Replies on behalf of Augustine to the Excerpts of the Genoese preface–8

Preface. Prosper to Camillus and Theodore, venerable presbyters. In the books of Augustine, the bishop of blessed memory, entitled On the Predestination of the Saints, certain things struck your holiness as either unusual or not very clear; these you excerpted from the context of the discussion and sent to my humble self, so that you might know with what understanding or what judgment I took them; as though there were more insight in me than in you for looking into these things, and as though you ought not rather to exercise the measure of your own capacity in this examination, and, if some obscurity held you back, to run to the Father of lights, from whom comes down every best gift and every perfect gift, and by whom the Spirit of wisdom and understanding is given. Nevertheless I will not withdraw my compliance from your instructions; and with the help of the Lord, who gives wisdom to little ones, I will briefly indicate what I think about these headings together with holy and learned brothers, asking that, where there is the simplicity of obedience, you do not think there is a presumption of teaching. Of the excerpts, then, you put forward these first, in which are the words of the holy bishop Augustine. The book of answers.

(Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 3.) “‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ I brought the reasoning to the point of saying: ‘God did not, then, choose the works of anyone, which he himself would give, but he chose faith in his foreknowledge, so that he chose the very one whom he foreknew would believe in him, to give him the Holy Spirit, so that by doing good works he might also obtain eternal life.’ I had not yet sought more diligently, nor had I yet found, what the election of grace is.”

Again his words. (Ibid.) “And then I added: ‘That we believe is ours; but that we do good works is his who gives the Holy Spirit to those who believe.’ I would certainly not have said this if I had already known that faith itself also is found among the gifts of God which are given in the same Spirit. Both, then, are ours because of the choice of the will; and yet both are given, because of the Spirit of faith and love.”

Again his words. (Ibid.) “And through this, what I said afterward also: ‘For we cannot even will unless we are called; and when after the calling we have willed, our will and our running are not enough unless God both gives strength to those who believe and leads them where he calls’; and then I added: ‘It is manifest, then, that it is not of him who wills or of him who runs, but of God who has mercy, that we do good works.’ This is altogether most true; but I discussed too little the calling itself which takes place according to God’s purpose; for such is not the calling of all who are called, but only of the elect.”

Answer to these three. In these three headings, though they are separated from the body of the discussion and have become more obscure precisely because they do not cohere with what precedes, what lies between, and what follows, one must understand that the writer is pursuing one and the same cause. He is speaking of those who said that he had thought better at the first time of his conversion, when he reckoned that the faith by which we are Christians was not from grace, nor held as a gift of God, but was from man himself and from the freedom of his choice; but that he now erred, because he asserted that faith itself too is God’s gift, and that to it also belongs what was said, “What do you have that you did not receive?”; and that he did not now rightly refer the election of Jacob to God’s purpose, which he had earlier referred to foreknowledge. To this objection, then, he answers that before he knew the truth of grace, and before he was set over the governing of the church, he erred in this opinion through ignorance; but that at the very beginning of his episcopate, consulted by Simplician of holy memory, bishop of Milan, about the election of Jacob and the rejection of Esau, he examined with keener diligence the whole question concerning these twins, and with all the powers of reasoning recognized without doubt that no human merits precede the election of grace, and that faith, from which all merits begin, is God’s gift, lest grace not be grace if something comes before it on account of which it is bestowed. So in the saying “Jacob I loved” it was shown what was given to man, and in the saying “But Esau I hated” what was owed to man. And this he carefully reviewed in the book of his Retractations, a second work of his; and when he examined all his opinions with a censor’s gravity, he rejected this one, which his detractors choose, which he foresaw before the rise of the Pelagian heresy to be friendly to the error to come, and which he rejected once the truth of grace was revealed to him.

What reason is there, then, for us not to approve this profession of this man, by which, through the example of his own correction, he teaches us to chastise our own opinions if we have perhaps fallen into any unwisely, and by which he teaches that we receive from God what we are commanded to pray that we may receive? For if we consider the arguments of the Pelagian faithlessness, what does it strive more to obtain than that the grace of God should appear to be given according to our merits, so that, in the very act of confessing grace to be necessary, it weakens it by asserting the human will? Into this perversity anyone falls entirely who does not think faith belongs among God’s gifts, or who boasts that he refers it to God only because the nature was created by him, into which he implanted rational freedom, by which each has in his power both to believe and not to believe, so that by this natural good, which he received without preceding merits when he was created, he may merit the other gifts. But whoever asserts this confesses with us, I believe, that the nature of all human beings was vitiated in the first Adam; nor does he deny that in that fall it lost its virtues, which it cannot have unless it receives them through grace. Why is it, then, that he will not have faith alone snatched from the same nature, which, had it not lost faith first, would not lack all the other goods? For by believing the devil, Adam did not believe God; and when he was drunk with the spirit of pride, he departed from the Lord his maker, and became the slave of the apostate while he wished to be free from righteousness. Since, then, we would not have continence unless God gave it, nor holy love unless the love of God were poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us; since, finally, no one would have wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, knowledge and piety, and the fear of the Lord, unless the Holy Spirit gave these virtues, how would the faith lost in Adam be found in any of his children unless the same Spirit, who works all in all, poured it in? Hence if posterity did not lose what Adam lost, his sin harmed him alone and not the human race. But all sinned in one, and by the desert of the transgression his whole offspring was condemned. All, then, lost what Adam lost. And he lost faith first; and because we could lose it first, we need to receive it first. Let this preaching of grace, then, please us, by which faith is defended as God’s gift; and in nothing will the Pelagian error be able to mock us, which, to persuade that grace is owed, will not have faith to be given.

The persuasion of those people, then, is understood to have been neither just nor reasonable, who called back the knowledge of this man, enlarged by the advances of so many increases and polished by the studies of so many years, to the rudiments of his youth, so that what he had thought unskilfully at the beginning of his conversion might rather support heretics than what the truth had revealed to his episcopal diligence might benefit catholics. Rightly the gravity of pious readers marks them as using this prejudgment and dwelling on what had long been renounced; for those who took care to track down all his opinions did not wish to advance with his learning. But now let us consider what kind of thing it is that you have noted from what follows.

“Not because believing or not believing is not in the choice of the human will, but in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord.”

Answer. Let us join what follows, so that what is proposed may be clearer from the connected discourse. “Therefore to faith itself, which is in the will, belongs the saying: ‘Who distinguishes you? What do you have that you did not receive?’ Many hear the word of truth; but some believe and others contradict. These, then, will to believe, but those do not will. Who does not know this? Who would deny it? But since for some the will is prepared by the Lord and for others it is not prepared, we must certainly distinguish what comes from mercy and what from judgment. ‘What Israel sought it did not obtain, but the election obtained it, and the rest were blinded, as it is written: God gave them a spirit of compunction, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, to this day. And David says: Let their table become a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and a retribution to them; let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see, and bend their back always.’ Behold mercy and judgment: mercy in the election, which obtained the righteousness of God; judgment on the rest, who were blinded. And yet the former believed because they willed, and the latter did not believe because they did not will. Mercy and judgment, then, took place in the very wills. This election is, of course, of grace, not of merits. For he had said above: ‘So too at the present time a remnant has been saved by the election of grace. But if by grace, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.’ Freely, then, the election obtained what it obtained. Nothing of theirs preceded which they might give first, so that it would be repaid to them: he saved them for nothing. But to the rest who were blinded, as is not passed over in silence there, it was done in retribution. ‘All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.’ But ‘his ways are unsearchable.’ Unsearchable, then, is both the mercy by which he frees freely and the truth by which he judges justly.”

What offence do all these things give to a pious and catholic reader? What contradiction do they incur? Is it false that “the will is prepared by the Lord”? Are not all who are led by the Spirit of God sons of God? Does nature distinguish man from man, and not rather grace the believer from the unbeliever? Can anyone say that he has what he did not receive, or boast as if of something not received but his own, which, had he not received it, he certainly would not have? Is it doubtful that, when the word of truth is preached, some believe by their will and others by their will do not believe? But since God has opened the heart of the ones and not of the others, one must distinguish what comes from mercy and what from judgment. And after recalling the apostolic statement, which he supports with prophetic testimonies, that the righteousness of God, which Israel sought and did not obtain, the election obtained through grace, the rest being blinded in retribution, has it not been said most truly: “Behold mercy and judgment: mercy in the election which obtained the righteousness of God; judgment on the rest, who were blinded”? And a little later: “Freely, then, the election obtained what it obtained. Nothing of theirs preceded which they might give first, so that it would be repaid to them: he saved them for nothing. But to the rest who were blinded, as is not passed over in silence there, it was done in retribution.” What place is there here for complaint, except among the enemies of grace, who want what is repaid to be counted as injustice unless what is given freely is referred to retribution? Then, what he brought in from the prophetic words, “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth,” who has denied? Or what he added from the apostolic sense, “But his ways are unsearchable”? Unsearchable, then, are both the mercy by which he frees freely and the truth by which he judges justly. It is not for sound minds, then, to find fault with these things, and to consider the unsearchable ways of the Lord, that is, the gifts of mercy and the judgments of truth, penetrable to the pride of the Pelagians. For according to them God’s counsel is not hidden, nor is the reason of the divine will in secret, if toward every human being both the grace and the wrath of God are from merit. After this you put down what is said below.

“Faith, then, both begun and perfected, is the gift of God; and let no one who does not wish to oppose the most manifest sacred writings doubt that this gift is given to some and not given to others.”

Answer. Whoever does not accept this, whose opinion does he seem to hold, except that of one who says: “The faith by which I am justified is from me; and this good, from which the righteous lives, I did not receive through grace but have by nature”? If, then, faith is not God’s gift, in vain does the church pray for unbelievers that they may believe, and it suffices to apply to the ungodly the teaching of the law, of which it was said, “If righteousness is from the law, then Christ died for nothing”; which can likewise be said of nature too. In vain also does the Apostle give thanks to God for those who received the gospel, since according to the Pelagians this was not granted by God’s gift but is had from human will alone; and in vain does the same Apostle pray for some that they may have peace and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ; so that the pride of the heretics is convicted of saying that they have from their own resources not only faith but also peace and love. And if these things are from man, what prevents him from having from himself also the other goods which are lower, when he dares to claim for himself the highest, without which the others, however many and splendid, are of no profit? What was said cannot rightly be refuted, then: “Faith, then, both begun and perfected, is the gift of God”; for this is also the voice of the Apostle, who says: “By grace you have been saved through faith; and this not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God; not of works, lest anyone should boast”; and: “To you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him”; and again: “Let us run with patience the contest set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.” By these and very many other testimonies of the divine Scriptures it is recognized without doubt that, as this man defined, faith both begun and perfected is the gift of God; and that this gift is given to some and not given to others, he says, let no one who does not wish to oppose the most manifest sacred writings doubt at all. We could not think this truly said if all human beings were believers; but since some believe and others do not believe, and the Apostle says, “For not all have faith,” who does not see that the faith which those who have it received, those who do not have it did not receive?

(Ibid.) Then he says: “But why it is not given to all ought not to trouble the believer who believes that from one all went into condemnation, beyond doubt most just; so that there would be no just reproach against God even if no one were freed from it. Hence it is clear that it is great grace that very many are freed, and that they recognize in those who are not freed what was owed to themselves; so that whoever boasts may boast not in his own merits, which he sees are equal to those of the condemned, but in the Lord. But why he frees this one rather than that one, his judgments are inscrutable and his ways unsearchable. For it is better here too that we hear or say, ‘O man, who are you to answer back to God?’ than to dare to speak as though we knew what he willed to be hidden, who yet could not will anything unjust.”

Answer. If all these things were not rightly said, then the judgments of God are searchable and his ways traceable; nor is it hidden why this one rather than that one is saved; and he who, while others perish by their own fault, has been found worthy of election will boast in himself, not in the Lord. And so it will indeed be justice that very many are condemned, but it will not be grace that very many are freed. Far be these things from catholic hearts, far be such impiety, that we should think anyone is rescued by his own merits from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God by an adoption that is owed, not free. Adam perished by a great sin, and in him all perished. For to every human being born of a condemned birth it is owed in Adam that he perish. And just as we cannot complain that in past ages he let all the nations walk in their own ways, so we would have no just complaint if, grace still withheld, we perished with those with whom we had a common cause. Yet grace, just as it then rescued a few from the whole world, so now from the whole human race saves countless people, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and the grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before eternal times. You have also added what he says after much discussion.

“It is, then, in the power of the wicked to sin; but that in sinning they do this or that by that malice is not in their power, but in God’s, who divides the darkness and orders it; so that hence even what they do against God’s will is not fulfilled except as God’s will.”

Answer. Since this is of the most manifest truth, I wonder that it was picked out among the obscure passages, as though every hesitation of the reader could not have been resolved from the context. Look at what follows: “We read,” he says, “in the Acts of the Apostles that when the apostles, released by the Jews, had come to their own and reported how much the priests and elders had done to them, they all with one accord lifted up their voice to the Lord and said: ‘Lord, you are he who made heaven and earth and all that is in them, who by the mouth of our father David, your holy servant, said: Why did the nations rage, and the peoples devise vain things? The kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For truly there gathered together in this city against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod and Pilate and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your counsel predestined to take place.’” If, then, what the Holy Spirit prophesied through the mouth of our father David can in no way be understood otherwise than it was understood by the apostles, and Herod and Pilate and the people of Israel did whatever God’s hand and counsel predestined to take place, what unfitting thing did the admirable disputant say? “It is,” he says, “in the power of the wicked to sin; but that in sinning they do this or that by that malice is not in their power, but in God’s, who divides the darkness and orders it; so that hence even what they do against God’s will is not fulfilled except as God’s will.” For to will is very easy for the wicked; and there is no doubt that their damnable will is shut in by God’s power, so that they cannot have the effect of their desire unless he permits it. No one taught even slightly according to piety is ignorant that the wisdom and justice of God use even the works of the wicked, which proceed from their own appetite, to fulfil his counsels and judgments. For he sees the most good will of God the Father, who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, accomplished through the most evil will of the traitor Judas and of the Jews; and he reads in the pages of the Gospel that when Pilate said to Jesus, “Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to crucify you, and power to release you?”, the Lord answered, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.” God, then, divides between light and darkness; and the darkness is not therefore blameless because God uses it well, who has ordained, even from its work, what would turn out for good for the children of light, allowing the malice of those who desire to harm to go only as far as he knows it to be useful for his saints, either to chasten them or to prove them; “so that hence even what they do against God’s will is not fulfilled except as God’s will.” There follows next what is found in the second book.

“Or will anyone dare to say that God did not foreknow to whom he would give to believe, or whom he would give to his Son so that of them he would lose none? If he foreknew these things, he certainly foreknew his own benefits by which he deigns to free us. This is the predestination of the saints, and nothing else: namely, the foreknowledge and preparation of God’s benefits, by which whoever are freed are most certainly freed. And the rest, where are they left by just divine judgment except in the mass of perdition, where the Tyrians and Sidonians were left, who could even have believed if they had seen those wonderful signs of Christ? But since it was not given to them to believe, that by which they might believe was also denied.”

Answer. Those who resist these things are most clearly proved to think that faith is not God’s gift, that grace does not precede free choice but follows it, and that God’s grace is given according to our merits. For if they confess that something is conferred on man through grace, and that only faith receives it, faith not having been received, then merit lies in faith, to which not a gift is given but a debt repaid. Holding this opinion, they consistently think that those are predestined to eternal life whom God foreknew would be believers through the choice of free will; so that the predestination of the elect is nothing but retribution, and in those who are predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things God does not work faith; nor would there be any merits of man if God works all things. Truly those who think these things have not received faith, or have lost what they had received, following the most empty pride of the Pelagians and boasting in themselves, not in the Lord, who works all things in all: good things, of course, not evil; and if all good things, then certainly faith too, without which no one can please him, and which is the foundation of all the virtues. And what kind of thing is it that, though it is God’s building, and unless the Lord builds the house those who build it labour in vain, these people either do not want the foundation to belong to the building, or want to begin themselves what the Lord may build up? The Son of God will not, then, be their beginning, nor will they be founded on the cornerstone, Christ Jesus himself, nor was it said of them, “But God’s firm foundation stands”; for they set their whole election on a little box that can be broken up and on falling ash. Let us, then, wisely recognize and piously confess that God foreknew unchangeably to whom he would give to believe, or whom he would give to his Son so that he would lose none of them; that, if he foreknew these things, he foreknew his benefits by which he deigns to free us; and that this is the predestination of the saints, namely the foreknowledge and preparation of God’s grace, by which they are most certainly freed. And the rest, whoever are not freed, whom grace has not rescued from the general perdition of the human race, let us know were not exempted by a just judgment; and let us learn in them, whose condemnation we cannot complain of, what has been remitted to us. For there is no injustice with God, nor does anyone perish innocent under his judgment. For as this same distinguished preacher of grace says elsewhere: “God repays altogether both evil for evil, because he is just; and good for evil, because he is good; and good for good, because he is just and good; only he does not repay evil for good, because he is not unjust. He repays, then, evil for evil, punishment for injustice; he repays good for evil, grace for injustice; and he repays good for good, grace for grace.” When some perish, let us not doubt that their perishing is to be counted to their own merits, whom God could certainly free mercifully if he willed. And when some are freed, let us not dare to define that they were worthy to be freed, whom God could certainly condemn justly if he willed. But why he does not free all, or why he frees these rather than those, it is neither necessary to ask nor possible to find out; it suffices, leaving aside the causes of this distinction, to know that neither does mercy take away justice nor justice mercy with him by whom no one is condemned except justly and no one freed except mercifully.

As for the Tyrians and Sidonians, what else can we say than that it was not given them to believe, who, the Truth himself says, would have believed if they had seen such signs of power as were done among those who did not believe? But why this was denied them, let the slanderers say if they can, and show why the Lord did wonders among those whom they would not profit and did not do them among those whom they would have profited. We, even if we cannot penetrate the reason of the deed and the depth of his judgment, yet know most clearly that what he said is true and what he did is just; and that not only the Tyrians and Sidonians but also Chorazin and Bethsaida could have been converted and become believers from unbelievers, if the Lord had willed to work this in them. For no one can think false what the Truth says: “No one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father”; and, “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given”; and, “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him”; and, “As the Father raises the dead, so the Son gives life to whom he wills”; and, “No one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.” Taught by the authority of these divine words, let us give thanks to God, who has given us the spirit of faith and power, of continence and love, of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and piety, and of his fear. If he who works all in all had not given us these goods, we would not have them in us at all; and with those who did not know the Lord, or, when they knew him, did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but, counting this to their own wisdom, became fools and with darkened heart became futile in their thoughts, with these, I say, we would sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, having no complaint about the punishment, no excuse from ignorance, no protection from nature. Now let us see what kind of thing follows.