Letter to Rufinus on Grace and Free Will

Letter of Saint Prosper of Aquitaine to Rufinus, on grace and free choice. To his lord and most beloved brother in Christ, and deservedly venerable, Rufinus, Prosper sends eternal greeting. Prologue. 1. I have received through a common friend the signs of your brotherly concern for me, and I have recognized with gratitude the care of your most sincere love. And so that malicious rumours, in so far as they cannot keep away from your ears, might not bring you any fear or anxiety, I have taken care, as far as a letter's speech allows, to free you from every scruple; and I am eager to lay everything open to you in the fullest truth, so that, since you could not hear in full what is being spread abroad by our opponents, you may learn through me whatever is said and repeated about us to stir up empty ill will. But first the nature of the question from which these things arise must be made known to your Holiness, so that the falsehood of the slanderers may be all the plainer to you, and you may see what a place they are trying to cover with darkness.

2. By what doctrine the Pelagian heresy set out to destroy the catholic faith, and with what poisons of impiety it tried to take hold of the bowels of the church and the very vitals of the body of Christ, is too well known to need a narrative. Among these, however, there is one blasphemy, the most wicked and most subtle seed of the others, by which they say that the grace of God is given according to human merits. For at first they wished to assert so great a soundness of human nature that by free choice alone it could attain the kingdom of God, because it was so fully helped by the very safeguard of its created condition that, having by nature a rational understanding, it could easily choose the good and avoid the evil; and since the works of the will were free in either direction, those who are evil lacked not the ability for good but the desire. So when, as I said, they wished the whole righteousness of man to stand on natural uprightness and ability, and sound doctrine rejected this definition, they kept among themselves, by a clever device, the view condemned by the catholics and afterwards coloured with many varieties of heretical deceit: that they professed that God's grace is necessary to man for beginning, for advancing and for persevering in good.

3. But by the grace of God itself it was revealed to the vessels of mercy with what deceit the vessels of wrath were trying to creep in under this profession. For it has been understood, and most healthfully seen through, that they confess only this about grace: that it is a kind of teacher to free choice, and shows itself outwardly, by its judgment, through exhortations, through the law, through teaching, through the contemplation of creatures, through miracles and through terrors, so that each person, according to the motion of his own will, may find if he seeks, receive if he asks, enter if he knocks. That is, the calling of grace itself does this first with us, that it admonishes the choice of our ability; and grace is nothing other than the law, the prophet, the teacher, whose common and general concern for all people throughout the whole world is that those who will may believe, and those who have believed may receive justification by the merit of faith and good will; and thus the grace of God is given according to human merit, and in this way grace is not grace, because if it is paid for merits and is not itself the creator of good merits, it is called grace in vain.

II. 4. These tricks, by which the sons of darkness wished to transform themselves into the likeness of sons of light, were detected by the judgments of the Eastern bishops, by the authority of the apostolic see, and by the vigilance of the councils of Africa; and the most blessed Augustine too, surely the chief portion of the Lord's priests in this time, destroyed them copiously and beautifully in many discussions in his books. For among the many gifts of God with which the Spirit of truth filled him most abundantly, he had also this power of knowledge and wisdom, from the love of God, that he overcame with the unconquered sword of the word not only this heresy, still writhing in its mutilations, but also many heresies before it. Against him, shining amid so many palms of contests, so many crowns of triumphs, for the enlightenment of the church and the glory of Christ, by which he himself has been made illustrious, certain of our people (which is much to be grieved over in them) speak against him in whispers that are hidden but not unknown; and wherever they find ears of certain people subject and convenient to them, they defame his writings by which the error of the Pelagians is attacked, saying that he does away with free choice entirely and preaches, under the name of grace, a fatal necessity. They add also that he would have it believed that there are two masses of the human race and two natures, so that the impiety of the pagans and the Manichees is ascribed to a man of such great devotion. If these things are true, why are they themselves so negligent, not to say so impious, as not to drive so headlong a ruin away from the church, not to resist such mad preaching, nor at least to confront in writing the man from whom such teaching flows? For they would serve the human race with great glory to themselves if they called Augustine back from error. Unless perhaps, as modest men and new censors, they spare with honour and mercy an old man of great previous merits, and rest secure because no one anywhere accepts his books; and they should know, indeed they do know, that not only the Roman and African churches, and all the children of the promise throughout every part of the world, agree with this man's teaching in the confession of grace as in the whole faith, but also that in these very places, in which complaint is raised against him, there are, thanks be to God, very many who are steeped in his most healthful discussions for the receiving of the gospel and apostolic teaching, and are daily spread abroad in the members of the body of Christ, as far as he himself multiplies them. If we are rightly blamed, why are we not openly refuted? If we are not to be refuted, why are we bitten by hidden disparagement?

5. But who does not know why they chatter these things privately from spite, and in public fall silent from calculation? For, wishing to glory in their own righteousness rather than in the grace of God, they take it ill that we resist the things they have asserted, among many collations, against a man of the most excellent authority. Nor do they doubt that, if they raise any question on this, in any gathering of priests, in any congregation of peoples, they will be met by the hundred volumes of the most blessed Augustine. And when these begin to make manifest to the hearts of the hearers the most powerful truth of the Christian faith, and to flood the minds of those present from the springs of the divine word, which of the faithful, which of the devout, having recognized and taken to heart the causes of his own salvation, will wish to take up this bitterness of smoky vanity? I for my part hope even this from the riches of God's mercy: that those whom he now allows to be deceived by their free choice and to wander from the way of humility, he will not altogether and to the end deprive of understanding; but that this very advance of theirs into further error is recalled by him more slowly so that the work of his grace may be celebrated with greater glory, when he has subdued to himself even the hearts of opponents, in whom danger has arisen from zeal for virtues, and peril from uprightness of conduct. Not that anyone ought to lack these, but because their use is most wretched when they are thought to have come from natural ability, or indeed from the generosity of grace, but with some merit of good work or good will going before.

6. They support these views indeed with certain testimonies of the holy Scriptures, but not reasonably taken. For in defence of any definition, those passages must be brought forward which do not give way to another understanding, from which the definition seems to differ, and do not desert the rule to which they are fitted. They say, then, that it was said to those using free choice: “Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you; take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls; for my yoke is sweet and my burden light.” This they would have refer to all people, labouring in the uncertainty of this life and burdened with sins, so that those who are willing to imitate the meekness and humility of the Saviour and to take up the yoke of his commandments may find rest for their souls in the hope of eternal life; while those who are not willing to do this lack salvation by their own fault, which they could have obtained if they had willed. But let them hear also what was said by the Lord to those using free choice: “Without me you can do nothing”; and, “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him”; and, “No one can come to me unless it is given him by my Father”; and, “As the Father gives life to the dead, so also the Son gives life to whom he will”; and, “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” Since all these are unchangeable and cannot be twisted by any interpretation into another sense, who can doubt that free choice obeys the exhortation of the one calling at the moment when the grace of God has begotten in it the disposition to believe and obey? Otherwise it would suffice for man to be admonished, without a new will also being made in him, as it is written: “The will is prepared by the Lord”; and as the apostle says: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, for his good will.” For what good will, if not that which God has worked in them, so that, having given them to will, he might give them also to do?

7. They say also that, to demonstrate the ability of free choice, there is a great proof in the centurion Cornelius, because before receiving grace, fearing and praying to God, he was intent with spontaneous zeal on almsgiving, fasting and prayer, and, praised for this by the divine testimony, he received the gift of regeneration. They do not understand that all that preparation of Cornelius was conferred by the grace of God. For when Saint Peter was taught by a vision of every kind of animal about baptizing Cornelius, and thus about all the nations, and he refused food unclean and unseparated by Jewish observance, a voice came to him three times, saying: “What God has cleansed, do not call common.” By this it is shown clearly enough that all the good works that preceded in Cornelius were begun by the grace of God for his cleansing: so that the apostle should not hesitate to confer the sacrament on one to whom the Lord had already imparted this gift, lest the beginning of a new and not yet revealed calling should waver, unless it were established, through the very signs of his preceding pursuits, that God had been at work in those to be taken up. For not all have faith; nor do all believe the Gospel. But those who believe are led by the Spirit of God; those who do not believe are turned away by free choice. Our conversion to God, then, is not from us but from God, as the apostle says: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not from works, lest anyone should boast.”

8. Let human weakness acknowledge itself, and the condemned succession of all generations in the first man; and when the dead are given life, the blind are given light, the wicked are justified, let them confess Jesus Christ as their life, their light and their righteousness; and let him who glories glory in the Lord, not in himself, who, when he was wicked and blind and dead, received freely from his deliverer righteousness and light and life. For he was not acting justly and his righteousness was increased; he was not walking towards God and his course was strengthened; he was not loving God and his love was inflamed; but when he was without faith, and therefore wicked, he received the Spirit of faith and was made righteous. “But the righteous lives by faith”; and, “Without faith no one can please God”; and, “Whatever is not from faith is sin”: so that one may understand that the righteousness of unbelievers is not righteousness, because nature without grace is defiled.

9. For when natural innocence was lost, man, an exile and lost, walking without a way, entered into deeper errors; but he was sought, and found, and carried back, and brought into the way which is truth and life; and he was set on fire with love towards God, who first loved him when he did not love. As the blessed apostle John says: “Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us”; and again: “Let us therefore love God, because God first loved us”; and the same says: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” With him the blessed Paul agrees, saying: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” Where, then, does this faith joined with love come from, if not from where he himself shows it received, saying: “For to you it has been given for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him”? This certainly could not be done without great love. And again: “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Without this love, the apostle testifies, how great a faith, how great a knowledge, what virtues, what pursuits, what labours profit nothing! For many praiseworthy and wonderful things can be found in a person which, without the marrow of love, have indeed the likeness of devotion but not its truth.

10. Of this so great and so unspeakable good no one has been found worthy; but whoever has been chosen by God has been made worthy, as the apostle says: “Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us worthy of a share in the lot of the saints in light, who has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.” And the same to Timothy: “Labour with the Gospel,” he says, “according to the power of God, who has freed us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and the grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before eternal ages.” And to Titus: “For we too,” he says, “were once foolish and unbelieving, going astray and serving various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another; but when the kindness and humanity of our Saviour appeared, not from works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his mercy he saved us.” The grace of God, then, whomever it justifies, does not make better from good, but good from evil, and afterwards, through progress, will make them better from good; not by taking away free choice, but by setting it free. As long as free choice was alone without God, it was dead to righteousness and alive to sin; but when the mercy of Christ enlightened it, it was rescued from the kingdom of the devil and became the kingdom of God; and to be able to remain in it, it is not sufficient for itself even in that ability unless it receives perseverance from the same source from which it received its diligence.

11. For even the most ardent faith of Saint Peter himself would have failed in temptations if the Lord had not prayed for him, as the evangelist shows, saying: “And Jesus said to Peter: Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when at last you have turned, strengthen your brothers”; and, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And that it might be the more proved that free choice can do nothing without grace, it is foretold to the same man to whom it had been said, “Strengthen your brothers, and pray that you may not enter into temptation,” and who had answered, surely from free choice, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death,” that before the cock crowed he would deny the Lord three times. What else is this but that he was going to fail in faith? Certainly the Lord had prayed for him that his faith might not fail; and he had certainly not prayed in vain, whose working was one with him whom he had asked. But lest he who had promised great things of himself should seem to stand by free choice, he is allowed to be endangered, so that when he was troubled and failing, he might look on him and restore him, without whom no one stands, no one perseveres. [11] Chapter XI. 12. Some recoil from this confession of the grace of God for this reason: lest, when they have confessed it as it is preached by the divine word and as it is known by the work of its power, they should also be obliged to confess that out of the whole number of human beings born through all the ages there is, with God, a certain and fixed number of a people predestined to eternal life, chosen according to the purpose of God who calls. To deny this is as impious as to oppose grace itself. For it is not hidden from common observation through how many ages how countless thousands of people, left to their errors and impieties, have perished without any knowledge of the true God. As also in the Acts of the Apostles the words of Paul and Barnabas declare, saying to the Lycaonians: “Men, brothers, why are you doing these things? We too are mortals, men like you, announcing to you that you should turn from these vain things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them; who in past generations let all the nations go their own ways. And yet he did not leave himself without witness, doing good to them, giving rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.” Surely, if either natural understanding or the use of God's benefits could have sufficed them to lay hold of eternal life, in our time too rational contemplation, the mildness of the air and the abundance of fruits and food would save us, since, using nature better, we would worship our Creator for his daily gifts.

13. But far from the minds of the devout and of those redeemed by the blood of Christ be this persuasion, too foolish and pernicious. Human nature is not set free apart from the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; without him there is salvation for no one. As he made us, and not we ourselves, so he remakes us, and not we ourselves. And lest the ability of man should seem to repay the price of this restoration through works of righteousness, even after its own restoration, the riches of God's goodness have poured themselves out on the very beginnings of certain little children, in whom neither devotion going before is chosen nor devotion to follow; no obedience, no discernment, no will. I speak of those who, as soon as they are born, are reborn, and, snatched from this life, are assigned to eternal blessedness; while an innumerable multitude of infants of the same nature and the same condition die without regeneration, of whom it cannot be doubted that they have no part in the city of God.

14. And where is that which is always set against us as if contrary by those who do not understand, that God wills all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth? Are not those who have perished from past generations until this time without the knowledge of God part of all people? And if, for those of mature age (which is not rightly said), the evil works they committed by free choice stood in their way, as if those set free were set free by the grace of the good and not of the evil, between the saved little children and the little children not saved, what difference of merits could there be? What brought these into the kingdom of God? What shut those out of God's kingdom? Indeed, if you consider merit, not one part deserved to be saved, but both to be condemned; for since all were laid low in Adam's transgression, unless merciful grace took up some, blameless justice would remain upon all. But what is the cause or reason of this discrimination in God's secret counsel is both inquired into beyond the power of human knowledge and is not known without any loss to faith: provided we confess that no one perishes undeservedly, no one is set free by merit, and that the most almighty goodness of the Lord saves all and instructs all for the knowledge of the truth whom he wills to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For unless he calls, teaches and saves, no one comes, no one is taught, no one is saved. For although teachers are commanded to preach to all people without distinction and to sow the seed of the word everywhere, yet “neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but God who gives the growth.”

15. Hence, when the apostles had begun to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, Scripture records of a certain part of those who had heard, saying: “And the Gentiles hearing it rejoiced and glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as were preordained to eternal life believed.” And elsewhere, when many women were hearing Paul teaching: “A certain woman,” it says, “named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, a worshipper of God, heard; whose heart the Lord opened to attend to the things said by Paul.” And again, at the very time when the preaching of the Gospel was being sent to all nations, the apostles are forbidden to go to certain places by him who wills all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, many, surely, being held back and turned away by that delay of the Gospel, and about to die without the knowledge of the truth and without the consecration of regeneration. Let Scripture say, then, what was done: “Passing through Phrygia and the region of Galatia,” it says, “they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” What wonder, then, if at the very beginnings of the preaching of the Gospel the apostles could not go except where the Spirit of God willed them to go, when we see many nations only now beginning to become partakers of Christian grace, and others not yet touched by any fragrance of this good? [15] Chapter XV. 16. Or is it to be said that human wills resist the will of God, and that the ways of these people are so wild and intractable that they do not hear the Gospel because impious hearts do not open to the preaching? And who changed the hearts of these, if not he who fashioned their hearts one by one? Who softened the hardness of this stiffness into a disposition to obey, if not he who is able to raise up children to Abraham from stones? And who will give the preachers fearless and unharmed constancy, if not he who said to Paul: “Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no one will be set on to harm you, for I have many people in this city”? I think, however, that no one would dare to say that any nation of the world, any region of the earth, is to be passed over in which the tents of the church are not to be spread, since God says to the Son, “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession”; and again, “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before him”; and the Lord himself says, “This Gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Whatever nations, then, have not yet heard, will hear the Gospel, and as many of them as are preordained to eternal life will believe. For no others will come into the fellowship of Christ's inheritance than those who were chosen before the foundation of the world, and predestined and foreknown, according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

17. Let us confess, then, the works of the Lord and glorify his mercies, and not bear it impatiently that we do not know which or how many are the vessels of election. For in earlier ages too, when it was said of the people of one nation, “God is known in Judea, his name is great in Israel,” the future election of the Gentiles lay hidden; and afterwards what had not been revealed was made known, as the apostle says: “Which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit: that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus.” And in the Acts of the Apostles: “The believers from the circumcision who had come with Peter were amazed,” it says, “because the grace of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the nations also.” For if the Lord hid and deferred this counsel of his calling as long as he willed, and revealed it when he willed, and that ignorance did no harm to his saints, why do we believe it harms our hope if it is hidden in what number and in which people the vessels of mercy are prepared for glory? While yet it is certain that all the good will enter the kingdom of heaven, by the gift of God's grace, and none of the evil will enter, by the deserving of their own wickedness.

18. It is said very foolishly and very thoughtlessly by our opponents that through this grace of God nothing is left to free choice. For although in little children passing through baptism there is most clearly no work and no desire of their will, and regeneration that sets free sanctifies very many who used free choice indeed, but were turned from the true God and spent their life in shameful deeds, at the very end as they breathe their last, yet if we consider with a devout gaze that part of the children of God which is kept for the works of devotion, shall we not find in them free choice not destroyed but reborn? It, when it was alone and left to itself, moved only to its own ruin. For it had blinded itself, and it could not give itself light. But now the same choice has been converted, not overturned; and it has been given to it to will differently, to think differently, to act differently, and to place its safety not in itself but in the physician; for it does not yet enjoy such perfect health that the things that harmed it can no longer harm it, or that it can now refrain from unhealthy things by its own turns. So the man who was evil in free choice has been made good in the same free choice; but evil of himself, good through God, who so re-formed him to that original honour by another beginning that he not only forgave him the guilt of evil will and action, but also gave him to will well, to act well, and to persevere in these. “For every best gift,” says the apostle James, “and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” He clearly shows what free choice is like that is driven by the human spirit, and what that is like which is ruled by God, saying: “But if you have bitter zeal and contentions in your hearts, do not boast against the truth and be liars. This is not wisdom coming down from above, but earthly, animal, devilish. For where there is zeal and contention, there is inconstancy and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first chaste, then peaceable, modest, open to persuasion, full of mercy and good fruits, not judging, without pretence.” Whoever, then, pursue and cling to these virtues are enlightened not by their own wisdom but by wisdom from above: “For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his face come knowledge and understanding.” And this is their truest glory, if they glory not in themselves but in the Lord.

19. As for what is bandied about, with most foolish falsehood, to the injury of so great a man about fate and two masses and two natures, it neither burdens him, in whose books errors of this kind are most copiously destroyed, nor disturbs us, who detest such opinions together with their authors. But let them see how they will strip themselves of the disgrace of this falsehood, who can invent such foolish things, if those whose ears they abuse apply a little diligence to learn what that most excellent minister of grace has argued; although those who say these things ought themselves to forestall all delay in this inquiry by producing and explaining the books, or by pointing out any little part of them which the holy man published as open, through an understanding at least doubtful, to such an interpretation. But they have heard absolutely nothing of the kind from us, they have read nothing of the kind; for we know that nothing is done by fate, but all things are ordered by the judgment of God; and that not from two masses or two natures, but from one mass, which is the flesh of the first man, one nature of all human beings was created and is created, and that the same was laid low through the free choice of that first man, in whom all sinned; and that it is in no way free from the debt of eternal death unless the grace of Christ re-forms it to the image of God of the second creation, and preserves its free choice by acting, inspiring, helping, and going before it to the end. [Epilogue] 20. Since, therefore, your Holiness sees (if the obscurity of my speech does not stand in the way) that certain people complain of us in vain, and that all those foolish charges have been woven together to exasperate and turn away the minds of those whom they wish to persuade otherwise, be confident, then, in the power of God's mercy, that this opposition, as in other parts of the world, so also in these regions, will be quieted, so that the preaching of the greatest man in the church at this time may be helped even by those by whom it is at present rejected. But you, my most beloved and most venerable brother, if you truly desire to be instructed on these questions, as it is fitting that you should desire, give your care to learning the discussions of the blessed Augustine himself, so that in confessing the grace of God you may attain the purest and most healthful understanding of the gospel and apostolic teaching. May the grace of God and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you at all times, and direct you by the way of truth into eternal life.