Replies on behalf of Augustine to the Objections of the Gauls (complete)

Saint Prosper of Aquitaine, on behalf of Augustine: Answers to the headings of the objections of the slandering Gauls. Preface. The teaching which Augustine, the bishop of holy memory, asserted in apostolic fashion for many years and committed to writing against the Pelagians, enemies of the grace of Christ and corrupters of free choice, some have seen fit to censure, either from not understanding it or from not wishing it to be understood; and to offer this as a kind of summary of knowledge to those who were led by their judgment, publishing in little lists of brief headings the things they boasted of having found worthy of condemnation in the books of the said man; so that by such a device they might both obtain hatred for the man they attacked and turn away the frightened reader's attention from what they had defamed. Lest anyone, then, rashly accept this persuasion and think that such a sense is in the writings of the catholic teacher as those who slander him in vain make out, I answer each heading which they have marked with the title of condemnation by a brief and complete profession, departing in nothing from the path of the definitions contained in the holy man's discussions; so that even an examiner of slight diligence may easily notice with what unjust reproaches the memory of the catholic preacher is torn, and into what sin they fall who, stirred by another's prompting, would rather blame a writer of most celebrated name than know him. Part One: To each objection, its answer.

Objection. That by the predestination of God, as by a fatal necessity, people are driven to sins and forced into death. Answer. No catholic Christian denies the predestination of God; but fatal necessity is rejected even by many who are not Christians. Sin, then, draws to death; but God forces no one to sin. For “he has commanded no one to act impiously”; and: “You hate, Lord, all who work iniquity; you will destroy those who speak a lie.” Therefore whoever preaches fate under the name of predestination is as little to be approved as whoever defames the truth of predestination under the name of fate. For the opinion of fate is vain and conceived from falsehood; but faith in predestination is fortified by much authority of the holy Scriptures, and to it the evil things done by human beings may in no way be ascribed, since they came into their proneness to fall not from God's creation but from the transgression of the first father. From his penalty no one is set free except through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, prepared and predestined in the eternal counsel of God before the foundation of the world.

Objection. That from those who are not predestined to life, the grace of baptism received does not take away original sin. Answer. Every person who, believing in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, is reborn in baptism is absolved both from his own sins, which he contracted by evil will and action, and from the original sin which he drew from his parents. But whoever denies that one who has fallen back after baptism into unbelief and impious conduct was purged of original sin is as false in his opinion as whoever asserts that the same man is not to be condemned to eternal death. For whoever withdraws from Christ and ends this life a stranger to grace, what does he fall into but perdition? Yet he does not fall back into what has been forgiven, nor will he be condemned in original sin; but he will, because of his later crimes, be visited with that death which was owed him for the things that were forgiven. Because this neither escaped nor deceived the foreknowledge of God, without doubt he never chose such a man, never predestined him, and never set him apart, as one who would perish, from eternal perdition.

Objection. That for those not predestined to life, even if they have been reborn in Christ through baptism and have lived devoutly and justly, it profits them nothing; but they are kept until they fall and perish, and are not taken from this life before this happens to them. Answer. That many pass from holiness to uncleanness, from righteousness to iniquity, from faith to impiety, is not doubtful; and it is most certain that the predestination of the sons of God and co-heirs of Christ does not belong to such. That those of this kind who fell into these evils died without the correction of repentance, then, did not come from a necessity of perishing because they were not predestined; rather, they were not predestined because they were foreknown as going to be such by voluntary transgression. And that God did not take them from this life at the time when they were in right faith and good conduct is to be referred to his hidden judgments, which yet are never unjust. For who does not know that within the one condition of human mortality, from the infancy of a single hour to the most aged old age, the departures of the dying vary with unequal ends of life, and that no one's soul leaves the body it gives life to sooner or later than God has willed? If, then, someone in the length of his life has deserted God, he has used badly a good that was from God. For long life is only from God; and what is from God is only good; and what is good is not the cause of evil. So he does not think rightly who supposes that the one who prolongs life is the author of sin for those who will fall, since surely it is not a sin to live long, but to live badly, which can happen even at an age of few years. Therefore, as good works are to be referred to God who inspires them, so evil works are to be referred to those who sin. For they were not forsaken by God so that they might forsake God; but they forsook, and were forsaken, and were changed from good to evil by their own will; and so, although they had been reborn, had been justified, yet they were not predestined by him who foreknew them to be such.

Objection. That not all people are called to grace. Answer. It is not rightly said that those to all of whom the Gospel is preached are not all called to grace, even if there are those who do not obey the Gospel; unless one looks to those to whom the mystery of the cross of Christ and the redemption of his blood has not yet become known. For even if it were established that the whole world had already received the Gospel in all nations and all the ends of the earth (which indeed has been most truly foretold as going to happen), it would still not be doubtful that from the time of the Lord's resurrection to the present age there have been people who passed from this life without knowledge of the Gospel, of whom it could be said that they were not called, since they did not even hear the hope of the calling. And if anyone asserts that this complete universality of the calling was always so carried out that, from the Lord's ascension into heaven, not even one year passed within which the preaching sent to all did not reach them, let him see how he can prove that the people of Asia were called then, when the apostles, as it is written, were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word of God in Asia; or the Bithynians, to whom the same apostles tried to go, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them. Let him see also how he will uphold the declaration of the Truth himself, saying: “This Gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world, as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” For the faithfulness of the word wavers (which it is impious to say) if the world was filled with the Gospel four hundred years ago and the Lord's coming is still deferred. Finally, let them also look at the many thousands of little children, even among Christian peoples, who have passed from this life without baptism, and let it be proved in some way that they were called, whom neither the planter could preach to nor the waterer help.

Objection. That those who are called are not called equally, but some so that they might believe, others so that they might not believe. Answer. If the calling is understood only in the preaching of the Gospel, it is not truly said that it is preached differently to different people, since there is one God, one faith, one regeneration, one promise. But if one looks to the effect of planting and watering, one thing has been done with those whose outer ears have been struck by a bodily voice, another in those whose inner sense God has opened, and in whose heart he has placed the foundation of faith and the fervour of love. But to say that some are called so that they might not believe is too absurd, as though the calling had been the cause of unbelief for them, and the preaching of faith had made them unbelievers. For although the stewards of God's word are, as it is written, to some the fragrance of life to life, to others the fragrance of death to death, yet they are the good fragrance of Christ to God, who preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. That Christ crucified, when preached, was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles was the doing of the turning away of the human will; but that to those called, Jews and Greeks, Christ was the power of God and the wisdom of God was the work of divine grace.

Objection. That free choice in man is nothing, but that the predestination of God works in people, whether to good or to evil. Answer. It is wrongly said that free choice is nothing or does not exist; but we are not rightly denied in saying that before the enlightenment of faith it acts in darkness and in the shadow of death. For before it is set free from the dominion of the devil by the grace of God, it lies in that depth into which it plunged itself by its own liberty. So it loves its sicknesses, and takes for health the fact that it does not know it is sick, until this first remedy is given to the sick, that he begins to know that he is ill and can desire the help of the physician by which he may rise. So a man justified, that is, made devout from impious, with no good merit going before, receives a gift by which gift he may acquire merit too; so that what was begun in him by the grace of Christ may also be increased by the diligence of free choice, the help of God never being removed, without which no one can either advance or remain in good. But it is most foolishly said that the predestination of God works in people either to good or to evil, as if some necessity seemed to drive people to both; since in the good the will is to be understood as from grace, but in the evil the will is to be understood as without grace.

Objection. That God does not give perseverance to some of his sons, whom he has regenerated in Christ and to whom he has given faith, hope and love, for this reason, that they have not been set apart from the mass of perdition by God's foreknowledge and predestination. Answer. That some of those regenerated in Christ Jesus abandon faith and devout conduct, apostatize from God and end an impious life in their turning away is shown (which is to be grieved over) by many examples. But to ascribe their fall to God is an extreme of perversity, as though he were the instigator and author of their ruin because he foreknew that they would fall by their own will, and for that reason did not set them apart from the sons of perdition by any predestination. For how could the election preordained in Christ hold those whom, departing from Christ, a just condemnation was going to hold? But since it is not doubtful that perseverance in good to the end is a gift of God, and it is plain that these did not have it, from the very fact that they did not persevere, God is not to be slandered as to why he did not give these what he gave others; rather, it must be confessed both that he gave in mercy what he gave, and that he justly did not give what he did not give; lest, as the cause of falling arises from free choice, the cause of standing too should seem to arise from it, since the one is done by human work, the other is fulfilled by divine gift.

Objection. That God does not will all people to be saved, but a fixed number of the predestined. Answer. If the will of God concerning the salvation of the whole human race and its calling to the knowledge of the truth is to be asserted as so undifferentiated through all ages that it is shown to have passed over absolutely no human being, the impenetrable depth of God's judgments is assailed. For why in past ages God let all the nations walk in their own ways, when the Lord chose Jacob for himself, and did not deal thus with every nation, and did not make his judgments known to them; and why those who were once not a people are now the people of God, and those on whom he once had no mercy now receive mercy; and where it was said, “You are not my people,” there they are called sons of the living God; and why what Israel sought it did not obtain, but the election obtained it, and the rest were blinded: this is impossible to comprehend, and it is dangerous curiosity to inquire into it; while yet no one may be ignorant that there is no iniquity with God, and that it is not to be believed that any human being, whether before the law or in the time of the law, was justified by any other grace or other faith than this same one, through which our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the counsel of his will, came at the end of the ages to seek and save what was lost. But whoever refers the causes of God's works and judgments wholly to human wills and actions, which yet he does not find in the adoption or rejection of little children, and would have God's dispensations vary according to the changeableness of free choice, professes that God's judgments are searchable and his ways traceable; and what Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, did not dare to touch, this man thinks he can publish as unlocked; and, what is no less impious, he teaches that grace itself, by which we are saved, is either paid to good merits or affirms that it is kept off by evil ones. Setting aside, then, the whirlwind of obscure questions, let us betake ourselves to the breadth of revealed grace; and let us say with the apostle that God wills all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. And again let us say with the apostle: “who is the Saviour of all, especially of believers.” And let us hear the Lord saying to his apostles: “Go therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Let us hear also the promise of God to Abraham, saying: “In your seed all the tribes of the earth will be blessed”; and if we are sons of the promise, let us not waver in distrust, but with our father Abraham give glory to God and believe most fully that what he has promised he is able also to do. Let us hear David prophesying: “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 elsewhere: “And in him all the tribes of the earth will be blessed; all nations will magnify him.” And elsewhere: “All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord, and will glorify your name.” Since these promises are most true and cannot waver in any part, they are fulfilled in those who are saved throughout all the ends of the earth, since what God has promised he is able also to do. This, then, is that taking up of the whole human race, this the adoption of the sons of God, this the fullness of the nations, foreknown and predestined in Christ before the foundation of the world. This is the Jerusalem which from the beginning to the end is built of living and chosen stones, so that the city founded on the cornerstone itself, Christ Jesus, in whom the whole building is constructed, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Of these stones nothing is thrown out, nothing is diminished, nothing is snatched away. For the Truth says: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and him who comes to me I will not cast out.” And again: “You do not believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they will not perish for ever, nor will anyone snatch them from my hand.” God, then, cares for all people; and there is no one whom either the preaching of the Gospel, or the testimony of the law, or even nature itself does not address. But let us ascribe the unbelief of people to people themselves, and confess that the faith of people is the gift of God, without whose grace no one runs to grace. And with the two hundred and fourteen bishops, whose decree against the enemies of God's grace the whole world has embraced, let us say with truthful profession, as their own words have it, that by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord we are helped in each single act not only to know but also to do righteousness, so that without it we can think, say or do nothing of true and holy devotion. Nor let us suppose that these gifts are from God in such a way that, because he is the author of our nature, he seems to have conferred them already through our creation. For he did indeed give man this ability at the beginning; but we all lost it in him in whom we all sinned. Hence we need to be renewed by another creation and another beginning in Christ, in whom we are a new creature and a new making, and through whom it is given us, with no good merits and many evil ones going before, that from vessels of wrath we should be vessels of mercy.

Objection. That the Saviour was not crucified for the redemption of the whole world. Answer. There is absolutely no one among all human beings whose nature was not taken up in Christ our Lord, although he was born in the likeness of sinful flesh, while every human being is born in sinful flesh. God, then, the Son of God, made a sharer in human mortality without sin, conferred this on sinners and mortals: that those who had been partakers of his birth might escape the bond of sin and death. Just as, therefore, it does not suffice for the renewal of human beings that Jesus Christ was born a man, unless they are reborn in him by the same Spirit from whom he himself was born, so it does not suffice for the redemption of human beings that the Lord Christ was crucified, unless they die with him and are buried with him in baptism. Otherwise, the Saviour having been born in the flesh of our substance and crucified for all of us, it would not have been necessary for us both to be reborn and to be planted together in the likeness of his death. But since without this sacrament no human being attains eternal life, he is not saved by the cross of Christ who is not crucified in Christ. And he is not crucified in Christ who is not a member of the body of Christ; and he is not a member of the body of Christ who has not put on Christ through water and the Holy Spirit. He underwent communion in death in our weakness so that we might have fellowship in the resurrection in his power. Although, therefore, the Saviour is most rightly said to have been crucified for the redemption of the whole world, because of his true taking up of human nature and because of the common perdition of all in the first man, yet he can be said to have been crucified only for those whom his death profited. For the evangelist says that Jesus was to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who were scattered. For he came to his own, and his own did not receive him; but as many as received him, to them he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Different from these, then, is the lot of those who are counted among those of whom it is said: “The world did not know him.” So that in this sense it can be said: the Redeemer of the world gave his blood for the world, and the world was unwilling to be redeemed, because the darkness did not receive the light; yet there was darkness that received it, to whom the apostle says: “You were once darkness, but now light in the Lord.” The Lord Jesus himself, who said he had come to seek and save what was lost, says: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But what these sheep of the house of Israel are, the apostle Paul explains, saying: “For not all who are of Israel are Israelites, nor are all the seed of Abraham his children; but in Isaac your seed shall be called; that is, not the children of the flesh are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed.” Among these, then, are those of whom we recalled that it was said above: that Jesus was to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who were scattered. For not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles, through him who calls the things that are not as though they were, and who gathers the dispersed of Israel, the children of God, the children of the promise, are gathered into the one church; so that what was promised to Abraham may be fulfilled, to whom it was said that in his seed all the tribes of the earth would be blessed.

Objection. That the preaching of the Gospel is withdrawn from some by the Lord, so that they may not be saved by receiving the preaching of the Gospel. Answer. If it can be proved that, since the Gospel began to be preached, there has been absolutely no one to whom Christian grace has not been announced, it is not rightly said to have been kept silent, which is shown to have been preached. But if in any way people are found to whom the Gospel has not been preached, it cannot be said to have happened without the judgment of God; and it is impious to find fault with it because it cannot be comprehended. [11] Chapter XI. Objection. That God by his power compels people to sins. Answer. No catholic has said or says that God by his power compels people who live devoutly and rightly into sins, and that divine power does violence to human innocence so as to shake it from its resolve of good living. These are not the works of God but of the devil, whose joy is the ruin of the saints; but the Lord lifts up all who fall and raises up all who are crushed, to whom he gives repentance, that they may come to their senses from the snares of the devil, by whom they were held captive to his will. But when we read that some have been handed over by God to their desires, or hardened, or abandoned, we profess that they deserved this by their great sins; because such crimes of theirs went before that they had to become a punishment to themselves, which turned even their punishment into further guilt. And so we neither complain of the judgment of God, by which he deserts those who deserve to be deserted, and we give thanks to his mercy, by which he sets free those who do not deserve to be set free.

Objection. That from some who are called and live devoutly and justly, obedience is withdrawn so that they cease to obey. Answer. If God throws a man who obeys him out of devotion and makes one who is running well fall, then he repays evil for good and punishes unjustly what he drives to be done. What can be said or thought so perverse, so mad? But those are drawn into such a sense who think that in all things God's foreknowledge is the same as his will; whereas his will never wills anything but good, while his foreknowledge knows both good and evil: the good, which he either does himself or commands that we do; but the evil, which he himself did not do at all, nor persuaded or drove to be done. So he has not withdrawn the strength of obedience from anyone because he did not predestine him; but he did not predestine him because he foresaw that he would withdraw from that obedience.

Objection. That some people were not created by God for this, that they might attain eternal life, but only to adorn the condition of the present age and to be born for the benefit of others. Answer. We are not unaware that all people are created one by one by God, and that of this whole number some are to be condemned with the devil, others to reign with Christ. That those too are created who will not be partakers of eternal life is therefore no fault of the Creator, who is the author of nature, not of the vice that nature contracted. But who would not understand that the variety of this world is adorned even by the condition of such people, who sees how many conveniences of the present life have been furnished by the studies and works of certain impious people, in the invention of arts, the building of cities, the establishing of laws, the alliances of peoples? And if it is asked whether divine providence has brought any good to the progress of the saints and the growth of the church from those whom impious error has turned from true religion, let us look first at the cross of Christ itself, in which, through a great crime of the Jews, the merciful will of God, that his only Son should be killed for our redemption, was fulfilled. Let us look at the glorious endurance of the apostles, crying to God with one voice amid the raging of the persecutors: “For truly there gathered together in this city against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do what your hand and your counsel predestined to be done.” Let us look, finally, at the palms of innumerable martyrs, on whom a happy victory has been conferred by the most cruel savagery of unbelievers. Let us hear also the apostle instructing the church of God for perseverance in devotion: “Be terrified,” he says, “in nothing by your adversaries, which is to them a cause of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that from God. For it has been given to you for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him.” Let the goodness of God that provides for us be felt also from those errors which God has permitted to arise in the church against the church, not, certainly, creating or fostering them, but through them exercising the diligence of his children in the search for and guarding of the truth, as the apostle says: “There must be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you.” And who, looking at the darkness of the impious and at the enlightenment of the faithful, does not become more fervent in giving thanks to God from the very comparison, and learn from the ruin of those who perish into what evils he would rush through free choice, unless the grace of God came to his help through our Lord Jesus Christ?

Objection. That those who do not believe the preaching of the Gospel do not believe because of God's predestination; and that God has so decreed that whoever do not believe, do not believe by his ordinance. Answer. Unbelief, in not believing the Gospel, is by no means generated by God's predestination. For God is the author of good things, not of evil. The predestination of God, then, is always in the good, belonging either to the requital of justice or to the gift of grace. For all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth. Therefore the unbelief of those who do not believe is to be referred not to God's ordinance but to his foreknowledge, which did not impose a necessity of not believing because it could not be deceived about the unbelief that was to be. But faith and the works of love, and perseverance in them to the end, because they are conferred on man through God's grace, are rightly said to be predestined, both they themselves and what is to be rendered for them, on the authority of the apostle, who says: “By the grace of God you have been saved through faith; and this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not from works, lest anyone be puffed up. For we are his workmanship, created in good works in Christ Jesus, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” So he who refers the unbelief of the impious to God's ordinance is as much in error as he who does not profess God to be the author of the faith and righteousness of the saints. For he who lost what he had received does not get it back from the source from which he lost it; but he gets back what he may have from him from whom he had received what he lost.

Objection. That foreknowledge is the same as predestination. Answer. Whoever does not distinguish God's foreknowledge in any way from his predestination tries to ascribe to him also in evil things what is to be attributed to God in good ones. But since good things are to be referred to God, their giver and co-worker, and evil things to the voluntary wickedness of the rational creature, there is no doubt that God, without any difference of time, both foreknew and predestined together what was to be done by him as author, or what was to be repaid by just judgment to evil merits; but only foreknew, and did not also predestine, what was not to have its cause of working from him. So there can be foreknowledge without predestination; but there cannot be predestination without foreknowledge. Part Two: To each heading, its sentence. Although, then, I think that all the objections, whether of complaining ignorance or of deceitful envy, have been answered most plainly and fully, as far as the Lord has granted, let us nevertheless also compress the profession of our mind into brief statements, so that under the simplicity of a few words it may appear more and more that we cloak with no art of circumlocution what we understand about the headings written above, but freely and openly both reject the perverse and do not deny assent to what is worthy of approval.