On Grace and Free Will (Against the Author of the Conferences) 15–18

But until now, so as not to seem to differ altogether from the rule you had set out, you transferred the beginnings of virtues and merits from free choice to grace only so far as to confess that the voluntary movements of good desires themselves can neither be advanced nor completed without God's help. But now, removing God further and separating him from the support of man, you give such power to free choice that it not only accepts steadily and calmly the loss of manifold possessions and the most bitter end of the whole household and of its kin together, but also overcomes the unspeakable tortures of its own body by the resolve of the bare will. And so that no one can doubt it, as you argue, you set up the example of holy Job, who, you say, fought without God's protection against that notable cruelty of devilish savagery; and you strive to prove by the argument that the bloodiest enemy himself confessed that he was overcome not by the Lord's strength but by Job's, in that he did not say that the grace of God had opposed him in the heavier combat; as though that man needed to be covered by protection from above in his losses and bereavements, but did not need to be helped in the torments of his flesh and soul. If, then, nothing more memorable, nothing more illustrious is found among the palms of the saints than this greatness of soul, which the penalty of so many deaths inflicted on every one of his limbs does not overcome, and you assert that it stood in him by human strength alone, what praise and merit will there be that the freedom of choice, which you have crowned at the end of so great a contest from its own strength, cannot obtain amid the pursuits of quiet and peace? I ask you, then: does it seem to you that this man, when he was being tried by the tortures we read of, had the Holy Spirit in him? If you say he had, it is certain that God, who did not forsake him, helped him. But if you say the Holy Spirit had departed from him, his own prophetic word convicts you, when he says: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and on the last day I shall rise from the earth, and I shall again be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another; this hope of mine is laid up in my bosom" (Job 19:25–27). If this is rightly understood as a prophecy of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the resurrection of him who is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, and of the hope of redemption which is laid up in him for all the saints, it is plainly evident that the grace of God had not departed from its temple, and that the Lord was already then doing in this holy one of his what he later promised would be done in his apostles and martyrs, saying: "But when they hand you over, do not think how or what you are to speak; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you" (Matt 10:19–20). When the same saint answered his foolish comforters, did he not trust in God's help, saying: "He who is mocked by his friend, as I am, will call upon the Lord, and he will hear him" (Job 12:4)? Or did he not know that he had what he had from him of whom he says: "With him are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding" (Job 12:13); and of whom he says: "In whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the spirit of all human flesh" (Job 12:10); and again: "I wait," he says, "until my change comes: you will call and I will answer you; you will stretch out your right hand to the work of your hands; you have numbered my steps, but you spare my sins; you have sealed up my offenses as in a bag, but you have healed my iniquity" (Job 14:14–17)? The Lord, then, had not forsaken the one whom he was healing, nor had he withdrawn his help from the one to whom he applied purifying remedies, that he might shine more brightly. For this endurance of sufferings, in which this saint shone out, he too had been prepared by the Lord who said: "For though I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (Ps 23:4); and that: "The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord, and he is their protector in the time of trouble" (Ps 37:39). For this endurance he too had been prepared by the Lord who referred both believing in Christ and suffering for Christ to Christ, saying: "Being justified, then, by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God; and not only so, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, and patience proof, and proof hope, and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5:1–5). And again (Rom 8:35–37): "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are put to death all day long; we are regarded as sheep for slaughter (Ps 44:22). But in all these things we overcome through him who loved us." From where the strength of this endurance came down, blessed Peter, and in him the whole church, learned from the voice of the Truth himself, who said (Luke 22:31–32): "Behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail." Whoever, then, does not fail in tribulations, let him not doubt that he is helped by him to whom the hearts of all the faithful cry daily: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" (Matt 6:13); because "the Lord keeps the souls of his saints; he will deliver them from the hand of sinners" (Ps 97:10). But as to what you say, that the grace of God is to be understood as not having wholly withdrawn from Job in that God gave his tempter as much power to tempt as he knew Job had the strength to resist: would you not speak more rightly and truly if, where you said, "as much as he knew Job had the strength to resist," you said rather, "as much as he knew he had given him the strength to resist"? By correcting that word you would have tempered with some sobriety all that glory which you wished to assign to human strength, so that that wonderful patience in so great affliction would be ascribed both to the help of God and to the free choice of man. But you feared to lessen the praise of human nature if you professed that its strength was given by God. Therefore you will not have it believed that God was a fellow worker in that combat and victory, but only a spectator; so that anyone whom you can persuade that so hard a contest was won through the natural capacity of free choice will not dare to doubt that in lighter matters the effects of good will are much freer; and so he will fall into the pit of that condemned sentence by which it is said that the grace of justification is given to us so that what we are commanded to do through free choice we may be able to fulfil more easily through grace; as though, even if grace were not given, we could still fulfil the divine commands without it, not easily indeed, but nevertheless. Since the catholic bishops judged this worthy of anathema, we must use the testimony they used, saying: "For the Lord was speaking of the fruits of the commandments when he did not say, Without me you can do it with more difficulty, but said, Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5)."

To these definitions of yours, which you believed were fortified by sufficient authority, you add, as though sure of your readers' agreement, that God is sometimes accustomed to offer more than is enough in order to test our faith, so that it can be known how firm the faith of believers is. And you show this by the example of that centurion who, when he asked for the healing of his servant and the Lord promised that he would go to his house, answered: "I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed" (Matt 8:8); in which the Lord praised him with such admiration that he declared he had not found such faith in Israel. And by a short conclusion you confirm almost the whole Pelagian doctrine, saying (Conference 13, chapter 14): "For it would have been of no praise or merit if Christ had preferred in him what he himself had given." Then it was written falsely (Wis 8:21): "No one can be continent unless God gives it." The Apostle preached falsely when, speaking of the same virtue, he said (1 Cor 7:7): "I wish all men to be as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another." He too taught falsely who said (Jas 1:5): "If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, and it will be given him." Nor was it said according to the truth (Jas 1:17): "Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights"; and (John 3:27): "No one can receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven." Or must it be said that all the virtues are indeed to be counted among God's gifts, but that man is praiseworthy in those which he has had from his own, and that there are merits where God's gifts have not been? Then, according to your rule, those to whom it was given not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him have lost both praise and merit; and those who glory not in themselves but in the Lord have no true glory. But we listen more rightly to the prophet who says (Jer 17:5): "Cursed is the man who puts his hope in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord"; and to him who says (Ps 18:1): "I will love you, O Lord, my strength"; and (Ps 34:2): "In the Lord my soul shall be praised"; and (Ps 118:14): "The Lord is my strength and my praise." So that we may know most plainly that those have neither any praise nor merit in whom there is not found what is not had unless the Lord gives it. But you thought that from the testimony of a faith that was praised a prejudice could be produced against the gifts of grace; as though faith, where it was shown to be praised, were not shown to be given. The Apostle praises the faith of the Romans, and for this good of theirs he gives thanks to God, saying (Rom 1:8): "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in the whole world." To the Corinthians too he writes with similar affection, saying (1 Cor 1:4–5): "I thank my God always for you, for the grace of God which has been given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you have been enriched in him, in all speech and all knowledge." By giving thanks to God, did he take away praise from the believers? Or by praising the believers, did he deny the author of their merit? Let us hear also what he thinks of the faith of the Ephesians. "For this reason," he says (Eph 1:15–18), "I too, hearing of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened." These, then, had faith, and had the works of love, which could lack neither praise nor merit; but for these virtues the Apostle does not cease to give thanks to God, knowing that these gifts came from the Father of lights, from whom he also declares that he asks that he who gave them faith working through love may give them the Spirit of wisdom and understanding; so that the Ephesians might know that they had received what they have from him from whom they learn to hope for what they do not have. For the Philippians too he gives similar thanks to God, and does not suppress their merit and praise, saying (Phil 1:3–6): "I thank my God in every remembrance of you, always in all my prayers for you all making my prayer with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." What cause of human praise and merit is now suspended here on God? What of virtue or godliness is excepted, which has not flowed from the fountain of grace, where from beginning to end both the beginning and the completion of the good work are credited to the Lord? To whom his saints sing (Ps 89:15–17): "Lord, they will walk in the light of your face, and in your name they will rejoice all the day, and in your righteousness they will be exalted, for you are the glory of their strength."

One must consider well in this opinion of yours how much you help those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits; whom, nevertheless, so as to be shielded by the shade of the catholic faith, you profess to be of a profane opinion, saying: "But let no one think that these things have been brought forward by us in order to try to establish that the sum of salvation lies in the power of our faith, according to the profane opinion of some, who, attributing everything to free choice, define that the grace of God is dispensed according to each one's merit." But I wonder greatly how you do not see, or think that others do not see, that you condemn yourself with your own mouth. For by saying that the centurion, whose faith was praised by the Lord's voice, would have been of no praise or merit if the Lord had preferred in him what he himself had given, you defined that that centurion had a faith not given but his own; and so that nothing had been bestowed on its beginnings by grace; but that in that same faith lay the cause both of praise and of merit, neither of which he would have if the Lord had bestowed that to which praise and merit are owed. In vain, then, to escape the odium of the condemned error, do you deny that the sum of salvation lies in the power of our faith, since salvation can in no way be except from faith. "For the righteous lives by faith" (Rom 1:17; Hab 2:4). For the Truth says: "Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but will pass from death to life" (John 5:24). And again: "This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:40). And again: "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3). Since, then, it is established that eternal and blessed life has been prepared for this faith, which you have honored with merits and praises precisely because you prefer it to be counted among the goods of free choice rather than among the gifts of God, how will you avoid the wound with which you pierce yourself, by declaring profane those who define that grace is dispensed according to human merits, and by asserting that those who are faithful by the gift of grace evidently have neither praise nor merit? Wherever you turn, you are both defeated and bound by yourself. For if merits do not precede grace, and faith cannot be without merit, faith does not precede grace; and whatever it is from which merit is born, which is not had before grace, is had in every way from grace.

So that the absurdity of your definitions may not seem to contradict itself, you try to mix incompatible things, and by a new presumption you establish the unity of the members of the body of Christ in two kinds of faithful: in one, namely, to which belongs what you said at the beginning (Conference 13, chapter 3), "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"; in the other, which suits that rule by which you say that the centurion would have had neither any praise nor merit if the Lord had preferred in him what he himself had given. And although you have drawn the whole web of your discussion out to these two formulas, which can in no way agree, you now state more distinctly and expressly what you wished to establish, saying: "Through these examples, then, which we have brought from the records of the Gospels, we shall be able to notice most clearly that God provides for the salvation of the human race in diverse and countless ways and by inscrutable paths; that he urges the course of some who are willing and thirsting to a greater ardor, but compels some even against their will and unwilling; and that now he helps that what he has seen us usefully desire may be fulfilled, now he even inspires the beginnings of the holy desire itself, and grants either the beginning of a good work or perseverance. Hence it is that when we pray we call the Lord not only protector and savior but also helper and upholder. For in that he first calls and draws us to salvation while we are ignorant and unwilling, he is protector and savior; but in that he is accustomed to bring aid to us as we strive, and to receive and fortify us as we take refuge, he is named upholder and refuge." With this distinction laid down, then, there will be, as you define, this diversity in the one church: that our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it was said (Matt 1:21), "And you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins," and of whom it was said (Acts 4:12), "For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved," would be the savior not of all Christians but of some, and the upholder of others; so that only those would be saved whom God compelled, averse and resisting, to receive grace, while those would be upheld who anticipated the call by the fervor of a spontaneous course; and to the former a free gift would be given, but to the latter a due reward paid; the former would be of no praise or merit, having nothing good except what they received, while the latter would abound in glory and grow rich in reward, who, devout by their own capacity, offered what they had not received; and so Jesus Christ would have found some already free and freed others. And then what he says would not apply to all, "You did not choose me, but I chose you" (John 15:16), if there are some by whom he was chosen when he had not chosen them; this would not apply to all, "No one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father" (John 6:65), if there are some who could come to the Son without the Father giving it; what the Evangelist says would not apply to all, "He was the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world" (John 1:9), if there are some who either came into this world in such a way as not to be darkness, or began to be light in such a way as not to need the enlightenment of the true light; nor would what the Apostle says be understood of all the adopted (Col 1:13), "Who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love," if indeed they themselves break their bonds and, having shaken off the yoke of the old captivity, run across with free eagerness from the domination of the devil into the kingdom of God. If these things can be preached within one church, so that neither opinion yields to the other but each gives way to the other, it may come about that we accept what the Pelagians hold and the Pelagians accept what we hold. But in this way they will not so much be catholics as we (which God forbid) shall be Pelagians. For the mixing of contraries is the failure of the better; because when virtue admits vice, it is not vice but virtue that is abandoned. In no way, then, do Christian hearts accept what you have tried to persuade them: that those who are what they are by the grace of God have neither any praise nor merit, and that, by him who came to save what was lost, part of the Christians has been saved and part upheld; for disciples of the gospel and apostolic teaching, not minding high things but agreeing with the lowly, shudder at this madness of proud elation. For in the whole body of the church, and in each member, what was dead has been made alive, what was captive has been redeemed, what was blinded has been enlightened, what was lost has been sought, what wandered has been found. Nor, according to this new division, is Christ the savior of some and the upholder of others; but he is both savior and upholder of all the faithful everywhere. Nor are those deprived of merit and praise who receive that by which they may merit eternal goods; and they become the more blessed the fewer the things they have that are their own and the more the things they have that are God's. For we are not disturbed by the foolish complaint of the proud, by which they allege that free choice is taken away if the beginnings, the progress, and the perseverance in good things to the end are said to be gifts of God. For THE AIDS OF DIVINE GRACE ARE THE SUPPORTS OF THE HUMAN WILL. We pray willingly, and yet God has sent the Spirit into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal 4:6). We speak willingly, and yet, if what we speak is godly, it is not we who speak, but the Spirit of our Father who speaks in us (Matt 10:20; Mark 13:11). We work out our salvation willingly, and yet it is God who works in us that very willing and working (Phil 2:13). We love God and neighbor willingly, and yet love is from God (1 John 4:7), poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). This we profess of faith, of the endurance of sufferings, of the chastity of the married, of virginal continence, and of all the virtues without exception: that unless they had been given to us, they would not be found in us; and that free choice, naturally implanted in man, remains in his nature, but changed in quality and condition through the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who turned the will itself away from what it perversely willed and turned it toward willing what was good for it; so that, moved by delight, cleansed by faith, raised by hope, kindled by love, it might take up a free servitude and cast off a servile freedom.