice can suffice for these things without the aid of grace. For of these definitions one has been overthrown by the church, the other defended; and the compact of this new treaty does not suit them in any way, by which the catholic doctrine would be more corrupt and the Pelagian more correct. "Many," you say, "believing each of these singly and asserting it more than is right, have become entangled in various errors contrary to one another." Are you pleased, then, to condemn catholics with heretics, victors with the vanquished, and to brand with the mark of error those who drove error out of the church? For according to your censure, by which you will not have the beginning of holy and faithful wills come from God in all human beings (as though you gave much to grace if you agreed that it works this in the minds of some), Pope Innocent erred, most worthy of the see of Peter, who, speaking of those who glory in free choice, said (Letter 29): "For what right judgment can we form henceforth of the minds of those who think that they owe it to themselves that they are good?" And again, writing of the fall of the first man: "For he once suffered his free choice; while he used his goods too heedlessly, falling, he was sunk in the depths of transgression and found no way by which he could rise from there; and, deceived for ever by his own freedom, he would have lain crushed by this ruin, had not the coming of Christ afterwards raised him up by his grace." The Eastern bishops erred, at whose judgment Pelagius, in order to seem catholic, was compelled to anathematize those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits. The councils of the African bishops erred, which laid down in their decrees that both are a gift of God, to know what we ought to do and to love to do it, so that, with love building up, knowledge cannot puff up; for as it is written of God, "He who teaches man knowledge" (Ps 94:10), so it is written, "Love is from God" (1 John 4:7). The two hundred and fourteen bishops erred, who, in the letter which they placed before their decrees, spoke thus to the bishop of the apostolic see, the blessed Zosimus: "We have decreed that the sentence pronounced against Pelagius and Caelestius by the venerable bishop Innocent from the see of the most blessed apostle Peter should stand, until they confess most openly that by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord we are helped in every single act, not only to know righteousness but also to do it, so that without it we are able to have, think, say, or do nothing of true and holy godliness." The most holy see of blessed Peter erred, which speaks thus to the whole world by the mouth of Pope Zosimus: "Yet we, by the prompting of God (for all good things are to be referred to their author, from whom they are born), have referred everything to the conscience of our brothers and fellow bishops." The African bishops erred, who wrote back to the same Pope Zosimus and praised him for the soundness of this statement of his, saying: "What you set down in your letter, which you took care should be sent to all the provinces, saying, 'Yet we, by the prompting of God (for all good things are to be referred to their author, from whom they are born), have referred everything to the conscience of our brothers and fellow bishops,' we have taken as said so that, as if passing by in haste, you cut off with the drawn sword of truth those who exalt the freedom of human choice against the help of God. For what have you done with so free a choice as referring everything to the conscience of our humility? And yet you saw faithfully and wisely, and said truly and confidently, that it was done by the prompting of God; surely because the will is prepared by the Lord, and, that they may do something good, he himself touches the hearts of his children with fatherly inspirations (Prov 8 LXX). For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (Rom 8:14); so that we neither feel that our own choice is lacking, nor doubt that in all the single good movements of the human will his help is the stronger." Do you see your rules broken by the solidity of the invincible decrees, and the crooked and cracked joints in the structure of faith fallen, like the walls of Jericho, at the joint blast of the priestly trumpets (Josh 6:20)?

For when the question was being argued between our people and the Pelagians about the origin of holy wills and the first principles of faith and love, the contest was not ended with a doubtful victory or an uncertain outcome, so that we should still have to negotiate about the most unjust peace of this treaty of yours. The enemy army has been laid low, the war is finished, we are the victors through him who "has shown strength with his arm, has scattered the proud in the thought of their hearts, has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the lowly, has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty" (Luke 1:51–53); through him who, "showing mercy to our fathers, remembered his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to Abraham our father, that he would grant us that, delivered without fear from the hand of our enemies, we might serve him in holiness and righteousness before him all our days" (Luke 1:72–75); through him "who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Cor 15:57); through him from whom "we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things given to us by God" (1 Cor 2:12). Why do you strive to gather broken weapons from the petty reasonings of crushed arguments? Why, by warming the ashes of an extinct doctrine, do you try to kindle the smell of dying smoke into a revived flame? Free choice is in no danger from the grace of God, nor is the will taken away when to will well is produced in it. For if it is not to be thought ours because it is formed, ruled, ordered, and instructed, then the sons of God who are led by the Spirit of God (Rom 8:14) are robbed of freedom; they lose the vigor of the rational soul and are deprived of all praise for willing devotion, they to whom is given the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and godliness, and of the fear of the Lord (Isa 11:2). Indeed, those who think they do not need these reformings have passed from the habit of an old disease into frenzy: they spit out the remedy, they shout, they rave, they resist; but if they are children of the promise, they will grow quiet and be healed.