On the Predestination of the Saints 8–13

Accordingly, the one Master and Lord himself, when he had said what I mentioned above, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent,” a little later in the same discourse says, “I said to you that you have seen me and have not believed. All that the Father gives me will come to me.” What does “will come to me” mean but “will believe in me”? But that this may happen, the Father gives. Again a little later: “Do not murmur among yourselves,” he says; “no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me.” What does “Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me” mean but “There is no one who hears and learns from the Father and does not come to me”? For if everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes, certainly everyone who does not come has not heard from the Father nor learned; for if he had heard and learned, he would come. For no one has heard and learned and not come; but everyone, as the Truth says, who has heard from the Father and learned, comes. Very far removed from the senses of the flesh is this school, in which the Father is heard and teaches, so that one comes to the Son. The Son himself is there too, because he is his Word, through whom he teaches thus; and he does not do this with the ear of the flesh but of the heart. At the same time the Spirit of the Father and the Son is there; for he too teaches, and does not teach separately; for we have learned that the works of the Trinity are inseparable. And he is certainly the Holy Spirit, of whom the Apostle says, “Having the same Spirit of faith.” But this is attributed especially to the Father, because from him the Only-begotten is begotten, and from him the Holy Spirit proceeds; on which it would take long to argue more minutely; and I think that our labour on the Trinity which is God, in fifteen books, has already reached you. Very far removed, I say, from the senses of the flesh is this school, in which God is heard and teaches. We see many come to the Son, because we see many believe in Christ; but where and how they have heard and learned this from the Father, we do not see. This grace is exceedingly secret; but who would doubt that it is grace? This grace, then, which is bestowed secretly on human hearts by divine bounty, is rejected by no hard heart. For it is bestowed for this very purpose, that hardness of heart may first be taken away. When, then, the Father is heard within and teaches, so that one comes to the Son, he takes away the heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh, as he promised through the preaching of the prophet. For thus he makes sons of the promise and vessels of mercy which he has prepared for glory. Why, then, does he not teach all to come to Christ, unless because all whom he teaches he teaches in mercy, while those whom he does not teach he does not teach in judgment? For “he has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardens”: but he has mercy by bestowing good things, he hardens by repaying what is deserved. Or if these words too, as some have preferred to distinguish, are the words of the one to whom the Apostle says, “You will say to me then,” so that he is taken to have said, “So he has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardens,” and what follows, that is, “Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?”, did the Apostle answer, “O man, what you have said is false”? No; but the answer was, “O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me thus?’ Has not the potter power over the clay, from the same lump,” and what follows, which you know very well. And yet in a certain manner the Father teaches all to come to his Son. For not in vain is it written in the Prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” When he had cited this testimony first, he then added, “Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me.” Just as we speak correctly when we say of some teacher of letters who is the only one in a city, “This man teaches everyone letters here,” not because all learn, but because no one who learns letters there learns from anyone but him; so we rightly say, “God teaches all to come to Christ,” not because all come, but because no one comes otherwise. But why he does not teach all the Apostle has disclosed, as far as he judged it should be disclosed: because, “wishing to show his wrath and make known his power, he endured with much patience vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory.” Hence it is that “the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.” All these God teaches to come to Christ; for all these he wills to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For if he had willed to teach those also to whom the word of the cross is foolishness to come to Christ, without doubt they too would come. For he does not deceive or is deceived who says, “Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me.” Far be it, then, that anyone does not come who has heard and learned from the Father. “Why,” they say, “does he not teach all?” If we say that those whom he does not teach are unwilling to learn, we shall be answered, “And where is what is said to him, ‘O God, you will turn and give us life’?” Or if God does not make willing those who are unwilling, why does the church pray, according to the Lord's command, for its persecutors? For so too holy Cyprian wished to be understood what we say, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven,” that is, as in those who have already believed and are like heaven, so also in those who do not believe and are therefore still earth. What, then, do we pray for those who are unwilling to believe, except that God may work in them even to will? Concerning the Jews, certainly, the Apostle says, “Brothers, the good will of my heart and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” He prays for those who do not believe: for what, if not that they may believe? For in no other way do they obtain salvation. If, then, the faith of those who pray goes before the grace of God, does the faith of those for whom prayer is made that they may believe go before the grace of God? Since what is prayed for them is this, that faith itself may be given to those who do not believe, that is, who do not have faith. When the gospel is preached, then, some believe, some do not believe; but those who believe, while the preacher sounds without, hear and learn within from the Father; while those who do not believe hear without, but within do not hear or learn; that is, to the former it is given to believe, to the latter it is not given. “For no one,” he says, “comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” This is said more plainly afterwards. For some time later, when he was speaking of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and some even of his disciples said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”, Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were murmuring at this, said to them, “Does this offend you?” And a little later: “The words,” he says, “that I have spoken to you are spirit and life; but there are some of you who do not believe.” And at once the Evangelist says, “For Jesus knew from the beginning who were the believers and who was to betray him; and he said, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father.’” To be drawn by the Father to Christ, then, and to hear and learn from the Father so as to come to Christ, is nothing other than to receive from the Father the gift by which one believes in Christ. For he who said, “No one comes to me unless it has been given him by my Father,” was distinguishing not hearers of the gospel from non-hearers, but believers from unbelievers. Faith, then, both begun and completed, is the gift of God; and let no one who does not want to fight against the most plain sacred writings doubt at all that this gift is given to some and not given to others. But why it is not given to all ought not to trouble the believer, who believes that from one man all went into condemnation, without doubt most just, so that there would be no just reproach against God even if none were set free from it. From this it is clear that it is a great grace that very many are set free, and that they recognize in those who are not set free what was owed to themselves, so that he who glories may glory not in his own merits, which he sees are equal to those of the condemned, but in the Lord. But why he sets free this one rather than that one, “his judgments are inscrutable and his ways unsearchable.” For it is better for us here too to hear or say, “O man, who are you to answer back to God?”, than to dare to say, as though we knew, what he willed to be hidden, who nevertheless could not will anything unjust.

As for what you recall that I said in a short work of mine against Porphyry, under the title On the Time of the Christian Religion, I said it in such a way as to pass over this more careful and laborious discussion of grace, though not without indicating that I had not wished to explain in that place what could be explained elsewhere or by others. For among other things, answering the question proposed, why Christ came after so long a time, I spoke thus: “Accordingly,” I said, “since they do not object against Christ that not all follow his teaching (for they themselves feel that this can by no means rightly be objected either against the wisdom of the philosophers or even against the divinity of their own gods), what will they answer if, setting aside that depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God, where perhaps another divine counsel lies hidden far more secretly, and without prejudice to other causes perhaps that can be traced out by the wise, we say to them only this, for brevity's sake, in the discussion of this question: that Christ willed to appear to men and to have his teaching preached among them when he knew, and where he knew, there were those who would believe in him? For in those times and places in which his gospel was not preached, he foreknew that all would be such, at his preaching, as many, though not all, were in his bodily presence, who would not believe in him even when the dead were raised by him; such as we see many even now, though the proclamations of the Prophets concerning him are fulfilled with such evidence, still unwilling to believe, and preferring to resist with human cunning rather than yield to divine authority so clear and evident, so sublime and so sublimely spread abroad, as long as the understanding of man is small and weak for drawing near to divine truth. What wonder, then, if Christ knew that in former ages the world was so full of unbelievers that he rightly did not will to appear or be preached to those whom he foreknew would believe neither his words nor his miracles? For it is not incredible that all were then such as we marvel that so many have been and are from his coming to this time. And yet from the beginning of the human race, sometimes more hiddenly, sometimes more evidently, as seemed by divine counsel fitting to the times, neither did prophecy cease nor were there lacking those who believed in him, both from Adam to Moses, and in the people of Israel itself, which by a special mystery was a prophetic nation, and in other nations before he came in the flesh. For since some are mentioned in the holy Hebrew books, already from the time of Abraham, neither of his fleshly stock, nor of the people of Israel, nor of those who joined the people of Israel from outside, who nevertheless shared in this sacrament, why should we not believe that there were others too in other nations here and there, though we do not read of them mentioned in the same authorities? Thus the salvation of this religion, through which alone true salvation is truly promised, was never lacking to anyone who was worthy, and he to whom it was lacking was not worthy. And from the beginning of human propagation to the end it is preached, to some for reward, to some for judgment. And therefore those to whom it has not been announced at all were foreknown as not going to believe; and those to whom it has been announced though they would not believe are shown as an example to the former; but those to whom it is announced who will believe are being prepared for the kingdom of heaven and the fellowship of the holy angels.” Do you see that, without prejudice to the hidden counsel of God and to other causes, I wished to say this about the foreknowledge of Christ, which seemed sufficient to refute the unbelief of the pagans who had raised this question? For what is truer than that Christ foreknew who would believe in him, and when, and in what places? But whether, when Christ was preached to them, they would have faith from themselves or receive it by God's gift, that is, whether God only foreknew them or also predestined them, I did not then think it necessary to ask and discuss. Accordingly, what I said, “that Christ willed to appear to men and to have his teaching preached among them when he knew and where he knew there were those who would believe in him,” can also be said thus: that Christ willed to appear to men and to have his teaching preached among them when he knew and where he knew there were those who had been chosen in him before the foundation of the world. But since, if it were said so, it would make the reader attentive to inquire into those things which now, at the prompting of the Pelagian error, must be discussed more fully and laboriously, it seemed to me that what was then sufficient should be said briefly, setting aside, as I said, the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God, and without prejudice to other causes, of which I thought it more fitting to argue not then, but elsewhere.

Likewise as to what I said, “that the salvation of this religion was never lacking to anyone who was worthy, and that he to whom it was lacking was not worthy”: if it is examined and asked from where anyone is worthy, there is no lack of those who say, by the human will; but we say, by grace or divine predestination. Now between grace and predestination there is only this difference: that predestination is the preparation of grace, while grace is the giving itself. So what the Apostle says, “Not of works, lest anyone should be lifted up; for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works,” is grace; but what follows, “which God prepared that we should walk in them,” is predestination, which cannot be without foreknowledge; but foreknowledge can be without predestination. For by predestination God foreknew the things that he himself was going to do; hence it was said, “He has made the things that are to be.” But he is able to foreknow even things that he does not do, such as any sins whatever; because, even if there are some which are sins in such a way that they are also punishments of sins, of which it was said, “God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do what is not fitting,” there it is not God's sin, but his judgment. Therefore the predestination of God, which is in good, is, as I said, the preparation of grace; and grace is the effect of that predestination. When, then, God promised Abraham the faith of the nations in his seed, saying, “I have made you the father of many nations,” whence the Apostle says, “Therefore it is of faith, so that the promise may be firm according to grace to all the seed,” he promised not from the power of our will but from his own predestination. For he promised what he himself was going to do, not what men would. For even if men do the good things that belong to the worship of God, he himself makes them do what he has commanded; they do not make him do what he has promised; otherwise it is not in God's power but in men's that God's promises be fulfilled, and what was promised by the Lord is rendered to Abraham by them. But Abraham did not believe so; he believed, giving glory to God, that what he had promised he was able also to do. He does not say “to foretell,” he does not say “to foreknow,” for he can foretell and foreknow the deeds of others too; but he says, “he is able also to do,” and therefore deeds not of others but his own. Or perhaps God promised Abraham in his seed the good works of the nations, so as to promise what he himself does, but did not promise the faith of the nations, which men make for themselves; but, so as to promise what he himself does, he foreknew that men would make that faith? The Apostle certainly does not speak so; for God promised Abraham sons who would follow the footsteps of his faith; this he says most plainly. But if he promised the works of the nations, not their faith, then certainly, since there are no good works except from faith (for “The righteous lives by faith,” and “Whatever is not of faith is sin,” and “Without faith it is impossible to please”), it is nevertheless in men's power that God fulfil what he has promised. For unless man does what belongs to man without God's giving, he himself will not do what he gives; that is, unless man has faith from himself, God does not fulfil what he promised, that works of righteousness be given from God. And therefore it is not in God's power but in man's that God be able to fulfil his promises. But if truth and godliness forbid us to believe this, let us believe with Abraham that what he has promised he is able also to do. Now he promised sons to Abraham; which they cannot be if they do not have faith; therefore he himself gives faith too.

Truly, since the Apostle says, “Therefore it is of faith, so that the promise may be firm according to grace,” I wonder that men prefer to entrust themselves to their own weakness rather than to the firmness of God's promise. “But the will of God concerning me,” he says, “is uncertain to me.” What then? Is your own will concerning yourself certain to you, and do you not fear, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall”? Since, then, both are uncertain, why does man not entrust his faith, hope, and love to the stronger rather than the weaker? “But when it is said,” they say, “‘If you believe, you will be saved,’ one of these is required, the other offered. What is required is in man's power; what is offered is in God's.” Why are not both in God's power, both what he commands and what he offers? For he is asked to give what he commands: believers ask that their faith be increased; they ask for unbelievers that faith be given them; so in its increases and in its beginnings faith is the gift of God. But it is said, “If you believe, you will be saved,” in the same way as it is said, “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.” For here too, of these two, one is required, the other offered. “If by the Spirit,” he says, “you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live”: that we put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit is required; that we live is offered. Do we wish, then, to say that putting to death the deeds of the flesh is not the gift of God, and not to confess that it is the gift of God because we hear it required of us, with the reward of life offered if we do it? Far be it that this should please those who share in and defend grace! This condemnable error is the Pelagians'; whose mouths the Apostle at once stopped by adding, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God,” so that we should not believe that we put to death the deeds of the flesh by our own spirit and not by God's. Of this Spirit of God he was speaking also where he says, “All these things are worked by one and the same Spirit, distributing to each individually as he wills”; among all of which, as you know, he named faith too. Just as, then, though it is the gift of God to put to death the deeds of the flesh, it is nevertheless required of us with the reward of life set before us, so faith too is the gift of God, although it too, when it is said, “If you believe, you will be saved,” is required of us with the reward of salvation set before us. For these things are both commanded to us and shown to be God's gifts so that it may be understood that we do them and that God makes us do them, as he says most plainly through the prophet Ezekiel. For what is plainer than where he says, “I will make you do”? Look at that passage of Scripture, and you will see that God promises that he will make them do what he commands to be done. Nor is he silent there about their merits, but evil ones; for which he shows that he renders good for evil, by the very fact that he makes them have good works thereafter, when he makes them do the divine commandments.

But all this reasoning, by which we defend that the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord is truly grace, that is, is not given according to our merits, although it is asserted most evidently by the testimonies of the divine oracles, nevertheless, with those who think themselves held back from all zeal for godliness unless they assign to themselves something that they give first so that it may be repaid to them, labours somewhat in the case of those of a greater age who already use the choice of the will; but when one comes to little children, and to the Mediator himself between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, every assertion of human merits preceding the grace of God fails: because neither are they distinguished from the rest by any preceding good merits so as to belong to the deliverer of men, nor did he become the deliverer of men by any preceding human merits, though he too is a man. For who would listen to the claim that little children, baptized in that very infant age, depart from this life for their future merits, and that others die unbaptized at the same age because their future merits too are foreknown, but evil ones; with God rewarding or condemning not their good or evil life, but no life at all? The Apostle indeed set a limit which the unwary suspicion of man, to put it mildly, ought not to overstep. For he says, “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil.” “Has done,” he says; he did not add, “or would have done.” But how this came into the minds of such men I do not know, that future merits of little children, which are not going to be, should be punished or honoured. And why is it said that a man is to be judged according to what he has done through the body, when many things are done in the mind alone, not through the body nor through any member of the body, and often things so great that most just punishment is due to such thoughts; such as, to say nothing of others, that the fool has said in his heart, “There is no God”? What, then, does “according to what he has done through the body” mean but “according to what he did in the time when he was in the body,” so that by “through the body” we understand “through the time of the body”? But after the body no one will be in the body except at the last resurrection, not to acquire any merits, but to receive rewards for good merits and pay punishments for evil ones. In this intervening time between laying down and taking up the body, souls are either tormented or at rest according to what they did through the time of the body. To this time of the body belongs also original sin, which the Pelagians deny but the church of Christ confesses; and when infants die, this being either loosed by the grace of God or not loosed by the judgment of God, they pass either by the merit of regeneration from evil to good, or by the merit of their origin from evil to evil. This the Catholic faith knows; in this even some heretics agree without any contradiction. But that anyone should be judged not according to the merits he had as long as he was in the body, but according to the merits he would have had if he had lived longer in the body: how men could have come to think this, men whose talents, as your letters indicate, are not contemptible, I cannot find, wondering and amazed; nor would I dare to believe it, except that I would not dare not to believe you. But I hope that God will be at hand, so that, being admonished, they may soon see that, if what are said to have been future sins can rightly be punished by God's judgment in the unbaptized, they can also be forgiven by God's grace in the baptized. For whoever says that future sins can only be punished by God's judging and cannot be forgiven by God's mercy ought to consider how great a wrong he does to God and his grace; as if future sin could be foreknown but could not be forgiven. But if this is absurd, then all the more ought help have been given to those who would have been sinners if they had lived long, when they die at a young age, by the washing in which sins are washed away.

But if perhaps they say that sins are forgiven to those who repent, and that these are therefore not baptized when they die at a young age, because they were foreknown as not going to repent if they lived, while those who are baptized and leave the body as little children God foreknew would have repented if they had lived, let them notice and see that, if this is so, it is no longer original sins that are punished in little children dying without baptism, but each one's own future sins if he had lived; and likewise in the baptized it is not original sins that are washed away, but their own future sins if they had lived, since they could not sin except at a greater age; but some were foreseen as going to repent and others as not going to repent, and therefore some departed this life baptized, others without baptism. If the Pelagians dared to say this, they would no longer labour, in denying original sin, to seek for little children outside the kingdom of God some place of I know not what happiness of their own; especially since they are refuted by the fact that they cannot have eternal life because they have not eaten the flesh nor drunk the blood of Christ, and that in those who have no sin at all, baptism, which is given for the remission of sins, is false. For they would say that there is no original sin at all, but that those who are released from the body as infants are baptized or not baptized according to their own future merits if they had lived; and according to their own future merits they either receive or do not receive the body and blood of Christ, without which they can have no life at all; and that they are baptized for a true remission of sins, though they draw none from Adam, since the sins are forgiven them of which God foreknew they would repent. So they would most easily plead and win their case, in which they deny that there is original sin and contend that the grace of God is given only according to our merits. But since the future merits of men, which are not going to be, are without doubt no merits at all, and this is very easy to see, therefore not even the Pelagians could say this; and much more ought these not to have said it. For I cannot say how much it troubles me that what the Pelagians saw to be most false and most absurd these have not seen, who with us condemn the error of those heretics by Catholic authority.